Are engineers timid? 18

[lacajun]

During a conversation with a salesman, he stated that engineers are uncomfortable cold calling companies or people. If you gave one an assignment to call fifteen companies, institutions, people, he would be very uncomfortable doing it. He believes the task would not get done.

All thoughts and humor are welcome.

 

[mtu1972]

ISTJ

15 to 20 years ago the entire paper company management group (where I worked) was tested and in my session (engineering and maintenance managers) 30 of 32 were I's.

There was some scatter in the other three categories.

I was most troubled by the J - Judgemental; and when I shared my thoughts with my sister, who is the polar opposite of me, she said "And you are suprised by this?".

I typically develop good relationships with strangers on projects, but they initiate the contact with RFI's etc.



gjc

 

[IRstuff]

I would think that engineers have to judgemental; that's a major component of the basic design process. You "judge" whether a particular design alternative has sufficient merits relative to its demerits to warrant continuation with that alternative.

TTFN

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[Ron]

Risk averse? It's all relative. When you design a 20-story building in a high wind and high seismic zone, there's no way in hell an engineer could be considered "risk averse". Risk to a salesman is whether he'll get to take someone to lunch and get it paid by his expense account. Risk to an engineer is daily life...and I do mean "life".

 

[KENAT]

Hmm, thought about this some more.

I enjoy making cold calls about as much as filling out a big wad of paperwork and avoid them with equal vigor.

I'm pretty sure not enjoying filling out paperwork has nothing to do with being timid.

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[Mr168]

I could probably afford a little more timidness as of late. Some could say I've got a secret lust for arguing above my pay grade, I just argue that I'm sick of the corporate BS and the associated lame duck attitudes!

 

[JohnRBaker]

Where I used to work (back in the 70's) arguing with the boss was a sign that he cared and considered your points of view as being worth debating. For those he had no respect for, he would just order them to do what he wanted, end of conversation. With those whom he felt were good engineers he would argue to make his point or to allow you to make yours. And if decided to pick an argument with you and you backed-down too quickly, after one or two instances of that would soon find yourself getting ONLY 'orders' from the boss. I'm not saying that this was a good way to do business, but there was a 'click' in our office and membership generally had to be earned over years of standing-up for what you believed in while realizing that when the boss WAS right that you had to eventually accept that and graciously 'lose' those arguments. Now it did help if you a graduate of the same university that he was, which was the case for me and 4 other guys in our office, so therefore our 'probation' period for membership into the 'click' was much shorter than others. Again, I'm not claiming that this was a good situation, it's just the way it was, but since I was on the 'inside' I never really questioned it at the time, but in retrospect it's easy now to see how this would have been bad for moral and and eventually productivity.

BTW, being part of the 'click' also meant that when something really crappy had to done, such as go into the field for 3 or 4 weeks and try to save some installation it was guys from the 'click' who always got picked, because the boss trusted us and he knew what we were capable of. And in return, we got the best performance reviews, the chances to work on the fun jobs when they came along as well as getting to attend the tradeshows we exhibited at and when something totally unexpected happened and the boss needed someone he could trust to tell him if this was a good idea or not, then one of us would be given the chance.

Case in point. Back in 1977 when our company first implemented CAD/CAM our boss had no idea what it was or how it could be used effectively in our organization but our parent company had made the decision to have the system installed at our facility and a sister facility in the UK. Our system was going to be used by 3 departments and we were given 6 training credits to send people to classes in SoCal (I was working in Michigan) and so 2 of them were given to my boss. He picked two engineers to go, both members of his 'click' and 3 years later, after my boss had been fired (it was actually over something besides his office 'demeanor', but management used that as the official reason since they knew he couldn't deny it), I decided that this CAD stuff looked like more fun than 'work' and so I contacted the salesman who sold us our system and arranged for an interview and I was hired as a technical sales consultant (AKA 'demo jock') and as they say, the rest is history.

So the moral of the story is, if the boss wants to argue with you, it may be in your best interest to participate as long as you understand the rules since in the end it may be a career-enhancing move and besides, it might put you in a position where you're given the opportunity to try something different leading to a totally new professional direction in your life.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Design Solutions
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA

http://www.siemens.com/plm

http://www.plmworld.com/museum/

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[nuche1973]

I don't agree with timid. Take an engineer's calculations and scrutinize them, I bet he won't be "timid" for long! I've heard that engineers "are unaccountable", but if that were the case why do engineers carry professional liscensure? No, I believe that some engineers lack certain communication skills. But eventually they all to learn to communicate, it's a core part of our job.

