Tek-Tips is the largest IT community on the Internet today!

Members share and learn making Tek-Tips Forums the best source of peer-reviewed technical information on the Internet!

Register Log in
  • Congratulations cowski on being selected by the Eng-Tips community for having the most helpful posts in the forums last week. Way to Go!

The best engineer 12

Status
Not open for further replies.
Kevin_Hall

Kevin_Hall

Aerospace
Joined
Jan 27, 2022
Messages
4
Location
UA
A long time ago one of my teachers told me:"To become a great engineer you should not know everything, you should know where to find everything" and I think that this statement is undisputed.
What do you think of it?
 
Sort by date Sort by votes
I dispute it. If you know nothing more than where to find an answer, you'll have to look up the same answer over and over again when repeatedly faced with the same question. This will happen with every question you ever face. What a complete and utter waste of time.

xnuke
"Live and act within the limit of your knowledge and keep expanding it to the limit of your life." Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged.
Please see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
To be functional, there are things you just need to know. I sure as heck didn't look up how to operate my coffee maker this morning.

There's a balance--things you know; things you can find; things you know that you don't know
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Story of unknown validity:

Henry Ford was once asked if he thought of himself as a smart man. He said he did. They then asked him what the square root of some large number was. His response: I do not know. If I wanted to know, I would find somebody that did know and they would tell me. Then, I would know.

We know what we know, but we have to acknowledge what we do not know. That is when we need to know how to find the answer.

As an engineer, I do not commit the endless formulas for my tasks to memory. I know which books contain them on my bookshelf, when I need to look them up.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Which is why they let you bring reference materials when you take your PE exams. If they were ONLY testing how smart you were, they'd ban everything except #2 pencils.

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
I agree, TigerGuy. xnuke took it to the absurd extreme (I'm also an ex-Nuke EM so I get it). This idea is that you thoroughly know your profession. I can explain the fundamentals of structural engineering without consulting a library, and can do most basic design and analysis tasks from memory. But if I need to "get into the weeds"...I know where to find the detailed information to handle it or I know who to call if it's really a specialist's sort of question.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
I definitely agree with phamENG. There is great value in experience that allows me as an engineer to know the basics without looking up details. For example, I am familiar with the basics of an electrical load analysis for the aircraft on which I am qualified to review and approve the analysis. However, I will always, always, always look up the source data for every detail, load value, flight condition, electrical buss, etc., before approving any specific analysis. I have full confidence I know the process but I still check every piece of source data. I can recall far too many times I would be in the middle of such a validation, thinking to myself, "This is probably a waste of time" and then suddenly noting a bit of source data that was NOT what I expected to see.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
"Knowing" is definitely going to become less and less prevalent with open-access to so much information. It's even manifesting in the NCEES Professional Engineering Exams, which are going "closed book" this year, and going forward. All necessary textbooks will be provided in electronic format at the testing site. I feel like the ability to "ctrl-F" and immediately find a topic cheapens the studying and tabbing I did all those years ago.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
To be the best engineer: Conceptual understanding of the current research and state of practice in you field; decades of practical experience; intuition and an ability to understand the big picture as well as the small. Willingness to accept that the current state of practice is imperfect but nevertheless things must be built and problems must be solved. I don't think you need to have every formulae memorised but if you don't understand things conceptually you aren't going anywhere.

 
Upvote 0 Downvote
I think that just knowing your subject's basics inside and out is enough. You would be surprised by how many people can't read a paper or do proper investigations and research. The PE exam, I thought was more of a litmus test for people who can't answer a question in a timely manner and therefore would struggle badly with anything they had to teach themselves that had depth. The PE in the exam in the U.S. is 8 hours long, two 4 hour segments for morning and afternoon. The exam can easily be done in 2-3 hours by anyone that knows their material. I brought a graphic novel as a joke and ending up spending about 4 hours reading it. I bought 4 reference books and only opened 3 of them. Some brought wagons of books. I can guarantee those who did that are unable to answer a question quickly or much able to eliminate the bad answers on a multiple choice exam would struggle checking their own work.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
"To become a great engineer you should not know everything, you should know where HOW to find everything"
Click to expand...

