Are ex-graduates second best to ex-apprentices? 1

[dkjfnvfd]

I've worked for five years since graduating with a BEng in EEE the UK.

In that time I've worked for three companies in numeric protection relay R&D, a hospital designer, and now I'm an electrical engineer in nuclear.

Everywhere I go, and even in pubs and among my family when we talk about work there's a consensus that 'time-served' people are superior engineers.

I recently had a conversation with the woman charged with engineer retention at my current employer, who let slip she only cares about retaining time-served people.

I have mates at work who came in through the graduate scheme, they have complained a few time they are paid less than the time-served engineers, even when the time served ones have worked in that capacity for less time.

I also recently went on an HV operation safety course where I let slip I had a degree and from there on I was singled out to answer questions and do calcs every single time.

I am beginning to feel that I will always be singled out and seen as 'second best' in engineering. I am starting to regret not working in IT or finance. There seems to also be an issue where people who don't know me treat me like a trainee because I 'look' younger than I am.

I am sure I do a good job, I have tens of millions in cost avoidance and savings to my name. I understand the equipment I am responsible for and often have to explain things or correct engineers with 20+ years experience ahead of me. I'm not difficult or abrasive, people like me. Although I have to admit I do spend a lot of time thinking 'Jesus Christ why don't you know this'.

 

[zeusfaber]

Five years in, you're probably just about reaching the point where "how you got to be able to do the stuff you've been doing" stops being as important as "the stuff you've been doing" itself. If it doesn't start getting better from here on in, you're probably doing something wrong.

Having said that, I took a little bit of secret satisfaction when, about 20 years after graduating, I found myself on a vendor's trade course where the tutor asked me how it felt to be back on the tools.

A.

 

[TheTick]

Its much easier for a tradesmen to go to school than to make a graduate get his knuckles bruised in the field.

 

[GregLocock]

Sounds like its a UK thing to be honest, although nobody ever said it to me. In fact, in automotive, almost all engineers have degrees, I can't remember working with any who didn't or at least if they didn't they didn't push it in my face to justify why their line of reasoning was better. I image when I started out in the late 70s there would have been some time served engineers. It was a very hard alternative to uni, lots of night-school.

Cheers

Greg Locock


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[IRstuff]

These days, or even 20 years ago, non-degreed people would have found it nearly impossible to get an engineering position. We tried to hire a software engineer, once, that basically started programming in junior high and never went to college. He was brilliant, by all accounts, but the lack of that sheepskin kept him out of our company's ranks.

These days, shop experience, while useful, does not compensate for the lack of a formal education, particularly the theory side. In other disciplines, there is no "shop," per se; not knowing even the basic theory completely hampers you.

By the same token, I've had the distinct displeasure of working with degreed engineers that must have bamboozled their way through college, because they couldn't even figure out shift register.

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[dkjfnvfd]

Hello all,

Thanks for the responses so far.

I don't feel any better but it's nice to hear some different voices.

There are plenty of engineers, and engineering managers everywhere I've worked who don't have degrees or bother with professional registration.

My current employer has a training scheme for ex-apprentices where they're sent off to university if they 'show promise', so they have the craft background plus degree. These people are perceived as 'best' although I'm not sure why. More than one has tried to pay me to do their homework.

I'd argue that over the five years I've delivered a lot which is why I can't understand why people focus on my background. I've done plenty of hands on stuff, as a student I worked in an electronic factory and I have wired my own house and built various prototypes at work.

 

[IRstuff]

Sounds like it's just a bias thing; you can either put up with it or leave.

