I DON'T KNOW SYNDROME 5

[desnov74]

Hello all,

Does anyone find there to be in general an increasing amount of ignorance in the engineering community?

I think that we may be suffering from over specialization and commercialization, in the sense that we depend too heavily on vendors, old designs,simulations, and codes rather than fundamental engineering judgement.

My question concern comes from asking engineers that I work with and others in the field questions, especially those that get to fundamental why's, and I often get confusing and conflicting answers. When I was in school, when I asked questions that we practical I rarely got answers.

I've met only a few engineers that had "it" (an intuitive understanding of the fundamentals). I feel most of us, present company included, depend to heavily on software, codes, and standard methods in a design. As the addage goes, when the only tool you know is a hammer everything looks like a nail.

 

[BillBirch]

desnov74,
The really disappointing thing is the ease that is the ease that information can now be obtained. More than a few of our colleagues on the site have snappily (and rightly so) responded to posters with basic questions to try Google, or have even linked Google search result strings. Just laziness?
Regards,
Bill

 

[plasgears]

I always felt that the PE qualification separated the men from the boys [sorry girls] as the expression goes. We should start looking for this qualification whether it is a legal reqt.

 

[Ztrain1985]

plasgears,
I dont have my PE, but most PEs I know dont like having it. They like the opportunities it opens, and the pay increase/recognition, but they really dislike the legally binding portion of it.

In fact they were telling me that if you put PE in a letter (such as in your name or title), that the document you send then becomes a legally binding technical opinion, despite not having a PE seal on it. Thus, you are legally liable if the advice you gave is wrong.

I understand why some engineers dont want a PE... because you become liable for everything. And while mistakes shouldnt be made, we see how often mistakes are made.

 

[KENAT]

Do we have to have the PE debate again?

KENAT, probably the least qualified checker you'll ever meet...

 

[MortenA]

Reflecting on the original post:

Maybe its just you getting older? As we get nearer the "top of the ladder" the days where we could look around ask question and expect the people around us to know the answers are gone?

Now its you who has to have the answers ready.

Best regards

Morten

 

[GregLocock]

I seem to have been asking unanswerable questions since I was 30.

In the intervening years I have either found the answer out myself, finally bumped into someone who knew, or forgotten the question.

The worst example in my notebook is 4 pages of maths that is in fact a 2 line problem, once I understood it.




Cheers

Greg Locock

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

 

[plasgears]

I never had any negative repercussions from having the PE, but there were many positive results. At one time in automotive, a PE was respected as a reliable sign of expertise, and your views and calcs were trusted.

Fortunately, my work never came under review in life threatening situations. Cadillac liked my elastic-plastic analysis of side impacted crash bars in stretch limos.

The essence of engineering is inventing new arrangements of existing elements, and providing analytical justification for your design. Prep for the PE gave me the confidence to do a better job of engineering design and analysis.

 

[bradpa77]

Yes. I see it here too. I agree.

The problem with this place is that we are too specialized. We don't cross train our engineers and we don't mentor. We have one expert on every component of the machine and when that one person leaves the job, that knowledge is lost. No one else knows that area of specialization and the company, for some reason, doesn't seem to want to make it a priority to train people. Even when people retire and the company has years to prepare a replacement, they just let the person leave and replace them with someone straight from school who has no idea why the machine is designed a certain way and no one to learn from. So you end up having a machine that is "designed" by copying the old designs without knowing any rhyme or reason to it.

Computers and simulations add to the problem too because you don't need to know how to calculate the stress of a complex part anymore, you just model it, run it, and compare the results to your allowables (from code) and you're done.

Of course, on the positive side, I have seen examples where hand calcs were used on difficult stress problems and considered gospel for decades only to be proven wrong by a simple FEA analysis. The simulation is a double edged sword in my opinion. The training, on the other hand, is just plain screwed up IMO.

 

[nickelkid]

Knowing your limitations is a very important part of being an engineering professional. Continually developing your skill set is another. Unfortunately laziness and/or unqualified personnel and/or incompetence appear to be a growing challenge (frustration). IMO it is the duty for true engineering professionals to lead by example and not to get caught up in the shortcomings of peers, which is often easier said then done.

 

[casseopeia]

I find myself having to give a lot more ‘I don’t know’ answers because of the constraints put on investigating building system failures. My client base generally consists of defense attorneys. The cases usually involve class action lawsuits on housing developments built 7 to 8 years ago.

