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Status

(OP)
Engineers often moan about "lack of status".  Can anyone define it?  I find it hard enough to even explain to family and friends what it is that I do, so I don't see how I can hope for any kind of "recognition".

RE: Status

Actually, Wikipedia summs it up quite well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_status

I think what most technical people bemoan is the fact that society (at least in America) does not "rank" (which infers status) the engineering profession as highly as others (i.e. Doctors, Lawyers, etc. . ..)

In some other cultures, it is quite different.  I previously worked for a French electronics conglomerate, and I learned that Engineers, especially from the top French schools, are very highly regarded in France.  I read somewhere that Engineers have been placed on a high pedestal in France going back to the days of Louis XIV.  Louis XIV derived much of his power from his armies advanced weapons (for the times), which were developed by his engineers.  Hence, he valued them highly, and it seems to have carried forward in that culture.

IMHO, it's much easier if you pursue engineering for the love of what you do, and don't worry about what others think!

-Tony Staples
www.tscombustion.com

RE: Status

dang, from my point of view.....everyone seems to be incredibly impressed with engineers actually.  not only from the professionalism we exhibit, but also the level of diffuculty of the course-work.  

let's not pretend that engineering is by far the most difficult undergraduate curriculum that a university can offer.

RE: Status

Lack of status of engineers is mostly an American phenomenon.  American culture in particular has been highly anti-intellectual.  The typical American thinks of engineers as the guys in white lab coats with pocket protectors, horned-rimmed glasses, and zero social graces; "Nerds", "Eggheads", etc.,

Oddly, that's a fallout of the Puritan roots of the country.  "Yankee ingenuity" has been the warcry of those who believe that only hard work and diligence is required for success and that book learning is practically an evil.  

Doctors and lawyers, while they spend more time in school than engineers, are not required to be proficient at math, while engineers are required to do math above and beyond what most of us really need in every day work.

TTFN



RE: Status

It's not just the US, UK too.

However in the UK they don't seem to have such a proverbial up the hoo-hah about it.  

Not that that's right or wrong I just notice the difference.

RE: Status

IRstuff,

Well stated.  I've worked for a couple of nitch companies where the owners used "Yankee Ingenuity" to make their company sucessful.  Nothing wrong with that but they had inferiority complex issues with degreed engineers.

Best Regards,

Heckler
Sr. Mechanical Engineer
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      o
  _`\(,_
(_)/ (_)

(In reference to David Beckham) "He can't kick with his left foot, he can't tackle, he can't head the ball and he doesn't score many goals. Apart from that, he'

RE: Status

Maybe part of the problem is that in other industries/professions the ‘ranks’ are perhaps better defined.

In medicine, you have the various 'ranks' of Doctor (consultant, registrar, Senior House Officer, House officer… I can’t remember all the US equivalents, can’t have watched enough ERsmile), as well as different ranks of Nurses, and the growing range of Physicians Assistants, Nurse practitioners etc.

In the legal system you have similar, in the UK you have Barristers then Solicitors (some of whom are now allowed to conduct ‘minor’ cases in court), in the US Attorneys & Paralegals etc.

I’m inclined to think most of these are fairly well defined and well understood even outside of the relevant industries.

In Engineering, it doesn’t seem so clear cut.  Of course, there’s Engineers, which even the members of this site can’t agree to the definition of, then there’s a range of Technicians, Designers, Draftsmen/Drafters, Checkers, Tracers etc.  And if you get into small scale Civil you then get to add Builders, Contractors, Tradesmen etc into the mix.  And probably others for other specializations that I’ve missed.

And there’s all the separate (at least sometimes) but associated fields such as Architect, Surveyor etc.  Given that different Engineering Industries or Specialties don’t have a standardized ‘rank’ structure is it any wonder the public at large confuses Engineers with Train Drivers, Appliance Repairmen and Mechanics.

