Revisiting Structural Engineering as a Profession vs Trade (Reboot from 2019) 9

[MJB315]

thread507-459807

I'd like to reboot one of my favorite threads on this forum -- the one where Kootk explains how structural engineering is a trade and that the way that our business models work is by keeping early-stage engineers in the dark about the economics.

There's more to it, but that was one of my core takeaways. You can find the entire thread here and I'll bring in the core of the piece below for convenience.

I'd like to reboot this thread by:

[ol 1]
[li]Providing some background;[/li]
[li]Asking the $100k (USD) question, and;[/li]
[li]Asking for the contrary opinions and advice. [/li]

I'll also copy and paste a few of Kootk's points from 2019 for reference at the bottom.
[/ol]

Background

I'm a structural engineer in my late thirties practicing engineering in New York State. I have a bachelors and masters in Civil Engineering (Structures Focus), practiced at three dedicated structural firms (50 people, 3 people, 10 people) and a multidisciplinary engineering firm (150 people). I've worked on my fair share of projects and for the most part, generate successful outcomes in them. I'm a licensed PE and formerly an SE (I have the quals, but just let the license lapse).

I started questioning my own career path into engineering early on in the process. I started questioning how anyone actually chooses career paths. I mentored and shifted into education (teaching Civil Engineering and Construction Technology) to explore it more. I started a start-up devoted to understanding how professionals act and think in a local geography and use video, VR, and human networks to try to expose students to the career paths that surround them. I'm in this pot, stirring the stew.

$100,000 Question.

The best way to approach career discovery with the typical high schooler tends to start with money. Not starting salary money, but a number like $100,000/year (USD). If you ask a student if they'd like to learn more about local careers and pathways -- they don't say no, but they don't exactly sit up. If you ask them if they'd like to understand the ways they can make $100K within ten years of graduation, they do. The quality of the discussion tends to increase from there, but money (of course) is important.

There are lots of discussions about work life balance, curiosity, duty, earnings in middle and advanced ages, etc...that we could add in here. Pros understand burn out. Pros understand the common desire to shift paths and try something new, finances be darned.

Students do not however. And as an educator (and as one who has been "educated"), I'm mortified that the economics of engineering is not a cornerstone of our national curricula. I know why we "say" that we do not teach it (there is so much technical material that we have to teach) but the truth is, there is time and I don't think it's in firms (therefore our industry's) interest to do so.

I think we collectively feel (fear?) that if understand the economics, they'll shift. I say, if we don't tell them and they find out later - they'll shift anyway... at a great opportunity cost to nearly everyone involved.

Going back to, "Can a Structural Engineer earn a $100,000/year within ten years of high school?" I feel like the answer is no. Fifteen-twenty years, probably.

Construction Project Management? Yes. Many other skilled trades, possibly. But engineering, no.

Push Back

Is there anything about that understanding that is inaccurate? If you're in a class full of high schoolers or college students, what do you say? What should you say?

I'm literally asking. Because as I make more career discovery content - I feel like the heavy equipment operator pathway is getting more love than the PE/SE with Two Degrees Pathway. At least to an 18 year old.

As a thirty-eight year old, I like having the club in my bag. Because I know that clients aren't just paying for product - they're paying to have someone take uncertainty away and they like doing so by someone they know and like. I also know it becomes a different way to make a $100K, which may be more appealing as we age.

But again, I'm focused on the question of what should we say to students?


--
Here's a few excerpts from the 2019 thread which I think resonate. The thread overall is great of course, here's two of Kootk's points.

START KOOTK's DEFINITION OF A PROFESSION

As humans toil away, I propose that they get paid for two things:

1) The effort/labor that they put into producing their product, on a product by product basis.

2) The requisite knowledge that a practitioner must posses in order to successfully product their product.

A profession is work where compensation is dominated by knowledge rather than effort.

A trade is work where compensation is dominated by effort rather than knowledge.

