In The United States and Great Britain, the engineer is developed in the company, gains her2 status within it, and it is the process of socialization and adaptation that determines her position. In France, the mobility of engineers is related with age and with the school where they studied (graduate school), as well as with the view of position. In the case of Japan, what predominates is the idea of rank, in which there are between five and ten classified grades of competency. All is based on the notation of merit, quantifiable as work attitude, leadership and encoded results. While French engineers are placed in differentiated careers early on, Japanese engineers progressively acquire professional ability which leads, at close to forty years, to a differentiation between those in middle management, and those who are not (Lanciano and Nohara, 1993).

The career trajectory gives meaning to continuous professional development, and to lifelong learning as an individual within a group or within an organization as in everything, reinventing and reorienting oneself again and again, mastering, over time, the complexity and dynamism of the company. On planning the career, people take increased responsibility for their own employability, based on the possession of a variety of communication abilities, teamwork, problem-solving, critical thinking, and a positive attitude toward change, in which transition abilities that allow the individual to advance from one opportunity to another are essential. Recently, the professional career trajectory has been related with the educational deficit of those who have already passed through the educational system: the large number of direct workers, professionals and administrators in early or mid-career stages. “The deficit increases with the failure to achieve a professional development structure beyond that stage of formal qualification” (Duggan, 1995: 142).

In the career trajectory, job hierarchy is related with the jobs’ scope and depth. The scope refers to the number and variety of tasks performed; the depth, to the degree of freedom to plan and organize the work, to move to one’s own rhythm, and to move about and communicate freely. Greater freedom is associated with the management of personnel, and with the flow of the process; less freedom, with the material resources’ level of availability, and with the possibility of implementing new ideas. The trajectory also undergoes: a) the possibility of enlargement of the position, by means of the incorporation of new tasks of similar nature, which means widening its scope; and b) the enrichment of the position or elevation of the work status by the extension of its scope and depth, usually by assuming new functions and responsibilities. For the engineer who is moving up, the first case may mean a transfer; the second, a promotion.

There are recognized three stages in the development of the professional career, which also includes the professional trajectory: initial career stage, mid-career and late stage career. The choice of three stages allows us to compare our results with similar studies using this same apportionment.

The initial career stage includes the process of socialization for becoming part of the organization; it consists of the development of abilities, adaptation to the group and its norms, learning the culture of the organization and the acquisition of contextual knowledge and conduct appropriate to the new employee’s role. It is a critical period in which the work is centered on routine and technical tasks, in processes more than in products, and in familiarizing engineers with the technological level of the company.

The two most important characteristics in this phase are autonomy and responsibility. It is a crucial phase for demonstrating professional competency. In this phase much of the engineer’s formal learning is irrelevant, and his knowledge of the discipline is insufficient in problem-solving. At this stage, the company assesses employees’ potential, and makes decisions regarding the best ways to implement their professional development.

At the mid-career stage, tacit knowledge is acquired in the area of professional development, and one passes from specific and technical tasks to the larger scope and depth of the jobs. The criteria of execution and achievement, which at the beginning of the career are lightly structured, are conducive to vertical mobility and job enrichment. Those who develop social skills and technical and managerial competencies find that the criteria with which they were recruited are not the same as those with which one is promoted, and that the rapidity of promotion declines after the first few years. Promotion includes a variety of factors, and as individuals acquire additional responsibilities, their professional scope expands, their growth agenda increases exponentially and the knowledge required becomes interdisciplinary. Promotion can include “being in the right place at the right time” at a stage where there is an increase in competitive pressure, derived from the rapid change in knowledge, and of the constant organizational changes in the company.

In the late stage career, individuals, depending on their professional trajectory, have achieved a level of technical or managerial specialization. They have a broad vision of the company and a profound knowledge of its products, which, on occasion, is used specifically in the socialization of new engineers. However, there are few opportunities for vertical mobility, the scope of the position is reduced and the depth decreases. The individual is near retirement, or is on a dead-end career path.

