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Competence

Competence

Competence

(OP)
What are the engineering connotations of competence?  If someone is competent, does it have a positive or negative connotation with that person?  If advice is given to study enough to pass for competence, is the advice good or bad?  

RE: Competence

it depends of the context.  in answer to a question "is the guy competent?" yes is an ok answer.  in answer to the question "how good is the guy?" competent is (IMHO) a not-very-ok response ... i'd rate it below good but above incompetent.  in both cases the follow-up discussion would explain what is thought more fully.

RE: Competence

Interesting. When asked by managers, if I describe an engineer as competent that is taken as being a glowing compliment.

How about 'average'?



Cheers

Greg Locock

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RE: Competence

Competent means able to do the job.  I suppose there are degrees of competency and incompetency, but there is only one line between the two.

The basic symptom of incompetency is the inability to discern what is truly needed to accomplish a job.  Incompetent people generally believe they are doing a fine job, until they are enlightened as to what standards that job truly requires.

A competent person is able to judge when he is in over his head.

I saw what happened.  Claw marks healing OK?

RE: Competence

Knows just enough to be dangerous...

A special form of incompetance that lets you get into trouble that can't be reached with regular incompetance.

From my point of view competent is a compliment. Extraordinary is a better compliment, but failing that I'll take competent.

RE: Competence

It's very context sensitive.

If you give a more detailed example you may get a better response, are you talking about posts in another forum in this site.

KENAT, probably the least qualified checker you'll ever meet...

RE: Competence

Dictionary.com Unabridged

com·pe·tent      /?k?mp?t?nt/
–adjective
1.    having suitable or sufficient skill, knowledge, experience, etc., for some purpose; properly qualified: He is perfectly competent to manage the bank branch.
2.    adequate but not exceptional.

RE: Competence

I think the second definition nails my use of the term, "adequate but not exceptional" says it all.

David

RE: Competence

The problem in the example you cite isn't the meaning of "competence".  The problem is "pass for".

Hg

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RE: Competence

Do people get promoted from a level of competence to a level of incompetence or does that not exist since they're doing the same job for slightly more pay?

RE: Competence

Competence is an incredibly subjective word. I could be competent enough to flip burgers. I could also be competent enough to work with theories of classical physics to determine the makeup of our universe. Competence, in my opinion, is not at all a reflection of intelligence.

In the same breath, if someone called me, for lack of a better word, competent; I'd be pissed. smile

V

Mechanical Engineer
"When I am working on a problem, I do not think of beauty, but when I've finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong."

- R. Buckminster Fuller

RE: Competence

I put it like this: if they learned how to pilot a plane the way they do their work or their homework, would I get on a plane they were piloting?  If I feel comfortable saying I would get on that plane, I'd say they are competent.  When you trust your life to someone else's work, you'd better hope they are competent.

Competence has to do with being able to get a job done in a way that satisfies the requirements of the task at hand.  It has a lot do with being able to communicate intelligently with people involved in the task and understanding the requirements for the task, then having the skills to address the requirements.

Ken Sauter
Designer

RE: Competence

True to human nature, we have taken a fairly objective idea and colored and splashed it with all kinds of negative subjective connotation.

"Competent" means "able to do the job".  The word itself has no negative aspect.

Many enterprises work to assess and refine their "core competencies", things they do effectively.  Interesting how competency is so positive when viewed from an enterprise perspective, and can be perceived as a sleight on a personal level.

I don't put much credence in Dictionary.com's 2nd definition.  It sounds pithy and poorly researched.  No such entry in Webster's.  Makes me question the competence of Dictionary.com's editorial staff.

RE: Competence

competence:

noun 1 the quality or extent of being competent. 2 dated an income large enough to live on.

http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/competence?view=uk(Or for those in the US: http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/competence?view=get )

competent:

adjective 1 having the necessary skill or knowledge to do something successfully. 2 satisfactory or adequate, though not outstanding: she spoke quite competent French. 3 having legal authority to deal with a particular matter.

http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/competent?view=uk (Or for those in the US: http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/competent )

Tick, seems that Oxford entry too is "pithy and poorly researched"

Hmm, Websters or OED, which to pick...

