What is an Engineer? Words of Advice For Students

Engineers are masters at blaming someone else.

"The welders don't know how to weld."

"You don't know how to read a drawing."

"They didn't have a trouble with my drawings where I used to work."

"Fabrication's fault."

"All I did was design the machine, it was So&So that sent it out, go talk to him."

Reminds me of a sign I once saw on a senior engineer's desk. It read:

Mistakes Have Been Made

Others Will Be Blamed

An engineer is one who takes what he has learned in college and applies it to a job. From personal experience, I have found that an engineer doesn't always get to do what he was trained for. An engineer's education prepares him to get a job, period. The rest is on-the-job training. There are two types of engineering students, those who have a serious interest in engineering and those who just want the title of "engineer". The latter wants to go up quickly in the world without too many actual engineering challenges. I hope you are of the former persuasion as we can use some good engineers in this country. Right now, we are importing quality engineers from other countries, like China, Japan, India and Germany.

Don't he drive the train?

Looking at those videos, Engineers are looking more like politicians, Allot of talk without saying anything. Not one of them answered the question 'What is an engineer?". They talked about everything except what an engineer does. They hinted at the ease of getting away from work, and even talked about playing in the rain!!

It must have really affected their golf game

The videos weren't exactly enthralling but then I challenge you to try and make a video. Easy to criticize when you're not in front of the camera.

As a Mechanical Engineer and soon a registered PE, I commonly find that those who just fix things commonly criticize those that design and apply. I'm in manufacturing so I do little design but I hear it all the time. F#*&ing engineers, yet when giving a BLANK sheet of paper and asked to recreate they cannot. Let's be real here, I know a few engineers that are too arrogant to ask the opinion of a tech.. But I also know a few techs that couldn't hack the degree and are therefore bitter about anyone that has one. I also know engineers that have no degree and could run circles around those that do. Most of them are older and understand the true essence of engineering which isn't the pursuit of the degree. It's the pursuit of understanding and applying mother nature to make people lives safer and more sustainable.

Engineering gets clouded when introduced to business, engineers forget that our duty is to uphold public safety above all else and not submit to political or financial pressures. I manage maintenance and engineering so I'm very familiar with financial pressures but it's no excuse for making poor designs or poor judgements to make a buck.

Last rant, don't be fooled by the media. i.e. companies (engineers are blamed) are being sued at an alarming rate for perceived faulty design. That's because most insurance companies and lawyers no nothing of design intent and they don't care. It's big bucks to win a class action lawsuit, or even settle out of court for that matter. Take the Yamaha Rhino, class action suit based on faulty design. How about follow the guidelines by the manufacture and stop blaming everybody but yourself because you have no idea how to operate the machine. That's an easy example, the list could go on and on.

There are big differences in engineering, They exist between those who are engineers and those who want to have an engineering degree, or a title. First of all engineers are not exactly here to advance the good of humanity. If that is your goal you should become a scientist. Scientists do work for the good of humanity. Us engineers dirty it up because we involve money. Engineering involves trade offs and presenting the cost / benefit options to managers and executives to allow for informed decision making. One of the engineers posted above that this means safety first and highest priority. That is not always the case. It is at what point you put your foot down that will define you as both a person and an engineer. It is also how you will shape your career. Let me present an example; If safety was such a high priority like the engineer states above, why is automobile design the way it is? Engineers could design and build you an automobile that you could drive at 100 + mph and crash into a reinforced concrete wall and you could laugh at the impact and get out and go do it again without a scratch and not even lose the press in your pants. The only problems would be the thing would be about 58 feet long, weigh about 96,000 pounds, get less than one tenth of a mile per gallon of gasoline and cost almost 1.25 million dollars, have a style that is ridiculed and by the way nobody would buy it. This means you would make one or two , maybe sell one to ralph nader and then close up shop and go out of business. The reality is it is a trade off. We accept some damage to ourselves and our passengers to get fuel economy, a car whose style is appealing, or what we can afford to own. There have been notable automobile issues where the engineer did not persevere and the company suffered. Don't listen to this crap posted above that engineers are the caretakers of truth, justice, and the American way. That is just crap. You will get unpopular tasks, and when you do you have to do them with extra effort. It is perfectly acceptable to question the boss once, but then you have to go do the job. Like it or not. As the engineer you do have a lot of weight that can be potentially thrown around so be careful what you say, it can put a lot of people to work in a direction you might not necessarily want them going. Probably one of the most desirable characteristics an engineer can possess is the ability to recognize the right answer when told the right answer. As a new engineer you might just smile but after a while you will understand what I mean. One last thing, you better just love mathematics. The University will force feed it to you like it or not. I have a sister who is close to brilliant, but she does not like math, so she became a doctor. A financially wise choice for her, I could not look someone in the eye and tell them they are terminal or whatever, so I am the engineer. We both share a love of reading which is also quite important for any technical career