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Growing dissatisfaction among career engineers
The Raleigh News & Observer ^
| Thursday, December 26, 2002
| TERRY COSTLOW, CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
Posted on 12/26/2002 2:03:20 PM PST by Willie Green
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Comment #101 Removed by Moderator
Comment #102 Removed by Moderator
To: El Sordo
Thanks for the ping.
I have B.S. and M.S. degrees in Mechanical Engineering and a P.E. My career as an engineer is 14 years long, and I still enjoy it. I make good money (wouldn't mind a little more) but no complaints here. If there is one secret to my success, it has been to stay versatile and current. The first eleven years were spent in the pressure vessel industry at one company. Since then I has branched into the defense, aerospace, and consumer industries, while continuing in pressure vessels.
Don't been afraid to try new things. Take a course at a local college (most employers will pay for it), develop expertise in a new software package, and/or join a local technical society and attend the seminars. It is not just a 40-hour a week job; no successful profession is anymore. Opportunities exist to advance skills, and since the competition does, so must you, regardless of the profession.
If there is one problem with this profession, it is the concept that "it must be right, the computer says so". Anybody can input anything into a piece of software, but how do you know it is correct? Most of my work involves finite element analysis, and while even a child can put a model together, it takes an engineer to make sure the results are correct.
To: sc-rms
.
I managed an Engineering Staff at Sunbeam-Oster, Delco electronics and Holmes Products.
I never hired PE's.
This is not an argument. Experience with CATIA, ProE, or ANYSIS trumps PE anyday. There were times when I would have sold my soul for an experienced Plastics Designer with Off-Shore Manufacturing experience. But that was long ago. Now, the work has dried up.
Engineering is cyclic. It will bounce back. It always does.
As far as starting your own business...good idea. But its against the IRS regulations to do so if you are an Engineer. The 1099 billing must be to a Firm that employs more than one individual. PE has no bearing on that.
FYI. I left Engineering.
.
104
posted on
12/27/2002 6:27:53 AM PST
by
vannrox
To: SSN558
.
Yes. I agree with you. You have an experience base that I can relate to.
.
105
posted on
12/27/2002 6:30:36 AM PST
by
vannrox
To: Piltdown_Woman
Looks like it's becoming universal. Don't know about universal, but a lot of people get shaken out of the tree from time to time.
Comment #107 Removed by Moderator
To: Willie Green
That was the catalyst that prompted the New York native, already disgruntled with his choice of profession, to look into attending either business or law school. Out of the frying pan and into the fire.
To: Thebaddog
The engineers that work for me are all control freaks with a superiority complex.What an out of date boss you are. A real throw-back to the fifties.
109
posted on
12/27/2002 7:15:46 AM PST
by
Glenn
To: Willie Green
"I spent seven years in school, and it resulted in a six-year career," says Porter, who feels his master's degree in engineering is little more than "a base." Well, engineering does not last without inovation or creativity teams. Secular colleges certainly do not foster personal helpfulness, but little slaves bowing to the god professors. So what do we expect.
To: Glenn
I still write your paycheck.
To: Thebaddog
St Augustine on carreers. control freaking, it has not changed a bit since then.
http://www.ccel.org/fathers2/NPNF1-01/npnf1-01-09.htm#P217_55917
Chapter IX.-Concerning the Hatred of Learning, the Love of Play, and the Fear of Being Whipped Noticeable in Boys: and of the Folly of Our Elders and Masters.
14. O my God! what miseries and mockeries did I then experience, when obedience to my teachers was set before me as proper to my boyhood, that I might flourish in this world, and distinguish myself in the science of speech, which should get me honour amongst men, and deceitful riches! After that I was put to school to get learning, of which I (worthless as I was) knew not what use there was; and yet, if slow to learn, I was flogged! For this was deemed praiseworthy by our forefathers; and many before us, passing the same course, had appointed beforehand for us these troublesome ways by which we were compelled to pass, multiplying labour and sorrow upon the sons of Adam. But we found, O Lord, men praying to Thee, and we learned from them to conceive of Thee, according to our ability, to be some Great One, who was able (though not visible to our senses) to hear and help us. For as a boy I began to pray to Thee, my "help" and my "refuge,"39 and in invoking Thee broke the bands of my tongue, and entreated Thee though little, with I no little earnestness, that I might not be beaten at school. And when Thou heardedst me not, giving me not over to folly thereby,40 my elders, yea, and my own parents too, who wished me no ill, laughed at my stripes, my then great and grievous ill.
15. Is there any one, Lord, with so high a spirit, cleaving to Thee with so strong an affection for even a kind of obtuseness may do that much-but is there, I say, any one who, by cleaving devoutly to Thee, is endowed with so great a courage that he can esteem lightly those racks and hooks, and varied tortures of the same sort, against which, throughout the whole world, men supplicate Thee with great fear, deriding those who most bitterly fear them, just as our parents derided the torments with which our masters punished-us when we were boys? For we were no less afraid of our pains, nor did we pray less to Thee to avoid them; and yet we sinned, in writing, or reading, or reflecting upon our lessons less than was required of us. For we wanted not, O Lord, memory or capacity,of which, by Thy will, we possessed enough for our age,-but we delighted only in play; and we were punished for this by those who were doing the same things themselves. But the idleness of our elders they call business, whilst boys who do the like are punished by those same elders, and yet neither boys nor men find any pity. For will any one of good sense approve of my being whipped because, as a boy, I played ball, and so was hindered from learning quickly those lessons by means of which, as a man, I should play more unbecomingly? And did he by whom I was beaten do other than this, who, when he was overcome in any little controversy with a co-tutor, was more tormented by anger and envy than I when beaten by a playfellow in a match at ball?
