............................................................................................................................................

Fuggin A Rog.

Say no more!

LOL...

Gotta love WV...

No engineers, no architects, no inspectors... no code.

Just banjo music.

Train drivers- - - - - - -highly intelligent people with no common sense!

Couldn't get him to understand 13 2ft pieces of bullnose was what he needed to get for the shower, "him" you mean 25 linear feet, "me" yes 13 pieces of bullnose is 26 linear ft, even his wife was rolling her eyes and my helper was trying not to laught. this went on for 15 minutes before he got it.

Two engineering students were walking across campus when one said, “Where did you get such a great bike?” The second engineer replied, “Well, I was walking along yesterday minding my own business when a beautiful woman rode up on this bike. She threw the bike to the ground, took off all her clothes and said, "Take what you want." The second engineer nodded approvingly, and said: “Good choice; the clothes probably wouldn’t have fit.”

All that book learning and no common sense.

Hell you say, put in a Macy's DC in Martinsburg, dang place was eat up with inspectors and such. Worst bunch of sinkholes I ever had to deal with too.

LOL... must be local chit.

Never been to Macys... or Martinsburg.

“Engineers” is a very broad category. Chemical engineers are a breed apart. I know, because I Are one!

WV PES Exam question:


A front porch is constructed of 2x8 pine on 24 inch centers with a field rock foundation. The span is 8 feet and the porch length is 16 feet. The porch floor is 1 inch rough sawn pine. When the porch collapses, how many dogs will be killed?

LOL!

They say what's the difference between a engineer and a catfish? You can talk to a catfish.

38

I’m married to one, it’s interesting at times. The biggest argument we ever had was over measuring wood flooring. She is a blonde Aggie.

When a business hires an engineer from Tennessee State University- - - - - - -they make him buy his own mop and broom! Yep, it's a groid school!

The female body was designed by a civil engineer- - - - -who else would put a toxic waste dump right next to a playground?

I are one.

I worked with and managed hundreds of very capable engineers.

Engineering degree doesnt always mean engineer IMHO.
Had some fresh out of state college kid at work blow my bud some crap....he supposedly went to a better school than my bud. Claimed he was an engineer by degree.

My bud asked him if he was a registered professional engineer.
Kid didnt even know what that was.

My bud was, and simply walked away.

Dude own2d 3 farms, was an ME and pilot.....but this fresh out of school dweeb was THE engineer LMAO


That friggin sissy never amounted to chit at work, hopped from program to program and was worthless. Guess somebody in his family hired him LOL

And how many that weren't?

Worked w some masters and PHD that were good people and good at their jobs

Worked with some that were worthless all the way around.

GM used to have non degreed engineers, worked with some.good ones.

EE and computer guys were the insecure back stabbing screw ups. Suckasses too.

The United negro collage fund ... The results are showing up .

Very, very few. The oil and gas industry does not tolerate incompetence.

I was wondering where the engineers in the Public Works Department I worked for came from.
We had plenty of incompetent's.

Those that can't cut it or even be hired in the private sector go work for the public sector and that's not just engineers.

2nd biggest lie in the world, "Hi I'm from engineering, I'm here to help.

Mining engineer in W.VA says to trying to impress worker on a job site by quoting the formula, "pi r squared". Local responds, no pie are round.

2nd biggest lie in the world, "Hi I'm from engineering, I'm here to help.

Mining engineer in W.VA trying to impress worker on a job site by quoting the formula, "pi r squared". Local responds, no pie are round.

"Cornbread are square!"

I have a close friend who is a very successful engineer in the aerospace business. He makes a nice living figuring out how to fix the fuckups the blue-collar production/mechanic supermen who know everything make.

LOL, that's what they all say.

He ain't in public works.

Not uncommon IME.

Brilliance...

Assume you cannot be an engineer?

No offense, Rog.

But I've met some flooring guys that weren't too fugkin' bright either.

LOL

I just thought it was funny.

