A Few Questions for a Current Engineer

4 comments

Rate

msowardscsm Participant Join Date: Jan 2018 Posts: 1	A Few Questions for a Current Engineer 01/23/2018 2:39 PM
	I am currently an engineering student, and for one of my design courses I would like to ask an engineer a few questions. Either over the phone, email, or just over this forum as well. 1.What percentage of your typical day is spent collaborating with others (meetings, discussion, brainstorming)? 2.What forms of communication (papers, presentations) do you use? What percent of your time is spent communicating with others? 3.What percent of the problems that you tackle are “messy” (no precedent for a solution, and/or poorly constrained, and/or no one right solution, and/or conflicting user needs)? 4.If you could give a student one piece of advice regarding solving technical problems after college, what would it be? I would also appreciate if I could receive your name, position, and the company that you have experience at. Thank you so much for any replies!
	Register to Reply

Interested in this topic? By joining CR4 you can "subscribe" to
this discussion and receive notification when new comments are added.

These comments received enough positive votes to make them "good answers".

Brave Sir Robin Guru Join Date: May 2007 Location: Annapolis, Maryland Posts: 7940 Good Answers: 458	#1 Re: A Few Questions for a Current Engineer 01/23/2018 2:52 PM
	1. Anywhere from 5% to 100% collaborating. There is no typical day. 2. PowerPoint, drawings in Mentor Graphics, Visio, Excel, napkins, whiteboards. 30% communicating. 3. All of them. That's why they pay me the big bucks. If it were easy, anybody could do it. 4. Get to know your technicians, operators, and maintenance people that actually DO the work. They will teach you more about your job than you can ever learn in any college or university. Name: Brave Sir Robin Position: Knight of the Round Table Company: King Arthur's Court, Inc.
	Register to Reply Good Answer (Score 2)

MACA Power-User Join Date: Feb 2007 Location: Aberdeen, Scotland Posts: 393 Good Answers: 21	#2 Re: A Few Questions for a Current Engineer 01/24/2018 2:50 AM
	1. Probably between 20% and 80%. 2. Phone, IM, powerpoint, Inventor, whiteboard, flipchart, scrap paper, drawing on components to be altered.....hand gestures! 3. Almost 100%. As said before, my boss hired me to do the hard jobs, he could have hired someone a lot cheaper to do the easy jobs. I also make a lot of decisions where there is no right answer by using my experience and judgment. It may not turn out to be the right answer in the end but I always have justification for why I made the decision at that time. 4. Be methodical, don't wade in and try to be the hero. I've seen many a problem caused by people not spending a few minutes thinking about how they will tackle the problem before they start trying. Maca Senior Engineer Schlumberger
	Register to Reply

Tornado Guru Join Date: May 2009 Location: Richland, WA, USA Posts: 21017 Good Answers: 795	#3 In reply to #2 Re: A Few Questions for a Current Engineer 01/24/2018 3:23 AM
	How is "Schlumberger" pronounced? Nothing I've heard so far seems convincing. __________________ In vino veritas; in cervisia carmen; in aqua E. coli.
	Register to Reply Off Topic (Score 5)

MACA Power-User Join Date: Feb 2007 Location: Aberdeen, Scotland Posts: 393 Good Answers: 21	#4 In reply to #3 Re: A Few Questions for a Current Engineer 01/24/2018 4:35 AM
	In this link there are three pronunciations. https://www.howtopronounce.com/schlumberger/ The first one is most like how everyone I know says it. I have never heard anyone use the second and third pronunciation.
	Register to Reply Off Topic (Score 5)

These comments received enough positive votes to make them "good answers".

Copy to Clipboard

Brave Sir Robin (1); MACA (2); Tornado (1)

	Got Something to Say?
	Ask a Question Start a Discussion

	Aerospace
	BioMech & BioMed
	Chemical & Material Science
	Civil Engineering
	Communications & Electronics
	Education and Engineering Careers
	Electrical Engineering
	General Discussion
	Instrumentation
	Manufacturing
	Mechanical Engineering
	New Technologies & Research
	Software & Programming
	Sustainable Engineering
	Transportation

	Site Directories
	Forum Directory Blog Directory User Group Directory RSS Feeds CR4 Rules of Conduct CR4 FAQ Site Glossary Who's Online (68 right now) Show Members