What do engineers actually do day-to-day??

College Majors Engineering Majors
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<p>Hi guys. I'm an incoming high school senior so I will be applying to colleges soon. I would like to apply in the engineering program. The job of an engineer sounds great- solve problems, design things, build things. But what I can't seem to understand is what engineers actually do day-to-day. Specifically civil engineers and industrial engineers (thats what im most interested in)</p>

<p>Like... teachers make plans, teach students, and grade papers. Lawyers read documents then go to court and represent their clients. But what do engineers do?? Do civil engineers sit at desks all day just thinking about new things to build? Do they work out mathematical equations all day to figure out if a building is going to be stable? Idk!!</p>

<p>This may sound like a stupid question, but i just don't know. Could anyone shed some light onto this please? :)</p>

2

<p>Although I work in I.T., our goal is to still produce a “product”. That product is a software application. Using the systems engineering approach (as spin-off if industrial engineering), I may can give you generic day-to-day of an engineer (non-research).</p>

<p>Like I have mentioned before, let’s say the engineering life-cycle for a producting a product is:</p>

<p>Analysis –> Design –> Development –> Testing –> Implementation –> Sustainment</p>

<p>Hell, thay life-cycle could on on for a year or two. I will breakdown typical day-to-day tasks by each phase:</p>

<p>Analysis - Engineer could be reviewing the current system that is in place, noting all of the capabilities of the product. He/She could be working on the CONOP. He/She could be talking to the internal/external client or other stakeholders who requested this new product to gather more requirements. He/She could be conducting trade-off analysis on the new capabilities.</p>

<p>Design - Engineer could be drawing up a high-level design of the product using design software. The design could be electronic circuits, mechanical components, network diagrams or entity-relationship data models. All of the mentioned could be broken into 2 mini-phases: preliminary design and detail design. He/she may assemble a “peer-group” to perform a peer-review of the design.</p>

<p>Development - The engineer could be developing part(s) of a prototype product. He/She could be constructing actual circuits or networks or Java code or database tables/scripts</p>

<p>Testing - Engineer could be setting up the testing environment(s). He/She could be conducting actual test runs. He/She could be collecting metrics from the test runs. The engineer could be involved in creating the actual testing plans. He/She could be the liason between the developers, testers and project management.</p>

<p>Implementation - This engineer could be the person bring all of the partial “pieces” of the product and constructing the best method to perform an “install” of the tested system. He/She may enforce the configuration management. He/She may be studying the target environment of the system to help determine the best method of installation. He/She may the liason between the testers, management and the actual users.</p>

<p>Sustainment - This engineer may “troubleshoot” the system if issues arise. He/She may perform pro-active maintenance on the system. He/She may gather periodic metrics to measure and monitor the performance of the relatively new system.</p>

<p>Again, the time it takes from Analysis to Sustainment could be anywhere from 1 to 3 years…so it is VERY possible that a single phase (like Analysis) can take months to finish.</p>

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<p>Thank you very much GlobalTraveler!! I like the fact that one could be doing something different each day. I would hate it if there was never any variety :)</p>

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<p>A lot of engineers do complain about monotony though. It is highly dependent on where you work and what your highest degree obtained is. It is very possible to end up in front of a computer running simulations on the same family of parts each day. It is also possible to have a job with a new problem to solve every day. It is highly variable.</p>

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<p>^Generally, does it work in the sense that the better your degree and company, the better/more challenging your work will be?</p>

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<p>In high school they taught it like what GLOBALTRAVELER said, but it went more like:</p>

<p>Problem—>Design—>Prototype—>Experiment—>Failure(Go back to Design) or Success(Proceed with development)—>Development---->Implementation—>Mass Production</p>

<p>Needless to say I took my first Intro to Engineering Design class a WHILE back and I forget the process =/. But its something like that as GLOBALTRAVELER has put in detail. I think it was like a 9 step process, but I probably messed up a few.</p>

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<p>Maybe in a very general sense. The level of your degree probably has more of a correlation with the keel of variety in your job.</p>

<p>The quality/reputation of the company, in my experience, has less to with it than the aide of the company. Generally, smaller companies employees that are less specialized by necessity, and as such have more variegated jobs. At any rate, that is still a major generality.</p>

8

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Well, it generally works that the better your degree and company the better/more challenging your opportunities will be. I’ve seen quite promising engineering graduates plop down into very routine jobs, by choice. By comparison, marginal graduates from marginal schools generally have to take what they can get.</p>

<p>OP - there are a tremendous variety of engineering positions. Some samples, people I actually know, and yes, they are all 100% real:</p>

<p>Flight test engineer: Other people bring you systems, you help integrate them onto test aircraft and help monitor/operate them during flight. Ever see a regional commuter jet impersonate an F-16?</p>

<p>Electro-optical engineer: Play with high-intensity heat beams, or “lasers”.</p>

<p>Competitive intelligence: Work through rivals’ press releases and try to glean clues about what they are building and how, so that you can better prepare your own product for competition.</p>

<p>Design engineer: Design “components” of systems, often operating alone or with a small group.</p>

<p>System engineer: Manage “interfaces” between system components.</p>

<p>System architect: Design entire systems - whether that is a boom box or a satelite.</p>

<p>Proposal specialist: Also known as “PowerPoint Engineering”, design purely theoretical systems on paper in the hopes that someone will pay your company to build it.</p>

<p>Field engineer: Take systems to customer locations, install it, train them to operate and maintain it.</p>

<p>“Ility” engineer: Monitor system designs to ensure that some characteristic (generally something ending in “ility” like reliability or maintainability) not generally thought of by systems engineers actually makes it into the product.</p>

<p>There are many more.</p>

9

<p>Just because you have an advanced degree from a top tier school or work at a “really cool” company does not mean you are immune to dull, monotonous jobs. Someone has to get that kind of job done and these are not always bad jobs, depending on what you’re looking for. One of my friends, who does not handle stress particularly well, has a boring job that pays very well. For him the job is a good match as he’d rather exert effort elsewhere and really has no interest in working outside of the largest paycheck possible.</p>

<p>I think most jobs, including engineering, are going to have a good amount of repetition. It makes sense, employers are going to want you mostly doing the same thing every day so you become proficient at it. You might design ASICs, code in C#, install finished products, integrate the many components of a system, etc. for the majority of your day. The variation comes in what you are working on within your daily activities. Depending on your job, working on a different product cant often times require you to do something substantially different things, even if you’re still doing the same thing you do every day. Creating a small software tool that will be used by a handful of people is going to be a much different experience than working on developing a large application that will be used by thousands, even if both tasks are ultimately just programming.</p>

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<p>I found this to be a great resource to find out what a future in ___ engineering will hold… [Sloan</a> Career Cornerstone Center: Careers in Science, Technology, Engineering, Math & Healthcare](<a href=“http://www.careercornerstone.org/engineering/engineering.htm]Sloan”>Career Cornerstone Center: Careers in Science, Technology, Engineering, Math and Medicine)</p>

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<p>Well it depends on how your company is structured. You might be involved in one project where you get to move from one phase to another, adding variety (not necessarily on a daily basis) or you might work across many projects - doing the exact same thing.</p>