Aerospace Engineer Named Lego Czar

24-year-old Cal Walsh has put his aerospace engineering degree to good use by becoming the Lego Czar at The Legoland Discovery Center in Texas. Walsh beat out over 100 other Lego lovers for the $37,500 starting salary, and the chance to play with blocks for a living. From the article: "The 15 finalists were given an hour to design something that defined them and their interests. Walsh applied his engineering skills to build a spaceship, a unicycle and a running shoe that spelled out his first name. He gave credit to the children spectators at the event, who offered suggestions on what pieces to add to make the designs more interesting."

Comments

Pathetic

[Animats]

$37,500 starting salary... (Stupid new Slashdot layout breaks italics.)

With an engineering degree and experience. Pathetic.

Re:Pathetic

[hbean]

37,500 is pretty decent to have fun and play with legos for a few years, rather than work at some soul crushing corporate job.

Re:Pathetic

[Tynin]

Still, it is going to take him forever to pay off his likely expensive tuition on that salary. However it would make a great 2nd job to have on the side.

Re:Pathetic

[natehoy]

He graduated a year ago, so his experience was looking for a job for a year, unsuccessfully I might add. You might have noticed that the economy is blowing steaming stinky glowing green monkey chunks at the moment.

He might have garnered his degree into something with a starting wage somewhat higher, or he could have languished in the job market for another year or two and decided to give up and step out in front of a bus some day.

Instead, he found something that he thought he'd love doing that covers his expenses and went for it.

It's not all about the money for all of us, you know.

Re:Pathetic

[Jahava]

Not so much considering he gets to play with Lego bricks all day long. It may be a waste of his talent, but hell, who cares if he enjoys it.

How much do you earn and is your job as entertaining as his will be?

I'd quit my (better payed) job not thinking twice if I get offered that position.

Here's a thought: get an engineering job, make three times that much in one year, and then take the next two years off to play with Legos.

Re:Pathetic

[squareroottwo]

It wasn't too long ago that I was hired for my first real job out of college for $37,500/yr with benefits. The video game studio position was lower salaried than other jobs I could have had. (I even turned down one.) I didn't make the wrong choice, despite holding multiple college level degrees. I had a blast, I learned skills I didn't expect, and I'm better for it. The only things pathetic in this story are reactions like yours revealing how money is the only thing to chase in so many peoples' eyes.

Re:Pathetic

[BluBrick]

37,500 is pretty decent to have fun and play with legos for a few years, rather than work at some soul crushing corporate job.

True, but there's a fair chance he won't get his $37,500 if he refers to them as legos.

Re:Pathetic

[Nadaka]

Interesting. except doing that gets you exactly the same amount of money and only 2 years of lego play instead of 3. It also does not account for the fact that you would have to buy your own lego's.

Re:Pathetic

[Ephemeriis]

$37,500 starting salary...
(Stupid new Slashdot layout breaks italics.)

With an engineering degree and experience. Pathetic.

I was making considerably less than that at my last job... So it doesn't sound that bad to me.

Especially considering that he gets to play with LEGO all day long.

Re:Pathetic

[Nadaka]

My little sister has a degree in architecture, mechanical engineering and drafting. after she graduated 3 years ago she has had 2 part time barely above minimum wage jobs, but has been mostly unemployed. So yes, things are really bad in the field.

Re:Pathetic

[lennier]

"I, uh, Built things. Out of little bricks. Every day."

"Ah, so a Shuttle thermal tile engineer, then? Welcome to the team."

Re:Pathetic

[Albatrosses]

It also does not account for the fact that you would have to buy your own lego's.

And the fact that you now have a two-year gap in your resume when you apply to get a job again.

Re:Pathetic

[denobug]

More money then most with an _engineering degree_ and probably some serious student debt? Although if he's been unemployed for a year then maybe he wasn't very good/not employable.. or the job market for engineers has taken an even bigger nose dive then I thought.

Sometimes it really takes someone to give you a chance to get your foot in the door in any particular industry. I have heard of people graduated from good schools and takes them more than a year to find decent paying jobs that is related to his field in the lean years (that was 2003, which was lean in engineering field, especially electrical).

I hope this job will give him the leg up to another better paying job. A job that will actually use some of what he has learned. Knowing how lean the aerospace industries are right now I hope he found another engineering position outside of aerospace industry.

Re:Pathetic

[vlm]

Salary means nothing without knowing what cost of living is wherever he will be living. Where I live (northeastern Wisconsin), I make $37,000, but that is a pretty good salary given the low cost of living.

Hi neighbor. I went to a Cisco router BGP class about a decade ago in Chicago. I live in suburban WI, lab partner lives in downtown Chicago. Compared salaries and he makes twice as much as I made. Later on, compared lifestyles and he was a small step above a homeless person and I lived like a king:

WI: $60K yr, wife and two kids in a medium size house on an acre of land in a very good area (low crime/great schools/great location), two brand new cars, no significant loans except the (small pre housing bubble) mortgage.

IL: $120K yr, tiny one bedroom apartment with wife and kid "want to get a two bedroom but can't afford it", he drove me around town in his princely 15 year old rusty pickup truck, commented about still having hefty student loans and maybe after they're paid off he could afford the rent on a two bdrm apt.

Now of course job opportunities being what they are, ten years later he's probably making $240K, and I'm still making, you guessed it, $60K, but...

Re:Pathetic

[dudpixel]

hmmm, lets just say you're probably not the employee they were after.

to call something "boring" is pretty subjective. To call lego "boring" just means you have no imagination.

Where are the lasers and guns?

[chemicaldave]

That doesn't look like a fort at all!

Yay!

[MightyMartian]

And I've just been named Emperor of the Wazoo! Bring on the weird, pointless titles! King of Underarm Deodorants... Duke of Aged Cheeses... Chief Technical Adviser to Nails and Screws!

Re:For building that?

[Anonymous Psychopath]

OK, maybe I was too harsh. He only had an hour.

The article notes that it wasn't so much about what he built as how he did it; by interacting with the kids and incorporating their suggestions into his design.

Ha! Take That China!

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Your stealth fighter airplanes are no match for ours produced out of Lego by our aerospace engineering Lego Czar!

don't be an idiot

[Thud457]

It's not all about the money for all of us, you know.

How else are we to measure how favored one is by God ?

Re:don't be an idiot

[AuMatar]

By how many of your enemies he smites, of course.

Lego Czar?

[lennier]

And then came the Lego food riots, the Lego Revolution, the Lego Five Year Plans, the Great Lego Patriotic War... From Lego With Love... the fall of the Lego Wall... the rise of the Legoligarchs...

No. Stop.

[Meditato]

Note to everybody: Please stop using the term "czar". This isn't Romanov-era Russia. I hate how people are using this word to be synonymous with "management".

I am happy to read about Lego

[Crouty]

Many people may think that Lego has nothing to do with IT or even technology in general. I think what happens when a child plays with Lego is the very core of what hacking means - being creative and constructive. Uh, and of course most of the things you can build with Lego can be portet to Minecraft ;-).

Kudos

[jshackney]

I say, "Congratulations!" to this man. He'll be making a little more money than your average Part 135 Lear Jet captain east of the Mississippi. Now is a particularly bad time to be looking for work and it'd be nice to do something fun and get paid for it.