I have done jobs with several good ones but every once in a while you come across one like this.

There are a bunch of them. Most have some bad habits.

Engineers are just the worst of those who are
"Educated beyond their intelligence".

Colleges dump out millions of graduates every year.
All kind of titles, a lot of "college educated idiots.
The same breed as the blue collars Mathman references.
Except they wasted 4 more years in school.


It's amazing to consider the type of engineer Roger mentions,
Then think of the self taught , and the things they built.

Kinda like foresters.
A good family friend could look at a house plan, then go
cut the trees, saw the lumber, and build a building with post and beam framing. When it was all done, there wouldn't enough left over to
build a small chicken coop. All with a few notes on a piece of scrap
paper. Educated types would have needed an engineer, a forester......
Then, they would have blamed Paul for there not being enough lumber.

Wanna say I've met all kinds of engineers. An old millwright general foreman probably said it the best that I've heard it told. More than once he'd cup a hand behind his ear and say, "I don't need an engineer. I need an enginear."

The operations guys in the powerhouses are mostly engineering guys. Never met a more savvy and intuitively bright bunch. You try and explain something and they got it. Usually a couple of steps ahead of your explanation. Those guys really dedicate their lives to safely and reliably turning turbines.

And then I was on a project welding sensor brackets to the outside of a nuke reactor vessel. Both the design engineer and the fabricator had done a worthy job on those brackets.
The contracted project engineer seemed to not have a grasp of gravity, and was determined that the brackets be mounted upside down. You can get away with some stuff working the nukes. You will not survive being the cause of extending an outage.

And, In the funny zone...
Another nuke, replacing a head on a moisture separator vessel. The old head was dismounted and laid aside, under shielding. We went to the clean lay down area where the new head was staged. There was a visible and obvious difference in the two heads. The newer one was both heavier and had a different bolt hole layout.
The supplier had a rep on site, who claimed to be an engineer. We had a known weight on the old head, and the first thing the rep demanded was that we weigh the new supplied head. He watched as we weighed it. Yep... heavier by a ways. Then the rep wanted to argue with the scale. He stepped on it and claimed that it was several pounds heavy on his weight. Our G.F. on the job indicated that the guy should remove his heavy overcoat and re-weigh himself. Our claimed "engineer" stepped off the scale, removed his overcoat, folded it over his arm and stepped back on the scale.
Pretty sure the little smiley laugh emoji was invented in imitation of the G.F.'s face that moment.

They are a quirky type of bunch as a whole.

I’d say it goes both ways…..

If i had a dollar for every time I’ve heard “it works in the model ( solid works) “…..

An old gentleman with his Pennsylvania Dutch accent once told me. You can tell an engineer, but you can't tell him much.

Good engineers will take input from non-engineers, and explain when said input won't work, and make changes when said input will work.

Unfortunately, you get hardheaded people in all fields.

Maybe once upon a time, but the inspector that approved my deck last year (after they corrected the bracing for the rail posts) was up on all the latest poop, and came back to make sure they’d done it right. Still lots of fly-by-nighters working, but they’re hot on their trails in this county. The permit people ride around looking for piles of material to be sure there’s a permit to go with them.

The Tax Lady was out not long after as well to make sure I didn’t sneak in any gold leaf or other taxable goodies. Used her tape measure to confirm the dimensions matched the permit.

Engineers; my self, my father, my uncle, my cousins, my wife, my son, and lots of friends.

They paid attention in jr high math class.

The kind of people who know the sine of 30 degrees off the top of their head.

Floyd and Charlie rocked it !!!

They were private sector Civil Engineers. Not State employees. 😁😁😁

I can’t lie. I also worked with some vary capable state engineers. They usually ended up in the private sector. 😉

I have worked with a bunch in the oilfield most are good and most are highly intelligent. Only a few are capable of accepting things that don't perform like the expected numbers say they will.