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[CWB1]

My experience has been similar to most of the posts above. I have known a few engineers without degrees but the overwhelming majority had them. Every non-degreed engineer that I can think of however weren't tradesmen but rather ex CAD-jockeys who simply had become really good at design and worked their way up. I believe only one made it to management for lack of a degree. That said, I have known many former tradesmen who went back to school, earned a degree, and became engineers including myself, and yes I honestly believe they are among the most competent engineers I have known. IME those that aren't ex-tradesmen or serious DIY'ers outside of work are indeed noticeably less-competent. To be fair, the same applies to contract engineers designing equipment or products for other companies', they will never be nearly as good as those interacting with that facility or product daily. To each their own however. A good friend and colleague grew up in a family that hired everything done for them and never repaired or maintained anything themselves. Since becoming an adult however he has taken great pride and joy in becoming an avid DIY'er, so I would never hold a person's background against them, only their current choices and attitude.

I would also submit that the best engineers often are also the most targeted by office politics and suffer bc of it.

 

[Jboggs]

Hang in there. You'll be ok. Just be patient. Like it or not the world values "gray hair and scarred hands" over a degree, and once you become one of those old gray-hairs you will understand why. My father, an engineer himself, had some very wise words for me on my graduation from engineering school 45 years ago. He said "Well son, now that your academics are behind you your education can begin." I had no idea how true that was. You've got the degree now and you think you should get the due respect for completing that very difficult education. That's understandable. Most of the folks you interface with really have no idea what it took to get that education. All they know is they have seen many young engineers make the same mistakes that all "greenies" will. They also resent a young engineer that seems to expect respect simply because he/she has a piece of paper. They respect results, not credentials. At five years in, you are just now starting to get to the point where you might actually produce a few valuable results.

I learned the hard way that my dad was right. I learned to respect experience over book knowledge, even when my book knowledge disagreed. You want the respect of the old hands? Learn to do two very important things:
(1) Respect their experience. Lean on them. Learn from them. Ask them questions. Ask their opinions. Let them know you value their real-life contributions to your continuing education. Take their advice and use it. When they know you took their advice they will go to the mat to help defend you. Some of the absolute best engineers I ever worked with did not have a degree.
(2) Learn to laugh at yourself. You're not really a knowledgeable and wise engineer yet. You are a young man with little real-world experience that happens to have an engineering degree. Forget about your degree for now. Literally! It will come in handy later. Right now you are about half-way through the school of hard knocks. You'll still have that degree when you come out the other side. Combine it with the knowledge you're gaining now and you will make a real mark!

Hang in there. You'll be ok.

 

[MortenA]

I could be an UK thing? In Denmark its illegal to call yourself an engineer if you dont have an engineering degree!

 

[EnergyProfessional]

MortenA: same in Germany (I'm originally German and have a "Diplom-Ingenieur" degree, which means accredited engineering school and defended a thesis).

It kind of annoys me that in the US the guy in the hotel who shows up and adjusts the thermostat when someone says it is too hot is called an "engineer". First time I was in a US hotel and there was an issue with the TV remote, the receptionist really impressed me by telling me they will send an engineer. What, you send the guy from Samsung who designed the remote?

 

[GregLocock]

It isn't in the UK, or the USA, strictly speaking. That is in the USA there is a path to being a PE that skips uni. It is not a cakewalk. In the UK 'engineer' is not a protected term.

However I think the OP's talking about apprentices/tradies who then get paid to go to uni, as opposed to people who go to uni and then start learning.

Cheers

Greg Locock


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[zeusfaber]

I read it the same way as Greg.

The other thing that plays into the way UK Industry now values people in a certain age-bracket with decent trade skills is that, for about 20 years, UK Industry simply didn't bother training apprentices. I suspect the OP is catching a bit of the rebound from that.

A.

 

[Bill West]

MortenA & EnergyProfessional, it's a translation problem. In the US a 150 years ago, long before professional licensing, the guy who ran a locomotive was called an engineer not a driver and the guy who ran the boiler in the basement of every steam heated building was called an engineer not just a janitor. These terms are still valid today hence the emphasis here on professional in professional engineer. The term is also used in marine work were the engineers are licensed but not necessarily university graduates.

In my youth I worked in an old factory being used as an unheated warehouse. It had an air compressor in the basement to top up the fire sprinkler pressure once a week. The City still had a law about stationary engineers being licensed, primarily because of boiler operating safety concerns but it covered other building mechanical services too. So the company had to pay one of the warehouse men extra to get and hold that "engineer" license for his once a week task.

