Rewards and Awards in the Industry

A lot of what engineers do may be either secret or proprietary and not publicly published, so it is really difficult for anyone to know what really clever technology is being developed, much less evaluate it for awards. Much of it isn't patented and even when there are patents involved, there is a lot of know-how that is proprietary, so the technology can't be discussed. I've worked on many projects that are considered at least corporate secrets and/or government secrets and some where we did some amazing things, but we still can't talk about them. In fact usually the more amazing the technology that is being developed, the more secret it is.

It is convenient that engineers are generally introverted and not seeking the lime light because they do a lot of highly innovative things that go un-noticed.

element14 is great in that it is much more egalitarian, and I really like the way they run the forum, but few members will disclose truly innovative ideas here.

A couple of years ago I was the featured speaker at my local IEEE Awards Banquet.

During my career I never worried that much about awards. My customers kept me busy and that was the best feedback I could get.

I find most of the societies too academically oriented for my tastes.

DAB

IEEE and the Professional Engineering Societies hand out awards, but the eligibility and selection criteria don't make them very universal and consequently they are not that well known.

I think it would be awesome to win the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering......

Other apparently prestigious prizes I never heard of but just looked up:

The Charles Stark Draper Prize

Fritz J. and Dolores H. Russ Prize

Bernard M. Gordon Prize for Innovation in Engineering and Technology Education

We've never been the sort to congratulate ourselves. I've worked in IT in a number of industries and it's always been the same. The business or the sales team always shout about what a brilliant job they've done asking for something to be made for them. On the technical side we just get on with out job and build what's required without a fuss.

The American Society of Mechanical Engineers and other such societies and organizations give out awards and recognition for service, merit, etc.  I don’t think most engineers follow such things closely though. It seems like it was more a thing years ago when we would get a monthly magazine with such information in the back than it is now but that might just be me.

I have in past followed Design News annual Engineering Achievement Awards, and The Best Product of the Year Award.  I have worked on products that have receive some of these awards.

Oh, congrats! That's awesome!!

Red Dot awards are also considered prestigious to get them(the likes of Apple probably get lots of them, so it's quite some effort to win these for a product), these are some of the awards for 2019 from their website:

It's actually a good way to search for cool products, just browse the red dot awards : )

Some other industry ones are extremely specific industry-specific so most people won't have heard of them unless they are in that exact specific industry, e.g. IT world or Networking world and so on would have them.. some products I've worked on have won these types of these awards.

I'm not too far off being an accredited Engineer.

I'm not familiar with Red Dot or the other awards you've alluded to though, is there any links to more information?

Hi Christopher,

Interesting question!! There's some general product awards that are cool, like Red Dot. Also quite specific ones for certain product types, i.e. more focused on the product than the engineers, but acknowledging technical/design work. I've had to collect one at a ceremony on behalf of a team, merely because the award was in London and I was closest : ) The events are nice to mingle with new people.

Some of the engineering firms will award titles to their best and most senior engineers, sometimes almost giving tenure too, that would be informally recognised across the industry I think. Any important work-related award definitely goes on my CV, or any conference speeches, again in the informal hope it would be recognised by other firms.

There's accreditations achievable by working across areas in industry lots, such as CEng/MIET/MIEE is a legally awarded title, and the British Computer Society has them too I think, although they tend to be slightly national accreditations, they probably would be recognised worldwide. Not the same as an award as such, but maybe similar!

Hah I think that's more of an infosec' award