Engineers?

[okiedokie]

one of our most senior "degreed engineers" here often remarks that he "doesn't have a degree in this or that" after he screws something up or feigns ingnorance in his inability to think through some simple problem, as if to imply the degree he does have somehow excuses him from being a total tool.

You don't need degrees or certifications to be extremely competent and well-qualified at what you do. And by the same token, many of those degrees and certifications aren't worth the paper they're printed on when the holder is basically an idiot who somehow slipped through the system.

 

[elwood]

Okiedokie,
Although what you say may be true, that and two bits won't buy you a cup of coffee. If you intend to get a job as an engineer today, you better have a degree in engineering. You sound like some of the "old school" engineers I started out working with forty years ago who got into the profession before the HR departments took over with their "hiring models" and psychological questionnaires. In the old days, a good manager could tell if a guy was worth a darn by a two-minute interview and a handshake. . .but that was a long time back and you better have an engineering degree in this current job market.

The original poster's son is doing the right thing by earning that engineering degree and to suggest otherwise to the young folks today would be doing them a great disservice just because of some chip on your own shoulder.

 

[Lex94]

With an Engineering degree you can do anything. The education teaches you to think rationally, logically, and instills figuring skills in the context of physical reality. There is a HUGE shortage of people that are capable of that in all industries. A drawback to Engineering study is that you will loose your ability to spell and assemble proper english syntax. English is a profoundly irrational language with goofy exceptions to goofy rules. It was created by a bunch of inbred Royal Family members afterall...And lets not even get into the English weights and measure system...Egads. Paul Craig Roberts is a twit BTW.

 

[okiedokie]

Elwood, seems you changed the subject. I don't see anything in the original poster's entry about any son. Cliche's don't cut it either. You did a good job of repeating that one (in the same thread, no less) though. No chips here, just observations.

 

[KBFXDLI]

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Tigrpal: "My son is in college, studying to become an engineer. I've always done my own car maintainence but he never joined me and never seemed interested.... What advice would any of you have for my son?"

About the car maintenance, keep plugging away. About his major, read the following Paul Craig Roberts column, then talk to him about whether getting that engineering degree is really in his best interest:
The death of US engineering

If your son gets that degree, he might as well start planning to move to China or India. There is little future for the profession here. Roberts said in another column (paraphrased), "How long will parents pay $100,000 for their child's engineering degree when the child will simply end up in a soup line after graduation?"

A few months back, we had discussions in the General forum about the relative worth of a college degree and of certain degrees in particular. It is starting to look as if engineering, scientific, mathematics, and IT degrees for American citizens are soon going to be nearly as worthless as art history and forestry degrees in the US job market. Steer him toward law instead; that will remain a good field until the lawyers start eating their own and suing one another.

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You are way off base and your sources of information are out of date.....engineering jobs are still in high demand in the US and will remain so for the next 20-30 years.

 

[toocrazy2yoo]

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That said, with the Baby Boomer generation approaching retirement age, one would hope there job market for engineers will improve down the road if we can prevent them from moving all the technical jobs overseas.

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Sorry 427, I butchered your post to get to the meat of my question: How ya gonna do that? We can't prevent them from erasing our borders, shipping out all the manufacturing and even technical service jobs. Code-banging for software, tasks once demanding software engineers earning 80K are being performed by code-bangers in India and Pakistan by folks earning the equivalent of 20K U.S., performing those tasks for U.S. companies. They're running a commerce highwway right up the middle of the United States out of Laredo clear up to Canada, and it's going to be a tremendous threat to our security and the safety of our highways, and it's going to be utterly untouchable to investigators. Wouldn't want to offend our "partners", dontcha know? There are dozens of methods business and government are perpetuating to trade away our sovereignty for the profits resulting from pitting the world's poverty against our own middle-to-upper middle class. This next go-round of job-export will be the professional classes.


How to stop it? I fail to see how. And after middle and upper managers, the engineers are the next to go from where I sit. The best advice to a youngster these days after all, MAY BE to "learn law and finance" and, I'll add one, "learn Spanish and Arabic". Someone prove to me these aren't valid strategies, I'll send you a case of PP (on the 2-4-1 deal, of course!

