What Percentage of Your Job is Actual Engineering? 3

[Christine74]

If you're currently employed as an engineer, what percentage of your job duties are spent doing actual engineering work? By that I mean tasks that you couldn't do if you didn't have your engineering degree.

I'm a bit dissapointed that probably 80-90% of my job could be performed by someone without a degree. Is this typical?


Thanks,

-Christine

 

[TheTick]

I'd say that's actually pretty typical. However, it's the odd 5-20% (like the math?) that makes all the difference.

I know enough about flying planes to do 90% of an airline pilot's job. You wouldn't want to be on board with me for that other 10%!

"Customer satisfaction, while theoretically possible, is neither guaranteed nor statistically likely.--E.L. Kersten

http://www.EsoxRepublic.com

 

[sms]

I'd say about 70% or more. Every job has its mundane aspects so no job will be 100%. I chose not to go down the management road, so I have done about 20 years of solid technical work. There are periods where it is very technical, and then there are periods where it is less so. But I would say 70% is a decent estimate...

My first job out of school was doing ultrasonic inspection of pipe welds at nuke plants. That was 99% book keeping, but when we found a crack, there was some juicy technical work...

 

[ctopher]

I estimate 50-60%.

 

[COKA]

Actual engineering work? About 75% of what I do. However, we have technicians doing the same thing, except that their documents have to be approved by a qualified engineer before they can release them.

Coka

 

[HgTX]

The first year or two I felt like a secretary. I took down the information, took it to people who knew stuff, got their answer, reported it back to the people who were asking. I've refined the technique over the last few years and now I sometimes even know stuff myself.

As I said in one of the PE threads, because I'm not a designer, I had to do some hard thinking about whether I was an engineer at all. I don't sit with a calculator, I don't draw anything, I don't use fancy analysis programs. But I handle questions that the inspectors (who have five times my experience but not my education) can't answer, and that's the difference. "Engineering judg(e)ment" is where it's at. TheTick is right--even if most of what you do could be done by someone else, it's the rest that you're really there for. ("Drawing chalk line, $2. Knowing where to put the chalk line: $9,998.")

Hard to say how much of what I do couldn't be done by a non-engineer. I think most indivdual tasks could be given to various non-engineers but I don't know that I could hand off the entire package to one person.

After a certain number of years out of school, what one did in school often becomes much less relevant, and the value of the education seems less obvious. What you're left with is the pattern of thinking that the education established, combined with the innate ability that led you to get that education to begin with.

 

[strokersix]

Jobs I've had varied. My last job was in aerospace. I considered about 50% of it technical work. Unfortunately my current job is much less so. But even then it varies through project cycles from about 20-30% technical to, at the moment, ZERO%. New products are currently out of development and in production so my work is all maintenance, bill-of-material, part substitution, production problems, deviations, etc. Not stimulating at all.

Eng-tips gives me something more interesting to think about each day!

 

[71corvette]

I think it certainly varies with your position. I'm a younger structural engineer and just recieved my PE.

Over the past few years I'd say 70% of my time was spent on engineering tasks (e.g. calculations, detailing, writing specs etc.)

Recently I've been appointed project manager of a small project. My actual time spent doing engineering tasks has since dropped to about 40-50% (And thats still much more than some other PM's in the office)

 

[GregLocock]

70-80% at a rough guess, but then I have a technical job, with no one to supervise.





Cheers

Greg Locock

 

[OilBoiler]

80%

 

[NickE]

I think also for us young engineers that education and preference for technical work makes a big difference. Also if you have the ability, and work at a good company they will realize that your skill set suits technical work more.

In my case I am the only engineer (degreed) at my location who works in R&D, this obviously results in an engineering workload of >75%. However the pay is less, the education is more, the work is trying at times, mistakes are common. Its well worth it to me. (Although I could use more pay, who couldn't.)

What I do is pretty much what I've wanted to do all my life. I cant even entertain thoughts of a different job, let alone management/paperwork.

nick
(Lab engineer/metallurgist/troubleshooter)

 

[metengr]

The amount of time spent doing engineering work is really dependent on the job, and to some extent on the engineering discipline.

For me, I spend on average 50% of my time for the year performing actual engineering work related to my discipline. Also, I have feast and famine cycles because I perform technical support to Power Plants. As with any business, when the Plants are in production things slow down and I perform "other" duties like catching up on reports. However, when scheduled or unscheduled outages occur, outage support functions go into high gear and I am off to the races.

 

[GeneratorGrrl]

The discipline I'm in is worked on a laddered progression, where the candidate must not only take schooling, but demonstrate years of experience, in order to be recognized. As I'm on the fourth rung of the ladder (starting to reach for the third), I don't see a lot of actual "engineering" design work. So, perhaps 5% of my job is actual engineering. But as TheTick said, that 5% makes all the difference.

"Eat well, exercise regularly, die anyways."

 

[strokersix]

Work was more interesting today! Field component failures required calculations for root cause investigation. I feel better now.

 

[HgTX]

Does telling someone, "Your submittal makes no sense and seems to have been poorly trancribed from something else non-applicable," constitute engineering? How about the time spent figuring out how to communicate that without sounding hostile?

Hg

 

[liberty]

Less than 5% of my time is spent solving or reviewing actual engineering problems. The rest of my time is spent doing tasks that could be completed by CAD designers, drafters, checkers, machinists/fabricators, technicians, and hourly production assemblers. This doesn't count time spent on totally non-technical things like traveling or sourcing issues. And how many hours are spent in meetings presenting designs, budgets and schedules? Don't go there.

When I worked at a large company (GE) there were bodies available to do that peripheral stuff so we could focus on just the engineering projects. At a smaller company, wearing more hats means less of my time is spent on engineering work. I'm an expensive machinist, but not that much more than a union or contract machinist, especially when you consider the quick turn/low volume of machining that might be needed on a given development program.

I agree with The Tick, and Thomas Edison said it best: "Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration".

 

[flamby]

Hg,

The time required to reach the conclusion that the document is all goofed up and telling this flat on the face of the person should go under the column "Engineering". The time taken to mince the words and figure out how to say it shall be charged under "Diplomacy". This may be found in the Management worksheet.

 

[cardoso115]

in my experience since my graduation, I've had 2 job's. One was in R&D, and the actual engineering workload was about 70% of all my time. The other 30% were quite boring, building Bill of materials, analysing errors, filling quality paperwork or even writing the instructions.

Now, I'm in maintenance. And so far, the actual engineering work is about 10%. I just have to assign an eletrician or a mechanic to a machine with troubles. However, there are some things that they have never stumbled in, and that's when I get the chance to actually do some engineering. I also look around the plant for some dangers, or processes that may be optimized, however my supervisor hasn't left much work to do in that area.

In the rest of the time, it's just paperwork, or checking the pretty girls in the office...

 

[TheTick]

Then, again, there is that portion of my job that perhaps should be done by someone who is more educated or qualified...