Some applications of this definition.

3) Landscapers (my son last summer). 5% knowledge; 95% effort. Trade (or unskilled trade I suppose). Bodies functioning as machines.

4) The Plumber that fixes my dishwasher. 30% knowledge; 70% effort. Trade (skilled).

5) Surgeon that replaces my pacemaker. 95% knowledge; 5% effort. Profession.

6) Structural engineer?? I would say 30% knowledge; 70% effort. Trade (skilled).

But wait? Didn't I go to school for six years to get my masters? Didn't I take a dozen arcane licensing exams to prove my worth? Yeah, you did. But remember that we're not talking about what you had to do to be able to legally practice structural engineering. Instead, we're talking about what your actually getting paid for when your client contracts for your services. I submit that we're mostly getting paid for effort. In a way, structural engineering is a particularly cruel form of a trade. Imagine if plumbers had to endure six years of post secondary and endless post graduation exams and professional development?

END DEFINITION

And...

Yes, issues with schedules, fees, and quality are the day to day nuisances. But, then, why do these things bother me really? All that just falls under the umbrella of "work", right? For me, these things are bothersome because they put me at odds with my own integrity almost constantly. Since we're talking big threes:

1) If an alien landed on earth and read all of our codes and design guides, they would have one impression of what structural engineers should be doing in regard to detail and rigor in design. Then, if they observed what practicing structural engineers actually do, they'd be horribly disappointing and confused. We take shortcuts. And lots of them. In fact, this is one of the first difficult lessons that new structural engineers must learn in a hurry. For me, this discrepancy between what I feel that I should be doing and what I'm actually doing is a challenge to my integrity. I tell the world that I'm delivering one product in terms of rigor and safety and then I turn around and deliver something quite different. I'm lying to the world in this respect.

2) As pointed out above, we have to commit to very aggressive schedule in order to keep winning work. This inevitably leads to agreeing to unrealistic schedules that give little account to reasonable contingencies. Yet I agree to these schedules because I feel that I have to to survive. This is me knowingly committing to delivering something that I know that I often wont be able to deliver. This is me lying to my clients and fellow project participants.

3) It is the low paid efforts of junior engineers that make our business model go 'round. Since most structural engineers get into the game to satisfy their inner nerd, the only way to keep such engineers motivated is to perpetuate their misunderstanding that society places a high value on the activity that is structural design. As a senior structural engineer, I'm guilty of this on a near constant basis. You can't very well motivate a junior by telling them "the only way to make any money at this is to get out of design and into management or sales as fast as you can". Again, this is me lying... now to junior engineers.

As structural engineers, we like to facetiously toss around the concept that we lose sleep over our work. You know, stuff falling down and crushing baby carriages etc. The truth is that none of that costs me any sleep. What does cost me sleep is my being constantly at odds with my own integrity as I've described. I think that a practicing structural engineer would actually be well served by some degree of sociopath in this respect. And, indeed, I know of some mild sociopaths that are wildly successful in structural engineering and make it look easy.

 

[IDS]

Thanks to all for the responses, I'll certainly give ChatGPT another go for some coding.

Some thoughts arising from the comments above:

1) I have no idea what an EIT is.
2) My main concern with ChatGPT specifically (as it is now) is that it comes up with a convincing sounding answer, even when it has no idea. If its ability to do that continues to improve the apparent quality of the answers, without signalling that they are unreliable, that seems like a real danger in an engineering context.
3) On the other hand, even though an AI can beat top level human players at chess, a good (but not top level) human working with and AI can beat an AI working by itself. Similarly, in an engineering context human engineers working with AIs would be expected to provide better value than AIs with minimal human oversight, and would greatly reduce the risk of major dangerous blunders.
4) We have actually been through all this before, when computers with Autocad replaced humans with pens and straight edges. There were quite a few older drafters who couldn't adapt to the new system, but there were many who did and there are still plenty of humans involved in that area of engineering work.

