As recent as five years ago, the engineering profession was deemed a dead end job. There
was no future in this profession and one needed to get away from science and technology
"to Make it". If we take a causal look of the history of physics from the early
1900s, the golden age of modern physics, we see a number of the giants in physics, such as
Sommerfeld, Drude, Schrodinger, and the like were not too well off financially, although I
seem to remember de Broglie was a Belgian Prince, Max planck was probably doing okay. Most
of them were devoted to physics and seemingly did not care about financial rewards of
their profession.
From 40s to the 60s, the bipolar transistor and the computer were invented, and launched
the modern age of technology. To be in the technical field was trendy. Everyone wanted to
be in Physics, and engineering. The Lighters were going to school during this age. A lot
of us became just that.
In the late 80s and early 90s, American technology, and in particular the US semiconductor
industry, was in a sad shape. It was not the " in" thing to be an engineer.
Intel was barely in the top 10 chip makers. Young men should go "business" and
" wall street".
In 1995/96 "Yahoo" was launched, the InterNet age as upon us, closely followed
by the wireless communication age. It was clear that one needs a technical background to
launch a startup. A "technie" with a good idea would make it "big" in
a few years after the startup and buyout. For example, a colleague in EE at a sister UC
campus started a "high-tech" company with one employee and himself. Sold to a
"biggie" for $13E6, with $7E6 all to himself. That was pretty good, considering
there was no product, no pilot plant, no anything, only an idea and a patent.
In 1992, QUALCOMM, the CDMA pioneer in the wireless communication, went public. Since
Jacobs and Viterbi were faculty in the ECE dept. at UCSD, some of his former colleagues
had confidence in the company and bought in the IPO at less than $20 a share ( probably at
$16). The market value of one share is somewhere around $400 recently. QUALCOMM has split
twice since 1992, thus one share in 1992 is worth $1600 in December 1999. Let us say one
of their former colleagues bought 5000 shares in 1992, the holding is now worth between
$7E6 to $8E6 to-date. No wonder some of their former colleagues are donating $500 K or
more for chair professorships and fellowships to the department.
In the recent past, the "younger than 30 " millionaires were mostly from
inheritance or wall street guys. Nowadays, they are most likely Bay Area
"technies". A significant number of my colleagues have their companies, even the
Cavendish professor at Cambridge is closely associated with a company. The
"Technies" are hot, young men go "bay area".
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