Engineering Myths
Myth — Women can't become engineers
Many have told you that women and engineering are like water and oil. In other words, they are not meant to mix together. Women are supposed to be incompatible with designing machines or building software or working on the field in industry. These myths have gained popularity since the 1800s - the century that marked the Industrial Revolution.
The Industrial Revolution was led by business men and former pure scientists who wanted to apply their theories in real world applications. The revolution began with men, not women, since the administration propelling the revolution consisted of men. Since those times, women gradually fought and achieved rights to different carriers.
Medicine, law, education, policing, being a fireman or security officer, and many more career paths historically were thought to be incompatible with "feminist views of life". These careers need long physical or academic preparation, require mixing of family and work - compromises that women were thought not being capable to make.
Nuclear engineers like Marie Curie and many others have repeatedly shown that women perform equally or better than men in engineering research and work.
Myth — Engineers live in factories.
actories are 1 out of the approximated 478 places where engineers are licensed and are eligible to work at. Only in-factory work exists for basic and advanced manufacturing. Work in these settings is anything but factory like. Air conditioned rooms, super modern assembly sites, furnished lunch rooms, computers that count everyone in Paris under 1 hour, and more. Bottom line: factories are no longer the old tortuous hot, steamy, stinky, soul sucking places that they once were.
Nevertheless, majority of engineers find work in the remaining approximately 477 or so work environments - nothing in common with factories. Modern engineers have found homely work even at plant nurseries (Hint: Who designs the solar enclosure to maximize optimal humidity and temperature for plants? Ans: Engineers), out of many other work environments that don't have the word "engineering" with it.
Other top job markets that employ engineering graduates with B.Eng or graduate education: perfumaries, cosmetics manufacturers, banks, venture capitals, hedge funds, power generators, distributors, software design firms, law offices, municipal safety, housing and construction, automotive and plane makers, biomedical engineering departments in hospitals, mining and refining, transportation and logistics, industrial labs, public safety agency and that’s not it! More include: hospitals, telecommunications, science journalism, schools, colleges and universities, data centers, IT and system administration, computer networking, polymers and plastics, electrical manufacturing, piping and plumbing, national military, navy and airforce, secret services, gaming and graphics, wireless communications, instrumentation of devices, i.e. telescopes, microscopes, pH meters, accelerometers, pressure gauges, materials, fabrics and clothing.
Myth — Engineers don't save lives.
When you have an accident or illness, you go to the doctor's office. Even on TV you see Dr. Mehmet Oz having the "Oz Show", where he gives you health tips on how to eat healthy, or the importance of balancing physical activity with staying indoors, or the latest weight reduction techniques, and much more advice that the public thinks is necessary to abide by for a good lifestyle.
Doctors have saved lives and improved the condition of life. Condition of life is same as quality of life - the ability to ward off measles, mumps, rubella through vaccination, or the ability to rid cancer from spreading are just a handful of life saving actions doctors conduct every day.
It appears that engineers only stay in labs, offices and assembly plants building products like the next generation smartphone, body spray, fuel efficient car, faster transportation systems, taller and more energy conserving condos, earthquake tolerant cities, new 3D games, more powerful detergent soaps, contact lenses that are more durable, video compression for faster streaming movies online, and much more.
But, any malfunctioning of these engineered products or services would mean fire, electric shock, explosion, overheating, security loss of personal information and more bad "unpredictable" outcomes of man-made services and products. Engineers give their lifetime's work in ensuring to lessen "unpredictable" outcomes, i.e. an electrical outlet that powers your toaster doesn't electrocute since you touched with wet hands in kitchen while cooking a veggie stew.
Myth — Engineers don't like to read and write.
People who are good in math are supposed to be weak in reading. Anyone with weak reading skills, also happens to have a weakness for writing. Engineers like math, therefore they must detest writing long documentations and technical works for others?
Licensed engineers in fact are notorious for their "painfully" detailed habits to document their work in notebooks or work ledgers. If you were a pharaoh living in Egypt, who would you blame if a stone block "unpredictably" collapsed on your family? Would you blame the stonecutters?