Bill

 

[GrouchyStressedTensePoor]

Hey OP just want to say that I absolutely feel you and sympathise. I'm a mechanical engineer, but my experience has mirrored your own even down to I attended a hydraulics course where I was the only guy in the room with a degree and once that got found out the teacher relentlessly picked on me with "gotcha" questions.

Greg my experience has been that automotive and aerospace in the UK are exceptions (there may be others as well). In most of british industry the majority of engineers do not have a degree at all, and you are lucky if they even have a HNC. Seriously the number of "time served" engineers that can't even tell you the stress in a beam subject to bending, or who ask for tolerances of +/-0 or ask me to make it stiff enough that there is zero deflection is worrying.

All you can do is keep your head down and commit to learning where you can and improving yourself until one day you might be in a position to contribute to changing things. Or maybe move into automotive/aerospace.

GSTP

Graduate Mechanical Design Engineer
UK

 

[EnergyProfessional]

Bill West: calling someone operating an "engine" an engineer isn't too bad as that person still needs to know something about the "engine" they are operating and maintaining. At least in the old days, operating a steam locomotive required much more than just pushing "forward". There also is a fire apparatus engineer on a fire fighter crew. but calling the guy who changes batteries in a tV remote in hotels an engineer is quite a stretch....

Ultimately it is up to what the person can do as soon as both have the same license or other tangible paper. How independently can each person design a new device or system without problems in a given time?

At my work (in facilities) they hire more and more non-licensed or schooled people. The result is all they do is hire consultants to design and they are just over-paid paper pushers. Even the few with a license don't actually perform any design (and it probably is for the best). So that leaves me as the only one actually designing, stamping and bidding out my own design. That kind of leaves me with the smaller projects, but that is fine. I'm just a bit concerned about the future since having all the people who just create a lot of soft cost isn't sustainable. If I had known all it takes to be an engineer is to hire another engineer to design for you, I would have been an engineer in kindergarden

 

[IRstuff]

calling the guy who changes batteries in a tV remote in hotels an engineer is quite a stretch

True, but being a gopher is a bit of a thankless job, and if it gets them a bit more courtesy from customers...

As for the rest, that's not solely an issue in engineering; doctors are being assaulted with nurse practioners who are licensed to do most things a doctor can, but with no medical school or even advanced degree, and only 6 months of OTJ training, while doctors require a minimum of 4 years of medical school plus a minimum of 3 years of residency OTJ training. But, they only get paid about half of what a doctor makes; so the insurance companies are all for that.

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[Bill West]

EnergyProfessional, good post. Some bits, it is only in the past 30 years that locomotive engineers in the US have been licensed and even then it is all to do with tracking serious rules violations such as running red lights or having an impaired driving conviction in an automobile. I legally fired a steam locomotive, my training was having the water glass pointed out, a few tries to get the feel of starting the feed water injector and being told to adjust the fuel oil so that the smoke wasn't black. Now I already had an amateur knowledge of how engines worked and I knew the basic 5-6 hand signals for moving the train. My impression is that none of the railroads in the steam era required high school let alone college, Also that it usually only took a study of the train movement rulebook and 3-4 trips to become qualified to fire the engine. Of course the engineer with you would have had 4-6 year's experience on the road as a fireman before getting enough seniority to become an engineer. But this is all about being a skilled workman via on the job experience and there was no certification involved.

At the hotel, it's not that changing batteries represents engineering, it's that the building engineer is the only handyman on the staff so he gets the job. Probably along with other non engineer duties too.

Professional engineering is important but over here these non professional jobs took the word up long before professional licensing.

Regarding your present work circumstances, I quite agree. We had lots of non professionals designing 30 years ago but they were naturally skilled and sufficiently experienced. That hiring/promoting style went away. As I neared retirement we too went to the consultant approach and indeed it did cut the quality. Even our trades work went to contractors and the in house fellows spent their time as phone coordinators and arranging access for the contractors. No more in house maintenance experience, no more hesitating at fixing a part because of knowing it had broken 3 times before.

