Perception or view of an engineer or engineering industry 9

[arunmrao]

A Merry Xmas to all!!.

I have a few points for you to ponder and for you to offer your views. Not all may be applicable to you in US or other developed countries.

Manufacturing or engineering industry was once held in high esteem by the society. It was a pride to be a part of this fraternity . No incentive or persuasion was needed to attract the young.It was then that I joined engineering program.(Nearly 32 years ago!!)

In India today with the onslaught of software companies and call centres(BPOs) the perception of engineer or manufacturing industry has changed.

Relatively lower entry barriers alongwith excess extravaganzas have seized the incentives from an engineer.

Everyone is in a hurry to make fast money every which way possible.

The government,banks or industry associations are no longer receptive to our needs. We are considered the bottlenecks in growth or at the best an unavoidable necessity which can be ignored.

I see huge buildings all around(sign of prosperity!!) gobbling up hundreds of young men and women into their stream. While we are the tiny obscure ones who continue to remain the same(Lucky!! I should say) or entirely vanish .They kind of look down at you condescendingly and say you are still there!,Look at us.

We keep the wheels of society moving silently and stoically but go unrecognised. It is like a disposable commodity.

Will the wheels of fortune ever change for an engineer? I am an optimist and I have got my son joined for a mechanical engineering program, though he is not inclined to continue my business of manufacturing castings

 

[sms]

Wow, even the engineers in India are complaining that they get no respect. Is this just a engineer thing?

 

[CRG]

sms, you stated, “~~get no respect. Is this just a engineer thing? “

No, it is a human nature thing. The grass always looks greener on the other side of the fence. I just wonder if there are medical and legal forums on the net where doctors and lawyer are complaining that they get no respect.

If there is a correlation between the number of jokes about a profession and the respect that the profession has, the following unscientific study will yield some hard found data (humor indented here). A quick goggle on the web indicates the following:

Lawyer jokes 1990000 hits
Doctor jokes 2280000 hits
Engineer jokes 419000 hits

So I conclude that either engineers do not get enough attention for people to joke about them or they are held in such high regard that people refrain from joking about them.

 

[rerig]

Lawyer And Doctor shows on TV probably generate a significant amount of these jokes.
If no one knows what you do, they can't joke about it.
The closest engineering show is extreme makeover - home edition, but the actual engineering part is never shown.

My favorite:
An engineer shows up at work with a new bicycle.
His friend asked how he came by it.
The engineer said as he was crossing the park, a woman rode up to him, jumped off the bike, took off her clothes and said "take what you want".
His friend said" good choice, the clothes wouldn't have fit anyway"

I'm my own worst enemy!
Rerig
I'll tell the guillotine joke later.

 

[QCE]

Doctors and lawyers have a well regulated industry. Doctors and lawyers without degrees do not exist. Engineers do not have a well reulated industry.
Engineers without degrees exist and thrive.
The term engineer is not respected like doctor and lawyers for the above reason. Write or get involved in your local association if you wish to improve the situation.

 

[BJC]

Sooner or later everyone needs a Doctor, a good percentage of people will also need a lawyer. They may not want to, but they will have need of their services.
The vast majority of people will never need an engineer. Most don't know what an engineer does. Some will think they need an engineer if they ride Amtrak.

 

[moltenmetal]

QCE: you're preaching my religion!

Engineers don't get respect because anyone thinks they can do our job, and just about anyone is ALLOWED to do our job in most jurisdictions in the world. The public don't know who we are and what we do and don't actually care, because there's no reason they should. The only time we're noticed as a profession is when we screw up in some monumental way.

We've slipped from being a true profession to being a commodity service. Companies are allowed to judge for themselves whether someone is qualified or not to be an engineer, when by very definition it takes one to know one just like in all other professions.

It's just that doctors and lawyers have got it figured out whereas we haven't and probably never will. Doctors and lawyers aggressively defend their turf from all who trespass on it, whereas we let technicians, technologists and non-licensed engineers carve out parts of our traditional areas of practice at will.

 

[BobPE]

I kinda disagree BJC: People are exposed to engineering thousands of times a day. A doctor, a few times a year, and a lawyer, hopefully never, but I imagine hundreds of times a day. I know that this contact with engineering is not face to face, but I do not think it is this factor that causes our profession trouble. I think we have adequate laws to protect our profession, and if not, that can be easily changed if we would only get ourselves together. We as engineers also need to get some pride in what we do. Pride makes it easier to report that wanna be engineer doing engineering that will hurt people. Without the pride (pride that is beyond personal pride), we will never be what a lawyer or doctor is to todays society.

