One in five 'must become an engineer' (Telegraph)

Yeah, I think a good engineering education actually teaches you how to find answers, rather than just teaching you the actual answers. Lots of engineers are also naturally inquisitive.
Consequently you get a type of person who likes finding out how things (be they mechanisms, codes, whatever...) work.

 

engineering makes people use their logic. They want to logically think about everything, and not just accept an answer for it. Good engineering education teaches you how to find answers. Exceptional engineering education teaches you how to ask proper questions and then find their answers.

Its also applicable in private life. Things always have to fall in place, every piece of puzzle must fit perfectly or an engineer cant sleep :3

 

I think we do not need more engineers, I think we need more good engineers.

When I worked as a team leader, I needed to find good engineers. This is a huge problem, 2 times a week I conducted interviews with 10-12 candidates. To find one decent engineer I had to conduct not only 80-100 interviews, and it was not a professional, it was a person who at least knew a little about engineering. This is just a monstrous situation. 90% of engineers in Russia are office plankton who can push the buttons and no longer capable of anything. They do not understand anything in engineering but consider themselves to be professionals. The worst thing about this situation is that they don’t even want to learn.

Yes, these people design airplanes, many of them worked in companies that design components for Airbus and Boeing.

We need more engineers who are able to create and not office plankton. It is better to let every 15 or 20 people be an engineer, but the number of good engineers will be more than 2 times, then we will achieve much more.

One good engineer is much more valuable than 100 office plankton.

I think the problem begins in the university, young people go to study in order not to go into the army immediately after school. They idle around for 5-6 years at the university and then those few of them who decide to start an engineer career face the problem of lack of money. Companies that are ready to take them to work and in which they could gain experience and knowledge pay very little (400-600$ / month) Companies that pay more or do not hire engineers without good experience or in such companies it is impossible to learn and develop as a professional. In fact, a person faces the choice of a beggar’s life, working for food for the next 5 years or working where he cannot learn anything, but for big money and subsequently join the ranks of useless office plankton.

Most recently, one of these engineers brought me blueprints in which he wanted to weld a stainless steel pipe to a duralumin casing with a bearing installed in it, and that without counting other errors. This person has 4 years of experience as an engineer =). I spent 20 minutes trying to explain to him how to do it, but I feel that he didn’t understand anything, we’ll see the result in a week).

I think exceptional engineering education teaches where to find the right answers to any questions. The engineer must not know everything; he must absolutely know exactly where the correct answer, the solution, is.

I think an exceptional engineering education is impossible to get from the university; this only comes with experience.

I was a good student and learned a lot at the university, but if you now ask me a question: Was I a good engineer 8 years ago? I will no doubt answer: No.

 

Yes, I completely agree. You see it repeated everywhere and you hear it all throughout university but you don't actually start learning until you're working in the 'real world'.

I was lucky in that my university course had two years of study, then one year of work in industry, then one final year of study. That definitely helped me to understand things in a real-world context but like you mention I knew a laughably small amount when I graduated from university!

I sometimes wonder what my first bosses were thinking when I showed them some really stupid errors. But I suppose everyone makes mistakes - it's how you deal with those and learn from them that matters.

 

That is exactly why experience is more important in this industry if you are looking for a job more than years studied. Because they know hands on learning is the only way to know if you are making something the right way or you are just making something that is not manufacturable.

But then again the university is an important part of it because otherwise we wouldn’t know what is wrong even when some one point out the mistake to us.

But I was just wondering, for students who work the last year during their education. What if you don’t get the right company or position in the first place? Can you change it through the year? Or can you change into another department if you decide its not the department you want to work in?

How does this work?

 

Yeah, lots of people I studied with couldn't find good jobs. Some of them just took crappy jobs (they didn't care, it was just a tick in the box), some just carried on into their Final Year with no year out, and the university helped quite a few find jobs.

I guess you could switch in the middle of the year - it probably works on a very case-by-case basis. It's also an easy way for the university to get fees (you still pay, even though you're not there!) so they try to encourage it for that too (although it is really valuable for post-graduation employment rates too).