Yeah, we had a lot of “Engineers” in the Phone Factory, but mostly it was a title, not based on any degree. They looked up stuff in books and created circuit designs and code and routing orders based on the tables, then sent them to the field monkeys to implement, first with wire, later with keyboards. Had a few “real” ones, mostly transplants from failed equipment companies, but also a few of our guys who went back to school to “get ahead”, usually to no avail.

^^

I spent a lot of time working in a 2 reactor plant so an outage every year. I was outside contractor working on site year around keeping document scanners and film scanners/retrieval printers working. It was entertaining some days listening in on conversations on the main engineering floor! To my uneducated self it did appear competence increased the closer I got to the control room.

I hated the outages, I was on call almost 24/7. The head of document control offered to hire me if I'd move closer to the plant, wish I'd took the offer but at the time housing cost was out out my reach in that area.

On a flight next to a mechanical engineer. He's headed somewhere to diagnose an issue with the ripper tine assembly on the back of a road grader. There's 7-8 spaces for tines but the assembly is only rated to have 3-4 tines in use. I told him:

"You should assume some, maybe many folks will fill that tine-gang full and it won't matter how many times you tell them it's specified for fewer, if there's a slot for a tool, they're going to insert a tool. If you want to not have any more headaches, you're either going to need a bigger hydraulic ram or sharper tools."

I must've stirred something because he immediately dug out a notebook and spent the last part of the flight buried in said notebook.

I had to explain meplat measured OAL vs. ogive measured OAL to a Mech Engineer buddy who couldn't figure out why while using Berger VLD's he had to adjust his seating die for every cartridge and also why he had so much ES/SD as well as vertical dispersion beyond 300yds. The guy is very smart, grew up on a farm and is adept at problem solving on the fly using what you've got in/on hand to finish the job but the above just didn't compute until I showed him on a comparator.

We had some real winners in the oil field. One company I worked for would make engineers work in the field for at least a year as a lease operator. I don’t think it helped.

My father, my brother, my brother's wife, myself. Countless number worked with and for. About like any other profession or line of work, there's good ones and not so good ones, in both their work and their life/personality/common sense.

I have worked with many EEs over my 40 years in the electronics field---many very good ones and a handful of incompetents. One such at Motorola insisted that I could not measure a DC voltage with an o'scope then dragged me to the head engineer's office to set me straight because I would not acquiesce, only to be told that he was wrong. I have no idea why that guy was even in the facility.

Currently I am trying to assist a large aircraft manufacturer in correcting some maintenance errors on a certain aircraft. I pointed out the deficiencies in a publication the A&Ps have been using for years and agreed to help them prepare a new revision. The original procedures were written by---you guessed it, engineers, and it is not worthy of starting a campfire. Now that the new revision is nearing completion, ANOTHER engineer wants to step in and undo a good bit of what I've done. I've worked with this customer (and countless others) for 15 years supporting this product and have handled well over a thousand of their units (and about 12,000 other units from other users) and am very familiar with their issues. The guy who wants to undo my work has been there about two years. He may have a piece of paper stating that he's an EE, but. Makes me want to just throw the customer in his lap and watch him suffocate. I'm hoping the managing engineers shut him down on this one.

I'm glad The Oaf is not typical of EEs.

The fresh out of college EEs can be a real scream. I had one recently inform me that he did not agree with the requirements of J-STD-001 during some training I administer. I let him know how things work. He's been around about two years now, and with a little experience has realized he doesn't know jack yet. There's hope for him.

This may actually be true. My father was a respected chemical engineer who managed projects all over the world and was always in demand. My youngest brother is a chemical engineer who is a waste of oxygen by any measure and has gone so far as to change his name to try and get work.
I have to say though, Dad, while a fine engineer and good project manager, was largely incompetent when it came to practical application of knowledge. He repeatedly underscored the importance of skilled tradesmen and artisans. He also demonstrated the inability, as shown by many very intelligent people, to admit when someone knew more about a subject than he.
If engineers have a common failing, this is it; they just won't effing listen! In some respects, I may have inherited this trait but never got the degree to give me an excuse. GD

Being a good engineer is telling people they can go to hell and they will look forward to the trip.