Over the last few years, the attorneys have restricted the number of homes I inspect to save money on expert fees. I have NEVER been allowed to do destructive testing if it was not already planned by the plaintiff. The last time I suggested a mock up and burn test on ‘similar’ construction, it resulted in a complaint call to my boss.

So when an attorney tells me only to spend half a day looking at 3-4 homes out of 75, allows no defense destructive testing, refuses to pay for my time to watch plaintiff testing, and then asks me, ‘so why is the stucco cracked’, I reply ‘how should I know?’.

OK, I don’t REALLY say that, but it’s what I’m thinking.



"If you are going to walk on thin ice, you might as well dance!"

 

[swivel63]

and this is why jobs need to put young engineers in the field. it helps build intuition, IMO. how is just as important as why.

i say "i don't know" all the time. but i usually say "i'll look into it."

 

[ornerynorsk]

As long as our schools and society is teaching that sports are more important than anything else, and that by simply trying you are a very important person and therefore deserve passing grades, we are going to continue to degenerate into the abyss of general stupidity. Look at our political candidates and people who are being put into managerial positions. The human race is not in the finest shape it's ever been in, to say the least.

 

[IRstuff]

Must be a different school that you're looking at. The ones I look at have an average of 4 AP exams taken per graduating senior. My son will wind up taking at least 6, in addition to a slew of IB exams. That'll be 4 times the number of AP exams that I took when I graduated.

The biggest issue is that we're in the age of specialization; we have an ME that does the design, another that runs the FEA, and another that runs the thermal FEA. In programming, if you graduate with a BSCS or BSCE, you'll get very little in the way of actual math and physics, so those that need to write code for processing coordinate transforms need someone to actually lay out the exact mathematical operations for the programmer to code up, again, the consequences of specialization.

TTFN

FAQ731-376

 

[debodine]

IRstuff and ornerynorsk:

I see both your positions and I think you both have valid points. I guess what I see as the tragedy is that the highly educated and specialized individuals that IRstuff describes are going to end up working (in a sadly significant number of cases) for the "party" mentality, great self-esteem with no critical thinking skills crowd that ornerynorsk describes.

While I don't know if it is possible to survice the curricula that IRstuff describes without having critical thinking and reasoning skills, it is certainly possible to obtain a management degree and access to that "higher plane" of management without them.

debodine

 

[cksh]

I say "I don't know" alot. But I have only been here a little over a year and on average am 10 years behind others in this field in regards to XP.

But I have noticed a lot more I don't know people since entering automotive. My last job was really bad. If it wasn't an I don't know answer it was an answer that sounded as though they were unsure. And it didn't match the two other people that gave me an unsure answer. And it was something they should have known.

I always worry about my skills and knowledge becomming stale. But sometimes specialization is the only way to move up.

 

[controlsdude]

I had this major project and everytime I asked this engineer who I was doing server to PLC integration. He would always come back with the "I don't know". It got so bad at the tail end of the project, I had to get on the phone with my boss and tell him this guy needed help in the field to get his job done.

"I don't know" could be a call for Help!

But on the flip side of it, You have to ask a particular question to get a particular answer. Asking broad overall questions usually will get you the "I don't know" pat answer.

So the conclusion to "I don't know" should fall on the asker of the question. If you get this answer ask another question or a more detailed question. If you keep getting the "I don't know" to a particular lasered question then the person you are talking to probably does not know much in his field. Maybe he needs help or ask someone who does know the answers.

 

[Andy512]

I am at the point where I realize I have not responded "I don't know" enough in my career.

The personal gratification in helping out a colleague has been overshadowed by a desire to focus on my own responsibilities.

I know we are all supposed to be team players, but at the end of the day, I am responsible for me.

 

[EVEN01]

desnov74,

haven't you noticed that this trend is in every single industry? i.e. doctors, teachers, nurses, engineers, people without university education included etc. seem to be getting way too comfortable with making money without having to work "hard". I suspect this is the reason for our economic troubles. As a matter of fact I knew a couple of people at school who mentioned they were becoming teachers because they could make enough money to survive and had three months of vacation. There is no ethical behavior out in the world any more, it takes too much time and work to do the right thing I guess.

 

[cranky108]

Has anyone consitered that we as experts, more and more are being asked to do things outside our expertise. So to give an answer of 'I don't know', is really sometimes saying that the question is outside my area of expertise.

And now we are seeing questions that in the past were never a concern. We would just over size things to allow for unforseen factors.