I’m an engineer by training but after getting my feet wet, I now realise the naiveté of my childhood perspective of engineering. It is not the gilded profession that it was made out to be when you were a kid. It is regrettably not a profession commensurable with doctors, lawyers, accountants and others you would call professionals, at least not in Malaysia, not now.
Scientist and researchers discover new knowledge while advancing the scientific frontier. Engineers on the other hand, apply the discovered science or technology and maintain it. I was drawn to this idea. The Keepers of the Tech, a rather sci-fi title if I may say so myself. If it weren’t for engineers, all technological advancements from the telephone to the automobile would cease to operate. Modern life would give way to those post-apocalyptic scenes from sci-fi movies. It’s a duty, a designation in the world order. However, I would discover that such lofty philosophies are lost in the real world.
Engineers are often found across many industries all over the world, usually slotted within the technical or R&D departments. The number of engineering disciplines alone seem to be determined by what courses university offer and usually corresponds to what industries demands.
You can build bridges in Civil Engineering, get the buzz in Electrical, reinvent the wheel in Mechanical, hack Wall Street in Computer, and build R2D2 in Robotics and other cool stuff you see on TV or on the web. Those engineering disciplines are the ‘hard-core’ engineering courses. But there are also lesser known degrees like Industrial Engineering and Reliability Engineering that have much less technology or science in them as they were created just to fulfil industry needs.
The branches of Engineering is not unlike a family tree with multiple tiers and hierarchies. I graduated with a triple E degree, i.e. Electrical, Electronics and Computer Engineering. It’s a combination of three disciplines really, but under the general umbrella of Electrical Engineering, there are a host of other sub-disciplines like Telecommunications, Control Systems, Software, Electromagnetism, Power, Microelectronics, Signal Processing etc. Equally variegated subfields could be found in Civil, Mechanical and other engineering disciplines.
There are professional institutions for engineers of every discipline, but unlike other professions such as medicine or law, you don’t have to join them to do your job unless your job specifically need such certification, neither are you subject to any laws of conduct or other dictates from them. However being a member gives you some street cred.
How competent or skilled you are depends on how passionate you are about your engineering or your current role. If you are in R&D, you would probably expect engineers there who are extremely knowledgeable about their field, and always keeping abreast with latest developments and likely to join some engineering institution or other. But if you are a sales engineer, which is basically a glorified salesman selling engineering products, other than knowing your product, you can virtually throw everything you learnt in college away. While an engineering degree isn’t as costly as a medical degree, it’s still no small amount of money nor is it easy to get a passing grade.
What you learn in school is probably not sufficient for work, and most of what you learn in college may not be needed in your job. Sometimes digging into a subject matter can get so deep and specialised, believe me, only a handful of people around the world actually knows what you’re talking about. School, or university is just a place where you whet your appetite for the future, discover where your interests lie, it doesn’t spoon feed you the requirements for your job. If there is just one thing to learn, learn how to learn - fast.
While studying hard core engineering disciplines can leave you frothing at the mouth because it is so challenging, out there in the real world, the diverse range of functions and positions make the engineering profession less uniformly professional than law, accountancy or medicine.
Engineers are not respected in the same esteem as other professions. It is easier to understand what other professionals do, but what does an engineer do? For instance, if I work in a semiconductor company, I’ll have to first explain what a semiconductor is. Then I’ll explain what I do every day that in itself could prove tough too. Now, while many people think that designing semiconductor chips are within my skillset, but what if all I do is manage a bunch of unskilled operators, making sure they don’t touch the ‘red’ button etc. Officially both jobs are engineering jobs but skillsets employed are poles apart. Perception about engineers from the public is likewise as bewildering as they can range from what some peers would consider "My-grandma-can-do-a-better-job" to "If-I-Kiss-His-Feet-Do-You-Think-His-Magic-Will-Rub-Off-On-To-Me?”
Engineering is driven by industry. Industry in the modern world is driven by capitalists. Engineering divisions are merely a means rather than the source of money making. But there are exceptions, though scarce, like in purely research labs or in up-and-coming firms at the brink of the technological frontier, like SpaceX, Google etc. In organisations like those, techies and the innovation they create are the focal point of the company - technology centric, as opposed to being mere resources to be utilised. Alternatively, non-for-profit organisations may offer that direct and fulfilling connection between an engineer's work and the community of which the charity or goal it is intended for.
