Men/Women Staying in Engr, maybe we're the fools 10

[possumk]

As people touched on in their responses to the male:female make-up of engineering departments, the men significantly outnumber the females. Many noted that even women who start in engineering often move to other business areas.

Here's my question: So what? What's so superior about engineering compared to other career choices women or men may make? Why should we care that women (or men) don't want to be engineers?

I think we engineers tend to have a bit of a superiority complex about our profession. We tell ourselves that kids who transfer to the college of business just couldn't hack engineering. Is it possible that they realized they could make more money doing something else they enjoyed more? I'm as anti-BA in Psychology as any engineer, and really hate to read those people's posts on Monster.com, whining that they're unemployed. However, if you are smart enough to be an engineer, there are a lot of financially lucrative jobs that you could do.

So, why SHOULD we become & stay engineers?

 

[FrenchCAD]

I suppose it is as simple as "I do not imagine myself doing another thing"

I studied many years in this field after all, what else could I do? I love this job

Cyril Guichard
Railroad Sub-System Manager
Belgium

 

[jgailla]

csd72,
The current most likely explanation for the disappearance of the plague is the gradual extinction and replacement of the European black rat by the Norwegian brown rat, which doesn't carry plague. This was an environmental/evolutionary process likely beyond human control or intervention. Sewer systems helped a lot of diseases, but probably not the plague. Just an opinion.

 

[KENAT]

When I first brought up the sewers I was mainly thinking Cholera.

Glad I'm not the only one who actually likes being an engineer/thinks it's of worth.



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

 

[greenone]

The point of ebncouraging women to try engineering is bacause so many girls never have engineering, science and technology presented to them as a career option. If you don't have a parent in one of those fields, you are not exposed to it, and how many engineers, especially female engineers do you see in the news or as a character on TV?
I work with girls to introduce them to these fields, and some of them get really excited when they see what engineers can do. Others, not so much. But the issue is opportunity. If girls get shunted off to other careers, we may be losing valuable brainpower to the legal profession. And that can't possilby be a good thing!

 

[graybeach]

This post makes me recall my thoughts when I closed on my house. Do the real estate lawyers enjoy that work? It looked unbearably boring to me. I will take engineering any day.

 

[casseopeia]

I dunno, just seemed to be apropos to this thread

http://www.navycs.com/gallery2/v/useful_images/movies/women-know-your-limits.wmv.html

"If you are going to walk on thin ice, you might as well dance!"

 

[KENAT]

Ahh, Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse at their finest.

Star for Cass

Can't help thinking though, if a guy had posted that it may have gone down like a lead balloon, or a proverbial in a punch bowl.

Another reason for staying in Engineering, otherwise the manufacturers of slide rules, pocket protectors, drawing boards, erazor shields etc. (pick your archaic/stereo typical favourite) would go bankrupt.

Maybe we need to start advertising, I'm thinking:

Engineers, the world needs us

or

Engineers, where would the world be without us

or even

Engineers, making the world better one Widget/4th order Differential Equation/Structural Analysis/Eigan Vector... at a time

Seriously so much around us is due to Engineers and their historic predecessors. Most of the 7 wonders were works of Engineering, and some of the things people like Brunel did are really inspiring, at least to a geek like me.

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

 

[dcasto]

I have seen the women come into engineering and then leave and the reason for leaving are many. Here are the top reasons in order of their occurance. (Just the facts mam', just the facts.)

1. Management is pushed to sent women up the ladder and a title of Sales manager does that. Oh, a sales manager earns less than a next level engineeer.

2. They chose to leave when their significate other moves.

3. They are moved out because they cannot produce. On the other hand men are asked to leave or forced to move.


At this point the list of reasons people leave join and its the same for both. The item listed in 1 is at the bottom of mens list, number 2 as about 1/2 way down and number 3 is the top of the list for men.

 

[GSTeng]

For me there are not that many options for moving up the ladder that don't involve leaving traditional engineering jobs. If I was more willing to move to a bigger city I could move into high engineering roles, but to stay in my town and be an engineer means not really moving up in my company. i could always start my own engineering company, which is an idea I am working on but i need the experience first. Even the other companies in town that have engineers on staff don't have much in the way of a engineering ladder to move up. My biggest fear about moving into sales or management is that I will hate it. Then I will have to try to move back into engineering, which will not be easy.

So I guess another reason for leaving engineering is a desire to advance within a given company in a given area. This is probably not true for everyone, but for me it is fact I am faced with.

 

[flamby]

I am an engineer and so would stay for my life because when I engineer something, I feel like God.

Ciao.

 

[sms]

Hmmm

Not to side track to a theology discussion, but how does God feel?

Is God feeling happy and content today or vengeful??

Also just for my own curiosity what kind of structure is God working on right now? ;-)




"Why don't you knock it off with them negative waves? Why don't you dig how beautiful it is out here? Why don't you say something righteous and hopeful for a change?" Oddball, "Kelly's Heros" 1970

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

 

[KENAT]

Guess it depends partly on if you're a new testament or old testament kind of God.