There are days when I wake up feeling like the dumbest man on the planet, then there are days when I confirm it.

 

[lacajun]

Saw said salesman recently, who said, "No offense to engineers, but their social skills are non-existent. They just don't talk to people. They don't make eye contact and you're lucky if they don't look at their shoes during a conversation."

He doesn't have anything against us. He finds us too nerdy.

 

[JohnRBaker]

When I was just finishing up my Junior year in engineering school (this would have the 1969/70 school year) the university announced that an additional required class had been added and even though I was graduating the following year I was still expected to take the class before graduations (those behind us could take it anytime in their time at school but we had no choice). The class was titled 'Engineering Communications' and it was jammed into the curriculum because it was becoming apparent that engineers were heading our into the world unprepared for what it was really like.

Now some of the best professors and instructors already understood this and many of them had been creating ad hoc opportunities and requirements in their normal classroom work where students were expected to make stand-up presentations, use alternative media, which in those days included stuff like slides for overhead projectors and poster-board visuals and such. However this class took all those ideas and some others and made it a formal class. This was the era where video-taping was possible and so you would have to make a presentations which were taped and then critiqued by the instructor and your peers. We also had to learned quick freehand sketching techniques, and the use of presentation materials, such as those overhead slides, but including colored gels and such, as well as production of posters and other collateral material. Looking back on it now, it all seems rather crude, but it definitely forced a lot of 'geeks' to understand that it sometimes takes more than just a well drawn set of plans to get your ideas signed-off by the executives who controlled the purse-strings when it came to R&D expenditures in your company or even when having to help sell a customer on why your company or products should be the one they should considering.

As part of my current job I get a chance to visit my alma mater on occasion since they are one of the schools where we have provided software and support for integrating CAD/CAE/CAM into their engineering programs and so I'm often asked to represent our company at student contests which are held a couple times a year, one for a freshman-level general engineering class and then for a senior-level Mechanical Engineering class. Of course now students have laptops with PowerPoint where they can imbed animations, avi's (digital or actual video or even a combination), etc which they use when making the final presentations of their designs to what for them may be the first time that they have ever had to 'sell' their ideas to people who are not students or faculty members (the panel of judges are always people from industry or technology suppliers). I always come away awed at what some of these kids (to someone who's going to be attending their 40 year college reunion in a couple of weeks, trust me, these students look like KIDS) are able to first come-up with as their original designs and then how they demonstrate their ability to present and in some cases defend there work since as judges we're encouraged to ask questions as that is part of what they're graded on, how did they respond and what sort of additional information were they able to present when confronted with the realization that perhaps something wasn't as clear to others as it was to them (most of these competitions, particularly the senior level ones, consisted of 4 or 5 person teams where such things as division of labor, how they coordinated their activities and what they learned during the final integration of their work into a final product was part of what they were judged on).

All in all, I think the engineers who are graduating today or probably going to seen as less timid simply because they are going to have better communication tools to work with and they will already be well versed in their use and how they can impact people and events.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Design Solutions
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA

http://www.siemens.com/plm

http://www.plmworld.com/museum/

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[321GO]

After reading most of the posts, I would answer the TS question with a big YES.

I hate to see it this way though, no wonder the profession is chronically underrated.

 

[Gerez]

I think it is the wrong word.
What many of us dislike or are uncomfortable with is dealing with people. Of course, there are degrees of social discomfort, not all of us will be anti-social to the extreme, but most of us will carry inside that misterious engineer bug, some are more affected by it than others.
In my case, I´d say I hate making cold-calls, but in the other hand appart from my professional job I also teach at college and it is a way to soften that ill-need to avoid talking to others.
I´ll say it is a matter of constant practice.

As for the career underrate, is simple, life and business sucess is made of politics, politics is a consequence of social interaction, we lack of it...

Regards
Gerez

 

[Maui]

I am not timid. In fact, I find that it is in my best interest to exercise some level of restraint so that I don't come across as too confrontational in circumstances where I'm dealing with aggressive individuals. But that was the culture where I worked for 10 years, and if you didn't learn to how to effectively deal with some real ba$tard$, then you didn't survive.

