Coming Out of the Closet

J

Thread Starter

Jack Grenard

Note: This editorial first appeared in the English quarterly, IN+OC (Industrial Networking + Open Controls), published by Fieldbus.com. Its copyright is held by Jack
Grenard: copyright 1999.

COMING OUT OF THE CLOSET
By Jack Grenard

There might be one or more in your office, working among the engineers, never noticed. One might be your client or the salesperson who calls on you, maybe even takes you to lunch. You'll never know unless you ask. In the USA, the military has a policy: "Don't ask. Don't tell." Of course, that's for sexual preference.

I'm talking about people who don't have engineering degrees yet work as if they do. They've impressed me over a long career as some of the brightest lights in our industry.

You could start with Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft. He never finished Harvard. An idea got in his way.

When it comes to industrial controls, I think of three individuals who do engineering work without degrees. They don't talk about their "handicap" often, but a few of us know.

One is Richard E. Morley, founder of Modicon and father of the programmable controller (PLC). Oh, he has a degree, I suppose, but not in engineering. He didn't quite finish at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in physics. Yet he recently lectured at Harvard. Lack of a degree didn't stop Dick from starting almost 100 companies and inventing everything from the fax modem to the floppy disk. Many degreed engineers would be jealous of Dick's contributions--and maybe they are.

Another individual, not as well known as Dick Morley but whose name gets around the world, is Kenneth Crater. Ken, whose alma mater is a high school, has no degrees to his credit. He did not even complete high school, so interested was he in electronics, mineralogy, and photography. He does have a multi-million-pound company to his credit, though, Control Technology Corp., in Hopkinton, Massachusetts, once a British colony. He's about to launch a World Wide Web-based company, control.com.

If you've heard of Ken, it's likely you saw his name on the Automation List, an emailed forum divided into half-a-dozen topics dealing with automation. Ken started the list more than three years ago. Today it attracts almost 2,000 engineers, technicians, and others. (You can subscribe to the free list by sending a message to [email protected]--and I suggest you do.) Just this month [September] Ken was invited to write an article on software development for a major controls publication in the States.

Still lesser known is Willy Smith. He started Microsmith, an electronics manufacturing company in Scottsdale, Arizona, in 1984 as Softrol. He sold Softrol; today its revenues have reached $40 million, and it still sells the controller he designed at the start.

Willy realized he had a problem when he tried to call on company presidents and found they wouldn't talk to him. When he started Microsmith, Willy became a president. Suddenly, his calls got through. In 1995 he sold Microsmith to Numatics, his best customer. The people at Numatics liked Willy and the boards he was making so well that they backed him for a five-year start-up company in Costa Rica. Willy took his family to San Jose and began their experiment in culture shock last December. He reads thick volumes on the various networking protocols out there, and understands them. He was an early LonWorks (Echelon) licensee.

"I hate school," says Willy, "but I love learning." He went to college for three months in 1974 and dropped out. He fled to Europe, learning French and German. In 1979 Willy took a job as a commercial trader, averaging US$100 million a month in the currency and precious-metals markets.

"I could not handle the pressure," he says, "and changed careers to microprocessors and industrial controls."

Doubtless other examples of non-degreed people doing engineering work inhabit the Earth. It just hasn't been my good fortune to encounter them. Some of them keep it quiet.

--Jack Grenard

________________
Jack Grenard is a founder of Industrial Controls magazine, now an ISA bimonthly. He has published a monthly newsletter, Industrial Controls Intelligence (formerly The PLC Insider's
Newsletter) since 1981 until its sale in October 1999. Reach him at [email protected].
 
W
I'm not a degreed engineer, either. I have a degree in Technical Theater. This has allowed me to be technical enough not to kill people, and allowed me to speak engineer for over twenty five years now.

