To the wiser (older folks), how has the profession changed? 19

[ManifestDestiny]

Hi all

I've been binging a lot on documentaries lately, mostly on the grand old stuff that still amazes today, Concorde, SR-71, Apollo etc. Over the weekend me and some friends were catching up for some beers and inevitably it lead to the usual workplace whinge. We surmised that there are really no new problems, just new and innovative ways of F$&@ing something up, and every 5-7 years you just add another zero to the cost of the F$&@ up. Some of these folks were older than me (early 40's) so really still too young to be in the age of the grand stuff, who would be at least at retirement age and beyond by now. I think the majority of Engineers these days are pretty well acclimatised to the corporate buzzwords, sterile leadership, politics and smoke and mirrors that is the western corporate world (it seems to infect the anglo countries more than the europeans). As a young Engineer (29), I'm worried that we may never know what good leadership ever looked like and what professionalism and the craft of engineering really means.

So my question, whats changed? Has it changed? No doubt office politics and boondoggle's still happened, but I can only imagine the look on Kelly Johnson face at Lockheed or George Mueller when he was leading the Apollo program if you told them to "think outside the box", "innovate with blue sky thinking" or (I love this one) "leverage our technology stack". I'm sure the good stuff still exists, but I'm yet to see or hear about it.

What were the keys to success of those grand old projects?

 

[IRstuff]

Primavera is not particularly new; we were using that in 1993, with the same issues.

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[Sparweb]

I keep thinking about the OP's questions.

If you're looking for changes to the ways people work, in engineering or otherwise, I really don't think looking back a generation or two will do it. Some things have changed (faster computers, for sure) but many many things are still the same. Businesses are still hierarchies, and responsibilities are divided among specialized people, and their specialties are very similar to the specialties that people had 100, even 150 years ago (owner, manager, engineer, technician, labourer, consultant, accountant, sales, and on and on). So expecting radical changes in the way people work, when we keep fulfilling the the same roles for 6 generations, is not realistic.

If I was to think about a business tycoon of the modern day, I'd quickly name someone like Elon Musk. Ask me about a similar famous tycoon of the past, I'd probably name Thomas Edison. Compare these two guys' biographies. Setting aside flags and such adornments, they are very similar. How could two people with so much in common each rise to success 130 years apart, unless the economy and social structure that encourages and builds such success haven't changed much in the meantime?

This thread got me thinking about a BBC television show from 1985. It was called The Day The Universe Changed, and it was an opinion/educational piece by a BBC journalist about science, technology, and how western culture has changed as science and tech have changed. The host, James Burke, spent the first 9 episodes looking back in time 2000 years. Then in the last episode, he looked forward and basically predicted all of the major social changes that everyone seems surprised about today. By giving us 2 millenia of perspective, they don't seem so major after all.

The show totally changed the way I see "progress". It comes in bursts, followed by periods of stability. Change and progress are not really continuous processes that we think they are. We undergo abrupt changes that upset our point of view, then we pick up a new way of seeing things, and then THAT becomes the new reality we live in. The so-called stability still gets technological change, but those changes don't fundamentally shake up our society. The printing press and industrial production were radical changes that upset almost everything. Today's automation of cars is just the combination of two technologies in a more complex way and will not likely upset much of anything, except my morning drive in my non-automated car. Mass communication has drastically changed our daily lives, but it's important to realize that the tipping point of that change came in the 1960's when everyone got a TV, not in the 90's when everybody got an internet account. Western society already had personal mass communication by then, and just turned it over to the internet when it became popular.


STF

 

[IRstuff]

I might argue that it was the radio that provided the first instant, mass communication, opportunity. War of the Worlds live broadcast in 1938, and FDR's "a date which will live in infamy" speech in 1941 are iconic and shared experiences by most of the US at the time.

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[cranky108]

I would argue that change is continuous, But it jumps between industries.

 

[HamburgerHelper]

Outsourcing of drafting and engineering overseas on large projects. I saw a smaller company try this, it was a mess due to how slow it was and our in house drafters weren't "very motivated" to making it work.

 

[davefitz]

There have been many changes since the 1970's which have affected how engineers are implemented in the corporate structure. The 2 main outer changes that had impact were (a) the pc and (b) changing from pensions and long term ( lifetime) careers to portable 401K retirement funds and short term flexible careers.

Prior to 1980, a large manufacturing or design corp would keep a good engineer for 35 -40 yrs as a long term investment in knowledge or corporate memory. After retirement, a pension would carry the engineer thru retirement.It would take 20 yrs to be vested in a retirement plan. That changed with the Reagan administration ( 1980) with a 5 yr vesting date for pensions and the use of 401K's to allow flexible careers with multiple employers plus added tremendous wealth to the stock market. In concert with short time employment ( as opposed to lifelong career) there was made changes to financing laws which led to corporate takeovers and consequent "rationalizations" or downsizing of the workforce. This downsizing was a also a necessary result of the improvement in productivity due to the PC.