In the case of engineers, planning the professional career can take two routes: the technical and the managerial. At the beginning of a career, the technical skills, which can be applied to a variety of industries, facilitate insertion into the labor market with higher incomes, but as specialization in a company increases, the number of jobs suitable for ascent is reduced, and the probabilities of employability in another company or sector decrease. In contrast, those who have general skills and who enter the company with disadvantages accumulate significant learning and develop skills that extend their trajectory within the company. By and large, “in big companies, the career trajectories are short for those who have technical skills, as compared with those who have general skills” (Takata and Curran, 1999).

The empirical evidence indicates that the professional trajectory of engineers begins in a more technical dimension, and ends in a more administrative one (Mukamurera, 1999), that the mobility in the early phase determines the career trajectory (Rosenfield, 1992), and that employment reduction becomes critical between the ages of thirty-five and forty years (Lavoie and Finnie, 1996), when the engineer is submitted to an extensive process of professional conversions which leads from a formal specialization to a specialization in the company (Dore and Sako, 1998).

These findings indicate that there is a close relation between the initial training received, and the first employment (Weisner, 1993), and that in the majority of cases, the engineer’s practical training begins only after joining the company (Imano, 1994).

Normally, plans and career trajectory are based on each individual’s performance potential, which facilitates making decisions as to whether to continue the trajectory in the company; move across the market recruited by another company; or get out of the market, opting for a second career. These decisions are affected by the goals and expectations of the individual concerning the job and the company.

There is little evidence regarding the work of engineers in modern sectors of the economy. The studies of Hodson (1988), of Grosseti and Mas (1990) and of Lavoie and Finnie (1996) analyzed, respectively, the mobility of engineers in modern sectors in the United States, the trajectories of insertion in France, and the accumulation of skills in recent engineering graduates in Canada. In the case of the maquiladora industry, the trajectory of professional identity has been studied (Hualde, 1995) as well as engineers’ professional practice (Vargas, 1999)—in both cases, in the sector’s electronics branch.

Interest in the history of engineers in the maquiladora electronics industry derives from the some studies’ supposition that changes in the work offer and changes in the work itself have effects on the stability of employment and on the professional career, both in insertion and in internal mobility, threatened by socio-technical changes that oblige a certain operational re-composition of the operative functions. On the other hand, there is arising a widespread belief that individuals should have total control of their own careers, relating this process to alternate paths of professional career development in highly-structured companies.

Table 1. Training characteristics of Middle
Management personnel

The composition of Middle Management takes into account of the interface between the local system of higher education (50% of the engineers) and the national system of technical education (technological institutes) from which come 72% of Middle Management employees (see table 2). There is also a strong current of professional migration 42%); the reasons stated were the prospect of greater employment opportunities and the social networks established among graduates. This professional migration has been constant due to the presence of a dynamic labor market, and to population growth in Mexico’s northern border region.

Table 2. Institutions from which Middle
Management employees come

Of those interviewed, 26% said they were not using their professional training. This is due to their entering the maquiladora sector because they could not find work in another sector, and to their specialization in a particular profession. There are therefore industrial electrical engineers working as quality engineers; fishing engineers working as manufacturing engineers, or chemical engineers in departments of quality control. All this leads to professional conversion processes.

The number of employment changes in the career trajectory shows a mobility of as many as six jobs, with a relative stability in two and three positions, where the engineers construct their career trajectory in the internal market. The percentages of those who say that Sanyo Video Components was their first job, and those recruited in the last three years, point to a significant mobility presented at the beginning of the mid-career state. The data indicate that only three engineers, betwee 37 and 45 years old, have been at Sanyo since the company opened, with no promotion during the last five, eight and nine years; and that vertical mobility is found more frequently among those recruited between 1994 and 1996, while horizontal mobility is concentrated among those recruited in the 1997-1999 period (see Table 3).