)

 

[ssj4]

Well, as a Civil Enineer (EIT, never took the PE), all I can say is "hmmm interesting". After I "got out" of engineering school, I decided to apply to Law School (go figure, I really hated law school)....But I realized that just because I was a smartypants engineer, I still had alot to learn (i.e. not everything is equations and or calculations). After my JD, I found out that I only needed to use a relatively small amount of time to get my MBA. After my MBA, I know try to do everything myself, unfortunately, I do not have enoug time.

Bottom line, Engineering taught me how to work through problems. Law School taught me how to look at problems from different perspectives, and Business School taught me how to ????? (well at least I took Financial courses, so I know how to invest properly).

**No I did not check for grammar, and NO I DONT CARE

 

[ssj4]

nor did I check for spelling, which is obvious.

 

[BigAl]

Wherever the manufacturing jobs go, so will the engineering jobs.

I'm socking away as much money as I can, wondering if the next round of downsizing will hit me. Our sales are up, but office staff is way down. (I've been passed over three times in the last three years.) Why would they keep me when the upper management thinks a younger and lower paid engineer can do the work?

One company after another in our area is closing down and moving production to low wage parts of the world. My employer currently has a full time team working to source our product in China. We can't go on forever selling each other stuff made by somebody else.

I'm thinking about getting into subsistence farming as a backup plan. I'm resourceful, and I know how to work on my own equipment. Besides, I could use the exercise.

 

[MNgopher]

Kind of like the rest, I've seen all different types of engineers out there - the good and the bad. I can say that the best of them always seem to get a good education in the classroom (without fretting over whether they got straight A's), pursued hard, practical fieldwork, and figured out quickly that an engineering degree was only the opening to start learning about their chosen profession!

I will say that I am a Civil Engineer with my PE and about 10 years of experience. I specialize in water resources (stormwater in particular) and make a darn good living doing it. In contrast to what a few other engineering professions may see as a future in overseas conutries, there will always be a market for certain skills here in North America.

Out of my peer group, I'm one of those who tinkers with everything and I like to learn about nearly anything I get involved with. I've also worked with the book smart folks and they drive me insane! I'm also one of the few who would much prefer to not have project management be a part of my job - I'd rather engineer the real stuff. Tough to do in todays climate.

All in all, get yourself into a good school, work hard (not just at the grades - extracuriculars and internships are huge), and most of all: only do it if you enjoy it!

 

[Duffman77]

Lots of good comments here.
I am a degreed Engineer (Mech). As to the original post, you really need to look at a few factors. The person who said that we pick and choose what we want to do is bang on. There are people I went to school with (that topped the class) that I would not trust to change my oil. I will take a carb apart but don’t want to change a heater core.
Another consideration is the educational background. A civil engineer is not an expert on cars, period (at least not through education). A mech might be the same, he might be an expert in HVAC not machine design. My school did not teach automotive systems at all but general comments. When people say of my classmates that they should be automotive experts just because they are mechanical engineers is not really fair.

One thing that gets me wound up are software engineers, my old provincial association and university fought that one too. To me a engineer has a classic education consisting of a background in: materials, mechanics & dynamics, thermodynamics, electricity, some computer logic, physics, chemistry, math etc. but not necessarily an expert in all of them. A computer programmer can not say that.

One other thing to note, I have become a regular on another forum, where the mechanics are treated like gods. If something doesn’t work or somebody has a new idea, the tech is the only source that can know for sure. I have a ton of respect for techs and they can do things I cant: diagnose engine problems, do complex repairs that I don’t have the experience for. Yet I have seen posts made on turbo changes where the tech acts like he is a engineer for a race team or engineered the system for the manufacturer just because he has factory training. People really need to consider that engineers and techs have different backgrounds and as such bring different skills to the table. Best results are obtained when each knows their limitations and are willing to compliment the skill set of the other.

 

[Shannow]

Duffman,
when I went through uni, one of the guys who got 1st class honors (they never caught him licking his palm 5 minutes into exams to get rid of the evidence)destroyed the transfer case in his Dad's Range Rover, by driving highway speeds with all diffs locked.