Doug Jenkins
Interactive Design Services

http://newtonexcelbach.wordpress.com/

 

[Denial]

"Engineer in training", I think, Doug.[ ] But I had to give it some thought.[ ] (Some acronyms really do not cross oceans very well, and should be used sparingly.)

[sub][ ]—————————————————————————————————[/sub]
[sup]Engineering mathematician/analyst.[ ] See my profile for more details.[/sup]

 

[WinelandV]

Yeah, in the states EIT is Engineer in Training. Similarly, some states designate "EI": Engineering Intern. For all practical purposes both of those designations are equivalent. Essentially, and EIT/EI has passed the Fundamentals of Engineering exam (FE) and is now working on their years of experience so as to take the Professional Engineering exam (PE). (Although, there have been some changes at the NCEES with regards to when you can take the PE.)

Please note that is a "v" (as in Violin) not a "y".

 

[MJB315]

As luck would have it, this week's episode from my favorite podcaster (Russ Roberts @ Econtalk) is on ChatGPT: Link. It's a fair bit more "Skynet" than what we've been contemplating but I suspect that a lot of folks here would enjoy it just the same.

Yeah, that podcast was a great listen - especially describing the fundamental insanity of the model that is underlaying the "amazing appearing" veneer.

It reminds me of the distinction that we humans tend to deemphasize between intelligence and expertise.

Intelligence - the ability to cognitively chug through a problem
Expertise - ability to create something useful

I agree that AI is going to be increasingly fantastic at chugging through problems - including how to appear omnipotent. At least to most humans, most of the time. Humanity has been searching for a Deus ex Machina since the beginning - and what could ever be closer than General AI?

Now, should we plan for General AI to create something useful - at least for us humans? That really depends.

[ul]
[li]If we want a new useful way to get the attention of others in order to influence what they spend their money on [advertisements], sure. [/li]
[li]If we want a new useful way to disrupt other human's ability to function [war], sure. [/li]
[li]If we want a new useful way to look up information [search], sure. [/li]
[/ul]

But if we're looking for a new way to create things that are useful for humans on Earth -- especially if we're also seeking to make life meaningful and worthwhile at the same time -- I'm not sure that's coming to us with this particular Wells Fargo Wagon.

I've come to believe that "expertise" is a blend of intelligence, awareness, useful hard skills, curiosity, emotional calibration, and the ability to generate successful outcomes. That blend tends to make a person (or teams) particularly good at creating something useful for other humans. If you unscrew of few of those elements, the usefulness of the person or team starts to fade. I'm not entirely sure that I've never met an "expert" without that blend.

I've certainly never met a useful human that overcompensated for the lack of those "other" abilities with an over abundance of intelligence - however impressive the dinner conversation may be.

Can AI destroy humans in the intelligence category? Yes.
Can AI deploy behaviors that mimic the other five categories? Yes.
Can humanity be mesmerized by AI's IQ and ability to mimic the other qualities long enough to allow human expertise to atrophy in the process? Yeah.
Is that going to happen? Yes, at least in the world of bits. Maybe not in the world of atoms, where Civil / Construction mainly lives -- but it certainly could.

Two other things:

1. Here's a brief clip from a person who runs a Civil Engineering Department in the Northeast US. The question is, "Can humans develop expertise in a year?" His answer was no, because it takes humans time to develop expertise - for the better or worse. The conversation drifted into AI near the end. [URL unfurl="true"]https://youtu.be/-stbpGzcumg[/url]

2. Here's a classic interview clip with Elon Musk and Joe Rogan regarding AI. He describes how his concern that humanity cannot help itself but become the biological boot loader for AI, and how that concern led him to the creation of OpenAI (the non-profit version of OpenAI). It's crazy to me that OpenAI (initially trusted to develop AI safely) has jettisoned that founding principial in order to to grab cash. Also worth a listen. [URL unfurl="true"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ra3fv8gl6NE[/url]

 

[MacGruber22]

Welp, I *was* having a good day today.