Actually it comes down to negotiating between the business bottom line, keeping production going, and telling people why their "good idea" doesn't account for everything.

https://www.getyarn.io/yarn-clip/454ea720-0a50-4a38-bef0-b098ae5ea917

What we found out from trying to outsource engineering to India, was that 90% of the problem is defining a problem. By the time a problem is defined like a an engineering textbook homework problem, you could just send it to a student.

Engineers peak in wages in their 50s, as employers want engineers who are running on conditioned responses, not on the job training.

This is where I live and it meets WV code. Please keep trashing WV since we're getting less blue state immigrants than other states.

To avoid taxes, it is time for the Beverly Hillbillies to move back to WV.

You are blessed, Dave. Do everything possible to keep blue staters out of West Virginia.

Problem is ..... most engineers won't go to the Gemba .... for all you inbred fuQ's (from places like TN, KY) take a minute and look it up.

What I have found is that .... like so many other things .... the millennial generation has fuQ'd up honorable professions like engineering .... moreover the university system is no longer interested in grooming professionals but rather churning out soy boys and femi-Nazis.

On top of all that ..... the universities cater to the g o o k s and red dots for engineering students because the p u s s i e s and soy boys that this country is raising flunk out in all the eng'r schools still worth a damn.

I grew up on a farm in the Dakota's ....' we were so poor had to jerk off the cat to feed the dog ..... I am now a retired PE and lumping all engineers together is like saying all American Indians are red n I g g e r s or like saying all from the south marry their cousins.

Flame on.

Signed,
Retired PE

G

F

Y

This is very true, my son just graduated with a chemical engineering degree last December. He had 3 internships with a major oil company, after his second internship I told them that they will offer you a third internship, it was the summer before his last semester, not because they want to find out what you can do, but because they don't want you to go else where and have some other company find out what you can do. At the end of his third internship he was given a very nice job offer, pending graduation, which he accepted. Major oil companies recruit engineering talent with the same fervor that division 1 college football programs recruit top high school athletes.

All of my experience dealing with engineers has been with industrial/mechanical engineers and only one out of all of them, the most senior in both years AND experience, was well worth his paycheck, ...and then some... He was 'old school' and the only one of the whole bunch that would and could work with the differences between theory versus actual application. All the rest were only interested in not making waves, avoiding signing their name on any necessary and critical changes that had even a slim chance of not working out thus reflect negatively on them. As they got closer to retirement most of their main focus became trying to 'engineer' something to get their name on at least one patent.

PE? Pizz-poor Engineer, maybe?

I've found them to be great if they have functioning ears.

It takes lots of skill to keep the train balanced on those narrow little rails.



Bruce

I will keep it simple for inbreds like you ......'


G

F

Y

They wouldn't last five minutes with the friend I mentioned earlier. He is constantly presented with problems for which he must design solutions under heavy time pressure. He also must assess the similar work of others who are not so senior and the signature responsibility falls on him. The work has to be done right or planes may cease flying at inconvenient times.

I've found engineers to be as good or as bad as the rest of people I work with. I have worked with some really good engineers who knew what they were doing and could actually engineer something that could be built, assembled, and made to work from the drawings provided. I've also worked with engineers who couldn't make a living drawing bad cartoons....

I once had to call an Electrical engineer on a big job I was running and ask him what was the objective of his drawing because I surely couldn't figure it out the way he had it drawn and explained and neither could anyone else on the job. If I knew what he intended I could get it accomplished in the field... I was very careful and diplomatic in phrasing my question but this guy must have been getting reamed a lot lately because he just came unglued at me questioning his design and called me some very hurtful names.... .... we got the job done in spite of him but I never called an engineer again questioning his design. I just made a new design that would work and went to work ...