Would you blame the construction overseers or managers. Or, you blame the stone supplier? Or, out of anger and vengeance would you demand everyone to be blamed? Perhaps you would blame everyone, while giving most blame to the team who authorized the plans and designs of the pyramid prior to construction - the engineers of pharaoh.
Engineers have the dilemma to produce innovation as fast as possible, but also produce it in an organized way that allows growth of better technologies from older designs. Engineers create on the ideas of earlier engineers. Faster evolutions of new technology can occur only when precursor records of designs, notes, manuals and processes of older designs from past engineers can be quickly read, understood, and implemented in Research and Development.
Myth — Engineers work overtime without choice.
Engineers on field work or in-office work, both have regular and strict office hours between 8:00 AM and 5:00 PM. Weekend work is rare. Engineers do not work overtime, unless they want to. The definition of overtime in engineering has an interesting tale, because the overtime culture for engineers has been very different from the overtime culture of other professions.
In olden times, inventors and tradesmen had very little difference - the best inventors were creative geniuses with trade work, i.e. iron smith, wood working, stone cutting, metal lathing, welding, and more skills. The best tradesmen were also experts in technical and applied math as well as physics seen in everyday situations. The engineering profession gradually evolved to become a service oriented profession - where you get paid for the technical service you give to a builder, manufacturer, inventor, etc.
Multiple engineering companies happen to offer the same service, say testing, safety and feasibility check on prosthetic limbs. One firm competes against the others. Who would you choose to go to for the same service, at the same price? Perhaps, the firm with a good reputation and good track record of unfaulty and foolproof testing. To become this "better firm" the firm offers it's engineers opportunities to do overtime, with regular pay - not ...
Myth — Engineers live on coffee.
Engineers have tight schedules - note, not work schedules, but personal schedules. Personal work schedules include "engineering work", and other "sports", "extracurricular professional contribution to peers’ designs", "technical hobbies". As a consequence, despite having the option of having a normal personal schedule, the hyperactive minds of many engineers make them undertake other work beyond the office or field for personal pleasure.
Proverbial saying goes, "don't bite off more than you can chew". Do engineers, then, over commit themselves to an extent that they have to rely on stimulants like caffeine and relaxants like beer to help them accomplish everything?
No! Engineers rely on their loved ones, like their best friends or colleagues, husband/wife, co workers for the motivational support to work diligently to the end of a project's completion. Excess reliance on caffeine would mean short term increase in productivity, but long term negative consequences on attention span. However, statistics repeatedly support engineers who "make it" to be licensed, are regular in diet and avoid unhealthy dietary practices. Loved ones always give engineers the perfect vent for discussing frustrations and resolving them within community, instead of turning to alcohol and substance abuse.
Myth — Engineers don't fall in love.
Engineers are busy all the time, hence they must not have time for relationship building - for finding a girlfriend, or boyfriend. Engineers are busy at work. They are busy at home with pre-work thoughts and creative plans. So how will they have time for relationships at all, right?
Infact, the stress of professional work - work that you do regularly for a living and are held liable/responsible for by society - makes engineers seek partners who can provide motivation and emotional support. Engineers build machines and design services that are meant to ease certain aspects of human life. How can you build products for human ease if you yourself do not understand or immerse yourself in "being human" and "normal"?
Mother Teresa once said that the greatest poverty of life is to not be loved. Historically and to this day there have been some engineers who never learned to love themselves. Some of them continue to be unable to bond closely or love others. They most often failed to engineer products and services that connect and become radically popular with the end-user: the public.
Most engineers do discover love and affection for someone else - love, as in romantic. This happens in undergraduate programs, graduate programs and at the workplace.
Myth — Engineers hate and avoid lawyers.
Any man-made product has scopes of operation. If you use it beyond this scope, this product will behave in "unpredictable" ways. "Unpredictable" is the worry of licensed engineers who spend hours over simulations, dry run of prototypes, quantitative and statistical analyses and customer feedback on engineered products.
