What exactly is engineering?

College Search & Selection
41

<p>Oh dear semiconductor. This is one interesting mess we have.
Right now the US is not graduating as many engineers as we need to. Industry is having heart failure over this. Ive talked to high ups at companies, and they are starting to panic at the thought of there not being a large pool of engineers.
Engineering really is cool. It is the pratical aplication of math and science. It is design. It is so much I just cant begin. pretty much everything you use in some way has been touched by an engineer. your computer, your desk, your chair. engineers do a ton. There is so much diversity within the feild it is amazing. I though i knew how deep the rabit hole went untill I dove in. Now I am still unsure. But I figure i can do pretty much anything I want to do with my degree. And Im probably going to grad school. </p>

<p>yes, Im a nerd. .and I love engineering.
and yes, I am brainwashed. How I learned to stop careing and learning to love the Phoneix.</p>

42

<p>"However I feel somewhat cheated.</p>

<p>because MY engineering education did not prepare me to, among other things:</p>

<p>Write
Read..."</p>

<p>Mony-dad --- thanks for your post supporting my claims. I think you, uggio, oh_dad and myself ALL are saying the same thing!!!</p>

<p>I think what most future engineers don't know about engineering is that 90% of your time is not spent on technical work.</p>

<p>To succeed in engineering and to enjoy your work, you have to be....
1> First and foremost...a meeting-oriented person who knows how to network!! INDEPENDENCE will NOT WORK in a corporate setting. If you want independence (or more autonomy), become a doctor or a optometrist or something else.</p>

<p>2> You must enjoy, or at least be good at, MEETINGS! tons and tons of meetings where you have to talk to
-business people
-marketing folks
-sales guys
-customers
-make several presentations to the above on a monthly basis</p>

<p>3> Being good technically is not a virtue...you must be able to talk in lingo - marketing lingo, business lingo, techincal lingo.</p>

<p>It's ironic that engineering personalities are more suited for problem-solving, but there's a lot more problem solving in the medical field than in the engineering field on average!! </p>

<p>All doctors ever do is solve problems! Engineers need to be able to sell themselves and their services.....i.e. they have to be good at marketing!!</p>

<p>I love problem solving, which is why I'm NOTgoing into engineering as a career! At least as a doctor I'll be solving problems all day long.</p>

43

<p>First I must start off by saying that I'm not an engineer. However, I wanted to address a couple of things. I went to a state school that is not considered elite at all but which is known within our state to be the engineering school. Therefore, I knew a LOT of engineering majors throughout college ranging from chemical to industrial to civil to aerospace. Most of these people now enjoy what they do. They are all employed and none of them have lost their jobs over the last ten years. I have a good friend who is around 30 who is a chemical engineer and he is the youngest person working on his current project. I'm sure some of your stereotypes hold true in certain companies or in certain areas of the country but it's not true of all people who entered engineering and certainly not true of all engineering majors who didn't attend an Ivy League school. Sure there are unhappy engineers, but I have several friends who have already switched careers who were not engineers. People sometimes find that the reality of a job is not what they envisioned when in school. This is true for all fields.</p>

44

<p>Aehmo, what's your career or job type? Please tell us so we can bash it.</p>

45

<p>aehmo is just bitter. read his posts in the engineering forum</p>

46

<p>
[quote]
Right now the US is not graduating as many engineers as we need to. Industry is having heart failure over this. Ive talked to high ups at companies, and they are starting to panic at the thought of there not being a large pool of engineers.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Well, if they were 'really' panicked, they would simply boost engineering salaries. Think about it. If all engineers made 100k to start, you'd have guys coming out of the woodwork to study engineering.</p>

47

<p>"Mony-dad --- thanks for your post supporting my claims"</p>

<p>My post is my post. I was not intending to support anyone else's claims. To be frank, I only skimmed your prior posts. </p>

<p>I certainly don't agree with a good deal of your subsequent post, which I did read. To wit:</p>

<p>"I think what most future engineers don't know about engineering is that 90% of your time is not spent on technical work."</p>

<p>This was not MY experience when I worked as an engineer. I spent 90% of MY time on technical work.</p>

