My husband sent me a link to an EDN page featuring a video covering dating advice for engineers. I want to start by saying that the video was very amusing, so the following is in no way meant as disparaging. However, it was also very guy-centric, and I wondered what sort of dating advice might be useful for female engineers (which, the video says, are hypothetical…like Bigfoot).
So my advice would be:
- Ignore any guy who says that female engineers are unattractive. He’s just bitter because he can’t find a date. It’s karma. He’s probably also an engineer.
- You’ll probably want to date another engineer, or maybe a scientist. Otherwise you won’t have anything to talk about. (Well, maybe if you have hobby in common. HAM radio, anyone?) And saying things like “Higgs Boson” will be just fine.
- You’ll probably want to date another engineer because, given your salary, you’re likely to make a non-engineer somewhat jealous…unless he’s a lawyer or doctor, but then you run into the conversation problem again.
- Ask your friends for advice on clothes…but don’t wear anything that doesn’t make you comfortable. If you’re dating an engineer, don’t worry about your clothes.
- It’s perfectly fine to ask a guy out. If he’s the shy, nerdy type, there’s a chance he’ll really appreciate it. If he’s an engineer, he’s probably also clueless and anything more subtle will be off his radar.
- Don’t date any guy who seems jealous of your career or other men. Think about it: you’re surrounded by men all the time…how will he deal?!
- Make sure that if you enjoyed the date, you tell him you’d like to see him again. If he’s engineer, it’s probably a good idea to tell him specifically when and where otherwise he may not take the hint…or he’ll assume you mean immediately.
Just so you know, I checked with my husband, who is also an engineer, and he verified that my advice about dating male engineers was sound.
So what have I missed?
Lol, pretty funny. As I guy though, I think it was good I married a non-engineer to gives things some balance. Maybe it’s the same for females?
Actually, about 70% of female engineers and scientists will marry another engineer or scientist. (http://www.cspo.org/igscdocs/Brianna%20Blaser.pdf) I can’t remember where I read this, but women are more likely to want to marry someone with a similar intelligence level or something like that. (I think that’s how they justified it…) And from the women in my social circle, I’d say that’s pretty close to what I’ve observed.
This was certainly true in my case. I don’t think I could have managed a relationship with someone less intelligent than myself. Not just because they would have driven me crazy, but I found that people tend to be turned off by women who are constantly correcting their grammar and saying “didn’t you know that?”.
For some reason.
“If he’s an engineer, he’s probably also clueless and anything more subtle will be off his radar.
Make sure that if you enjoyed the date, you tell him you’d like to see him again. If he’s engineer, it’s probably a good idea to tell him specifically when and where otherwise he may not take the hint”
*ouch*
Spot on.
I married a Marine. She is a good match, although people who know us separately, then connect the dots, have a common reaction along the line of “How does *that* work?” – so far, over 20 years.
She is blunt, strong-willed, and straight-forward. She knows subtlety is lost on me. We also tend to have fact-filled arguments, although our interpretation of the facts my be different :^)
Far before meeting me, she decided that she was going to marry an engineer. Although, it did take about 5 years before she truly understood the ramifications. She will still look at me and state “You are a freak of nature” when I point out something that is usually obvious to an engineer.
One of my favorite tricks was raising the chicken coop after the (7omph) winds knocked it down. A rope, leverage, and a pickup truck and the thing just zipped up. Piece of cake, but it impressed her. The !@#$% thing got knocked down a week later, but the same trick worked and now the coop is tied down.
I recommend to guy nerds is to find chemists, because there are a large number of women chemists (the reason is the subject of another rant…). The difference between a chemist and Marine is: if you p*ss off the chemist, they may suspect murder, but cannot prove it. In my case, there would be no doubt…
This is good advice – I’m an engineer who married a non-engineer and I can’t figure out why he doesn’t like to use logic to solve problems. He seems to think there’s more to an issue than bluntly stating the facts and enacting a logical solution.
“bandit” and I may be married to the same woman, but maybe not as my wife was not a Marine. My wife also claims that I “am a freak of nature”. Another term is simply “you sure are weird, but lovable”. We are polar opposites in many areas, but still share a lot of commonalities. My first wife had a masters in computer science. A smart girl, but to her, everything was a hardware problem. Great on solving differential equations, but could not balance a checkbook!
It’s also hard on kids having techie parents. One of my sons complained as we were heading out to dinner one night that “could we talk about something other than compiler designs at dinner tonight!” On road trips I would ask the kids math type mental problems (age/grade appropriate) as we drove down the road. When they got older they complained that the families of their friends discussed sports. I asked “why?” Never got an answer. Yet they all went into “thinking” types of jobs where math skills paid off (econ, physics, math, insurance actuaries, etc). So far (knocking on wood) all six are gainfully employed
It takes a certain kind of person to live with a techie and it makes little difference if the techie is male or female. Most engineers can fix anything except the crack of dawn or a broken heart. But I’m working on doing both. It is indeed fun living here in Dilbertville. Well worth the trip. Thanks for the dating tips!
Both my husband and I are engineers, but we talk with our kids about a lot of things. We’re both very opinionated and try to keep up on politics, news, etc. We also are both history buffs and love to read, so we have a lot of non-technical things that we love to talk about. I’d like to think that offsets the ‘techie’ aspect, although there’s nothing I can do about the fact that we’re very intellectual about a lot of things.
That being said, I get a lot of comments about how smart my kids are, especially by people who don’t know us very well. I am afraid my kids stick out like a sore thumb, and there’s not much I can do to change that (nor would I).
Spot on, brother! Although … my son is third generation nerd. (He was doomed from the start, although we never pushed him into it). I would take him with me sometimes when I traveled. We would play “spot the nerd”, but it is too easy in the San Jose, CA airport.
Six kids, eh? We only had one. Her phrase after our son was born was “over your dead body”. I did *not* take this as a figure of speech.
I loved the “could we talk about something other than compiler designs at dinner tonight!”! How could they not be thrilled by lexical scanners, LALR(1) languages, and peephole optimizations? (Hmmm … teenage boys may interpret that last one differently.) Throw in inter-task FIFO communications and ISRs, and you just cannot get more riveting topics!
I do like the lists in the blog. I have a colleague who is so shy, he went to nursing school to get his “Mr” degree. Met a great gal, married, put her thru nursing school, then she put him thru engineering school. I learned early on that if he ever said anything, it was important enough to bubble up and I *should* listen carefully.
I must say… spot on!
Appears some guys are trying to say that they found themselves married with non-engineering females and trying to say that it’s not necessary for one to look for an engineer. That’s true with most MALE engineers. However, I find that most of FEMALE engineers do end up marrying male engineers. I myself being that same case. Perhaps it’s not true for males since the ratio of female to male engineers are so low. Of the female engineers I know (>20), only one of them didn’t marry a male engineer. Strange, yet true. Many possible reasons for it… but I think it boils down to … engineers are practical, both female and male… so you find someone with similar social status, similar career goals, similar intelligence, similar algorithms on how one does things in life.. (ie. spending cost vs. return), … and more so for the female species (relatively more talkative)… someone who understands our vocabulary… most of the time, this boils down to a male engineer. (should we have exciting news or complaints about work… like.. I can’t believe the network analyzer… there must be a software glitch… the calibration keeps resetting… a male engineer would understand, maybe even brainstorm a solution with you… the rest of the world… eyes begin to roll backwards.)