re: Engineers/Construction Workers?

Well this thread kinda took-off.

Alot of people are harping on a lack of work ethic with the young engineers. This could be part of the issue, but I don't think it's the main problem.

The problem, like I mentioned, is these kids have been so droned into their Excel and their calculators they just don't have a clue what they're building/designing anymore. It seems in the past that engineers were the guys who worked as mechanics and laborers in high school and then were good enough to study a little harder in college.

Now, however, they just grab kids who are good at math and science and make them engineers. I know I used to feel (and still feel at times) wholy inept compared to some of the construction guys I work with and especially the old engineers at my company. My dad or any of the older engineers are always talking about working on their cars and rebuilding engines and blah blah blah. I consider myself decently handy for today's day and age, but I'm lost when most of those guys start talking.

As someone mentioned, they were just tinkerers. Yea they're smart, but that wasn't what defined them. Thank God my dad taught me how to do 95% of the things I know how to do, because compared to the rest of my graduating class I looked like I'd been in the industry for decades.

It will never change as eductional institutions now drive the majority of decisions young adults make, but it would be nice if there was more of an emphasis on the type of students you push towards engineering. The majority of the kids I see coming out should be math majors or chemistry or physics majors. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that, but engineering is about the application of these discilines not the theoretical study of them.

That kid was sweating his arse off searching through every report in our system to try to tell him if a transformer that was a hundred yards from him had been installed.