The oft quoted solution, especially from those in Civil & Structural that deal most often directly (or near directly) with the public, is to tighten up the rules on who can be called an engineer to strictly only those with PE/CEng.  While I believe this could and probably should form part of the solution I truly don’t believe it alone is sufficient and with the current rules on getting PE/CEng would exclude too many who in my opinion do have the right to be called Engineers (for whatever it’s worth).

Just my 2 penneth

RE: Status

The reason why engineers do not get respect is that they do not fight for it.  No matter how much work you do as a legal asst or nurse you can't be promoted to the next level. Period.  I have had to endure many senseless discussions with semi & wanna-be engineers that if I was a doctor I would say "Are you a doctor? No, well then I can't discuss the case with you." End of story.  We need a "union" like the Bar Association or AMA.  I realize that this is a little snobby but I'm so tried of people who sat in the back of the class for their whole lifes grabbing a hold of a little info and acting as if they are a "tech head" or engineer.

I'm done with my rant, comments please.


jck26

RE: Status

I'm with jck26. Until we engineers get rid of our do-nothing (for us) engineering societies and establish associations such as the AMA and ABA where we can more closely control our destinies, nothing will change.

Another reason that we don't have the status of other professions is that engineering doesn't deal with human emotions. When an individual can heal someone or right some real or perceived wrong, then people will pay dearly for those services. We work with inanimate objects. Since there isn't the same urgency to fix the problems people can shop around for the lower price. No emotions means no money

RE: Status

"let's not pretend that engineering is by far the most difficult undergraduate curriculum that a university can offer. "

I think that says more about your uni, than engineering.

In my uni engineers had the highest work load apart from lawyers. To get in I had to get AAB at A level, back when A levels were difficult. 40% of my collge intake moved into different courses, or left, in the first year.

In Australia an engineering degree contains enough maths to count as 75% of a Maths degree.

So, which course is more difficult, exactly?

Actually I was hoping never to see this thread on Eng-Tips. It has been proved time and time again that we won't do the necessary to get better recognition.

Cheers

Greg Locock

Please see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.

RE: Status

we all know engineers are the backbone of society.  without engineers, there's nothing.

RE: Status

Not to worry, the climate is changing, soon enough everyone will be looking for engineers to save the world, or move to another planet.
But then again, "the for-profit governing societies" will probably find a way to take the credit and make us irrelevant.

RE: Status

The question of AMA and ABA have come up before.  Engineers have PE boards in every US state, with little impact on "status."  Making all engineers PEs will not help, because it's a cultural problem, endemic in the simple fact that most people are not physics, or math-oriented

Bottomline is that both doctors and lawyers have relatively immediate battles; disease, or other lawyers.  These are things that can be filmed or written about.  What a doctor or lawyer does in everyday life has little resemblance to college homework.  

This is not case with engineers.  Our battles are with equations, stresses, requirements, etc.  It's BORING to regular people because it actually does resemble college homework.  And the battles are long-term, months, or years, as opposed to days, in the case of doctors and lawyers.

The reality is that engineers will NEVER have the same status, because what we do is totally inaccessible to the average person.  Most people think they know something about medicine or have had direct brushes with the law.  How many people have even remotely done a real engineering problem?  

Even with NGC, History Channel, Discovery Channel, TLC, etc., their science and engineering programs are short on the gruntwork engineering and long on stuff that's visually stimulating.  But, in the end, it's all still hocus-pocus to most people.  They have zero insight and zero understanding, and without that, they'll never bestow "status" to engineers.

TTFN



RE: Status

I worked on a particular problem for something like 18 months. Finally, I cracked it. I had a good usable solution. So I plotted the test results out on a graph and was so pleased, I took it home to show my girlfriend (a nurse). She looked at it and said, "Oh so its wiggly lines".

Ego deflating? Yes.

Cheers

Greg Locock

Please see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.

