From my experience there is a kind of brotherhood in the crafts. I think if a young guy is in the right company and apprenticed under the right person he (or she) develops the skills they need for life.
Now - Let's take a young engineer hired out of college. he its thrown behind a desk and stuff is dribbled to him. I think in many A/E organizations, there is more of a tendency for he (or she) to be just another body to crank out engineering deliverables.
The young craftsman may be taught the right way and the wrong way to do the job. An eye is developed for the craft. An appreciation is developed for the work. Someone takes the time to point out mistakes. As time goes on this young worker takes on more intricate and difficult work to eventually move up to journeyman and may become a master.
The young engineer is put in his (her) place. Keep the head down, get the work done and obtain a paycheck. Work is divided like an assembly line. The person sees a small portion of the work, but little or no effort is made to expose this person to the big picture, the entirety of the work. Some of the work is done by H1B people from India. these folks keep to themselves and certainly do not help the young novice to learn. The young engineer learns his tiny portion of the job since there is not a "need to know" anything beyond this.
Craftsmen see the drawings, bills of materials and specs produced by the A/E firm. Some of the older craftsmen note that the product being produced these days by the engineers is not as good as it once was. It's like it's being "pushed" out the door. Another comments that today's engineers don't seem to have the experience that the older guys had a few years back. Luckily, the experience of the craftsmen enable most of the errors and omissions from the A/E company to be corrected.
I'm an engineer, and my experience in my 4 different jobs don't align with your perception of engineering - at all.
- in my first job, we were thrown in (but with lots of oversight...it was nuclear)
- second job, fab work, same thing. Now, the senior guys would solve all the problems, but they were good at answering questions. And if you asked them to lay off and let you figure something out yourself, they would. Likewise, once you figure things out you take on more work.
- third job, by now I'm senior and I'm training. I train people from the get-go. My goal here is to bring people up to speed. I don't want phone calls on the weekend. I don't want to be the *only* person trusted to do things. This means by about year 2 my guys are top notch and can a crap ton more money elsewhere. So, I send them off to do just that.
- fourth job, by now I'm the "go-to" woman and eventually the manager. I spent massive amounts of time giving the new engineers training, projects, responsibility, and freedom to experiment and learn things on their own. And the great ones? Ah, what a sight to see. There in the fab (like I was), coating, developing, looking at wafers, figuring out how the equipment works, understanding device physics. Lots of inspection, yield improvement.
From what I can tell, some of the larger companies are more ... hesitant, and slow to give a lot of freedom. Often they are slow moving companies and risk averse.