Back to the OP. I think we are agreeing that differences are the product of two factors, schooling and practical experience. We all know that having both works well and obviously having neither doesn't at all. In between I found both practical people failing on theory issues and graduates failing on practicalities. When these people are caught up is their attitude just the usual one of they don't know what they don't know and so reject your objections? May I suggest that at a mere 5 years you may be getting tainted by the other 5 year people of the sort EnergyProfessional is now experiencing? Disproving the doubters by showing wisdom and doing good work should cure them.

Bill

 

[dkjfnvfd]

Hello all,

I'm surprised to see so many responses.

I have to admit my OP was a big drip and I've cheered up since then.

I work in a big unionised environment so I suppose it's unsurprising that ex-apprentices are better paid as it seems that how long you have worked for the company matters more than what you deliver or previous experience.

One of the nice things about engineering is it's very diverse compared to some professions. I know and understand why a diversity of backgrounds is important. Sometimes I like to think it, but I'm not an electrician or a fitter, and even now I definitely make mistakes or have to ask questions.

I think I have been both sides of the coin first hand. I think I've seen less academic engineers paint themselves into a corner because they didn't really know what they were doing or see the bigger picture, but I've also seen some insane or impractical designs coming from engineers with degrees and no apprenticeship.

When I worked for the NHS I was the only person who worked on life support machine electronics with a degree and I used to fall out with my colleagues all the time because they couldn't explain why they did a lot of things. I never felt happy working on high risk machines like that without understanding the "why" behind it. The other side of the coin was I used to make mechanical drawings and I could be certain every time the machinists would have found a new mistake, but I was always happy to listen because they could tell me what the problem was, why it was a problem, and how I can fix it or make something more practical.

I don't think there's such as thing as a "professional engineer" in the UK. AFAIK there's no legal requirement for anybody including structural engineers to be particularly qualified, although the fact that you aren't could probably be held against you in court. There are Incorporated and Chartered Engineers but you get that by writing your experience up and then getting interviewed by a jury of two of your peers, so in my opinion it's more about spin than anything else.

 

[Sparweb]

Maybe the problem you're describing is more related to "scope" of knowledge, not pedigree.

For those BSc/BEng engineers who also fix their own cars, wire their own houses, and build robots in the basement, the education they have provides them with a way to understand the physical construction in more depth, and reciprocally the projects/hobbies/work they do anchors their book-learning to reality. For a millwright or an electrician, the trade they learned would have included some theoretical principles but unless they spent more time thinking about it and self-teaching, they probably don't get the depth of understanding that can come from the full-meal-deal education. Conversely, the kid who graduated from university top of his class but who cannot use a wrench will not always make choices that are based on practical constraints. The limited scope of knowledge of these latter two examples is a problem. The bias or perhaps ridicule that you may have encountered may come from the "scope limitations" that people expect when they don't know you. That has more to do with where they come from, not you.

I have worked with people from both kinds of backgrounds, and I find that a solid practical foundation is more robust than solid theoretical one. There are many pragmatic limitations in the machine shop that give lessons to the observant person. You don't have to have a degree to notice them. The only problem there is a sub-culture attitude that can be found in places (not all places) that discourages inquiry. Too much of that and you'll definitely find people who do things "because" with no reason why.

For those who invested the time in the degree and also in the shop, I can see the best of both coming together. I encourage new recruits to my engineering department to get involved in job-shadowing with the technicians in the shop, and have even taken on small fabrication projects expressly for the purpose of having a junior engineer do a substantial portion of the fabrication.

It sounds like your personal goal is to be as multi-disciplinary as possible, and have a thorough understanding of both practical matters and the physics that underpins them. Cheers to you; I share that ideal. There's not much point in going looking for recognition or applause, however (there's some to be had here at Eng-Tips).

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