Borrow an Engineer 7

[Gumpmaster]

Here's a new service to match engineering students with companies who need engineering work. You can hire an un-licensed engineering student much cheaper than a licensed one.


News Story

Borrow An Engineer

Any thoughts?

 

[hendersdc]

Sounds like mostly work that wouldn't require a PE anyways. There are tons of companies out there that already offer contract design work as well as websites where you can find individuals. The only difference I see is that you get the added benefit of the people you hire having no industry experience.

 

[GregLocock]

"required to have a mechanical engineer create a 3D rendering of a mall kiosk proposal"

Ah, so they weren't actually looking for an engineer. My aunt, a commercial artist, used to do these sorts of things.

Sadly since a non .edu email account won't work there is no way we can see the thousands of lucrative, scoped, well thought out projects available.





Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

 

[dvd]

I say we get some pickets walking the line in front of that outfit. Them kids are takin' our work.

Since I am more interested in forming instant opinions than reading, is that first, second or third world college students taking jobs from first, second or third world engineers?

 

[TehMightyEngineer]

The obvious problem with this is the first time one of these guys gets sued it will be a mess. And given that you have a lot of inexperienced people doing work that they're getting paid very little for, the situation becoming ripe for lawsuits seems quite likely.

Professional and Structural Engineer (ME, NH)
American Concrete Industries

http://www.americanconcrete.com

 

[JNieman]

Awesome, more perpetuation that it's ok to think you can get people to work for you "for the experience" as the sole compensation.

As if there wasn't enough of that bulls&&t going around. "Oh, we'll give you credit and you'll get the notoriety of having worked on this project! That should be plenty of compensation!"

 

[TehMightyEngineer]

I'm pretty sure they're getting paid as well, probably about the same pay as they would get as an intern.

Professional and Structural Engineer (ME, NH)
American Concrete Industries

http://www.americanconcrete.com

 

[Lomarandil]

Well, you've got entirely inexperienced students submitting proposals to bid the work. Surely they'll be able to calculate a bid that adequately compensates themselves for any time spent and contingencies, right? Especially with the implicit price pressure here, it's obvious people will be submitting projects to the site specifically because they don't want to hire a company to do the work at higher cost. I'd be curious to see some data in 6 months about how many projects are awarded to proposals other than the low bid.

It's inevitable that at least some students will significantly underbid the work. Leading to either JNieman's indentured labor or TME's lawsuits.

I don't see this ending well. Except for the founder, he got some nice press, probably helped in his MBA application, and he'll have a "cool" basis for his projects during the MBA program (instead of the endlessly rehashed case studies of Apple and Facebook).

I am curious how they'll enforce the hiring finder fee. I presume they'll have some sort of legal contract (bid out to a law student?), but especially with most companies requiring an application through their internal resume sorting service, I don't see that sticking.

 

[JNieman]

I remember when a client of ours didn't want us doing the shop drawings for all the structural design, and they didn't want to use the company we suggested (also in the USA, as we were) They sub'd it to a company that claimed to be in Puerto Rico, from what I heard. The shop drawings came back all done in fractional inches but we received lots of 3/7" dimensions and the like. They were allegedly professionals. I would love to see what some Asian or European college student is going to do when they accept an Inch-based drafting project of some cheapskates 'widget'.

Edit-to-add

Forgive my negativity, I just don't see either party in this relationship coming out ahead. The cheapskate clients are going to get a crappy result that they didn't foresee. The students are going to get taken for a ride because they don't know what they are getting into. The few situations that come out completely successful will be parroted as the status quo by the website owners in their future "case study" examples and fool more and more students and prospective clients into this charade.

I've seen a lot of "I'll get a college kid to do it" projects in my time and they were always a crash-and-burn.

 

[TehMightyEngineer]

Another things to consider is when someone gets fined for practicing engineering or offering engineering services without a license. While the examples they gave weren't engineering or at least didn't require a license in my mind; I can totally see someone designing some mechanical or structural system which qualifies. I'd be the first person to complain if they stepped over that line.

Professional and Structural Engineer (ME, NH)
American Concrete Industries

http://www.americanconcrete.com

 

[BUGGAR]

It might wind up like those paid for by the word articles that you see with whole paragraphs repeated.

 

[SnTMan]

Just ran across this thread. All I gotta say is, if we are all going to work in the "gig" economy, like they tell us we are, we're gonna need stuff (services?) like B.A.E.