Another (1st class hons again) argued that my bike was broken, as when in 1st gear, you could hardley pedal, while in tenth, you pedalled flat out, and got nowhere. I explained he had the gears bass ackwards. He got a pen and paper, and "proved me wrong"...well sorts.

 

[dave1251]

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Lots of good comments here.
I am a degreed Engineer (Mech). As to the original post, you really need to look at a few factors. The person who said that we pick and choose what we want to do is bang on. There are people I went to school with (that topped the class) that I would not trust to change my oil. I will take a carb apart but don’t want to change a heater core.
Another consideration is the educational background. A civil engineer is not an expert on cars, period (at least not through education). A mech might be the same, he might be an expert in HVAC not machine design. My school did not teach automotive systems at all but general comments. When people say of my classmates that they should be automotive experts just because they are mechanical engineers is not really fair.

One thing that gets me wound up are software engineers, my old provincial association and university fought that one too. To me a engineer has a classic education consisting of a background in: materials, mechanics & dynamics, thermodynamics, electricity, some computer logic, physics, chemistry, math etc. but not necessarily an expert in all of them. A computer programmer can not say that.

One other thing to note, I have become a regular on another forum, where the mechanics are treated like gods. If something doesn’t work or somebody has a new idea, the tech is the only source that can know for sure. I have a ton of respect for techs and they can do things I cant: diagnose engine problems, do complex repairs that I don’t have the experience for. Yet I have seen posts made on turbo changes where the tech acts like he is a engineer for a race team or engineered the system for the manufacturer just because he has factory training. People really need to consider that engineers and techs have different backgrounds and as such bring different skills to the table. Best results are obtained when each knows their limitations and are willing to compliment the skill set of the other.

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As an Tech I agree with your comments 100 percent. There have been a few engineers that I hold in very high reguard. There are other's that I wonder how they tie there shoes. Some engineers are experts in there fields and they have to talk down to me so I can understand. Other's need crayons and construction paper so they don't mess anything up.

 

[Kestas]

I'm a Metallurgical Engineer, PE, and have 26 years experience. It's fun being a metallurgist... other engineers consider us gods!

I've heard this comment from more than one professional.

I also have wrenching and machine shop skills. This - among other things - has earned me respect from technicians out in the shop, who sometimes come to me for brainstorming when they run into a difficult situation.

I agree with others that a degree is only one aspect of being an engineering professional. One still needs to develop himself to earn the respect from others in his field. This also hold true with being a good technician.

 

[BigAl]

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I'm a Metallurgical Engineer, PE, and have 26 years experience. It's fun being a metallurgist... other engineers consider us gods! I've heard this comment from more than one professional.

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As a MechE, I have only a very basic understanding of Metallurgy. Having a guy like you on our small staff would sure come in handy once in a while!

Of course a metallurgist would know what to make things out of, but not what things to make, like a MechE would.

 

[Shannow]

re Kestas' post.

Management want me to do "higher studies" (they mean an MBA). I've told them that if I ever do higher studies, it will be metallurgy, not management.

We had one instance, where we discovered type IV cracking in an aged, and mildly overheated CrMoV fabricated bifurcation on a steam main...could see the cracks before the oxide was removed (2 years since only mild voiding was observed).

It took them only a couple of days to develop a temper bead weld procedure to get us back into service inside our planned outage.

Only problem that I have with metallurgists is when they smile...it means that I've got big, and expensive problems (I usually refer to them as the "Grim Reaper")

 

[carock]

First, a freind of mine who says "don't tell ANYBODY I said this" does accounting for INTEL. He says that Indian engineers cost 1/3 as much as American engineers,and you need four times as many of them to get the same job done....you do the math.
Second, mechanics and technicians often know WHY things work or do not work. Engineers are trained to calculate the exact amount things did or did not work.This is why my professor ( Phil meyers-Wisconsin) told me "you kids are trained to solve for the unknown 'X', it takes experience to figure out how to get the job done". It took me 20 years to figure out what he meant. Now I get it.