<p>"You must enjoy, or at least be good at, MEETINGS! tons and tons of meetings "</p>

<p>Once again, that was not my experience as an engineer. We were more or less put in a corner and given systems to design/implement.</p>

<p>"It's ironic that engineering personalities are more suited for problem-solving, but there's a lot more problem solving in the medical field than in the engineering field on average"</p>

<p>I for one, cannot speak for either of these fields on average. However in my individual experience as an engineer virtually all of our time was spent on design, which included a good chunk of problem-solving in the engineering context.</p>

<p>The limitations of engineering education that I commented on in my post really did not impact my engineering career whatsoever. Where they came into play is later on, as I advanced my career into other areas beyond engineering.</p>

<p>I personally feel that engineers are better trained up front to get a well-paying first job in their narrow specialty, or a few other areas that are predominantly analytical (read: support) in nature, but liberal arts majors have the opportunity to get better training for the long-haul, looking at "the big picture" further down the road. But that's just my opinion.</p>

48

<p>it just occurred to me:</p>

<p>Every proffession or job you can get with any degree will have these problems. Liberal Arts Majors will get laid off too, no major has a perfect success rate.</p>

<p>The thing is how good you are at what YOU do. If you suck at it, you will be on the chopping block, and that has nothing to do with engineering. If you suck at bagging groceries and the grocery store needs to cut back, you'll be the first one out. It's not the major, and it's definitely not engineering, it's how you compare. Capitalism is competitive and that's just the way it is.</p>

<p>That said, good engineers who can keep their jobs make a lot of money, and if you or your parent has lost a job as an engineer, it's cuz they (or you) suck, and I don't care if you find that offensive because you are using your warped experience to dissuade others from a great career. I love engineering and I will work my ass off for it, and I will work my ass off to keep my job and rake in the dough.</p>

49

<p>"The thing is how good you are at what YOU do. If you suck at it, you will be on the chopping block, and that has nothing to do with engineering."</p>

<p>not really..engineers (especially electrical/computer) can get laid off for no reason due to outsourcing, downsizing, not cliquing with the boss etc.</p>

50

<p>Aehmo, the people who aren't producing are the ones who get laid off. Please produce proof or credentials or SOMETHING to show us all that you know what you're talking about. Until then, hush.</p>

51

<p>As can happen to any other type of employee. The Medicine field is also being oursourced and Lawyers now compete with the internet. In fact, even the president of the united states can be "laid off."</p>

52

<p>I am an engineer MSEE and physician M.D. </p>

<p>I have worked in both fields and all of the comments are fun to read.
Engineering is the best undergraduate major for those who are bright enough to survive it. It will change the way you view the world. Engineers designed every
practical thing we use, we get things done. </p>

<p>The problem is that American society does not appropriately value its engineers.
This resulted in four out of five close friends changing careers. Two Harvard Business School, one law school, one medical school. The one who stayed in is second in charge of one of our major defense corperations and probably will be the next CEO. One MBA became an entrpreneur. I enjoy medicine and practice very differently than my colleagues, who don't think much about why? Performing surgery is more fun than than circuitry, but it is also more stressful. Good luck.</p>

53

<p>scidoc, your comments seem quite informative. What is your take on engineering careers versus medical careers? Can you give some pros/cons? Also, the level of stress in surgery is understandably higher, but what if somebody goes into a local medical clinic as a primary care physician...that's gotta be much less stressful and still very high paying.</p>

<p>What did you not like about engineering? Also, do you think it's a true career once you're beyond 35/40, if you're not into management?</p>

<p>Also, i'd love to hear some downright harsh truths about medical versus engineering!!, and if you could, please don't hold back anything...nitty-gritty detail that can make a world of difference would reallly be appreciated! Things such as tensions of working in groups (in engineering vs med), number of presentations/meetings, public speaking, fuzziness of job (engineering), salesy/schmoozy differences, clear career paths, age-ism after 30, etc.! These are fascinating to me, and I think to a lot of others as well.</p>

54

<p>A company is not going to lay off all of their engineers. First of all they hire more than they need and lay off the ones that suck. It's a competitive profession. Secondly, if some jobs are outsourced, yes there will be layoffs, but they are going to layoff the crappy guys first, not for "no reason."</p>