RE: Status

I think Greg has hit the nail on the head. Everyone knows what a Doctor of Medicine does, but a Doctor of Wiggles doesn't carry the same weight somehow.
Personally I think the term engineer covers such a wide area that its meaning has been effectively watered down to such an extent that it means little. The correlation with salary goes without saying.
As a mathematician (and hence 75% an engineer by the definition above) my job title used to be Stress Analyst rather than Stress Engineer. To strangers an Analyst carried much more weight than being an ordinary Engineer, even though when asked what I did for a living people would ask if Stress was the cause of their sleep problems. I'd start thinking of a new name and leave engineering to road diggers.

corus

RE: Status

What's An Engineer?

An engineer to some is the guy you call when your kitchen faucet won't shut off.  

An engineer to some is the guy who drives the train.

An engineer to some is the guy who picks up the curbside garbage.

Oh, an engineer is also a degreed professional.

Unfortunately, I don't see this changing.  I see society as a whole understanding less about "logical principles" than in the past, and isn't logic (along with sicentific principles) the basis of engineering?  I see it in politics where both the arguements of both sides is 99% rhetoric, and most of the public buys it!  I see it on TV game shows where a question involving basic algebra is considered almost "rocket science".

I suppose, in the USA, part of the very problem is the free thinking that helped make this nation great.  Many inventors were not degreed engineers or scientists,  and in a free market based society money is, fortunately or unfortunetly, the ultimate measure of success.  Hence, it's not the inventor/scientist/engineer who gets recognition and rich;  it's the guy with better marketing and business savy.

Next, our (society's) lack of critical thinking has allowed lawyers to sue, AND WIN, for anything and everything.  In the real world, nothing is ever designed or built perfectly;  yet lawyers have been successful in winning multi-million dollar suits based primarily on this premise.  In this vein, I recall an article I read, probably 20 years ago when Japan's economy was booming,  the article highlighted a difference between Japan and the USA.  In Japan, there was 50 engineers for every lawyer.  In the USA, it's only 2:1 (per my memory and this article, that is).  When you consider that engineers essentially BUILD THINGS, and lawyers essentially PREVENT you from building things, it's no wonder many folks just don't see engineers in the same light as doctors.

OK, my rant is over.  Next...


RE: Status

I went to college for about 9 years, got a masters and two bachelors.  Started a job for one of the biggest companies in the world.  My title (an ISO thing) was Structural Engineer.  After a year I had done such a great job (by my manager's standards...I still really didn't know what I was doing) I got a 10% raise and a promotion to "Engineer" and was told to coordinate two others' workloads (not supervise, just coordinate--to supervise would have meant a bigger raise/different title, I'm sure.)  

He dropped the Structural because he was too lazy to write up a new ISO description (he told me so in those exact words) and I got lumped in with 10 other project engineers.  The new title meant I could run jobs up to $500k in size.

I ended up working in England for a year, "coordinating" a site with more than $10M in structural content.  Hmm, that was about 20x more than what my title said I was capable of running...

Doesn't matter what your title is...you know what you do and if the place where you work can't appreciate you, move on til you find a place that does.  My family has no clue what I do every day.  When I start to explain problems on the job their eyes glaze over and they change the subject.

As for the company, they could call me Lead Trash Taker-Outer as long as I can pay my bills each month.  

RE: Status

For me, the biggest step forward would be to split the CEng procedure into an administrative/project management stream, and a purely technical stream.

Doctors and lawyers do a specific and narrow role. Being an engineer for me is applied physics, quite why my professional qualification should involve so much business administration and the unspoken assumption that I should want to become a paper pushing manager to earn more money is beyond me.

A large amount of "professional engineering" qualifications aren't appealing to lots of people like me who are entitled to call ourselves engineers.

Ben

RE: Status

I don't think engineers do applied applied physics in the true sense from what I've seen. If that were the case then they'd be called Physicists and be held in some awe. It seems to me that the problem, in the UK at least, is that the CEng is merely awarded because you pay a fee and have shown you've been alive for a few years after graduating. It's not a qualification as such that you've been examined on and have passed a certain mark. I think it's different in the US with PE and different with other professions such as Chartered Accountants, Surveyors etc. The problem with the US system is that they used an acronymn as a description. That may go down well with management consultants but for me PE says Physical Education and that doesn't impress me at all. What they call themselves in other countries, and what qualifications ranks them as such I have no idea.   

corus

RE: Status

Getting back to the comment made by jck26 regarding "unions" similar to AMA, note that Ontario has a fledgling engineering advocacy group that has a different focus than the jurisdiction's regulator.