If you were a pharaoh living in Egypt, who would you blame if a stone block "unpredictably" collapsed on your family? Would you blame the stonecutters? Would you blame the construction overseers or managers. Or would you blame the stone supplier? Or out of anger and vengeance would you demand everyone to be blamed?
In fact, the correct person to blame would be the engineer who approved the structure, processes and mechanisms for everyone to follow during the construction of that pyramid. More generally speaking, since the olden days to this date, the licensed engineer is held responsible for the engineered product. If you make a mistake, you loose your "license to engineer". Lawyers are free to find a deficit in safety in engineered services. A lawyer on behalf of her/his client can then sue.
Myth — Engineers only build bridges.
Bridge building is one expertise of structural, mechanical and civil engineering - one expertise out of the dozen or so engineering disciplines.
All engineers are united, regardless of their specialization. A mechanical engineer has the knowledge and eagerness to solve a problem that an electrical engineer, manufacturing engineer, software engineer or automotive engineer will too have.
Engineering professions are most diverse since even a specialized engineer, say a software engineer, is also qualified to work in other occupational sectors that use finance, computational biology and chemistry, physical science instrumentation and research, economics, statistics, marketing and distribution, logistics and much more.
Myth — Engineers think they are always right.
There is a cult-like culture that few engineers are enticed in to follow. A culture that states, "ERTW - Engineers Rule The World".
The ERTW cult still exists, yikes! You will find engineers who dress simply and are very simple forward, down to earth - almost too down to earth, which makes them socially awkward. On the other hand, you will see some engineers who are too proud of their work or inventions - boasting is what limits these engineers from becoming good project managers or team players. And, you will also meet those engineers who are dressed simply or in business attire while they do lip service in appreciating the work of the handy tradesmen or the scientist or the artistic designers or others without the entitlement of "an engineer". This minority of engineers do a de-service to the word "engineering". It is this minority's choice to have a self-righteous attitude towards engineering work, but it is their personal attitude. Personal attitude of a select few individuals do not make it the mass attitude of everyone in the same group of people.
Myth — Engineers don't have a life.
Engineers have tight schedules - note, not work schedules, but personal schedules. Personal work schedules include "engineering work", and other "sports", "extracurricular professional contribution to peer's designs", "technical hobbies". As a consequence, despite having the option of having a normal personal schedule, the hyper active minds of many engineers make them undertake other work beyond the office or field for personal pleasure.
Proverbial saying goes, "don't bite off more than you can chew". Do engineers, then, over commit themselves to an extent that they are have to rely on stimulants like caffeine and relaxants like beer to help the accomplish everything?
No! Engineers rely on their loved ones, like their best friend's or colleagues, husband/wife, co workers for the motivational support to work diligently to the end of a project's completion. Excess reliance on caffeine would mean short term increase in productivity, but long term negative consequences on attention span. However, statistics repeatedly supports engineers who "make it" to be licensed, are regular in diet and avoid unhealthy dietary practices. Loved ones always give engieners the perfect vent for discussing furstrations and resolving them within community, over alcohol and substance.
Myth — Engineers fight with scientists.
Scientists discover patterns in the universe. Engineers use these patterns to invent a product or service that solves a human need or problem. Who has a more important job? Ans: Both of them, since one without the other would mean either (1) a world full of chemistry facts, but without any car tires or modern contact lenses or smartphone and tablet touch screens or the more than 100 000 tools that rely on chemistry and materials science (2) There would be numerous inventors at workshops with only detailed designs and detailed ideas of car tires, contact lenses, cell phones screens, but without any working products or prototypes.
As a general rule, for "discovery work" the working team consists of more scientists and less engineers. For "inventive work" the working team consists of more engineers and less scientists. Hence, the type of work will determine which profession dominates and persists in majority. Science is usually equally as difficult as engineering. Hence, engineers and scientists rarely will have arguments over whose work is more challenging.
Often scientists feel that their work is under-valued by clients and the public in society. The reason why this hidden feeling in scientists exists is because the profession of science, whenever tried to become accessible to the public for solving their problems, begins to accept the engineer's way of thought. For instance, agricultural research was purely science and discovery oriented, but now "agricultural engineering" exists as a recognized discipline to solve production and optimization of food.