I've done a lot of work at Intel and other very large projects over the years and some of those engineers are incredible to work with. Very smart, but easy to talk to and ask questions when necessary because these are very complicated and compact jobs. Even as big as these buildings are at times, it is still hard to squeeze all the equipment into them at times and still make it all work as advertised.

One Electrical engineer stands out over the rest- We were installing the large service gear in a new building for Tektronix many years ago and had just hooked it up to power. This Tektronix engineer always wanted to put his hands in our gear just to prove he could do it, even though the building wasn't finished and hadn't been turned over yet. We had to warn him several times to stay out of the gear- which was mostly 480V and I think about 5000 amps supply . I noticed he wasn't around for about a week while we were finishing up and asked somebody about it and it turned out he came in after hours , opened up the gear, and put his meter on the live busses to check it out. Only thing was he didn't know how to use a meter and left it on the resistance/ohm scale and when the leads hit the busses it literally blew up in his face. He spent about a week in a hospital with them picking Fluke plastic pieces out of his face and when he got back to work about two weeks later he wore the black marks of shame all over his face and neck for years later....

There was a failure to communicate somewhere in that guy's education. Even if I hadn't already known how to properly use a meter from working around my father when I was a teen, I'd have never made it out of the lab class for Circuits I in engineering school if I didn't learn.

I would think so also, but this guy was in his mid to late 50's when this happened. Personally, I think he just had a brain fart due to his overabundance of hubris... he was a really arrogant POS every time we encountered him.....

The computer or phone you're looking at was designed by engineers, so if you piss on engineers, throw it away.

That said...

A mechanical engineer, an electrical engineer and a software engineer were driving along when the car suddenly stopped.

The mechanical engineer said, "there must be a problem with the valves, we need to get out and adjust them."

The electrical engineer said, "no, there must be a problem with spark plugs, we need to get out and clean them or adjust the gap."

The software engineer said, "why don't we just get out of the car and get back in?"

****************************

Three people were being led to the guillotine during the French Revolution, a duke, a count and an engineer. (They had engineers back then, they just called them Le Engineer)

The duke assumes the position and the blade is released, but it sticks and doesn't drop. The executioner says it is a sign from God and releases him.

The count assumes the position and the blade is released, but it sticks and doesn't drop. The executioner says it is a sign from God and releases him.

Le Engineer is about to assume the position but he takes a look at the guillotine and announces, "hey, I think I see the problem..."





Fwiw, I was a software engineer for about 40 years although they used to call it "programmer" or "programmer/analyst".

I bet that place makes a killing on AirBnB.

My inner white trash might be showing, but that's kind of cool.

How can you tell if an Engineer has a personality?






He will look at the tops of your shoes, instead of his own.

I'm pretty certain a whole team of engineers designed it and the team was well led, but I'll bet there were a few schidtbirds on the team too.

Is that WVs answer to Epcot?

Not sure where you live, but it's dam sure not in the
E Panhandle, if you arent covered in Libocrats.

What's happened there is sad.

They also seem to have thin skins.

My son's father in law is an engineer and a very good one. He designed machines that can crush and tear up just about anything known to man and they shipped them all over the world. His company was on a show on cable and/or streaming showing his designed machines doing their thing and it was pretty impressive.

He's a great guy and we harass him about his OCD Engineer personality often. My son got him a Tshirt for his birthday a couple years ago that says "Electricians- Because Engineers Need Heroes Too"...

Dillonbuck, halfway between Charleston and Huntington. Right about where the I-64 symbol is.

Exactly, that was brilliant man.

The company I work for has a few engineers that want a part made but, are completely stupid when it comes to drawing up a print for that part. Not all of them but, some. One of them wanted me to drill 4 holes in a aluminum plate. I asked him where he wanted the holes, he said just near the corners. I said, this is a mounting plate, right? He said, yes. I said if I drill these, and it ain't right, I'm not drilling the SOB's again. You can. He left and brought me back a damn print.

Somebody put thought into that. I love it.

lot more railing than WV code calls for!

you overspent!