KENAT, probably the least qualified checker you'll ever meet...

RE: Competence

I pereceive the connotation of "competent" to be much better than "adequate" or "average"

Rick is a competent engineer.
Fred is an adequate engineer.
Billl is an average engineer.

Which one would you pick for your team?

=====================================
Eng-tips forums: The best place on the web for engineering discussions.

RE: Competence

Bill.

Presumably average is better than adequate since the inadequate get weeded out.  

OED states that competent implies adequate.

Hence based on the info available Bill is my pick.

QED winky smile

KENAT, probably the least qualified checker you'll ever meet...

RE: Competence

For the sake of our profession and the general public, I hope "average" includes "competent".

RE: Competence

Depends on what I need.  If I need someone to do stupid things just to find bugs, I'd pick the least competent engineer.  They don't follow rules but they're brilliant at breaking systems.  Just have a webcam watching them because they won't be able to remember what they did.

They're also great at writing security systems: their methods are totally inconsistent.  Even with all the source code, you can't figure out what's happening.  What chance does a hacker have?

RE: Competence

(OP)
imo:  "passing for competence" is what we all do when we take the FE and the PE. Our skill and competence levels then go up with exprience.  An engineer with 20 years experience is going to be more "competent" than an engineer that just took the PE and "passed for competence".   

RE: Competence

yes, that's a special application ... sort of like those university "arts" courses we engineers had to take that had a "satisfactory" grading only

RE: Competence

IAAWVU05, you're wrong about what "pass for" means.

What you are describing is passing an exam that demonstrates competence.  

"Pass for" means "appear to be", "give the impression of being", "be believed/considered to be", or other things that aren't quite actually *being* what you're talking about.

Typical uses are along the lines of "When I dye my hair, I can pass for 10 years younger than I am."

"Passing for competence" implies not being actually competent, but being able to give the impression of competence.  It doesn't mean passing an exam.

Hg

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RE: Competence

I associate the word competent with that stupid management notion that all you need to provide is training and any engineer can competently do any job.  Like a commodity - can you supply me with 500kg of competent engineers?

RE: Competence

(OP)
Hg
so, When I say "pass for competence", You were thinking that one should do enough to give the appearance of competence.  I was always under the impression that "pass for" means "to gain".  So when I say "pass for competence", you saw "to appear to have competence", whereas I meant "to gain competence".  Would that have been the better terminology?  To clarify myself, I don't condone posers, nor would I advertently give any advice in which to feign knowledge to make onself appear competent.

IAA

RE: Competence

What comes into play with "competence" and even "pass for" are rules of conversational implicature that go far beyond the words in the dictionary definition.

"Competence" means, at a minimum, having what it takes to do the job.  This could be anywhere from just barely to world expert.  All "competent" really means is "not incompetent".

Take a situation where one might be expected to say something unambiguously quite positive, and that does not include the possibility of "just barely".  Suppose one then says "competent", which does include the "just barely" possibility.  

In such a case, the assumption can be and often is made that the introduction of that "just barely" possibility was made for a reason, and that the speaker's intent was in fact to convey the "just barely" meaning.  If you could have said more and you didn't, the assumption is that you had no more to say.

In my own use, "competence" when it comes to qualifications and other legalistic situations means the state of having achieved a certain qualification, no more and no less.  But if I ask someone, "How good an engineer is X?" and am told, "X is competent," I take that as a bad recommendation.  It should go without saying that X is competent; the alternative is that X is incompetent, in which X really should not be practicing.  But if all the recommender can tell me is merely that X is not incompetent, I must assume that there isn't much else good to say abut X's skills.