Fixed it.

There's another that's a bit better IMHO, something to the effect of "Good engineering isnt finding a formula in a book, its finding the correct answer from experience." I've heard it called consultant's cliche but is true of all desk jockeys - without testing experience you dont realize how wrong you are.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Upvote 0 Downvote
"Calculus would be painful if you had to look up the methods and solutions every time."

Not for me. I've never once had to use it in 45 years of engineering practice with hundreds of successful machines and several patents under my belt. I understand that it was a critical tool in the original development of the formulas and equations that I use, but it has never been a factor in my work.


Thank God!!!!
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Fud-4-Thot... a diversion into a typical aero-career question, answered with some new twists...

Occasionally we in Aero, have new or about-to-be-graduate-level students... and sometimes 'struggling' working engineers... asking for 'best technical tools and resources and [?] how to get-ahead in their jobs and in our line-of-work.' [my paraphrase]

Here is a typical question recently posed to us... and our somewhat 'different' perspective to this guy...

best tools - more used (useful) tools
Hello everyone, My name is Gibran and I'm Aerospace Engineering student. My question is: what is the most useful tools (software, methodology and etc) to start to project aircrafts.
And what the job market wants in a engineer.

Most of us older guys, realize that honestly earning an engineering degree means 'you're smart enough to do the work and adapt' to new/changing/evolving tools and methods. Engineering is the easy part... get into the 'flow-and-go'. However...

Replies in this thread from some of us 'older engineers' had some serious/philosophical observations/recommendations from the most-important human-factors perspective.

Regards, Wil Taylor
o Trust - But Verify!
o We believe to be true what we prefer to be true. [Unknown]
o For those who believe, no proof is required; for those who cannot believe, no proof is possible. [variation,Stuart Chase]
o Unfortunately, in science what You 'believe' is irrelevant. ["Orion", Homebuiltairplanes.com forum]
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
FYI, if you copy and paste the thread ID, just below the title of a thread, like "thread 16-489875" the site software will replace it with the thread ID and title, ala
thread16-489875

I inserted a space in that first thread ID to stop the SW from doing its thing

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert! faq731-376 forum1529 Entire Forum list
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
IR... OK Duhhhh… I just learned something 'new-old' today! Thank You Sir!

Regards, Wil Taylor
o Trust - But Verify!
o We believe to be true what we prefer to be true. [Unknown]
o For those who believe, no proof is required; for those who cannot believe, no proof is possible. [variation,Stuart Chase]
o Unfortunately, in science what You 'believe' is irrelevant. ["Orion", Homebuiltairplanes.com forum]
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Come time to use it, I always forget how it was done...

Dan - Owner
Footwell%20Animation%20Tiny.gif
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

EngTal
  • Locked
  • Question Question
Career progression and learning as a Static equipment maintenance engineer
Replies
5
Views
2K
BSMEclassof2012
BSMEclassof2012
rQuestionEngineering
  • Locked
  • Question Question
Thermodynamic Engineer - Turbomachinery design
Replies
3
Views
567
StrucPatholgst
StrucPatholgst
W
  • Question Question
What do all the useless engineering graduates do for work?
2 3 4
Replies
62
Views
33K
goovel5
G
Muhammad Ali
  • Locked
  • Question Question
New Immigrant Electrical Engineer in USA (FE Exam-EIT vs Masters)
Replies
4
Views
2K
MintJulep
M
nisli-a
  • Locked
  • Question Question
Jr. Mech. Engineer Career Advice - Stay in it or Transition to Computer Eng/Science?
Replies
13
Views
2K
CWB1
CWB1

Part and Inventory Search

Sponsor

Back
Top