working with an engineer

That's what I call "spot educated, not intelligent". No offense to him though.

 

Went in today, the bearings we put in a couple days ago, we were missing a spacer. We pulled the bearing off and ordered a new bearing, $550.
That's what happens when two people take something apart and two to three people reassemble it.

None of the parts were organized, or at least not the way I would do it.

 

Lots of engineers are really bad at the hands on side of things (sounds like you had one of those guys). Great with CAD and programming but can’t turn a wrench for their life.

There are plenty guys out there as mentioned above that wrench on their shit and are good with their hands. In the end you really need both flavors for a successful project.

When I was in school the entire ISE department consisted of folks that had dropped out of the mechanical engineering program because they couldn’t hack it.

 

As a guy that wore a hard hat with all the stickers... That's what we told all the new blue collar workers.

Watch out for the clean, white hard hats. Those were the 1st people to ask why you were doing something the way you were doing it.
The new engineers always had good intentions, but you just knew when they got involved, the job just got 5x longer and complicated.

 

Stinkin’ engineers

 

When I was a young I was a surveyor, then cartographer, then Engineering aide in an engineering department. It didn't take me long to figure out the engineers I would enjoy working with.

There were 'academics' vs 'practicals who had a degree'. Practicals being the ones that did home remodel/repair, fixed their own cars, built their kids treehouses, etc.

I always catered to the practicals. Wound up as one of a team of 3 after a re-org, and neither of the other two had degrees, and I had just started night school. But one was an ex lineman/foreman, the other designed all the UG transmission in a significant city. We put out more work and fixed more problems than any of the other teams at the time. Because we could survey, design, draw, compile WOs and communicate with the construction foremen in their terms.

When I later managed some engineers, I always had some interview questions that ferreted out their practical side....... just because my odds of getting a good one were better. The best was a dual major ME/Industrial Arts who worked in the summers and volunteered in soup kitchens all winter. She made Bs and Cs in her general subjects, but As and Bs in her major focus subjects, so her GPA was lower than some other candidates. Some folks snickered that I hired her because she was cute. But 5 years later they were working for her. Deservedly. (I was long gone, she did it on her own)

 

In Logan.

 

Same though

 

I stand accused of Engineering. Chemical, Nuclear, Military Construction and more. My main function over the years was safe, timely and cost effective execution of complex things and I'm good at that. Typically some get crushed by the methods employed and hurt filling reports have been filed. However I know the species of engineer you speak of and simply suggest you get an upgrade to a better engineer. Problem solved, NEXT!

 

I've been in aerospace engineering (Mfg, Mech) for about 28 years. The last 10+ have included mentoring and working with college interns (MECOP) and rotational new hires (1 year stints at three of our locations). I will tell you, I am seeing many more "book smart" engineers who lack basic hands on experiences. Meaning, they grew up with no exposure to wrenches, bikes, wood/metal working, hands on field work... CAD and Excel...

I still enjoy mentoring regardless. I just feel a smashed finger or two goes a long way in making a person think...

 

Yep - I've gifted the new guys with handbooks I found essential back in the day and been asked why do they need a handbook, as if THE answers are known and look-up-able, LOL I could go on an on - my fav. was a basic lack of geometry knowledge: We knew the coordinates of points on a circle and needed to cipher out the center point - the new guy said he didn't have an app for that...really?? REALLY? That guy got "Mentored", however he still speaks to me.

 

Yeah it was 45 years ago, so I don’t know how many campuses they have now.

 

There’s a few, I gotta go to Logan still though

 

I studied ME, IT & FORTRAN back in the days of IBM cards and slide rules. The first scientific calculators came out in those days, but Pac-Man was years away.

We had Pong and pinball, but most engineers took little time to play either.

We had a wind tunnel so we did rockets, built models and smashed them, tested buried structures, Etc. They also were doing a lot with food engineering at that time, and I remembered the many products they designed processes for making from cheese way.

I did some soldering and welding and machine work at the Pepperidge farm plant in Richmond, up toward Idaho.They used to hire a lot of engineering students. I sat inside a shredded coconut machine one night eating shredded coconut and sewing a 2 foot conveyor belt back together with stainless steel wire. Stickiest job ever.

 

Really depends on what type of engineering work you are referring to.

 

Going on a bike ride, climb, or run during lunch and the requisite trips to the snack cabinet in the Engineering Office will do that to you.

 

Hard hats…?

adorable

 

Tool & Die maker here, and to be honest most of the “Engineers” I work with don’t know there ass from there elbow, so they need to make things look complicated