I believe the degrees that focus on technical skills and theory are not what the OP is commenting about. I've noticed there's a huge number of 'degrees' out there that are based on Operations, and not Engineering and Technical Skills. These typically have buzzwords in their titles and should be classified as such (Operations), and not confused with the 'pure' science and technical degrees.

In my country, the local universities churn out a number of dodgy-sounding 'degrees' such as Management Information Systems, Business Information Systems, etc. I actually have no idea what these are, but there's a preoccupation here with sitting in a desk in an office, versus doing the work. They sound 'managerial' and give the freshie a skewed viewpoint in that they expect to be leading teams of engineers and IT departments, all the members of which could probably talk them under the table in a technical conversation.

Seriously, I'm presently looking for great engineers to grow my practice, but everyone I talk to seems to want Google pay without Google technical skills. They want to be project managers and team leaders, yet confess they're 'not very technical' in the phone interview. They also have no answer to my follow up on how they expect to lead a team without understanding the work at hand. I've believed that great engineers manage themselves, with a good eye on the realities of the project and the customer interests. The 'project manager', if not having engineering background, is most likely redundant. No, please don't give me the 'engineers don't have time to manage themselves'.

My question to everyone is this: At what point did the engineers allow themselves to become the grunts of the industry?

The theory does help when writing code, though. At least the code doesn't look like a bunch of cut and pasted examples. It also helps in optimizing and what CS people refer to as 'elegant' solutions to complex problems. I'd say the theory helps one become a better, more 'complete' coder than one is, without it. I don't think the OP is grumbling about the lack of coding experience. See my other post for my take on the matter.

I agree. This will happen about the time technology can do a full physiological reading in seconds over thousands (millions?) of markers and tie that to a huge knowledge system - probably not in our lifetimes. At this point, doctors will only elicit symptoms (such as discomfort levels, but this will eventually also be quantified and handled by machine) and key the 'soft' data into the system.

So who're they going to sue if the thing goes offline? Should all network engineers for major medical facilities ask for larger risk remuneration, or just quit their jobs now?

Isn't Natal's resolution ~4cm? At that resolution, I doubt the system can pick up individual finger movements.

How did this thing get a patent again? It seems to do everything Silly Putty (tm) does.

Windows has been thriving on random errors for the better part of 20 years!

Release Windows Vista - Milennium Edition(tm)?