We do not preach our profession, that I agree. Others preach it for us, and do a lousy job.

BobPE

 

[rerig]

BobPE,

I agree 99%. People are exposed to engineering thousands of times a day...they just don't recognize it! A Doctor will make you better, a Lawyer will cover you legally...but you must seek them out. Engineering wonders are all around, but they are just there. Someone had to originally seek out an Engineer to design whatever, and everyone else takes for granted that the design was accomplished properly. If not you seek out the Lawyer.
Look at the esteem with which Pilots are held. Without the Engineering they would be Bus Drivers! But the Engineering is taken for granted.

Rerig

 

[CajunCenturion]

With the advancements in computer technology and software, those 'bus drivers' could be classified as 'bus monitors'. That being said, I hope you have good one in the left seat when the technology fails.

Good Luck
--------------
As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein

 

[BJC]

Arunmaro
Back to your original post and how people see engineers.
Where was all the G-whiz stuff you saw while Christmas made?
Are those huge plasma screen made in the USA? Where soes the average person think the research or engineering for them was done? If you had enought money to buy the car(s) you have allways wanted where would it be made? How many other americans think the same way?
Those are some of the things people see and are impressed with, they all say something about Amercian engineering. When they flush the toilet or flip a light switch there is no awe or G-Whiz factor.
How do you get esteem back to engineering? I don't know, our heros are Donald Trump, pro basket ball players, half naked people who survive on tropical island tv sets etc.
We may become a true colony of ohter countries. The defination of a colony being a place that produces raw materials and consumes finished goods.

 

[arunmrao]

BJC,

The huge buildings certainly had an American look. The funds were from US . An average person or for that matter even a qualified guy has stopped asking questions to himself. They are kind of scared perhaps.

The popular cars are Japanese or German. Remember we were a British colony for more than 4 centuries . Our independence is 57 years young. You can still see the colonial attitude especially in the bureaucrats.

Esteem back to engineering. Yes when we start respecting fellow engineers as a first step and do not deride him in public.

It will be easier as my generation (>50years) is thinning ,the younger and newcomers can setup a new trend.
I hope they learn from our mistakes and correct the trend.

 

[rerig]

CajunCenturion,

No slam on pilots...their talent is required for the available Engineering (Aircraft). What if there were no aircraft because of no engineering.
There are times I look up and wonder how that many tons of metal can fly. I know the theory and the dynamics...it's my Gee Whiz factor. My neighbor will look up and say "isn't that a pretty plane", not "how in the world does that thing fly?"
When you look at the shows about the "Wonders of the World" the engineering is always brought up...and immediately forgotten. People know lots of Engineers. How many are really Degreed Engineers. That is the problem. As previously stated, the "Engineering" title is given away by companies needing an "Engineer" to accomplish a job that does not really require a Degreed Engineer, but that is who will be working in their "Engineering" Dept.
How do we fix that?

 

[CajunCenturion]

I agree with you rerig. The term engineer is so badly bandied about that it has lost all meaning. I knew that when domestic engineers and sanitation engineers were proper job titles that we were in trouble. Within my own industry, programmers today rarely, if at all, have any concept of software engineering, much less degrees. Their complete lack of theory and fundamentals shows up in the quality of their work. I would very much like to see engineering professions, be it electrial, mech, chem, software, and the others be regulated. The lustre will return only if the title engineer is earned by meeting and maintaining high standards.

But in today's society, the question revolves more around profit.

Good Luck
--------------
As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein

 

[buzzp]

I dont think requiring licenses will help a thing. This has been addressed in several other posts.

I, for one, would not want the so called respect of lawyers. These people are bashed all the time so it is not really respect, is it?

Doctors get respect because we deal with them way more than engineers. When you are ailing, you go to the doctor and he makes you feel better. Pretty easy to respect this person for making an obvious improvement in your life. And it is pretty obvious that almost everyone has to go to a doctor sooner or later.

Engineers design stuff and make it better but no one ever knows this. The credit is given to a company or a manager of a company.

