The Engineer Who Stopped Airplanes From Flying Into Mountains 237
New submitter gmrobbins writes "The Seattle Times profiles avionics engineer Don Bateman, whose Honeywell lab in Redmond, Washington has for decades pioneered ground proximity warning systems. Bateman's innovations have nearly eliminated controlled flight into terrain by commercial aircraft, the most common cause of fatal airplane accidents."
Re:And yet somehow (Score:5, Interesting)
Everyone talks about age discrimination as if it were real. I've had problems with a slow job market, but not with age discrimination. If anything, I've found more companies willing to do interviews in the past years than less.
I'm starting a business because it's the right thing to do with the efforts I've made in my life and the cards I hold right now, not because I "can't find work." I could get a regular job, and be a wage slave for the rest of my life -- I choose not to.
But then again, I'm still willing to put in as much effort as I can for my employers and customers, even if that's not as much clock time as it was 20 years ago.
Maybe you should ask yourself a pertinent question the next time you think you were discriminated against on basis of age:
As someone in the mountains I appreciate this (Score:5, Interesting)
My family has had a ranch in the mountains for about 100 years within line of sight of a military airport in more recent years.
The B17 and other wreckage there was horrible, uncommon and yet eventual.
You won't see those pictures on the Internet.
Make the technology scale down... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Terrain (Score:5, Interesting)
"He deliberately force-landed the plane by diving down in a steep manner until the Ground Proximity Warning System gave off a signal 'sink rate, whoop, whoop, pull up'."
He said Komar ignored 15 GPWS warnings as well as his co-pilot's warning and brought the plane into the sharp dive, causing it to drop suddenly by 1,600 feet per minute compared with a normal 1,000 feet per minute and to overshoot the runway.
The plane's front wheel snapped off, causing the aircraft to bounce three times before skidding on the runway, crossing an airport fence and a public road and hitting a dyke before bursting into flames, the prosecutor said.
Source. [sky.com]
A few years ago, a friend claimed that a member of the flight crew aboard GA-200 actually said "Stupid American" or something along those lines in an attempt to shut up the GPWS (which wouldn't particularly surprise me knowing Garuda). I'd dearly love to hear the CVR recordings for that flight if anyone knows where I can get them, I'd like to see whether that rumour is fact or fiction.
Re:And yet somehow (Score:4, Interesting)
I will also admit to bias - I'm also an engineering researcher (coincidentally, also specialising in aerial systems). And I love my job... but I think that might be part of the problem. If engineering wasn't as fun and creative and fulfilling, nobody would do it for what's being paid. It seems to me that perhaps if we weren't willling to do it for the love of it, maybe we would get paid more... but then someone else would just step right in. Again, I think that unless society is prepared to paid for less-stressed and more productive engineers, we're stuck.
Re:And yet somehow (Score:3, Interesting)
The rich will still keep rich and people will still have a massive incentive to work (we can set the basic income perhaps quarter to half the amount of a normal job).
It's inevitable anyway once automation comes into force more strongly, and frees our time up. Tons of people will simply not be 'needed' (i.e. not needed to be slaves to the 9-5) any more, and I'm talking about even very skilled workers here, as well as those more menial jobs. We can start the basic income at a low amount and gradually increase it over time.
Re:And yet somehow (Score:4, Interesting)
Interestingly pro athletes and entertainers are unionized.
Dockworkers in Oakland CA typically make in the low six figures, but that is also a very unionized environment.
The dock workers struck a few years ago because they were being replaced by computer techs that were non-union and getting about a third of what the union workers were (the result of the strike is that the computer professionals at the port are now union scale.
Something to think about anyways.
Re:And yet somehow (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm totally biased when I say this, but engineers are one of the profession that's grossly underpaid and under-regarded. Some investment make millions just by moving some virtual values - usually worthless - left and right on a computer screens, while engineers responsible for the success of projects worth in the multi-billion "real dollars" range, or indirectly responsible for countless lives, struggle to get decent salaries and usually don't even come close to 6 digit figures.
I think you're comparing averages to outliers.
An analogous comparison would be to look at drama majors and assume they all make crazy money because A-list Hollywood actors are millionaires. There are large numbers of people who study finance and business -- and are good at it -- but who don't have the particular breed of genius mixed with insanity required to succeed in Wall Street, which is the pinnacle of that career field.
In my field, software, there are plenty of millionaire engineers, and a few billionaires. They made their money as much by luck, being in the right place at the right time with the right ideas, as by skill and hard work, but that's also true of the Wall Street types. Oh, and the software "outliers" have orders of magnitude more money than the Wall Street types.
Further, those millionaire investment bankers don't make money by just taking a nice, safe and predictable salary... their compensation is almost entirely performance-based, and the nature of their business is that performing well requires taking risks. If those risks don't pan out, they get very little and lose their jobs. Lots of people go that route and wash out, but we don't hear about them. The analogous sort in the software field is the guys who spend their careers in Silicon Valley, hopping from startup to startup, working insane hours for peanuts plus worthless stock, hoping that this time the stock becomes valuable. I don't know what the analogous risk-taking, shoot-for-the-moon career path looks like in, say, aviation engineering, but working for Boeing isn't it.
I think there are plenty of opportunities for engineers to make huge money by taking big risks. There are also plenty of opportunities for engineers to make a decent living working 40-50 hours per week, doing what they like, with a paycheck that shows up like clockwork. It's also important to keep in mind that the lower stress of the steady paycheck is also a form of compensation, and not a trivial one. It's huge if you want to have a family and to be involved in your kids' lives, for example.
Re:And yet somehow (Score:5, Interesting)
I recently met an engineer who developed the architecture and led the design of several widely deployed electronic systems. I don't want to mention the names (so as not to embarrass anyone) but they're systems that generate a quarter billion dollars in revenue annually and which you've almost certainly heard of.
*He* can't get a job, because of his age and (ironically) because his resume is so impressive. People are afraid to hire him.
Now to be fair this guy pretty much radiates "engineer". He comes across as gruff, cynical and impatient, and he dresses a little oddly. He might have some tendency towards Asperger's; he listens intently to what is said but doesn't seem to be aware of body language. But still, even considering that, this shows that the fond belief engineers have that a track record of success will magically open doors for them in their career is baloney. This guy built more than one "better mousetrap", and he can't even get a job interview.
The reason this guy hasn't been able to get a job for several years is that he doesn't want to network. He sees shmoozing as a stupid waste of time, because it's not how *he* would hire someone to do a job. But at his career stage it's the *only* way he'll get another job, because otherwise his resume will only land on the desk of people who see his ability and experience as a threat. He's got to hit the cocktail party circuit -- events where tech entrepreneurs hang out -- because *that's* where he'll find people eager to bring someone like him on board.
Re:And yet somehow (Score:3, Interesting)
As someone who has read resumes and done some hiring, its not that you see an overqualified person as a threat; you see them as a very expensive potential asset that is way overkill for the job you need done, and a unwise use of your limited budget.
You get the exact same issues when choosing a new platform for some internal project: do you go with the $1000 option, that does exactly what you need and nothing more, or the $100k option that does what you need as an configurable module in an expandable architecture (blah blah)?
If you don't need something, than you won't want to pay for it. Simple as that.