Table 3. Number of jobs held during
the career trajectory

At the time of the interviews, 36% of the staff, ranging in age from 24 to 34 years, had received ascensions in the last eight months (see Table 4), 16% to the level of supervisor, while 18.7% of those with a mean age of 39 years had remained without promotion for 4 to 8 years. Recent mobility occurred in individuals in mid-career, usually associated with a recent process of management change and the company’s efforts in hierarchical restructuring. Nonmobility prevailed in manufacturing and production engineers averaging 39 years of age, both in those with work experience in up to six companies, and in those who had experienced only internal mobility. The only constant was that none had obtained a professional degree, highlighted as the strongest limitation to ascent.

Table 4. Job stability

To analyze the potential for ascent, four categories of persons were identified by career: “apprentices”, “stars”, “serious citizens” and “dead weights” (Byars and Rue, 1995). Each of the persons in these categories has a potential career or has come to leveling-type jobs, usually in an unplanned way, supported or limited by cognitive, technical and social characteristics (see Table 5).

Table 5. Classification of potential for ascent in the career
(adapted from Byars and Rue, 1995, p.290)

The results permit us to infer an effective recruitment system and a potential human resources recruitment which translates to 40% of the personnel with satisfactory results, and 25% with a brilliant performance. The category of “apprentices” includes those recruited during the 1998-1999 period. In 80% of the cases, the vertical mobility predominated, concentrated in the “serious people” close to the plateau; in “stars” with high mobility potential; and in two cases of apprentices with fast-track trajectories. The company’s strategy tends toward specialized training, characterized by an ascending territorial logic of Production Engineer to Supervisor of Bobbin-winding, Production Supervisor, and later on, to General Supervisor of Production; with a rapid mobility of “apprentices” to “stars”, and in a few cases, of “apprentices” to “serious citizens”. Some individuals in the category of “stars” will continue in fast-track careers ascending to positions of general management, while others move on to the category of “serious citizens”. This strategy produces, at mid-career, an accumulation of learning and experience in both categories, which without adequate remuneration, produces mobility in the labor market.

Classification of the personnel according to its ascent potential indicates a concentration of human capital as “serious citizens”, “stars”, and “apprentices”. These last, located in production and production-support activities, constitute the company’s competitive potential. Generally, mature and highly-competitive industries like that of televisions, in a region where all the companies, as to their offer, are represented in an oligarchy, tend to employ “serious citizens” to a greater extent than those focused on new company technologies that require a high percentage of innovative human resources.

The reasons for the engineers’ mobility points to dissatisfaction with their remuneration; only 2% said they are paid minimum wage, and 5% receive compensatory benefits. Only 22 % of the engineers were satisfied with their salaries; those who want a raise in salary indicated eight types of desired stimuli, preferably economic (see Table 6). This piece of data reinforces the result showing adequate remuneration as a key factor for remaining in the company. However, mobility is associated with the recognition of personal productivity and quantifiable achievements; this lack of recognition is the factor most cited by those looking for opportunities outside the company.

Table 6. Types of stimuli requested by
Middle Management

The scope and depth of the position are increased in accordance with the hierarchy, so that they are greater for an Engineer C than for an Engineer A. However, they are lesser in the maintenance areas; lesser in project engineering than in product engineering; with a greater scope and depth in manufacturing and quality engineering. This same result follows the description and functions of the jobs of the general supervisors, so that the scope of and the depth is greater in the case of the engineering and quality supervisors, and lower for general supervisors of materials and maintenance.

The important choice is that of the professional specialization area. The attractive choices do not always lead to rapid mobility and middle management and managerial scenarios. Design engineers require high intellectual demand and higher theoretical knowledge in an area very specific and well-paid, but limited in professional mobility, unless the company maintains a policy of two alternate routes for the professional career. On the other hand, the engineers with greater scope and depth in their position are those in production; the ascent in this area is more rapid than in others, beginning with the exercise of leadership, greater visibility and the possibility of interpreting any activity and its results as a tangible indicator, such as productivity and quality costs.

With regard to the engineers’ external mobility, this is related as much with individual limitations as with family limitations. In the first case, age is the dominant area in the career trajectory (which includes experience and formal and informal learning), the hierarchical position in the company, and the potential for mobility; in the second, it is the civil state, the wife’s occupation, the presence or absence of children and the size of the family. The impact of these variables increases or diminishes depending on the state of the career trajectory; the impact of family limitations tends to diminish with advance in the trajectory and to increase the impact of individual limitations. The work offer in the external market acts as a intervening variable, since there is a permanent demand for engineers.

