Memoirs of an Engineer in America and Beyond

"Memoirs of an Engineer in America and Beyond", is the painful experience the author Gerald Aksheirian had endured in the service of many engineering firms in US he has been employed within various capacities as an electrical power engineer. He also describes his experience with foreign firms Aramco/SCECO, and Serete French corporation in Saudi Arabia. While serving at many engineering firms in US, he came to observe to his utter shock overwhelming corruption and incompetence were preserving and promoting self-interest to the utter detriment of the firm engineers are employed at, is the only driving force in the struggle for survival. Being utterly gullible and patriotic, It took the author many years of service and suffering to realize that engineers in US, are not to serve the public interests, or the nation, neither the firm they are employed at, not even "humanity" as he always came to believe as many also proclaim, but to their "boss", the only one to whose pleasure they are to serve. It is the law.

All events described in this book are real which the author had to face over many years of his services at engineering consulting firms, electric power utility companies, and manufacturing industries. Case stories the author describes and analyzes have the main purpose of inviting attention to the labor laws and cultural, and institutional setup engineers in the United States are subjected to inflicting dire consequences for the nation, US industry, and the very status of engineering professionals modern civilization depends on. The author describes many attempts he had undertaken to alter things for better understanding by those in power. All were to no avail! So, he decided to write a book on the subject, let us see what happens.

The author has studied electrical (power) engineering in Armenia, a small country in the Caucasus with 3,000 years of history. Upon graduation from academic courses in 1952, he served in various responsible positions in designing, engineering, construction, and managing maintenance and operation of a power network system. He also served in the neighboring Republic of Georgia. He moved to the United States in 1971 and was employed by many states on the East coast of the US - New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Texas, Ohio, and Massachusetts. In 1980s he was invited to join as a lead project engineer for Saudi Consolidated Electric Company in Saudi Arabie followed by French Corporation SERET as supervising engineering manager for electrification of Al Jawf region of S.Arabia. Although the author retired in 2008, he never actually "retired", for he kept working to complete the engineering dictionary he had on his desk for the preceding years. He completed in the year of 2006 - a multivolume engineering dictionary dedicated to electric power generation, transmission, and distribution. In his Memoires, the author recounts with pleasure and pride many engineering and design problems "unsolvable" to others for years which he would solve within a few weeks. He cherishes memories of his college professors who repeatedly warned their students never ever to think that upon graduation they become an "engineer" for, engineering is life long struggle of learning, studying, and practicing never to conquer a tiny portion of it. Engineering colleges can prepare students only for the lifelong struggle to become an engineer. The author alarmingly notes that among thousands of engineering students in US colleges Americans are a tiny minority. This obviusly is explained the author says by low, or rather by no status engineering is meant to enjoy in the United States.