55

<p>The challenge for those of you contemplating a career path is, at this juncture in your life and for a long time later, you really don't know if and when, in the end, someone someplace later on will decide you "suck". One of those "crappy guys", as determined by some person or people at some point in time, might be you.</p>

<p>Also layoffs might have nothing to do with assessment of one's personal performance. I've seen whole groups and divisions get the axe, as a whole.</p>

56

<p>Those sorts of things can happen to anyone who does not own a business, not just engineers. and business owners are assuming risk on their investment. No matter what career path you choose, there are risks, and who knows what the demand for engineers will be in 10 years? Or journalists, or doctors, you don't know. Perhaps an engineer will develop something that puts alot of doctors out of work! Now wouldn't that be ironic if you chose to be a doctor for job security. The world is rapidly changing and there is no way to know what the job market will be like in 10 years. So I will stick to my point. You should do what you enjoy, and don't suck at it compared to everyone else. Hopefully, if the market for your services decreases, you will not be the first to go.</p>

57

<p>"The challenge for those of you contemplating a career path is, at this juncture in your life and for a long time later, you really don't know if and when, in the end, someone someplace later on will decide you "suck". One of those "crappy guys", as determined by some person or people at some point in time, might be you."</p>

<p>monydad, you're soooooo true!!!!!!.....YOU might be the one that sucks, or is not productive, as determined by someone, somewhere, at some time in your life!! Who knows what values others think are important -- someone up the chain might not like your looks, or the fact that you don't engage in engineering debate-a-thons, or you don't attend enuf meetings, dont' have enuf friends("connections"), don't know enuf english etc., and decide that YOOUUUU SUCK!..what can you do about it?...you'll never get ahead.</p>

<p>Doctors/dentists on the other hand don't have any "next-steps"....they're at the upper echelon of their food chain....always in demand, never need to attend B.S. meetings or do miscellaneous odd jobs (engineers get odd jobs 90% of the time), never have to worry about "promotions" cause they're already at the top!!! They don't even need to answer to their bosses, just the patients...who they meet for all of 30 minutes in a day!</p>

<p>scidoc, if you could respond to my post above, it would be great!</p>

58

<p>"Perhaps an engineer will develop something that puts alot of doctors out of work! Now wouldn't that be ironic if you chose to be a doctor for job security. The world is rapidly changing and there is no way to know what the job market will be like in 10 years"</p>

<p>packrbckr, That's why the AMA restricts oversupply of doctors....it's like having a union behind your back!...besides which, you should look at what's going on right now an react. Fact is, penicillin could be made over-the-counter, but it's not...why?...because doctors would lose money if it was by loss of patients! That's the kind of grip the doctors cartel has....it's unlikely to change much in the future, since the AMA can always cry "QUALITY" and decrease the seat-count for med-spots, ensuring an undersupply of doctor.</p>

59

<p>After one year as an engineer for GE you are asked to choose career paths. Management v. science. If I wanted management I would have gone to business school. Whenever I read posts of students, much of it
is pretty amusing. You probably wonder why medical care has degenerated over the years. I mean care, not technology.
The reason is that it is attracting the wrong people. Any good physician, even in a small clinic suffers the deaths that he might have prevented, by spending a little more time.
Any student contemplating a career in medicine should volunteer in
a free clinic. There is too much discussion of money. Can I pay you enough money to have blood splashed over you by an aggressive HIV+ patient in the ER? Think about it. How well will you sleep that night?</p>

60

<p>
[quote]
Doctors/dentists on the other hand don't have any "next-steps"....they're at the upper echelon of their food chain....always in demand, never need to attend B.S. meetings or do miscellaneous odd jobs (engineers get odd jobs 90% of the time), never have to worry about "promotions" cause they're already at the top!!! They don't even need to answer to their bosses, just the patients...who they meet for all of 30 minutes in a day!

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Aehmo, you don't seriously think there is no politicking going on if you're a doctor? Believe me, hospitals have plenty of politics happening. And nearly every doctor has to spend many years at a teaching hospital in order to complete their residency. Residents often times are assigned to pretty crappy cases and attend pretty boring meetings.</p>