Important isn't the same as high value or well-paid

Two annual magazine issues that I like to read cover to cover - - the SI swimsuit issue and the Fortune 500 issue.  The current issue of 500 has so many good articles, it is hard to point them all out.  The most important for engineers is in the Geoff Colvin article entitled In the Future, Will There Be Any Work Left for People to Do?  This can be stated another way for U.S. engineers doing hum-drum design work - In the Future, Will There Be Any Commodity Design Work Left for U.S. Engineers to Do?

Colvin expertly addresses the question with the following:

"Consider the skills in highest demand over the next five to 10 years as specified by employers in a resent survey by Towers Watson and Oxford Economics.  Those skills didn't include business acumen, analysis, or P&L management.  Instead, relationship building, teaming, co-creativity,cultural sensitivity, and managing diverse employees were all near the the top.

The emerging picture of the future casts conventional career advice in a new light.  Most notably, recommendations that students study STEM subjects - science, technology, engineering, math - need fine-tuning.  It's great advice at the moment: eight of the 10 highest-paying college majors are in engineering, says recent research, and those skills will remain critically important.  But important isn't the same as high value or well-paid.  As infotech continues its advance into higher skills, value will continue to move elsewhere. Engineers will stay in demand, but tomorrow's most valuable engineers will not be geniuses in cubicles; rather they'll be those who can build relationships, brainstorm, and lead.

It's tempting to find comfort in the notion that right-brain skills gain value.  Calculus is hard, but we all understand emotions, right?  Yet not everyone will benefit.  We may all understand emotions, but we won't all want to go there.  Building the skills of human interaction, embracing our essentially human traits, will play to some people's strengths and make others deeply uncomfortable.  Those people will be in trouble."