In a subsequent job I foud myself disagreeing repeatedly with the technical decisions that my boss made on engineering processes. He made the final call on these engineering decisions, and he came up with a relatively large number of bad decisions over the years I was there. I would simply offer my perspective, but left him to do what he chose.

Then one day he came to me after I had given him what he had requested (on a ridiculously tight deadline) regarding a heat treating issue, and in a public setting he said that I looked like an idiot. I asked him why. He said that another employee who had been working in the company for several decades had contradicted what I had told him, and that he was embarrased in front of the company president when he voiced the opinion I had supplied. Apparently in this meeting the other guy's manager voiced an opposing opinion after my boss spoke. Hence, the embarrasment. Furthermore, my boss said, I would have to consult with that experienced employee on any future decisions regarding heat treat. I told him flat out that the other guy was dead wrong, and that I did not need to and would not consult with that guy on heat treat. We argued. I eventually called a meeting with several engineers including the other employee (who I actually got along with well) and we all agreed to run trials to find out what the proper decision should be.

Guess what happened? I was proven correct. He was proven wrong. And the boss was even more upset with me because of this. And when layoffs came in 2008, I was canned and the other guy is still working there for my former boss.

And Snorgy, in case you were wondering, my boss at that company was an MBA who couldn't engineeer his way out of a paper bag. And I was bitter about this for a long time. And maybe I still am.

Rant over.

Maui

http://www.EngineeringMetallurgy.com

 

[Mototank]

JohnRBaker brings up an interesting question for this topic-
In most cases, do sales people make more than senior engineers?
How about sales vs management?
The reason I ask, is does it make sense for a person who has "non-timid" skill or personality traits to pursue one or the other over an engineering career based on salary goals? Or does a senior engineer do just as well a lot of the time?
Thanks!

 

[SNORGY]

Maui:

I lurk...but I read. I appreciate commonalities in certain points of view.

I don't always jump on the Anti-MBA Bandwagon every time it rolls by. That said, I probably helped pioneer the development of said bandwagon.

It is unfortunate that engineering as a profession is more than just a bit polluted by egos, politics, and insecurities. Too often, people tend to want to focus on "who" is right rather than "what" is right, as appears to have been the case with your former boss. If we all stuck to "what" was right, there wouldn't be any idiots.

And if there weren't any idiots, there wouldn't be any _____.

(Blank is a user-defined choice, for the sake of political correctness.)



Regards,

SNORGY.

 

[jmw]

- managers?

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[GregLocock]

Mototank, I don't know, but I'd wager a nice bottle of wine that the median engineer earns more than the median salesman.

Cheers

Greg Locock


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[dik]

No!

Dik

 

[supercub]

I hate cold callers, I believe that cold calling is an act of desperation. If tasked to do so, I would take it as an opportunity to "put on a different hat". It could be fun.

 

[lacajun]

Mototank, I've learned that regardless of how much you earn money does not compensate adequately for other aspects of a job you dislike to varying degrees. Money is not the Holy Grail of life and if put on too high a pedestal, it will lead to ruin and disenchantment with life. I've watched engineers behave unethically trying to make an impression and control others in various schemes to get promoted and earn more money only to fail eventually. A person's true motivations always come out sooner or later and truth prevails somehow.

Maui, I've been called an outright liar by former colleagues in front of plant managers, project managers, my boss, and peers. I offered up my documentation to the whole group for review but none were interested, which spoke volumes to me. No one came to my defense. The PM's were amongst the last people to leave. Their conversation revealed they had no intention of defending me because they did not understand the nature of the technology I proposed to use and they feared losing job security. It took management seven years to understand I was telling the truth.

I don't view cold-calling as an act of desperation. It may appear that way to some; however, their are a number of companies that need help but don't have the time or resources to look for it.

I've not met that many engineers that I would call timid or anti-social. I've only met one that looked at his shoes while talking. The rest are very good communicators.

Pamela K. Quillin, P.E.
Quillin Engineering, LLC

 

[Mototank]

Lacajun-
Thanks for your response, and I will have to say I agree with you. That comes from a guy who has been raised in both worlds, and without a doubt, the big money parent is the one who can't seem to find happiness. That being said, I have interest in both areas and if I could have the ability to be more social, enjoy my job more(possibly) and have more financial freedom, I would definitely push that way...
Thanks for your response!