In the initial career stage, remaining in the company is motivated by the accumulation of learning and by professional experience, enriched by a variety of current activities and by those perceived as future. The individual evaluates other options based on an expectation of the accumulation of experience and learning within the company, so that she chooses not to have external mobility, up to the point at which she perceives a general competency in the sector and a specialized one in the area, in a combination of theoretical knowledge and practical experience. To Rosenfeld (1992), this phase presents, up to the third year, opportunities which fundamentally affect the professional career.

In mid-career, being single is an influence toward external mobility; in the case of the married, external mobility is influenced by the wife’s having gainful employment, and if there are children, by having a smaller number. These variables influence the way engineers perceive the comparative advantages of continuing in the company or moving out of it. However, this last decision, in most cases, is an effect of expulsion from the company, so that job characteristics such as low pay, no benefits, and other stimuli lead to external mobility, for the purpose of improving present and future monetary income.

This conclusion is reinforced by the engineers’ perception of their interaction with colleagues and with immediate superiors (see Table 7), and with the opinions of the company as “a learning space” with a cordial environment; with independence regarding work, and with good communication; with performing a creative task offering a high level of responsibility, “different from other Japanese companies”. In spite of that, 20% of the engineers said they were looking for employment, and two “stars” and a “apprentice” had already been hired by another company. In every case, inadequate remuneration for the person’s skills and for individual achievements was cited as the strongest motive for the external mobility.

Table 7. Perception of the work environment

The decision to stay in the company or leave it involves assessment of the advantages, so that the advantages of staying (motivated by opportunities for professional development, recent internal mobility and adequate remuneration) must be greater than those of leaving. These advantages are is not assessed only with reference to a difference in pay, but also regarding learning in a company whose technological characteristics and whose potential for growth may or may not be greater. Evaluation also concerns immediate opportunities and rapid ascent to a high hierarchical status, plus recognition of accumulated experience and technological learning. Usually, remuneration is the basic item of comparison when decisions are being made about a change of employment; the minimum differential of remuneration for external mobility is between thirty and fifty percent, besides other benefits. The greatest external mobility is found in engineers who have accumulated experience in areas of greater demand in the external market, such as production, manufacturing and quality; and in individuals with a high potential for ascent, or “stars”. The lowest external mobility is found in engineers specializing in an area with little demand, such as that of design, or technology transfer; in those individuals whose results are satisfactory, but whose opportunities for ascent are scarce—in whatever stage of the professional career—and who have arrived at the plateau and who stay on it for a period longer than four years (see Table 8).

Table 8. Options for change in the career trajectory

The career trajectories are basically developed in four areas: design, production and manufacturing, quality, and maintenance. In the area of design, there is a concentration of electronics engineers; in production and manufacturing, there are engineers with a variety of training: industrial, mechanical, electrical and systems; the area of quality control shelters industrial engineers, biochemists and chemical engineers, and industrial chemical engineers.

In contrast, the maintenance area recruits more electrical engineers, electromechanical engineers, and electricians. In turn, these areas have higher or lower external mobility potential, depending on the external market. Those who carry out activities of design have fewer possibilities for external mobility, given the specialized nature of their tacit knowledge and the number of companies in the sector who have incorporated design activities. Professional practice in production is characterized by longer trajectories in activities that combine both technical and human aspects; while the area of manufacturing, with its greater concentration on technical aspects, has more frequent mobility toward the position of Assistant Manager. In both cases there is a greater possibility of capitalizing on accumulated experience in the external market of the sector and of other sectors. The area of quality control cuts across all the areas and increases the possibility of internal and external mobility in the sector, particularly for those with experience in quality systems ISO 9000 and ISO 14 000. The maintenance area shows reduced opportunities for internal and external mobility, due to the technological heterogeneity of the sector. It may be deduced that in the absence of early conversion, it is professional training which largely determines the area of professional development, and is also the determining factor in the existence of a greater or lesser number of opportunities in the external labor market.