Gone are the times of great innovation that produced heros out of cocaine addicts like thomas edison, etc. They may not have been engineers but the innovation they brought was second too none and the far reaching affects of their innovation brought them fame and fortune. We have not had any great innovations in fundamental every day living since those days of the light bulb, phonograph, etc. I think this is a small reason that engineers have not been as respected as doctors. Its basically public ignorance of what goes on behind the scenes.
While I do think engineers neat to be mindful of engineer should be used in a title, I do not think lack of respect is a big concern. If you want to respected, like a doctor, go to medical school. These people make many more sacrifices in their personal life than I would in going to college and even more sacrifices after college. It is not fair to compare engineering to doctors, wages or otherwise.
If you want to make a comarison, at least start with a discipline that has the same requirements, years of college, etc. I can not think of any profession (bachelor degree) that has more respect than engineering other than maybe business administration or architects.

 

[metengr]

The engineering profession is “as old as the hills and twice as dusty”. It will always be around because of technology, but it may morph into a different look as a profession. Look all around you at the changes in society and the advances in technology. People today can obtain engineering degrees in many fields that has “watered down” the traditional paths that students used to take - mechanical, chemical, electrical , civil and structural.

The engineering profession is splintering at a dramatic rate. This splintering is both positive and negative. The positive side is more engineers as specialists, the negative side is limited job scope or too narrow of a focus – as technology shifts these engineering specialists could be left out in the cold. Also, a negative of splintering is less cohesiveness as a profession.

I am not sure of the cause for splintering other than the universities may be looking to capitalize on offering more diverse engineering degrees to maintain enrollment. Remember, college education today is big business, not like it used to be.

We need to stop comparing the engineering profession to doctors and lawyers. These are essential services that can’t morph into anything else over time because people seek out these services. Other professions that won’t morph into something else are the trades like plumbers, carpenters and car mechanics. Once again, the trades people provide a service that people (homeowners and builders) directly need. Car mechanics will always be needed as long as the automobile is around.

 

[HgTX]

I am not sure of the cause for splintering other than the universities may be looking to capitalize on offering more diverse engineering degrees to maintain enrollment.

Or, since it costs the university more to run separate programs than one big one, a response to demand. For example, it makes perfect sense to separate environmental engineering from civil. They deal with such different issues, and the environmental folks don't need much hardcore structural design background. And I'm surprised, what with the separate licensing of structural engineers in several states, that there aren't undergraduate structural engineering programs separate from civil.

Hg

 

[PSE]

The practice of engineering seems somewhat victimized by its own success. When the public uses any of the results of our labors, they expect it to work properly. It is when it does not work properly that engineers are considered important again to either find out what went wrong or to fix it.

Engineering practice can generate great wealth for a society. This can also create greed. Arunmrao your statement, "The government,banks or industry associations are no longer receptive to our needs. We are considered the bottlenecks in growth or at the best an unavoidable necessity which can be ignored." should be of great professional concern. It should go without saying that shoddy or shortcut work can have disastrous effects.

In parting, my condolences to all affected by the tsunami's in your part of the world.

Regards,

 

[flamby]

Arun M. Rao,

Sadly, all good things must come to an end. Engineering in India is no longer one of the most sought after profession these days after the good age has gone and given the way to IT, BPO, Management, Flying etc. Even armed forces have become a recent craze after the ministries have decided to promote a service guy every two or three years! That's great! Based on these, the talented pool is simply not interested to become an engineer.

But let us not be too quick to dismiss engineering as it remains a big industry. Opening up of Power-Generation and Distribution sector to private sector, in recent years, has seen a rise in salaries of engineers. Ditto with the Highways sector. With time, more and more disinvestment by the State will have some positive impact on the market. This is not only good, its inevitable.

These New-Technology people may sneer at our low salaries for now. But we haven’t seen a manufacturing or construction revolution as yet as compared to China or even Korea. I sincerely believe that Indian-Engineering has not yet seen its best and the real boom is just round the corner. If not for us, then for next generation perhaps.


Ciao.

 

[arunmrao]

flamby! I guess you too are from India. The armed forces has now awakened and is making some noises to attract the young. Earlier they were like the sleeping Buddha!!.

The defence labs are over staffed and hardly do any good work. Most of the funds gets drained in salaries and perks.

Imagine a society without engineering!! No cement plants, steel mills, paper industries, chemical plants power stations etc.

If everyone gets into the services sector my fear is that in 10 years all the above industries will become museums. We may revisit dark ages.

WE can see this happen im Pure Science stream. The courses are running empty, no research exists, and grants are a mirage. I have raised this subject with Prof CNR Rao too. He pleads inability to buck the trend as it is mega bucks and lucre that is attracting the young!!

I hope this does not happen to engineering too. We will have created a mess (Add to this is the population explosion)