Chapter X.-Through a Love of Ball-Playing and Shows, He Neglects His Studies and the Injunctions of His Parents.
16. And yet I erred, O Lord God, the Creator and Disposer of all things in Nature,-but of sin the Disposer only,-I erred, O Lord m.y God, in doing contrary to the wishes of my parents and of those masters; for this learning which they (no matter for what motive) wished me to acquire, I might have put to good account afterwards. For I disobeyed them not because I had chosen a better way, but from a fondness for play, loving the honour of victory in the matches, and to have my ears tickled with lying fables, in order that they might itch the more furiously-the same curiosity beaming more and more in my eyes for the shows and sports of my elders. Yet those who give these entertainments are held in such high repute, that almost all desire the same for their children, whom they are still willing should be beaten, if so be these same games keep them from the studies by which they desire them to arrive at being the givers of them. Look down upon these things, O Lord, I with compassion, and deliver us who now call! upon Thee; deliver those also who do not call upon Thee, that they may call upon Thee, and that Thou mayest deliver them.
To: tortoise
the difference between being a good auto mechanic and the guy who actually designed the engine from scratch.The latter being the one who located the spark plugs where they cannot be removed without lifting the engine out of the car...
I understand your post. Simply writing a program is far different than designing the system which flawlessly integrates the sub-systems and the OS capabilities.
113
posted on
12/27/2002 7:48:16 AM PST
by
ninenot
To: John Jorsett; Thebaddog
I get as much work now as I ever have. I always hear people say that. But ask them if they can let you do one of the jobs available, and they'll look at you stupidly, like they did not understand your question.
There is plenty of work out there, but there are plenty of people blocking the access, always interfering in the job others do or want to do. It ends up into a pi$$ing contest every time instead of the sought after enthusiasm in the first place.
To: NoControllingLegalAuthority
There is probably going to be NO secure career in the future. Hmmm.... Be an investment banker, get your million buck bonus, and go day trading for the rest of your life. That's the best job security ever.
To: jimt
There's also a factor related to the quality of education today. I recently met a computer science major who responded "What's that?" when I asked him if he messed with assembly much. LOL - that has less to do with quality education than you think. For anything more than a few hundred lines of code, a good globally-optimizing compiler will produce tighter code than any assembly programmer. Period. Therefore, there's no real reason to teach assembly any more, since there's no real reason to program in assembly any more.
Hate to say it, but the world changed when you weren't looking ;)
To: general_re
optimizer n. A compiler with three switches for controlling its object code output: big, slow, and both. Compare PESSIMIZING COMPILER.-- Stan Kelly-Bootle, The Computer Contradictionary.
117
posted on
12/27/2002 9:11:40 AM PST
by
dighton
To: Thebaddog
I still write your paycheck.No you don't. You owe me that money. I earned it. Go get your gray flannel suit cleaned, power-tripper.
118
posted on
12/27/2002 9:19:25 AM PST
by
Glenn
To: dighton
C = "portable assembly". And for the recalcitrant, there are always inline assembly macros. ;)
To: general_re
LOL - that has less to do with quality education than you think. For anything more than a few hundred lines of code, a good globally-optimizing compiler will produce tighter code than any assembly programmer. Period. I don't think so. A usable rule of thumb is that hand-tuned assembler will run twice as fast as code generated by a good C-compiler. There are reasons that this will generally be the case that aren't going away any time soon. However, this is not a good reason to write everything in assembly since economics is the primary concern, not execution speed, particularly since you can just move the code to a faster system a few months later and get the same results. For extremely performance sensitive programming, key sections of the code may be re-written from C (or whatever) into assembly code or Fortran (which often compiles into faster code than C for some things).
Therefore, there's no real reason to teach assembly any more, since there's no real reason to program in assembly any more.
There still are some types of work that require knowledge of assembly programming, but not much.
However, there is a good reason to still teach assembly languages. I've noticed an alarming trend in that a lot of young people coming out of schools now HAVEN'T been taught assembly code, with the noticeable consequence that they have no clue how software ACTUALLY interacts with the hardware. Instead they continue using the assumption that they are programming for an idealized abstraction of hardware, having no other way of looking at it. 99% of the time, this works fine, but there is that 1% of cases where they become totally lost when bumping up against some intrinsic limitations of whatever architecture they are working on. This is a failing of this type of education. Without carnal knowledge of what the hardware and software are actually doing on modern system architectures, there are many cases where you cannot make intelligent design choices. A lot of times this weakness is covered up by the ever increasing power of systems that software runs on, but when they hit a wall, they have to talk to people like me to tell them why they've hit a wall and explain to them what they need to do to get around it. Sometimes fixing these problems requires a very expensive redesign effort that could have been avoided if they truly understood the internals of what they were using in the first place.
Even worse, some places have stopped teaching C, which is the only high-level facsimile of assembly language in most important aspects (being the Universal Assembly language that it is).
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