The PEO (Association of Professional Engineers of Ontario) regulates the engineering practice in Ontario (i.e. ostensibly protecting the public from poor engineers and unlicensed persons) while OSPE (Ontario Society of Professional Engineers) has a mandate to "educate" the public (and indeed the provincial government) in order to increase the "status" of engineers.  So far, in the first five or so years of this organization, OSPE has promoted lower auto insurance if you're a member, and not much else that is noteworthy.  

Of the >25 engineers that I work with directly, I have yet to meet one that is a member.  I also do not see OSPE billboards and advertising promoting engineers, but I do see accountanting advocacy group's advertising.  You want status...become an accountant, that's where all the groupies are.  winky smile

Cheers,
CanuckMiner

RE: Status

Face, we're all only legends in our own minds and that's just the way things are.

TTFN



RE: Status

Back to the rant .... I does not matter if you have degrees and 30 years experience you will never get respect outside of those who understand what we do.  I agree with the other posts that for most people this is not, and never will be, possible.  I once said to my wife "why don't they have an engineering comedy show?  The people I work with are very, very funny?"  She said "you don't get it, you're (meaning engineers) the only people who would get it, plus it would just piss everybody else off ".

I have now resolved myself to be an EB (engineering bitch).  I feel much better now that I have accepted this fact.

jck26

RE: Status

jck26,

Along those same self deprecating lines, there would be the potential title of Applied Science Specialist we could use.  (obbreviated title ommitted intentionally)laughtears

Regards,

RE: Status

Well, the movie "Office Space" was dead on for the place I used to work at - right down to the appearances of the actors.  A group of us used to watch that every so often just to have a good laugh!  And yes, I agree, an office full of engineers can be funnier than a room full of stand-up comics.

If only the rest of the world appreciated our humor!

RE: Status

I have one thing to say.

Dilbert.

RE: Status

Why should I care what the public thinks about engineers? Most of the lack of respect that I endure on the job is from fellow engineers, engineering managers, engineer company owner's, engineer etc. Until we learn to treat each other with respect, we should not expect the general public to do so.

RE: Status

I worked on a project once where there were actually more PM's on it then engineers.  Each PM had his/her own agenda...what they needed done was more important that when any of their fellow PM's needed done.

So, I'd get instructions from one in the morning, another an hour later, etc., all thru the day.  I could never accomplish all of their tasks in a normal work day and ended up working 80-hour weeks for these yahoos (I was paid OT, I'm no fool...the proceeds bought me my house and paid off a good chunk of my college bills, and I blamed it all on the PM's lack of direction) but once my direct supervisor figured out that I was never making any deadlines, he told me that I needed to get my priorities straight.  I said, "no, YOU need to get my priorities straight."    And the Dilbert strip in the paper that day was Dilbert telling his boss, "You need to get my priorities straight for me".

No kidding...I cut that out, blew it up and put an 11x17 of it on my wall.  

After that, I asked each PM if all the other PM's agreed that his task was the highest priority.  It really shook up their department when people started questioning them.  That was a fun job, I tell ya...I miss it often.

RE: Status

Off topic, but following up michfan's post:

I've often wondered if Scott Adams (Dilbert's author) has little cameras and microphones posted in offices all over the place.  There have been many times where a situation has come up that mirrors what's on my desk calendar so well it's scary.  My hat's off to Mr. Adams.  He strikes again...

RE: Status

Nothing says status like $ (or your appropriate local currency) on the pay check.

Status wont pay the bills.

Of course if status helps increase $ then it's a concern.

RE: Status

Quote:

I've often wondered if Scott Adams (Dilbert's author) has little cameras and microphones posted in offices all over the place.  There have been many times where a situation has come up that mirrors what's on my desk calendar so well it's scary.  My hat's off to Mr. Adams.  He strikes again...

