especially in this Era of Hype. Neither you (I suspect) nor I (I Know) could function long in that world where neophyte hires put on their 'business card' such drivel as, "Working for Excellence" -- kinda like the guy who says , "Look: I'm Honest" cha cha. That's our !=brave new world of promising stuff you couldn't even imagine a workable path-to, but you have no qualms about promising it anyway.

I learned enough, just battling from 0-comprehension of that shiny new PDP-8, on through the basics (but not Basic) far enough to see, then: a glimpse of the manifold talents (and dedication) required to grok what "IT" was about (before it had that name.) Fortunately (I can say now) I was not attracted to that level of intricacy of puzzle-solving ... sufficiently to Go There.

Nor can I imagine how it could (next?) become true: that current 'Managers' who lack comprehension of the very-basics + some actual experience of crafting complex things, with discipline and tenacity: could "add-on" that underpinning, after-the-fact. ie They shall continue to 'manage' that which they are incompetent to understand even moderately well.

To me such a prospect seems ~~ like Redmond trying to glue-on 'Security', having conceived their CP/M-derived cash cow with no conception of that word. We see how that has gone (trying to stay 'compatible' etc. etc.)

So what does a company do? 1) Retrain selected Suits, 2) train already competent people to manage? or 3) muddle through with no changes in the way their hierarchy 'just happened' / "grew like Topsy?"--because nobody would!/could?? "retrain"

You would know better than I the likely choice, but I can't resist guessing: Door #3.
That seems to be the New Murican Way. But you couldn't build an accelerator with that MO. I doubt Murican Bizness can reform Itself, after all the easy money made before: just faking comprehension and winging it.

Hope you always find places persuaded-Otherwise than our ugly norm.

'Course my guess also would be that your lore and realizations should be passed on; could that be a better/more important? task than Doing [??]
(But I don't know how you'd feel about teaching--only I think that there are far-too-few IT folk who'd know or care what 'an oscilloscope' can contribute to learning stuff about Basic Stuff.) So it seems to me that an engineering-trained person also IT-*competent* shouldn't so much be ... daily solving IT-problems (however efficiently) as:

Training-up badly-needed New Ones. Well, if there's any org far-sighted enough to create a place for you to germinate some seeds--that is. (And, of course I know nada re your attitude re 'teaching'!)


My 3 Banana Republic deflated-kopecks