Engineers Don't Fix Your TV!

I just had the most bizzare conversation with a guy on an aeroplane . Admittedly he was a bit wasted but still I'm kind of crazy enough to still want to rant about it! He was slating engineers as being useless because one couldn't fix his TV!:

[rant]

Engineers, lets linger on that word a little. Engineers. Obviously derived from the root Engine, so therefore an engineer should be someone who understands designs and perhaps builds engines right? The profession of engineer did not really exist before the 19th Century, the great Engineers of that time were those conquering nature with huge structures and excavations. More importantly some were refining steam engines to be ever more efficient, for use in powering locomotives, ships, factories and eventually automobiles. Ultimately engines became the source of power and tractive force at the heart the industrial revolution.

The use of these machines relied on the taming of nature through large scale “Civil” engineering projects to provide routes for communication and trade. Therefore, engineering was originally all about the application science in conquering and harnessing nature for the good of humankind. That is still the case today. We as engineers push our understanding of the physical world around us to be able to do more with less. To be able to be more efficient in the use of our natural resources; to be able to go faster and further in greater safety; to understand the behaviour of materials and modify or alter these to provide the behaviours that we desire.

The problem is that today all this happens in a very complex inter-related world. Engineers no longer get to sit in their shed at the end of the garden tinkering with nuts and bolts. The object being engineered in to existence today is very rarely so simple as to be the domain of one discipline. So our world is as much constrained by inter-disciplinary, financial and often political requirements as the fundamental laws of nature that we challenge on a daily basis. That doesn’t mean though that we should forget as Engineers that at our core we are fundamentally creative people we are creating something of greater value than its constituent parts. Our business is in ideas, concepts, philosophy and understanding how turn those in to reality.

So the next time, for example, your gas boiler breaks and you are told an engineer is being sent take a look. Correct them, tell them the engineer is the guy who had the vision that created it. Tell them the engineer is the guy who designed, fabricated and constructed the well that got the gas out of the ground in to the pipeline and transported 100s of kilometres to a processing plant that made the gas suitable for burning in the boiler that is no longer working – tell them you need a technician to come fix it. An engineer would sit trying to figure out why it broke, how to make the design better and cost you a fortune in the process.

[/rant]

Apologies for those who didn't find that interesting

G

Dont' blame the engineers! Blame the Industrial Designers that wants the lean fancy look, and the directors who continuously are looking for a way to cut off a part of the construct to save money in the production!

My rant

engineers (for the majority) Don't actually know how to make anything
They just know how to design things to be made.
Just watch one try to drill a hole on location with a drill press.

I deal with and have to correct and consult engineers all the time in my job..they will deign stuff that sometimes cant actually be made. I have to discuss what they want and then change the drawing or design to that which can be made.

Example : dimensioning to a corner...a corner is a theoretical point. (i had one drawing that dimensioned the teeth angle of a small internal tooth form (spline)
The part didn't work quite effectively..so the engineers just hyper toleranced the angle - as if that would make a poor design work.
The new tolerance for the angle was +0 degrees/-.03 degrees -this created a measurable effect of 20 millionths of an inche (.00002") acceptable range (far beyond practical measuring capabilities let alone manufacturing ) - gosh engineers can be so dumb
Engineers seem to lack hands on practical application of their designs IMHO..heck anyone can make something in virtual space and be called an engineer in my book.
I have had to tell an Engineer the differences between 2 types of metal...hey they are designing something and have no clue out of what its to be made ????
I had an engineer berate me because i made the holes for a press fit pin wrong..low and behold he made the hole and the pin with the same tolerance range..so if the hole is made to the large side of the tolerance and the pin to the low..the pin falls through the hole..it doesn't press in..a real simple basic understanding completely lost on an engineer.

/rant off

Dreadwolf Mistwalker wrote:

I deal with and have to correct and consult engineers all the time in my job..they will deign stuff that sometimes cant actually be made. I

The new tolerance for the angle was +0 degrees/-.03 degrees -this created a measurable effect of 20 millionths of an inche (.00002") acceptable range (far beyond practical measuring capabilities let alone manufacturing ) - gosh engineers can be so dumb

..heck anyone can make something in virtual space and be called an engineer in my book.

I have had to tell an Engineer the differences between 2 types of metal...hey they are designing something and have no clue out of what its to be made ????

Sounds like you met some pretty s*** "engineers" It's true though there's a big difference between design and fabrication. It's also true there's a big difference between good engineers and shockingly bad ones. In my world we make some pretty big and complex structures - can't afford errors like that as they would cost us millions. Just seems everywhere I go engineers get a bad press. I think I'd get an easier time if I was a convicted pedo.

Maybe it's because when stuff works people don't notice? It's just the mistakes that get flagged up. Exactly the same with coding engineering software, games etc if it works then nobody knows your code exists. Take AoC for example, looks beautiful the game mechanics work great - but you only get to "see" the artists' work, the software engineer doing the smart stuff behind the scenes just catches all the bug reports

Engineering is one world where giving people the right title really matters - you can't call a graduate engineer a principal engineer and expect him to survive for long. Same way we can't call any older welder a TIG or MIG welder. He's got skills that a regular welder doesn't and whenvever we need to weld complex items we always go to the right guy and get his advice. Sounds like your engineer was making rookie mistakes, needs to learn that lesson and get some humility.

G

Wow, you guys can really rant!

/claps

i have a number of friends and co-workers who have bachelors degrees in electrical engineering. i would not trust any of them to build me a new PC. i am, in fact, frequently amazed at their lack of knowledge regarding any piece of electronic equipment. (they are all IP attorneys, so that may explain something.)

they do, however, give good recommendations about restaurants and happy hours. so they are good for something.

I wonder if engineers are like carmechanics. They are good at dealing with other's machines, but can have some very unusual and tricky creations that they use?

Inane wrote:

I wonder if engineers are like carmechanics. They are good at dealing with other's machines, but can have some very unusual and tricky creations that they use?

I guess it depends on the type of engineer, there are so many now Electrical, Mechanical, Civil, Structural, Chemical, Marine and Aeronautical for example with many specialisms within each I'm a Geotechnical Engineer which is a specialism within Civil Engineering - we use the science of soil mechanics to design foundations for structures. I'm even more specialised yet because I deal with offshore structures for oil and gas facilities. Mostly in very deep water in remote parts of the world.

So I don't have so many "tricky creations" because I'm generally engineering with nature. The job is to understand natures variablitly (how soil varies in behaviour, weather conditions etc) and be able to design solutions around that. It's not a lot differerent from other Engineering disciplines as we are generally dealing with complex systems....but it's very nice being so directly connected to the world.

I think in my rant, I was trying to highlight the difference between the creative process and the fixing process. Engineers are generally speaking creators, not fixers. Although we do get involved with the fixing side of things so we can improve designs.

It's probably different for Electrical Engineers designing computer chips, their material isn't soil of course it's silicon and their job is understanding it's electrical behaviour at very small scale - they need some funky machines to be able to do that. You see, the difference between most Engineers is the "material" or medium that they work with...

G

its like programmers vs the universe...

eg:

programming today is a race between programmers trying to build bigger and better idiot proof programs, and the universe trying to build bigger and better idiots... so far.. the universe is winning...

everyone's job description changes over time... Im pretty sure when *personal care attendant* (pca) first came out, it probably had nothing to do with aged care