Career Path: One Engineer's Road To Top Of His IndustryCareer Path: One Engineer's Road To Top Of His Industry

In 1980, when Jim Colson was a senior studying mechanical engineering at the University of Michigan, the automotive industry was in crisis, and the state's unemployment rate had doubled to 12% within two years. These weren't good signs for the Motor City native, who had assumed he'd go to work for the industry upon getting his degree.

Then reality hit. One of the Big Three automakers offered Colson a job, but it came with the unusual guarantee that he'd be protected from layoffs for the first year. That didn't sound too promising, so Colson accepted an offer with a maker of truck axles. Weeks later, he was told that because of bad economic times, the manufacturer was rescinding its offers to college students. Desperate, Colson called back a company he'd interviewed with on a whim--Texas Instruments Inc.--and was soon moving south to work on industrial robotics.

It's fair to say that the tough job market 23 years ago didn't stop Colson. Earlier this month, Colson's employer since 1982, IBM, named him to its distinguished engineers program, an elite ranking awarded to 296 of the company's 175,000 technical employees. Colson holds seven patents and has led key technical and production innovations in embedded software for PDAs, cell phones, and other products.

But back in 1980, Colson didn't know anything about software and hadn't even heard of IBM. At Texas Instruments, he got interested in making robots easier for assembly-line workers to use, and the key was software development. That led to 11 years of night school at the University of Texas, earning master's degrees in mechanical engineering and computer science, and segued into his work in embedded software. "The advanced degree in computer science gave me a lot of flexibility to move with the environment," Colson says.

As Colson's story illustrates, IT professionals during tough times need to stay flexible, stay educated, and keep up with emerging technologies. Says Colson, "You need to pull out the threads of experience from what you've done and apply those in new ways to keep you malleable and employable."

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