-Mac

 

[Trenno]

So is anyone actually using any AI tools for day to day tasks:

Writing proposals
Writing specs
Generating Teams meeting minutes
Composing emails
Writing boiler plate code for various API tools

 

[MJB315]

So, as the person who helped drive this thread into the depressing, dark corner of the yard -- let me share a few [closing?] thoughts. I've slept on it for a few weeks, which helps.

1. The AI-Topic is inherently demotivating, therefore potentially harmful. I mean, look at what it did in this thread. Elon's response to a recent question about what career advice that he would offer his own children (link here) mirrors my own thoughts and I recommend everyone give a quick watch.

Similarly, a few nights after this thread started down the AI-bunny hole, I somehow stumbled across a 1940s-era short story called "With Folded Hands." If Elon's link above mirrors my thoughts, that short story mirrored my feelings and fears. It's a straightforward read (about 50 pages), surprisingly good, and eerily prescient. Basically, a fully evolved AI+robot solution leaves humans nothing to do but to sit "with folded hands" - with corrosive results. Wikipedia summary here and full text can be read here. I know refencing a 76-year old science fiction novella is a far cry from referencing ACI-318-19, but hey, here we are.

2. Civil Engineering as a cross-word puzzle. Stepping away from the de-motiving abyss and shimmying toward the motiving-light, I do find that many students (ages 16-65) find satisfaction with performing Civil/Structural engineering work. I'm not talking about career satisfaction but something more like human satisfaction. I teach a course which combines statics and strengths into a single 16 week course, and my emphasis is driving toward assessing whether a steel/wood beam is safe (using M/S and FOS) and serviceable and if it isn't, for them to propose an economical alternative. There are a lot of moving parts to that, but, when we're able to sit parked there for a month on that style of problem -- students derive a lot of satisfaction from being able to do it. When I bring similar versions of that into high school technology classes, students derive satisfaction there too. There's something about the assembling the jumble of skillsets and applying it which, again, I find is satisfyingly for many people - not unlike a crossword puzzle.

3. I've yet to find a human stakeholder content on relying something other than another human. This is where I currently am and I am assuming -- perhaps natively -- is where the market will stay for a generation. This goes back to the ideas above that it's prudent to use the technical "stuff" we do as just a vehicle for customer service and make sure you can provide value there. Like Elon says in that clip -- it requires a certain amount of suspension of disbelief to remain motivated and thereby useful to society, and this is probably the optimism-off-ramp that I will continue to keep taking to remain professionally motivated in this career path for the foreseeable future. Humans will engage with other humans to develop solutions to problems -- so as long as I can remain a good human partner, there will continue to be a good human market for services.

---
Post Script - MJB enters post to Eng-Tips in May 2023. Sets calendar reminder for May 2033 to revisit this post and revise position as needed.

 

[IRstuff]

Certainly, a chatbot, whose sole purpose is to converse with the user is going to put a bunch of South Asian customer service operators; sad and bad for them, but we'll at least get more intelligible responses, although I'm sure the automated response hell will just get worse in a different way.

I still think that this generation of chatbots are still a long ways from doing non-cookie-cutter engineering on their own; ChatGPT is a predictive system, and often, its predictions are pretty horrible. They need to be supervised, and proper supervision will require experienced engineers to backcheck and backstop the bots.

And, I guess that's the point, they're still "bots", often still dumber than 3 year olds

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg

faq731-376 forum1529 Entire Forum list

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[phamENG]

But not all of them. Some estimates have them approaching 9 year olds. Still not engineers, clearly, but a huge leap.

I don't think anyone is saying AI will replace us all. I do think that, for many of us (I'm in my mid 30s), that these AI will be a part of and possibly completely change our profession before we retire. Better to get out in front (cautiously) than to be the one left behind.

As my grandmother used to tell me: the only constant in this world is change.