A little later , circa 1988, came the widespread use of the PC, which not only displaced the mainframe computer, typewriter, and manual draftsman, but also displaced the careers for most engineering and science PhD's. Prior to the PC, a large engineering corporation needed several PhD's in each specialty to solve detailed problems , but this need was later met , at low cost, by the widespread availability of commercially available computer programs that would solve the technical problems while only requiring a nominally educated technician or engineer to input the data.The combined reduction in PhD's and long term engineers led to a near complete loss in "corporate memory".

The latest changes to the profession are the shift of technical advances from the english speaking world to the east ( china + india) and a reduction in the need to understand thermal sciences and an increase in the need to address water shortages .

"...when logic, and proportion, have fallen, sloppy dead..." Grace Slick

 

[controlnovice]

Only been in industry for 27 years.

One of the bigger changes I've seen, although I think it started before then, has been outsourcing.

Until this last company, I've always worked as an engineer directly with an operating company, not for an engineering firm.

It started shortly out of Uni, that first company started to make engineering redundant, got rid of them, then would hire engineers from engineering firms. It was mainly what I call the 'hard' engineers: Mechanical, civil, electrical...and not the 'soft' engineers: Process, Chemical, Process Control. Same thing happened to the next two companies I worked for.

In those first 15-20 years, the outsourced engineers were still national.

However, in the last 12-15 years, this has become international for low cost.

Customers are looking for minimum bids. In order to do that, we are sending the engineering overseas.

In one of my first overseas projects 14 years ago, we hired a company in China to perform engineering (project was in China). The project manager asked why were weren't going to India for engineering as it would be less expensive... sigh....

______________________________________________________________________________
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[bridgebuster]

I guess I qualify as an older folk; the good Lord willing retirement is less than 5 years away.

Software has dramatically changed how we do things. A few examples from back in the day when life was simple, before everything became a specialty

On a bridge project, we didn't need an electrical engineer to layout the lighting; we used charts. If there was some complicated wiring, then we'd call Sparky. Then someone invented illumination software. Bridge drainage was designed using a nomograph; then someone invented HEC-whatever. To determine lateral capacity of piles there was the Navy Manual; then someone invented L-Pile. Continuous bridges were designed using the AISC influence line book. Fortunately someone invented Merlin-Dash ( I wish I could say the same about MDX.) We designed a lot of things using charts, tables, similar projects etc. as a guide. Generally, software is a good thing but I observe that younger people rely too much on software. A few years ago, I needed one of my guys (and a very intelligent engineer at that ) to size up a girder for a preliminary estimate; his response "I'll create a STAAD model". I said, just use the geometric criteria in AASHTO or look at a similar project; in either case you'll be 95% right.

I also believe younger people don't appreciate historical information, which is especially important when looking at an older structure. Opening up an old book or catalog is unheard. Meanwhile, they're scratching their heads why something doesn't meet code but is still standing. I'm not being critical. Before the internet, offices had a library; there was a wealth of information available for research.

Codes were a lot simpler. The first AASHTO I used was 8 1/2" x 6"; probably less than 500 pages and no flow charts to explain the design processes. Current AASHTO Bridge Spec is 8 1/2" x 11" and about 2200 pages. AISC 7-95 was a thin publication; now they have a separate book that's larger than 7-95 just to explain the wind provisions. Granted, codes reflect the state of the art in research - nothing wrong with that - but some things are too much for me.

 

[Sparweb]

Codes were a lot simpler.

You said it. When I started working on old airplanes, I quickly learned that "grandfathering" is alive and well in the aviation industry. Necessary, in fact, to permit aircraft to continue flying and remaining serviceable. Learning the old codes, in order to engineer the work on an aircraft approved to those old codes, taught me where so many of these rules came from. They aren't arbitrary, but they sure look that way in the regulations, now.

STF

 

[HamburgerHelper]

To add on outsourcing, I think I would add outsourced internally. There are places I have bumped into where visa employees outnumber citizens and green cards near 10 to 1. That probably has been common place in tech for awhile but it is happening in engineering.

 

[IRstuff]

that's hardly new, even in however you are segmenting "tech" from "engineering." We had job postings that were tailored to our own H1B EEs back in 1983.

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[HCBFlash]

I'd say the paranoia of liability as evidenced by the ballooning codes, as mentioned, and outsourcing/offshoring. Your mention of the Concorde grabbed my attention. I don't particularly know about it's history through the design stages, but today certainly hoops would be jumped through to spread liability and risk.

Of course, as also mentioned above these are incremental changes, not paradigm. I find Bridgebusters remarks accurate and applicable. I fear the loss of working human expertise and intelligence; "check the app", "what does the app show".

.

(Me,,,wrong? ...aw, just fine-tuning my sarcasm!)

 

[IRstuff]

"I fear the loss of working human expertise and intelligence; "check the app", "what does the app show"."

That train left the station at least 40 years ago, which is when I started working and engineers lamented the advent of circuit simulators. Likewise, more than 20 years ago, I knew a programmer that scoffed at people using even command-line C compilers as being wusses who didn't know assembly language.

But, the reality is much more nuanced. There is essentially an impossibility of developing products today without some level of automation. Trying to program Windows, or even the simplest Windows program, in assembly is now a fool's errand. Trying to design any of Dubai's skyscrapers using paper and a calculator would be insane.

