Engineers on this Board

[Jarhead*]

Hi all:
Just an observation.
I have enjoyed most of the thoughtful, and detailed posts from most on this board.
I am a little bit of a slow learner, and until the light bulb came on recently I had not figured out that I am about the only regular poster that wasn't an engineer in my previous life.
Is there anybody on this board that wasn't an engineer in their previous life?
I used to be a district sales manager, and the guys that I figured needed a lesson in humility would be given the leads to talk to any engineers I could drum up. They rarely disappointed, and were very helpful in weeding out the troops that were not suited for our business.
Mostly, the comments were "life is too short for this".
That was then, this is now. Please keep up your amazingly thorough posts, as I have managed to pick up enough detail to be helpful.
Regards, Jarhead

 

[haha]

Is there anybody on this board that wasn't an engineer in their previous life?

Jarhead,
I was in Public Health. But then, I do have an undergraduate engineering degree. A certain degree of obsessiveness is required for one to spend time on these technical RE pursuits.

Mikey

 

[John Galt]

I am the furthest thing from an engineer. Can barely screw in a lightbulb.
Not proud of it, but there it is..............

John Galt

 

[REWahoo]

A pessimist says the glass is half empty,
an optimist says it's half full, but an
engineer says it's twice as big as it needs to be.

I'm also a non-engineer.

 

[TheFIREman]

 
A pessimist says the glass is half empty,
an optimist says it's half full, but an
engineer says it's twice as big as it needs to be.

I'm also a non-engineer.

An engineer never says "overkill". We say "safety margin".

 

[unclemick]

A true R&D type would need more glasses and more tests before drawing any conclusions.

I had a framed plaque on my desk for many years:

There comes a time in every program when it is necessary to shoot the engineers and start production.

A few bosses(assholes) over the years told me to put it away - reminds me of yet another reason I like ER.

 

[renferme]

Another non-engineer here. Finance major in college and a DB2 Systems Administrator by trade (that's an IT area type job).

 

[Michael]

I was a journeyman millwright. I always enjoyed talking with the engineers at my plant. They tended to have a good understanding of the equipment that they designed, and were almost always happy to explain how it worked as long as I treated them with respect.

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

An engineer never says "overkill". We say "safety margin".

Hah...when we discovered that ballpoint pens dont write in space, NASA spent something like 12 million over 10 years to develop a pen that would write in zero g, upside down, etc.

The russians used a pencil.

Chicken@#^%@#$'s

 

[unclemick]

Fisher Space Pen - got one somewhere- no Antique/Collectable? Russian pencils or even Air Jordans though.

 

[Ted]

My career has been in civil engineering, but I have always been interested in economics and got a degree in that when I was in my early 40s. I did this out of interest; as a way of improving my management of my own investment; and as a way of enhancing my input into the planning of public works projects.

The latter objective proved to be counter-productive. I have a basic philosophy that public funds should be spent cost-effectively, and that the people who benefit from public expenditures ought to be the ones who mainly pay for them (unless they are truly needy).

This philosophy is completely inconsistent with the desire of most politicians to erect public works monuments, and the self-interest of most civil engineers in providing biased data to pander to the big-spending politicians.

Talking economics to politicians and civil engineers is like waving a silver cross in front of Dracula. So I didn't gain anything in my career by talking economic reality, but at least I managed to pare down the cost of some really idiotic schemes for wasting public funds. What I learned about investing my own money more than compensated for my engineering career being thwarted.

This state of affairs is really unfortunate for society, because my ability to contribute to real economic gains in public works construction has been grossly underutilized and downright sabotaged. Instead, I make an above-market return on investments basically by beating other investors at aspects of investing that are "zero sum games." Everything I do is completely legal and readily available to anyone who wants to "gamble," but I don't get the same satisfaction from it that I do by being paid for making a real contribution to society.

 

[Whakamole]

I'm a software engineer but learned my craft in engineering school with the rest of the "toolies", as we called them.

I agree completely with unclemick's plaque, though!