Hands vs. Heads
We’ve had a few posts recently about jobs recently. Chris’s Weekend Journal said that degrees shouldn’t be necessary to obtain jobs (though they can help) and Sam followed up with a question about ways to establish your pedigree outside of a university degree. I agree with the opinion that it is harder for a non-degreed engineer to get a job as an engineer. The way I have often seen this structured is that the non-degreed engineer gets the job called “technician” where s/he builds for the engineer with the degree. There is a general perception around technical positions, validated by lower salaries and position, that working with one’s hands is less valuable than working with one’s head. People who build the prototypes are valued less than those that design the prototypes/ first articles. Never mind that the technician often needs to re-engineer around the engineer who may be great theoretically, but less…
Finding a Job Building Things
I love building things. I love working with my hands, I like using power tools, I like the physical making of STUFF. (Or the tearing apart of stuff, which is a lot of fun but perhaps less productive….) And by choosing to major in mechanical engineering, I thought I was giving myself the best shot I could to find a career where I can build stuff. And now I am looking around at what my friends from undergraduate university are doing, and none of them are building things. And if I look at what my friends from graduate school are doing, none of them are building things either. Part of this has to do with what you WANT to do. Of course if your interests lie more on the modeling/simulation side of mechanical engineering, or if you are more interested in leadership roles, or in management, or in design rather…
Technician or Project Manager?
No one person’s engineering job is like someone else’s. I know many of the electrical engineers in this community spend a lot of time in their labs or at the bench. Being an engineer seems to be its own batch of challenges and opportunities but many aspects of the job wax and wane between a more hands on technician role or a very hands off project lead role. Despite working at a large company my role can be confusing at times. One would think with plenty of qualified technicians to work on the bench, and plenty more qualified programs and management folks to support the paperwork and planning side, that an engineer would get a nice rounded role. As in, maybe we could actually do our job. But so often you’re pulled into going to Home Depot to pick up that set of hardware that your multi-billion dollar business just…
Tinkering as a valid part of education
A profesor I once knew began a conversation with, “What classes are you taking this semester?” I responded, “I’m taking a class on teaching, a-” “Teaching?! Why are you taking a class on teaching? You don’t need a class to learn how to teach. You just do it.” The irony of this is that this professor was considered one of the worst teachers in the whole department. Chris’ post on a ‘tinkering class’ got me thinking (again) about what is really a good way to educate people. And despite some of the comments on Reddit, Chris is actually on the right track for some of the more current thinking on approaches to STEM education. So what do you want from someone educated in a STEM field? Obviously they have to have a certain amount of background knowledge, they need to have problem solving skills, they need to be inquisitive and…