[sean_V8_914]

these discussions have been enjoyable reading for me. Even though it got ugly, the info was interesting. My R&D experience confirms Brads summary of the relationships between each developmental element. It is interesting to see the dividing lines get blurred as a developement team gets deeper into a project, Engineers assembling parts, techs designing modifications and scientists wrenching on machines to meet project deadlines. Next thign ya know, we are all eating pizza at 3am discussing the physics behind why the widget failed for teh 55th time but worked 100 times before that.

Lapuwali also brought up a good point. I worked with an amazing engineer/scientist. he had a sign on teh wall that said something about removing the ego from engineering. Although he said he beleived this, he was not successful in living by it. I think ego enters into these things because of the large personal investemnt we feel we pay to achieve progress