Sycamore, overspent? Gotta buddy that works at the mines ......

West Virginia is such a bad place to live, even us engineers suck. Please don’t come here, don’t even travel through the state, methabillies might get you. Best to avoid us.

Post a pic of the schit hole you inhabit.

You Biden loving fugk.

I have a bunch of engineer jokes but I worked for this one in my younger days and he was no joking matter.

OK, I’ll bite ... Who Dat?

WTF does that have to do with my post?

Signed,

Someone smarter than a retired PE

Hyman Rickover.

Seriously?


Rickover

Ya'll call it OCD. I call it "put the MF thing back where it came from".

I spent about 45 years in a manufacturing environment & have worked with/for some very good engineers.

OTOH, I've met some real green ones as well & wondered if they would make it. It takes all kinds.

But good, bad, or ugly, I will stand by my belief that an engineering degree should include 1 year of blue collar work in the field of the chosen degree. Learjet had this policy & it's proven.

LOL

That's happened to me at the bar a few times. No bikes but you get the idea. Couldn't understand why a woman I never met before wanted me to follow her outside. I let the other guys go. They got mugged by her boyfriend. Same bar, different Friday night.

Engineers aren't so dumb, eh?

My opinion is 2 years mandatory military service to earn the right to vote. The same should be called for and started from the absolute bottom for any state licensed professional.

We retired at 41 and 37. Before that, my job title was helper and enlisted man. I was a high school dropout. She was a college dropout. We only became professionals after we didn't need to work.

The difference between engineers and the rest of the world is - we can explain this to the sharp high school dropouts - the not sharp ones can't understand complex concepts and are stuck in management, sales or labor. Can you? (I could explain it at 20 with no proper edumacations)

No, I dont get the idea. The bike is kind of an important detail for the whole joke.

Latina eyebrows?

Drag Coefficient? GFY

You defined it. Now explain it in terms someone who isn't mathematically inclined can understand.

Definitions are easy bro - explanations............not so much.

yes

50 year old, 35 year old and an 18 year old women. The young ones are built for speed.

Actually, the overspending took place at the Green bank observatory........

You must be an engineer.

OldSchool_BestSchool is living proof that some engineers use their personality as birth control….

My more than successful 30 year career with a major in O&G speaks to my ability as an engineer and, more so, as one that developed young engineers as a manager, many doing well beyond my retirement in 2015. At least 95% posting here would not be accepted in a proper engineering school and that number would drop to 98% after the first semester. Funny chit here from the simpletons.

Then there's that second semester when the physics profs get a hold of them in the well known General Physics weeder course.

Geeze.....

Physics started the first quarter, and it was just a rehash of high school physics from the year before. No big deal, honestly. The lab writeups were the hardest part, as I was trying to be a perfectionist. In fact, it was lab writeups that were my undoing, eventually moving over to CSc.


Ed, did you have Price for thermo 303? I knew upperclassmen that were hoping he’d die before they had to complete that class to graduate. Probably the strangest class I had there.

My first university physics course assumed calculus. High school physics assuming a calculus prerequisite I would believe to be uncommon.

right answer!

At the risk of appearing insensitive, I will note I live in the mountains of Arizona, not suburban Florida.

Good luck with that.....

I sure hope Vagisil came with it, what a fugging tool.

There are those who graduate with an engineering degree and then there are those who graduate with the same degree and then go on to BECOME Engineers.
It’s as simple as that

Hilarious. The people who couldn’t cut it as an engineer talking about how dumb engineers are.

Metallurgical Engineer here. I am in the steel industry and its crazy how many new Engineers come in and the "Idea Fairy" put an idea in their mind, they bring it up to an operator who tells them it wont work for one reason or another. Then they make the trial take place and they Screw up a 100 ton heat of steel. The operators have no reason to make the idea work and wont help you at all if you force it on them. if you actually spend time with them, ask them what they need, explain your problem, find a solution together and implement the solution then the operators have some skin in the game and want to see it work.