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[coloeng]

The biggest changes that I have noticed are that people want higher levels of precision, even if the errors in the assumptions exceed the level of precision, and people want answers right away, which in my opinion doesn't leave enough time to sit back and think about some problems.

 

[Terratek]

Technology and design keeps getting more advanced and complex because we keep getting dumber....?

We all stand on the shoulders of giants. I wonder if people lamented Newton's theories as a way for lazy people to just calculate stuff rather than forgo the much harder trial and error way of doing things.

Do we really believe that if engineers from the 1960's stepped out of a time machine to do the work we have to day that everything would be better? I don't think so. I think it would be about the same, technology learning curve withstanding.

Old people have been lamenting young people since the beginning of time. To me, this whole "engineering isn't what it used to be" stuff is no different than "kids today don't know what good music is" talk. Not productive and not correct.

 

[GregLocock]

I'm not going to read through all the above, so this may repeat some points. One common complaint is that the current crop of graduates don't understand the basics and/or don't know the stuff we learned at uni. Those two are often confused together. The first is serious. The basics are vital. Not being able to draw a free body diagram is a hanging offence, and always will be. The second, well yes, it is true but that's because without an ever expanding time at university there is simply more new stuff to learn, so something has to go. Frankly I don't see much point in teaching CAD at uni, still less in 'teaching' engineers to press the autoFEA button on the toolbar, but if that is what employers are stupid enough to ask for then it is hard to see why unis would say no.



Cheers

Greg Locock


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[CWB1]

Interesting comment as usual Greg. I too often distinguish the difference between design basics and what is taught in college today, but am struggling a bit to understand your distinction.

Most colleges IME do a decent job of teaching theory, a poor job of linking various theories together, a worse job of correlating theory to reality, and very little to actually teach common design practice/process. It seems popular today to require building something simple in intro to manufacturing/machine shop, model something simple and make a rough print in intro to solid modeling, and not much else in the way useful, practical skill. I'd like to see students have a final design project involving both design and manufacture of something for each core engineering class. Entry level MEs IMHO should have a couple hundred hours between 2-3 CAD modelers, be able to run basic FEA and CFD sims correctly and guesstimate the result (IOW know the theory), run a bolted joint analysis, be able to read GD&T, and have some decent manufacturing/fabrication experience before they graduate. I've interviewed far too many who could setup a 1st law problem, sketch FBDs, and knew the theory basics but who had no practical ability otherwise, some never even took CAD, print reading, or actually had to build anything in college. What use they would be if hired is beyond me, we'd spend months training them for both design and analysis roles. I'd actually rather promote willing draftsmen into engineering than hire the aforementioned degreed "engineer."

 

[Terratek]

CBW1,

The problem with what you want is that your suite of desired training would leave the broad degree extremely short in other areas where someone else with the same degree might want to work. In civil, you could have students more trained in drafting, but then where is the time to teach them geotechnical, environmental or material sciences? Not all jobs need CAD. What a waste if I had to spend that much time learning CAD. I don't know how to answer the CAD training conundrum where it is needed, but there seems to be no shortage of engineers in CAD required jobs that didn't get CAD training at university. Actually, I do have the answer: companies should train their employees in company/industry specific tasks. It's called human capital. Companies invest their own blood, sweat and tears in physical capital without pause. Why shouldn't they be required to do the same with human capital?

What your saying is you'd rather train someone who had the wherewithal to go to trade school into being an engineer than provide training to an engineer for computer tasks. Totally inefficient trade-off IMO.

The purpose of college is to increase capacity (intellectual horse power), not skill. If you want to build skill, but not intellectual horsepower, go to trade school. Personally, I'd rather train my engineers to understand practical applications of soil mechanics and general industry specific writing skills than train my lab tech's to be engineers.

 

[IRstuff]

It seems to me that so-called "practical" education is what technical schools are for, while universities are supposed to be teaching you the fundamental theory and applications thereof. So training a BSME to be fully proficient in Autocad ties them to Autocad, and shortchanges them on some amount of theory, while promoting a "draftsperson" leaves an even bigger technical gap. If all you want are draftspeople, that's fine, but that doesn't necessarily get your actual engineering accomplished.

And truth be told, not everyone is cut out to do drafting, or should be. As an engineer, they're a pretty darn expensive resource to be using for pushing pixels around on a screen, when they should be doing the engineering itself.

I get it, though, because I remember some fellow alumni getting shaded for not knowing how to use an oscilloscope when we graduated from college. As it turns out, a more thorough education in lab equipment would have been completely wasted, since I long ago left the lab for Mathcad. And, Mathcad didn't even exist when I graduated.

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[GregLocock]

Mathcad 0.3 was around in 1987. It ran off a 5 1/4 floppy. I never looked back. But I love scopes.

Frankly in my entire career I might have fired up a CAD program 500 times. I did use it daily for 18 months. Guessing it takes 100 hours to get somewhat proficient at a particular package, if I'd learnt that at uni that is more time than I spent in lectures on dynamics, something I've used every day for 35 years. CAD is a very bad example of a skill to pick up at uni.



Cheers

Greg Locock


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