In the late-stage career, staying in the company is directly related with age, professional trajectory and remaining in a position, as well as with the number and age of the engineer’s children. Internal mobility is reduced, and external mobility, should it be offered, is perceived as directed toward a position or to a definite project in a smaller or more recently established company, usually as a senior engineer; this implies a reduction in scope, but an increase in depth.

Career trajectories point to early ascending mobility for high-potential engineers who come to the management area between the ages of 30 and 35. However, the probability of promotion depends on the creation of opportunities, on the creation of jobs, and on the demands and remuneration of the external market. Thus, promotion and remuneration is partly determined by the external market in terms of quantitative and qualitative demands.

In the case of Sanyo Video Components, the diploma, as an expression of having obtained a professional degree, is not a relevant criterion for promotion. A chemical industrial engineer and a technician in industrial analysis ascended to the same position in the same time, although by trajectories which, in the case of the person with technical training, indicate an ascent based on the hierarchical structure (see Table 9).

Table 9. Career trajectories to Area Manager. Production area

Even in the same area, the trajectories that take one to supervisory positions, present differences. In this case (C and D), the engineers were contracted as recent graduates, without previous work experience. In the case of the women, two are in the initial career phase (E and F), and one is General Quality Supervisor. The three trajectories started from the lowest rung of the hierarchical ladder; the women said they had greater difficulty in their ingress to the company, previous work experience in smaller companies, and came from a technological institute in another state (see Tables 10 and 11).

Table 10. Career trajectory to Supervisor. Engineering area

Table 11. Career trajectories of two engineers. Design area

In the case of the engineers, mobility is associated with variables like personality and gender, and with uninterrupted career trajectories.

One of the characteristics of Sanyo Video Components is the mobility of the engineers up to Plant Manager, as opposed to companies that recruit for this position in the external market. This may have influenced engineers of under 30 years to point out the position of Plant Manger as the most desirable hierarchical position, while engineers between the 35 and 48 years old, having a more realistic attitude toward their ascent opportunities, aspired to become Area Managers.

There is no particular trajectory which ensures continuous ascent to jobs of higher hierarchy. However, the route to becoming Plant Manager requires a combination of technical and managerial skills involving working one’s way through the production area. Greater knowledge of the product and an overall vision of the company and corporation, as well as offering possibilities for career ascent, are essential for the promotion. The trajectory involves the journey of Engineer A, B and C to Supervisor, Supervisor to General Supervisor, of Assistant Manager to Area Manager, and from General Manager to Plant Manager. Each product creates a hierarchy of jobs that go from Engineer to Supervisor of Fly Back, Tuners and Yokes. The technical areas offer opportunities for high specialization; however, remaining in them past the initial career stage leads to the absence of “stepping-stone” jobs for ascent; at least one could capitalize on this training and experience in another company in the labor market. Generally, the engineers’ trajectory begins in a technical area and moves toward administrative activity.

3The “yokes” are the deflection coils on the monitor which direct the electron beam to display the television image; the “fly back” is the high voltage section of the amplifier of high voltage; the “tuner” tunes in to television channels.

4In Mexico, the title “Engineer” (Ing.), and other professional titles (Arquitecto [Arq.], Contador [Cont.], etc.), is used the way the title “Dr.” is used in the United State, and applies only to those persons who have obtained the degree and certification. Whereas in the United States a person who is doing engineering work would be considered an “engineer”, in Mexico, this is not so.

5All Mexican college students, not only those in the field of medicine, must serve an “internship” in his chosen field before receiving their degrees. This internship period is called the “professional service”.

6In Mexico, the degree is not conferred automatically upon graduation; after completing one’s studies, one must either take a professional examination or write a thesis, or both, in order to obtain the degree. Also required is the donation of a certain number of hours of community service, plus a designated number of unpaid work hours in one’s chosen field (see note 5). These requirements apply to every student, in every field.