I grew up with a mechanic for a dad and a machinist for an uncle. When I told them I wanted to be an engineer they almost disowned me.

Yet I still do more shooting and outdoor pursuits than your lazy ass.

Amazing, ain't it?

Maybe so but my workbench is pretty sweet.

And I built it.

Florida Man,

Is Uncle Sugar paying for caps you're busting?

Cleaning the pool in the backyard isn't considered an outdoor pursuit in Arizona.

(although I'm sure your high school buddies in Illinois think it is).

Carry on, and keep us updated with the great indoors.

Sycamore

Colleges crank out thousands of engineers, but a small percentage of them make careers of designing new things that get built.

My contention is that engineers are born and not made... the reason almost all engineers designing are white males or asian males.


I was at a conference of high frequency power design engineers with 1000 engineers that traveled to Wash DC... there was not much diversity.

I never knew there were so many engineers until I started competitive shooting. I don't think you'll find a greater concentration of engineers anywhere else.

So much for the myth of dumb hicks and guns.

My uncle married a gal whose dad worked fr Rickover. He said that when he went into Rickover's office for his first interview with him, he was told to sit in a chair placed before the Admiral's desk. He sat in the chair and found that the front legs of the chair had been cut so that the chair felt like it was trying to pitch you out on your face. I suppose it was meant to make the interviewee feel uncomfortable or some such. Interesting interviewing technique.

Sounds like a few engineers on this site got their manginas a bit tweaked over this thread... I get the feeling a lot of them think becoming an engineer is right up there with the Greatest Quest known to man and only a select few can make the grade from their comments. Relax guys, any worthwhile endeavor takes a lot of effort and discipline to accomplish and engineering isn't the only difficult field represented on this site....

I’ve heard the same from some nuke guys.

My reading comprehension almost as bad as my writing, but did I just read that 98% of "y'all" are simpletons?

Lol. Now look who’s mangina got bent.

Anyone who has worked in any industry has stories of great engineers, good engineers, and simpletons with a degree.

In our company, all the great engineers go on to become factory managers. Then they get to learn how to manage a workforce. Our best engineers were popular with the production crews as they spent time on the floor and asked for input from the operators.

Our worst always made it obvious that they were far too smart to hear an operator.

I was on the loading dock one day when "Special Ed" the engineer came in. The loading dock door was shut and locked, but Ed pushed the button to elevate the hydraulic leveling plate under the door anyway.

All I could do was stand and watch as he physically ripped the locks out of the Overhead Door. Then he lowered the dock plate, pulled the door down closed, and did it again.

My supervisor about lost his mind when I called and requested a service call from Overhead Door.

Our present plant manager is a gorgeous 29 year old blond lady originally hired as a packaging engineer. She is smart as a whip. Listens to experienced operators. Gives clear instructions. Gets in and gets her hands dirty. And brooks no nonsense.

But she is California born and raised. She will not let us kill pigeons, feral cats, or rock chucks on the property anymore. Ah Hell, nobody is perfect.

But she is about as close as I have worked for in forty some years at this location.

Assuming something I didn't imply bone head? I surely wasn't talking about myself, but a simpleton like you might assume that...

This was an interesting read. I’m a Chemical Engineer. Out of college and at my first job, my boss told me that it would be 2 years before I learned enough to be worth my salary. He was right. In the actual refinery, there was a lot of friction and even hate from some of the hourly people where I worked, and it took me a long time to become accepted and even respected. The problem in the refinery was interesting. The hourly guys could run the individual processes, but I couldn’t. I didn’t know how, and due to union rules, I couldn’t touch the control board or the actual iron. What I could do was examine the actual process and search for ways to improve it and make it more profitable. I was a ‘Process Engineer’. I couldn’t do what the union operators could do, and they had no idea what I did. And, there was the issue of my getting paid far more than they did.

Pretty much any idiot could run a refinery process once trained to do so. But those useful idiots couldn’t design a refinery process. I could. Hence the income.

