Engineering is hiring, but half the talent stays sidelined

Engineering is hiring, but half the talent stays sidelined

Engineering likes to tell itself it is a meritocracy. And, in purely technical terms, it is. A machine either meets tolerance or it does not. A cable assembly either passes testing, or it gets scrapped. The trouble is, engineering careers are not closed-loop systems; they are leaky pipelines built out of recruitment, training routes, workplace culture, promotion gates, and — crucially — who gets believed when they say that they can do the work. …