Engineering Facts
Fact — Engineers are licensed professionals.
Engineering graduates from accredited programs must gain 4 years minimum work experience before they can apply for Ontario's engineering license called "P.Eng". P.Eng is the abbreviation for Professional Engineer.
P.Eng holders are the only engineers who can call themselves as "I am an engineer." Anyone without a P.Eng is not legally an engineer, despite having an engineering education or degree, in Canada or from outside Canada. P.Eng engineers are the final authority on approving an engineering project, design or plan. P.Eng engineers work as technical professionals on the field, building, learning and doing professional engineering work.
P.Eng engineers are also consultants and advisors to contractors, builders, businessmen, scientists and government regulation programs.
Fact — Engineers are held responsibile for their work.
Engineers create things. Engineers build products that people use to accomplish tasks. You drive a car. It allows you to go travel to areas that would be near impossible without the car. Without a car or any other transportation, going to Niagara Falls or Wonderland would not be happy news.
Technologies work to make your life easier. Technologies are man-made. Technologies are not always perfect, neither are they meant to last a lifetime. Engineers invent and ensure that their creations are reliable in extreme conditions. A car on a highway with high wind speed must still perform reliably.
Engineers give the utmost importance to reliability and safety of any engineered systems, be it a refrigerator, tall skyscraper building, smart phone, MRI machine, eyeglass frames, wall paint, backpacks, microprocessors, coffee mug, radio frequency communication, a sharpener, renewable solar panels, dishwashers, aeroplanes and so forth.
Fact — Engineers are universal problem solvers.
A rocket carrying space shuttle probes to Mars and beyond has many decisions to make. Decisions are physical, software, mechanical, electrical, communications and much more. But, engineers are experts in problems beyond work. Engineering education will teach and train you to resolve common problems - everyday problems.
A problem itself is a situation that demands you to do something despite you having troubles or discomfort in doing it. A solution will help decrease or totally remove that particular [problematic] situation's difficulty. Say, your car trips are consuming too much fuel, and you want to reduce it, but you also want to go to all the places that you do now. This is a practical problem - it calls for optimization of your car trips.
All problems of everyday life are well within reach of an engineer’s skills to solve. Engineering education is hands-on: it is centered on problem based learning. Engineering formal training aims to give you an instinct to see the unknowns - note "instinct" - and scavenge for the set of processes that will find these unknowns. Discovery of unknowns follows with "connecting the dots".
Fact — Engineers make & influence public policy.
Car's drive on the left and right side of the road. Car's are legally allowed to travel up on the right, and travel down on the left. Public policy ensures that all cars are manufactured with the driver’s seat on left side of the car. This ensures that drivers on both sides of the road can see each other - see each other closest from their windows.
Cars must have a driver's seatbelt and a passenger's seatbelt nowadays - historically a belt on the driver's seat would be good enough. All roads must have dividers - either in paint or concrete. All power plug's must have a third [grounding] point. All houses, businesses, industries, must have a circuit breaker - excess electric load "breaks the circuit" and prevents an explosion or fire.
All labs must have a fire extinguisher. Modern buildings must have a stairway and ramp for helping physically challenged citizens move. Electronics must be RoHS compliant: they must not contain lead based solder. Numerous other public policy and legal regulations have been influenced by engineers on government and decision makers. Engineers are whistleblowers and guardsmen to make sure that all technologies we use have features that make them more efficient, safe and easy to use. This is modernity and engineers play a crucial part in continuing this modernity.
Fact — Engineers build and invent.
Engineers are always on a mission to either improve a scientist's or engineer's intention, or to invent a new process, component or solution adding to an existing framework. There is a huge distinction between amateur inventors and professional inventors.
Amateur inventors do brute force or huge numbers of trial and errors to make an invention or come to a solution for a problem. For instance, Thomas Edison, the famous inventor who created a music-player (phonograph), video technology (series motion picture box), lighting (electric lamps and bulbs), and much more, created most of his technologies through self-teaching and trial and error with help from lab assistants.
