Real Life Examples of My $100K+ Education At Work
I’m convinced that in my job, I use 95% of the material covered in engineering school less than 5% of the time. Most of what I do boils down to on the job experience or falls in the category of project management. In many cases, not much would separate me from a talented hobbyist or tinkerer. Of course, this makes me question the value of my education. Why did I spend all that time learning all that stuff? I’ve considered it for a while, and I like to tell myself that the 5% of the time I really use my degree is what makes me valuable as an employee. In a tangential line of discussion, there’s also been a fair bit of talk in the news recently about the workforce, the number of engineers trained in the US, and why so many STEM students change majors. One line of reasoning…
The Model Engineer
Last week, Miss Outlier’s contribution to the cross-disciplinary work theme discussed how she doesn’t believe in the modeling approach to engineering. Given simulation work is my bread and butter, I felt the need to respond at length to her post. However, I’ve already discussed many of the issues on my own blog. I’ve talked about how people who don’t believe in modeling often don’t understand validation, how one needs to understand the limitations of modeling, and also why I find modeling fun. As I’ve addressed most of the main points, you might think I have nothing left to say. However, I could not let this comment pass: Where is the enjoyment when you spend all the day in front of the computer? No wonder the stereotype is that the programmers running the algorithms are anti-social – if I spent my whole career interacting…