How to Succeed at Work? 3

[Lukemood]

I'm fresh out of college (Go Gators!) with a BSME and a minor in Sales Engineering. I have accepted a job as a mechanical management trainee with a major transportation company. I feel very fortunate to have a job right now and look forward to someday being a valued and respected engineer who can offer advice to fellow engineers like you'll hopefully do. I would appreciate any advice you could offer to help me have a great start with my first career. Advice on which organizations to be a part of (i.e. ASME and Toastmasters), exams or classes to take (i.e. FE exam), or anything else you think would be helpful for a new engineer, or new employee to do.
Thanks for your time,
Luke

 

[Tobalcane]

I have been burnt a few times getting information from the net. It’s the little things that can come back and bite you. I had to do a heat transfer analysis and needed some “k” values, so I went to the vendor’s web site and obtained it. When I was doing my calcs, my answers were not coming out to what I have expected. I spent a good morning just trying to figure out what went wrong. My boss walks in and looks at my calcs and then looked at me like I stepped on his cat and said that the “k” value did not make any sense. Sure enough that was the problem. I called the vendor and indicated that the “k” value must be wrong. Later they came back and thanked us for the find. It seems that they just send the information to the who ever is making the web site and trust that person is putting the information in correctly. They also found some more errors on the web site and this has been exposed to the public for years! I guess my point is that there is a lot of garbage out on the net and telling the hire ups that you got this value, equation, idea, …ext off the net and not out of a reliable book is not a good idea.

The way I see it is that if the information is free (or some company trying to lead you into their web site) it will be on the net and it will be 90% correct. If you have to pay for it most likely you will find it on the net but you have to buy the book. So if you have to buy the book, you might as well go to the local engineering college library and read it. Even better if your company (if it is big enough) has its own technical library, use it. I have found that the local library down the block does not have any real engineering material that is useful.



Lukemood, for your self you should build your own technical library of relevant engineering books. As a mechanical that deals a lot with electronics, the books that are close to me are Roark’s Formual, Vibrations Spectrum Analsysis, Electronic Packaging and Interconnection Hand book, Steinburg’s Vibration Analysis and Cooling Techniques for Electronic Equipment. And how can you be with out Mark’s Standard Handbook for Mechanical Engineers and Shigley’s Mechanical Engineering Design.

Well back to crunching numbers…


Go Mechanical Engineering
Tobalcane

 

[GregLocock]

How many errors do you find in textbooks? I've got one that came with 3 pages of errata, and I found a mistake in Shigley once.

Having said that, obviously there's a lot more integrity in a textbook than the web.

Cheers

Greg Locock

Please see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.

 

[IRstuff]

The Great Communicator said:

"Trust, but verify..."

TTFN

 

[svanels]

The internet is not a substitute for knowledge. Always use your knowledge aquired during years of calcullus, physics engineering etc., your primary source should be your text, reference books and experience you build up during your career. I always hated these so called conversion factors, because they are abused by people using a spreadsheet, and not knowing the underlying dimensional analysis.

Once I had a discussion with a financial guy about monthly inventory, chemical usage etc. We have boilers and use rock salt for water softening. We purchase the salt in 50 lbs bags. Stores reports the usage, accounting double check, and reports usage of salt in...liters
Started explaining why this was b.s. and his logic: seawater is salted, water you measure in m³ or gallons, thus salt is also measured in liters.
I found out that it was liters, because if they used barrels (oil refinery) the numbers would be too small, sigh...

People tend to believe everything that is coming from the net, prove: look how many persons send internet hoaxes, warning you about the disasters that are coming your way.

 

[waskillywabbit]

Best piece of advise an older, wiser engineer gave me...

"You cannot be really first-rate at your work if your work is all that you are." Work enough to live, but don't live to work.

It's like I saw on a commercial last night, no little boy ever grows up wanting to be "moneyman".

Good luck!

 

[Tobalcane]

GregLocock, I agree with you, but information in a book are written by engineers and used by engineers. The books are checked by committee and the errors are tracked by errata (as you said). But, “free flowing” engineering information that is put on the net is most likely put together by sales and web master people and are publishing stuff that they have no comprehension. Just so that they can put together a snappy web sit, they will start pulling stuff from who knows where. And there is no way to track or tell past users of errors. The more that I think about it now the more uneasy I feel (shiver).

I guess, when making a book, the publisher wants to make sure that the information is correct before they make hundreds or thousands of copies. But to put information on the net, the idea of “oh we will fix it if a problem is found” attitude relaxes there guard and little mistakes will get by.

Just my thoughts…


Go Mechanical Engineering
Tobalcane

 

[SWhit]

Respect the people who turn the wrenches. Remember that everyone on the shop floor knows something about your product that you don’t, the trick is separating the wheat from the chaff.