Regards,

Mike

The problem with sloppy work is that the supply FAR EXCEEDS the demand

 

[aap2]

Borrow an engineer kind of sounds like whoever is picking you up is going to shit you out. I was once asked to draw up a dye and another important part in ANSYS for a very large electronics company. I literally took out a pencil, paper, and ruler and drew the dye up in 3D as best as I could. YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR. Little did they know that I had almost no training in ANSYS. It took me a long time but the ANSYS drawing was nearly perfect.

Does it go without saying that company is mostly overseas.

 

[Panther140]

Those are transactions between two willing parties who each bring their offerings to the table, and work for mutual benefit (without imposing anything on people who are unwilling to participate).

Welcome to a free market. If you don't like it and want to live in a society where that does not exist, you can move to any number of countries with a centrally planned economy. I'm sure you would love it there. They ban every sort of innovation immediately. If fire was discovered there, it would be illegal.

 

[urgross]

Panther,

You should visit the US. Did you know prostitution is illegal in this county, and even child labor? So much for the "free market". Which one of the centrally planned markets are you from?

 

[JNieman]

Funny thing about the US (and many other countries) is that we have these quirky laws on the market protecting the public, such as requiring licensure of so called "Professional Engineers". What a scam, right? (sarcasm)

 

[moltenmetal]

Panther140: there's no such thing as a free market.

Governments have the right, and indeed the responsibility, to regulate and tax in the public interest.

In a totally free market, anyone who thought they were an engineer could design anything that customers would buy, for any fees. The insurance industry would be there to compensate the victims, assuming governments required people to carry insurance. If not, people would just die and others would go bankrupt and move on. Who would be there to protect innocent bystanders from being injured in the first place? Most societies long ago moved beyond merely offering people "blood money" for permanent injury- they want some reasonable assurance of injury protection in the first place.

If you concede licensure and regulation, i.e. codes and standards, engineering licenses etc., then all you're saying is that anyone is free to enter the workforce, apply for a license when required, and work for whatever money- or none- that they feel is fair compensation. Aside from minimum wage laws, we're pretty much already there.

The reality in a modern society is a little more complex. Right now we're beavering away at solving the perceived problems of the 1950s in the labour market. Whereas once it was a great achievement to just get a university degree- especially one in a regulated profession- now it's not at all rare. Educational attainment in Canada as an example is so high now that the bachelor's degree has taken the place of a high school education as a minimum required education for employment. We're cranking out so many engineers in Canada that only 30% of engineering graduates here work as engineers or engineering managers. When you consider that education here is still substantially publicly funded. With so many fresh grads unable to gain entry to their chosen profession, it's natural that many will reach around- for a while- for innovative ways to gain experience without requiring compensation for it. Does "free" represent fair value for the services rendered by these interns? In our view, the answer is definitely NO. We pay our interns, always have, and always will, because we find it unethical to de-value the services of our future generation. Our interns' pay is a fraction of an engineers' starting salary, which increases with experience, and that's fair value. And yes, we make money from their services- but even more important than that to us as a business, the pool of past co-op students is our natural recruitment channel. This greatly diminishes the importance of the (near useless) interview process, which is basically the equivalent to a phone call plus two dates and hour or two long prior to marriage- not a reliable strategy!

 

[urgross]

I was thinking about that pesky Brooks Act. The federal government costs way too much, and we could cut back on costs by making architects and engineers compete solely on cost and price instead of requiring selection on professional qualifications. Just think of the dollars we could have saved, just on the Pentagon Renovation alone, if we rented college students for the design (actually, for Wedge 5, it pretty much looked like it). The reduction in major weapons systems costs would be fricking ginormous.

 

[Panther140]

Independent contracting is not illegal in most cases. The government has no right or responsibility to tell me that I can't design a circuit for somebody that wants a circuit designed.

Are you guys under the impression that this will be used as a replacement for a PE? If so, I don't think we can discuss the actual implications of this mechanism any further. You are starting to sound like the cab driver's union that stopped a highway and threw burning tires at cars because the government in France allowed Uber to exist.

"Formal education is a weapon, whose effect depends on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed." ~ Joseph Stalin

 

[JNieman]

Independent contracting is not illegal in most cases. The government has no right or responsibility to tell me that I can't design a circuit for somebody that wants a circuit designed.

I think you need to clarify which government and what type of circuit, then, because that's absolutely false in many cases.

Are you guys under the impression that this will be used as a replacement for a PE?

I am not. Though the term "borrow an engineer" is advertising engineering services, imo, which I think the boards in the States of the USA will take umbrage with, if there are unlicensed members.