I’m retired now. Being an engineer led me to several better jobs and different careers and serious money. All because I was an engineer, and a good one. Just to say it though, all engineers aren’t good ones. Some are complete idiots.

What I absolutely cannot do is understand electricity. That’s where I’m an idiot.

Well said. I've never heard an engineer ever say anything like that. You sound like you had your schit together.

Electricity…..just like water, only different 😁

Do you suppose your thinking of them as useful idiots had any influence on the situation. I’m degreed, front line supervised in several union plants. For the most part the hourly men and women and I got along just fine. They taught me a lot.
I saw other supervisors come in and wear their college diploma on their chest, and with very few exceptions, they were gone in a few months.
I retired at age 61, as president of half billion dollar company.

This, my grandson is 9 years old and doing calculus.

All three of my kids graduated with an engineering degree. Time will tell which one becomes an actual engineer.

The thing is, not all engineers design mechanisms and devices. Lots of engineers end up writing. Some end up managing processes. Some end up overseeing sourcing, and here are other areas where they might be useful. An ME, CE, or EE really just means that you've got the chops to become competent. A lot of it is math. A lot of it is plain ol' literacy.

I'm not confident that a degree truly certifies any kind of competence these days. I know that cheating is rampant, so I know different. Be that as it may, I know there are still some very talented young guys coming out as engineers...I've worked with some who are sharp as a tack...others not so much.

Next level two engineers trying to solve a problem without trying to outdo each other. Don't take it personal for the engineers here.

And then there's the Engineer who decides to practice law.

My cousin's son. Graduated University of Idaho EE. From there to Law School, then to a judge's clerk, and now is a partner near Boise.

An old roommate of mine got a PhD in electrical engineering. Last I heard he's a patent attorney.

The good ones know when to listen to the non-engineers that have actual field experience. There’s plenty of useful idiots with PE licenses out there

Lot of chest pounding going on.

I think a lot of folks wasted their future on chasing an engineering PhD unless their plan was to teach.

Rocket science.

A couple of my other classmates have had careers with national laboratories and research organizations doing high end signal processing. Another started his own company based on implementing his algorithms for cleaning up reflected signals and has done well with medical imaging and subsurface imaging.

That said, a lot of us would have been better off going into the workforce earlier.

Interesting thread - I'm at the end of a Civil Engineering career about to retire. I make a decent income while living where I want to be - close to mountains and outdoor pursuits which was a major factor in choosing the career I did.

I've worked with mostly good engineers and a few duds over the years (same applies to contractors) which I think is typical of any profession. My biggest challenge now is finding my replacement to take over when I'm gone. We're having a hell of a time hiring engineers in our area.

You have some that can tell you everything about a tire , chemical compounds it's made of ,wear factorys , how to make and all. But can not change a flat ...

Becoming an engineer takes intellect, discipline and hard work. So those w/ lesser accomplishments love to pile on in deriding them...like they do M.D.s. There is a social divide in this country that is deeper than politics. It would appear that thinkers are becoming an endangered species.

JMHO, YMMV



mike r

A lot of "engineering" gets a bad rap. It's actually the bean counters and upper management that cause a lot of heartburn in industry. look at something from a machinist standpoint that you know it just designed to fail and you usually have a management decision that put it there. True there are those that have huge egos and some that are incompetent. Some can't cut it because they can't get by in that competitive environment.

I'm an engineer. I think these jokes are spot-on and hilarious.
Of course, I'm perfectly normal.

I don't belittle their accomplishments. I belittle the inflated egos. Not all of them have this condition, but quite a few that I have met do.

I'm a highway engineer that has to work with bridge/structural engineers. Noting worse that the bridge guys. They look down upon all others.

My bridge engineer joke goes like this: What the difference between God and a bridge engineer? God doesn't think he's a bridge engineer!

It was a rewarding career for me. Retiring in less than a year - right after I turn 60.