A light bulb prototype was built, as story goes, in 12,000 hours before reaching final prototype design. This is ( 12 000 hours ) / (24 hours/day ) = 500 days, or about 1.7 years, yikes! Modern day labs produce new light bulb prototypes under super efficient workflows - workflow that does not do trial and error, at best.
Engineers are professional inventors and investigators who use "invention by design, not by trial and error" to rapidly improve older technologies through evolution or creation.
Fact — Engineers work to improve living standards.
There are over 100 Million inhabitants of our world who cannot drink clean water. A human being can survive without food for 6 to 7 days. A human being will die without water under 2 to 3 days. Clean water for nations that we now call "developed" used to be a gigantic problem just 120 years ago.
Engineers have worked hard with applied scientists since olden times to ensure that long lasting solutions to human problems arrive fast and reliably. The problem of clean water purification and transportation, has been solved by engineers in the developed world. Engineers continue to tackle similar problems, besides water treatment, like environmentally friendly petroleum refinery, human consumables that are ergonomic - give maximal comfort, like ergonomic beds, office chairs, shoes, bed mattresses, wavy tooth brushes, dual-direction shaving razors, and other human used goods.
Engineers are under a mission to improve how we live life and help us use our time most effectively. Invention of the ASCII text system was proposed to speed up writing in schools and offices. Invention of the cellphone was engineered to give instant updates between communicating groups. Invention of television was engineered to decrease boredom. Invention of video gaming was engineered to immerse and engage the mind in puzzle solving and adventures that would be too expensive in real life.
Fact — Engineers build and strengthen teams.
No professional engineering project is completed alone - it is just impossible. For something as simple as a hair band, one may just design it on a desk with provided elastics, colours and textile folds. However, once it is to be mass produced and distributed to retail chains where you can buy hair bands off the shelf, the task becomes a multi-team operation.
The hair band needs a team of designers who will update the design every shoppers season, like pre-New Years shopping. It needs a team who will manage logistics: the processes and go-to tasks in-between designer and manufacturer. It also needs a market research and customer advertisement team who will help to determine what consumers demand in a hair-band: is it for use to soak up sweat during sports like lacrosse, or is it for fashion and should match to existing dresses, or is it therapeutic and helps a person control migraine pain.
A quality assurance team is also needed to make sure the manufactured hair bands are of the same or near-same quality as the first master prototype. A mechanical engineer working under any of the departments as designer, logistician, manufacturer, quality tester or other occupational roles is within a network of teams. Engineers are unsuccessful without the "soft" social and friendship-forging skills since simplest engineering and mass production tasks need multiple expertise - which comes from a team.
Fact — Engineers do project management.
Project management is different from leading a team of hardworking staff and workers – it involves specialized training in technical skills, besides the social abilities of a team leader. A team's skill sets are spread over a spectrum. There are members who are good in, say, writing, another excellent in drafting and drawing, others most comfortable with directly talking and communicating to clients, just to mention a few.
High efficiency project managers have formal training to understand the production scope, time limit, spending budget and quality standards of a given project. General team leaders are weak in accurately directing members of the team in a project for maximizing the project's return: the goals and objectives, i.e. producing a new car chassis that compresses slower on collision to reduce impact shock, designing telecommunication tower antennae that can give cellphones on LTE network over 1 GB/s speed, effective energy consumption reduction system in residential houses, knives that have long lasting sharpness, and much more.
Formal training in education consists also of non-science, non-math, non-technology courses, such as project management, economics, entrepreneurship and communications. These courses are a minor-focus, yet they are extremely rigorous and need tremendous effort during in-university engineering education. Engineers in active practice ensure all projects perform best and return most for investors and end-users.
Fact — Engineers push computer usage to the limit.
Engineers have elegant and powerful math and physics equations to work with. These equations allow them to predict or judge a physical system. Engineers use these equations to simulate processes before investing monetary funds and human energy on a final product.