Hg

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RE: Competence

Being labeled "competent" seems like a nice, understated compliment to me. An even higher compliment, to me, is to be referred to as "pretty competent." If a glass is "pretty full" it isn't as full as "full." It seems to me that the flattering use of the words "competent" and "pretty competent" (to describe someone as highly talented as myself), is a  gift from the British.

RE: Competence

I think I see the problem.  It's not really about the definition of a word, it's about listening skills.

It's important for the receiver a message to properly decode what the sender is saying.  To do so, the listener must attempt to evaluate the message not just by his own connotations of key words, but must also try to see what connotations the sender is using.  Obviously, there is a failure to do so in this case.

RE: Competence

HA!  500kg of competent engineers?  One 250 pound engineer like me can fill that order!

(Before my reputation gets dragged through the mud: yes, I am  amusing myself here.  I know 500 kg is 2500 pounds!)

RE: Competence

1. 500 kg is actually 1100 lbs, and it would take five engineers like me to fill the order.

2. In my understanding "competent" ususaly means the first of Oxford's definitions (thanks to Kenat for posting):
competent:

adjective 1 having the necessary skill or knowledge to do something successfully.

It would have to be related to a specific job (i.e. I am a competent engineer but an incompetent ballet dancer, see kgs/lbs above). Also, if I am successfull in the said job, that is a positive thing and the "just barely" has no meaning.

RE: Competence

Context is everything.  In the situation I described, among the people that I know, "competent" would be an insult.  On the other hand, "quite competent" in the exact same situation would mean the opposite, and be taken as a genuine compliment.

Look at the reaction in this very thread to "adequate".  "Adequate" means the same thing as "competent" (outside of a formal qualification situation), and yet there are plenty of people on this thread who saw "adequate" as not very positive, and "competent" as much better.  They read "just barely" into it.

The question really can't be answered in the absolute, without a full context.  The context given in the OP happens to be one in which "competent" wasn't the only word in doubt, so it really can't be used as an illustration of use of and reaction to the word "competent".

And speaking of other parts of the OP, just looking at the dictionary definition of "pass for", "gain" is not one of the meanings.  There is as one of the meanings "be accepted as", which could imply something positive, but just about every citation of the phrase I can find is negative.  Google for "pass for", "passes for", "passing for" and you'll see what I mean.

So overall, "pass for competence" is quite bad, but this doesn't say much about whether "competent" is good or bad.

Hg

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RE: Competence

Agree, it's context dependent.

"The engineer is competent" = "The ship floats"
As I see it it is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for an engineer to be a good engineer.

It can only be a compliment when used as the opposite of something violently negative, in a context like "That department is full of dumbos, except John - now THAT's a competent engineer".

RE: Competence

My take: "The engineer is competent" = "The ship is seaworthy".

RE: Competence

...it's a GO/NO GO word, as "competent" = sufficient; while "IN-competent" = not sufficient.

...it's a BINARY word conveying "either/or," it is not an ANALOG word conveying "degree/ranking."

RE: Competence

And when used in a context where an analog word might be expected, that's where assumptions kick in.

Hg

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RE: Competence

i think the binary meaning is appliciable to its use by professional organisations and the courts.

like HgTX, when it's used to describe your opinion of someone's ability "what do you think of ... ?" then "oh, he's competent" means a host of things.  this could be clarified by asking "so you think he's really good ?"; the reply tells what was meant.

RE: Competence

This may be one of those cases where body language and intonation mean more than the actual word.

Good Luck
--------------
As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein

RE: Competence

exceptional - top 5%
competent - next 10%
adequate - next 35%
marginal - next 10%
incompetent - the rest

This is after lowering my expectations to maintain sanity.

RE: Competence

Quote:

Only mediocrity can be trusted to be always at its best.

RE: Competence

whyun, That would appear to represent a "Standard Bell Curve" which seems to apply to most people or disciplines, or, maybe, all aspects of life. smile

RE: Competence

Notice that my “mean” is shifted towards the better half which means I have high expectations of engineers.  Society in general, I suppose, has its mean shifted towards the worse half with a larger standard deviation.

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