Walt Boyes


>Note: The following editorial first appeared in the English quarterly, IN+OC (Industrial Networking + Open Controls), published by Fieldbus.com. Its copyright is held by Jack

>Grenard: copyright 1999.
>COMING OUT OF THE CLOSET
>By Jack Grenard
> There might be one or more in your office, working among the engineers, never noticed. One might be your client or the salesperson who calls on you, maybe even takes you to lunch. You'll never know unless you ask. In the USA, the military has a policy: "Don't ask. Don't tell." Of course, that's for sexual preference.

>I'm talking about people who don't have engineering degrees yet work as if they do. They've impressed me over a long career as some of the brightest lights in our industry.

>You could start with Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft. He never finished Harvard. An idea got in his way.

> When it comes to industrial controls, I think of three individuals who do engineering work without degrees. They don't talk about their "handicap" often, but a few of us know.

>One is Richard E. Morley, founder of Modicon and father of the programmable controller (PLC). Oh, he has a degree, I suppose, but not in engineering. He didn't quite finish at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in physics. Yet he recently lectured at Harvard. Lack of a degree didn't stop Dick from starting almost 100 companies and inventing everything from the fax modem to the floppy disk. Many degreed engineers would be jealous of Dick's contributions--and maybe they are.

>Another individual, not as well known as Dick Morley but whose name gets around the world, is Kenneth Crater. Ken, whose alma mater is a high school, has no degrees to his credit. He did not even complete high school, so interested was he in electronics, mineralogy, and photography. He does have a multi-million-pound company to his credit, though, Control Technology Corp., in Hopkinton, Massachusetts, once a British colony. He's about to launch a World Wide Web-based company, control.com.

>If you've heard of Ken, it's likely you saw his name on the Automation List, an emailed forum divided into half-a-dozen topics dealing with automation. Ken started the list more than three years ago. Today it attracts almost 2,000 engineers, technicians, and others. (You can subscribe to the free list by sending a message to [email protected]--and I suggest you do.) Just this month [September] Ken was invited to write an article on software development for a major controls publication in the States.
>Still lesser known is Willy Smith. He started Microsmith, an electronics manufacturing company in Scottsdale, Arizona, in 1984 as Softrol. He sold Softrol; today its revenues have reached $40 million, and it still sells the controller he designed at the start.

>Willy realized he had a problem when he tried to call on company presidents and found they wouldn't talk to him. When he started Microsmith, Willy became a president. Suddenly, his calls got through. In 1995 he sold Microsmith to Numatics, his best customer. The people at Numatics liked Willy and the boards he was making so well that they backed him for a five-year start-up company in Costa Rica. Willy took his family to San Jose and began their experiment in culture shock last December. He reads thick volumes on the various networking protocols out there, and understands them. He was an early LonWorks (Echelon) licensee.

>"I hate school," says Willy, "but I love learning." He went to college for three months in 1974 and dropped out. He fled to Europe, learning French and German. In 1979 Willy took a job as a commercial trader, averaging US$100 million a month in the currency and precious-metals markets.
"I could not handle the pressure," he says, "and changed careers to microprocessors and industrial controls."

>Doubtless other examples of non-degreed people doing engineering work inhabit the Earth. It just hasn't been my good fortune to encounter them. Some of them keep it quiet.
--Jack Grenard

> Jack Grenard is a founder of Industrial Controls magazine, now an ISA bimonthly. He has published a monthly newsletter, Industrial Controls Intelligence (formerly The PLC Insider's

> Newsletter) since 1981 until its sale in October 1999. Reach him at [email protected].
 
M

michael christopher

I am not degreed either, but have worked as a software engineering and a software engineering manager for 22 years now.

I have supervised phd level employees (rather humbly :) and other brilliant folks. I keep up by reading voraciously and can teach myself any subject.

I have left management for a while now, and am concentrating on keeping my hands dirty. I know most computer languages and have always stayed on the "control" side of programming (vs database oriented things).

I enjoyed your article.

By the way, Larry Ellison (head of the second largest software company Oracle) is also non degreed.

Thanks,

Michael
 
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