Also, I doubt God has to do timesheets, project admin...

None the less flamby glad you enjoy.

There is someting cool about seeing a finished product and saying 'I designed (or at least somehow helped create) that'.

A couple of times I've looked in aircraft magazines and seen something I worked on and got a kick from it.

(This months airforces monthly is a good example, in the Typhoon article, all those black & yellow Paveways, and the blue ones labelled "Ballistic Flutter Environmental" that used to be my project when I was still in the UK. Don't get the same thrill from Atomic Force Microscopes though.)

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

 

[DarthSoilsGuy]

God is the worst contractor. Either God is working at a snail pace or God is clearing the whole site. And don't get me started about permit compliance with this clown. Insurance companies were right to drop God from their policies a long time ago. Who is covering these acts of God anyway, the government. We need to ween God off of divine welfare. If i bump into somebody's car on-site, and we're exchanging info for the claim. God will just bust open a detention pond and crush a site wall with 20,000 ft2 of water and nobody is looking to get him thrown off the job, fired, or at least drug-tested. Sure God has some big projects under the belt and not much competition in the market, but come on.

 

[ewh]

Ahh, it must be Friday afternoon (at least here)...

 

[jmw]

There is a very good program on the radio at the moment (Radio 4 seems to be too small an offshoot of the BBC to have been a target for total dumbing down) and the recording can be heard here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/sciencefriction.shtml

Sorry about the corny title but the discussion is a definite must listen.
(If you want to know what a polite fight sounds like, toward the end you'll hear it.)

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[jmw]

By the way it is program 1 that has been broadcast and is available.

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[mizzjoey]

Going back to possumk's first post...

LOL! I teach night classes and some of my students (11-year-olds) asked me what do I do during the day. When I told them I'm an engineer, they looked very confused and one of the girls said, "But engineers are males!"

We have a long way to go when it comes to promoting engineering as a career option for girls, especially in my country.

And even in the industry, there are still challenges. I used to work with a senior engineer who kept asking me whose secretary I was. When I started out, I had three strikes against me: my gender, my youth and my race. Of these three I can't say which has the most impact. Luckily I am now working in a company where all they care about is the quality (and to a slightly lesser extent, quantity) of your work. Maybe in the US it's different, I don't know. All I know is engineering is a pretty exciting job, even if I have to put up with my boss' micromanagement sometimes...

 

[vc66]

I don't think there could ever be another profession as rewarding to me, as Engineering is. The feeling of accomplishment that overwhelms me when I have figured out a *beautiful* solution to an intriguing problem is incredible. You can take all the money, houses, and other worldly possessions and forget about them. I'd be an Engineer for free if I could.

So to answer your question: There is nothing superior or inferior about Engineering. It's a choice. As in any career, if there is a lack of passion, then it's just a job. But if you are passionate about what you do, whether teacher, doctor, lawyer, or engineer.

Either way, I wish you luck in finding your passion-evoking career.



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

 

[Gymmeh]

vc

nice quote, I agree, some days I feel i dont get enough money/vacation/etc. for the work i do... but days when a design comes together well... Its just the sweetest feeling and I can work for free, if i didnt have bills to pay

So far I am satisfied with my career choice.

 

[moltenmetal]

possumk: there is nothing inherently superior about one career choice or one profession versus another.

I have no problem with programmes which are intended to show girls that engineering is a viable option for them. I believe there are plenty of women with a true natural ability and aptitude for engineering, and it would be a shame for the profession to lose them (and for them to lose a potentially rewarding career) merely due to adolescent peer pressure and misinformation. But I also have a problem with recruitment of students to study engineering, regardless of which gender is targeted, when misinformation is used in the process. Engineering is a profession which has seen its level of societal respect and monetary compensation fall (drastically) relative to those of other professions for one reason more than any other: we've allowed ourselves to become over-supplied relative to true market demand for our services. THAT is why so many engineering graduates leave engineering for greener pastures! And that we, as a profession, are complicit in this process just makes me mad!

possumk: figure out what you're passionate about and do that. You spend too much time at work and put too much of yourself into it for it not to be something you're passionate about. If you're in engineering for the money, or in an attempt to right some historical imbalance between the genders in our profession, or because you feel that you need to be an engineer for society's benefit, you've bet on the wrong horse. Chances are it's not just you personally that are dissatisfied with your career choice: chances are, the people who you're working with and for are suffering to some degree from your lack of passion for what you do. But then again, if a lot of your co-workers are feeling the same way, maybe it's merely the fault of the TYPE of engineering you're doing or perhaps you're just working for a bad firm which does boring work. I can say with certainty that none of my colleagues feel the way you seem to about engineering. We're all passionate about what we do. And I believe that this passion explains our success. But we're also REALISTIC about engineering as a profession relative to others, and don't try to make engineering something that it's not.