He doesn't have to.  He's been collecting emails from disgruntled readers for so long that he can write that strip for 1000 years.

Maybe we get less respect than lawyers and doctors because on average we are less educated (4yrs vs 6 and 8)and make less money.  Doesn't seem like such a mystery to me.  If you picked this field to get respect you made the wrong choice.  Go get your PhD, MD or JD if you need your ego inflated and wallet padded.

-b

RE: Status

Part of the problem is that people don't know what we do.
Part of the problem is that we can't agree on a definition of what we do (without using other professions such as "engineering utilises science .... blah blah blah).
Part of the problem is that almost anyone and every one can use the term engineer (eg. sanitation engineer = janitor) in everyday conversation.
Part of the problem is that most PE boards in the US have exemptions - many industries do not required you to be a PE to do "engineering" work.

Part of the problem is that maybe, our profession is not that special?

"Do not worry about your problems with mathematics, I assure you mine are far greater."   
Albert Einstein
Have you read FAQ731-376 to make the best use of Eng-Tips Forums?

RE: Status

The profession is far more general and covers a wider scope than other professions.  Whether it is special or not is another topic.

Many or most people don't understand what engineers do, but they surely enjoy what we can produce.

RE: Status

I think that most engineers distrust, or even loathe, the word 'status'.  


And I defnitely agree that describing what we do is difficult.  The best I've been able to come up with is that I cause blackouts (protection engineer).  Hardly anything for most people to get excited about.

RE: Status

Chicks dig industrial designers.  tongue

Seriously, many of my friends are engineers and I really enjoy that "culture".  A great deal of my work is actually engineering as well, since I cross-over to design many of my projects entirely (of course, my projects don't involve turbines).

michfan, I totally agree.  My last Dilbert job had me doing engineering work and it was amazingly like Office Space.  I think I had five PMs to answer to.  I came to my senses and struck out on my own to go back to industrial design (I didn't enjoy the strict engineering quite so much, and Dilbert Co. was farming out all our ID work to outside firms--BRILLIANT).

What use would an engineer have for status, anyway?  It's not entirely practical.

Jeff Mowry
www.industrialdesignhaus.com
Reason trumps all.  And awe transcends reason.

RE: Status

Part of the reason that engineers get so little recognition/respect is that the general public has this crazy notion that any time they fix something, or come up with a better way to do something that they are somehow "engineering" it.  Housewives all themselves domestic "engineers".  I actually heard a commercial the other day for a small business credit card that said the card is "engineered" for small business.  How in the heck do you engineer a credit card?
You don't engineer a light fixture falling off the wall, you screw it back in.
You don't engineer a credit card, you give good rates.
You do engineer a wide flange column to take all of those gravity and some wind load.

RE: Status

After received a PE license in the state I work my boss suggested getting new business cards with the "P.E."

My responce was along the lines of "I'd just assume not advertise it since it's bad enough dealing with a general population that thinks an engineer (any engineer) knows everything about everything and that's gotta be true for a LICENSED PROFESSIONAL ENGINEER."

Most of the time in my fields and interactions I have an easier time when I shed the Dockers for Levis and forget to shave.  Sure there are times to play and dress the part but in industrial settings I've found it easier and more productive to blend in.

RE: Status

My thoughts, albeit not organized or helpful at all:

Ask most kids what an engineer is an they will tell you a train operator....

I have more American lives in my hands daily than most MD's do in a year.  Indeed a slip of the scalpel can kill someone quite intimately, a slip in our calculations, well you know...

There is nothing at all sexy about what we do and no one can write a tv show about it, heck its hard to even write a book about it.  

It would help to get an engineer in the white house, it would be a definite improvement over Bushy.  I would like to think of the most powerful man in the world as smarter than myself.

RE: Status

I've never found much link between intelligence and common sense. I'd rather have a sensible president than a clever one.

There is a  reasonable TV show about engineers, it is called "Engineering at the Cutting Edge", from the UK

Cheers

Greg Locock

Please see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.

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