Most engineering departments are assigned as a corporate profit centre or cost centre. In business lingo, a cost centre is a subunit of a company that is responsible only for its costs. A profit centre is a subunit of a company that is responsible for revenues and costs. Despite being engineering at the core of every Tech Company, no R&D or engineering departments is ever regarded a profit centre. Funny, how the world works, when salesmen are seen to be the driving force of revenue.
In the land of great innovation, the USA, engineers are relatively respected more. Some reach the highest echelons of some tech companies as Chief Technology Officers or fellows. A true technical ladder for those who could not or should not manage people but remain as individual contributors in a technical capacity. But in Malaysia and most of Asia, the technical ladder doesn’t exist and even if implemented is not genuine in intent, rather a ploy to retain workers.
As engineers, we joked, we’ll never get rich if we remain as engineers. Jokes aren’t as funny when they are so woefully true. If engineers do not climb the managerial ladder or start a business, they will be condemned to life-long career of servitude.
A counter argument to that line of thought is that engineering is a safe profession. Safer because, industries rely on engineers, which means there is constant demand for those in the profession. But always be prepared to learn new industry trends or new tech, because an engineer's worth is only as much as how he can adapt to the ever changing modern world.
I’m going off on a tangent to remark that I think the business world has wrongly celebrated the salesmen as the revenue makers, the first point of contact between buyer and seller. If the product is so good it would sell itself. If the product is mediocre then it is the salesmen’s job to come in to seal the deal, trying to hide the inferiority of the merchandise. Talk about a debasement of human virtues, deception and dishonesty are formally the best ways to make a buck. Remember the 2008 financial crisis, brought about by financiers concocting false revenues, borrowing from the future and what-not. Well, the industries (most) engineers stand behind represent the Real Economy rather than the Paper Economy.
In further defence of engineering, I would like to offer you this widely off-track train of thought. In this time in history, polymaths cannot exist anymore. A polymath is a person whose expertise lies over multiple fields. Illustrious polymaths include Aristotle, Leonardo da Vinci, and Galileo Galilei. From my engineering perspective, a great polymath plies his trade between multiple scientific, medical or mathematical subjects, you know the hard stuff and creates new theorem, and discoveries etc. and not just one who studies various books. Thomas Young (1773-1829) had an autobiography written about him by an Andrew Robinson who claimed that Young was the ‘Last Man Who Knew Everything’. That may or may not be ordinally true, but know this; Einstein (1879-1955) is not regarded as a polymath because despite his genius he was fundamentally a physicist.
Great polymaths (science, maths, hard stuff) cannot exist today because the realm of science, maths and engineering by extension is so vast. It’s even impossible for one man to master everything in one engineering discipline. To discover something new in one field means you would already have swum across the whole seas of acquired knowledge, or oceans rather, and to do the same in another field would be humanly impossible, despite what some fantastical fictional storylines would have you believe. It is just incredibly time consuming. Acquired knowledge is like the Big Bang Theory itself. Knowledge had exploded, and to circumnavigate even 1/millionth percent of the outer edge of this ever expanding universe would be impossible. I could not help but to pleasantly ponder upon ancient times when if you were a scientist in your walled city, you possibly could procure the entire world’s knowledge single-handedly right there in your dusty little bookshelf.
Unless we evolve into some super brainy creature or genetically modify ourselves, all our acquired knowledge might implode on itself. Especially if there is an apocalyptic incident on the horizon. There simply aren’t enough people to sustain our highly specialised civilization which keeps getting more complex and divergent. So while it lasts, engineers, the proverbial keepers of the tech shall dutifully uphold and advance the mechanisms that drive our present lifestyles and future dreams. How’s that for a supporting argument?
I hope my cliff notes version of my insider perspective will be of some benefit to you. When choosing your career path, don’t choose engineering for the wrong reasons. Know what it is really like out there in the real world. Make an engineer friend. *I'm here*