Engineers use computers to do many tasks. Engineers take notes on tablets for greater organized documentation. They create extremely accurate and dimensioned designs of maps, machines, components, functional systems and operation processes via CAD (Computer Aided Design). Engineers construct to-the-last-detail plans via flowchart and mapping tools. They do financial analysis, data-science tools, like (open-source) GNU Octave, SciPy, (commercial-close-sourced) Macintosh / Linux / Windows versions of MatLab, Statistics SPSS, Excel, Access, Mathematica Computational Library and Maple.
Besides the technical, many engineers write at work and off-work magazines, i.e. lifestyle, science exploration and digital world. Engineers in the recent years have popularized on-line communication tools like websites and public email repository systems to keep a tap on what problems the public demands to be solved. Word processing, making video or slide-based presentations, blogging as well as routinely helping clients through video conferencing and e-mails are just some of the ways that engineers communicate with the public that they serve. Engineers, depending on their occupational duties, write critical and broad computer programs in languages such as C, C++ and Java. Engineers nowadays must be highly computer proficient.
Fact — Engineers learn & apply skills on the fly.
Since highschool we see that to learn we must take a course in that subject. To be a good writer we must take English in grade 9, 10, 11, and 12. To learn to manage money, make decisions based on numbers, do scientific analysis we must take Math, i.e. Functions, Advanced Functions, Data Management (Statistics & Probability), Calculus. Other courses like Science, Philosophy, Computers/Programming, Tech Design, Art, Drama, History, Geography and more are there to teach us critical thinking skills and give us the ability to investigate out information to solve problems in life.
High school courses are often very theoretical without much application of the theory. Many students feel bored or the emotion "what am I going to do with this course in my life, in the real world". If you ever felt that way, you will be surprised to know this: engineering is exactly the opposite!
Professional engineers-in-training learn in an accredited formal university setting and work with applications and hands-on work of design, science, and math theory. More application, more building, more activity: less sitting at one place, less only-reading textbooks, less restrictions on converting your ideas into real world products.
As a result, professional engineers are more "rebellious" in their learning style. This generalization is not true for all, however for the majority of engineers it is a reality. Engineers have to learn new concepts, techniques, skills, processes, outside school, outside the classroom. For instance, as a project manager for a power door company you feel your colleagues will benefit most if they will use a software collaboration/project coordination tool.
Fact — Engineers do business adminstration.
Project management is different from leading a team of hard working staff and workers – it involves specialized training in technical skills, besides the social abilities of a team leader. A team's skill sets are spread over a spectrum. There are members who are good in, say, writing, another excellent in drafting and drawing, others most comfortable with directly talking and communicating to clients, just to mention a few.
High efficiency project managers have formal training to understand the production scope, time limit, spending budget and quality standards of a given project. General team leaders are weak in accurately directing members of the team in a project for maximizing the project's return: the goals and objectives, i.e. producing new car chassis that compresses slower on collison to reduce impact shock, designing telecommunication tower antennae that can give cellphones on LTE network over 1GBs speed, effective energy consumption reduction system in residential houses, knives that have longlasting sharpness, a pizza unleavened bread maker for homes, and much more
Formal training in education consists also of non-science, non-math, non-technology courses, such as project management, economics, entrepreunership, communications. These courses are a minor-focus, yet they are extremely rigorous and need tremendous effor during in-university engineering education. Engineers in active practice ensure all projects perform best and return most for investors, end-users ...
Fact — Engineering salaries are among highest 10.
Amongst salaried labour, engineers earn salaries higher than the national average for newly minted graduates of Bachelor Degree programs. Higher salary does not mean "high social status" or "special treatment". You are well compensated due to the nature of your engineering work. At work you will conduct risk management and big decision making, be creative, do continued learning in applied science and, and will solve real world problems perceived as outright hopeless and impossible at the outset.
Formal training in education consists also of non-science, non-math, non-technology courses, such as project management, economics, entrepreneurship and communications. These courses are a minor-focus, yet they are extremely rigorous and need tremendous effort during in-university engineering education. Engineers in active practice ensure all projects perform best and return most for investors and end-users.