Why are Engineers so arrogant?
 

We've got a guy here in OT, a "systems engineer" (AND farmer!!) in PARF and good ol' sammy who I think is an engineer.

They all act crazy and think they know everything. What is up with that? It's only a 4 year degree.

At some schools it's closer to a 5 year degree...quite a few more credits required to graduate. I'm an engineering manager, and formerly was an R&D engineer and a systems engineer. I have a Masters degree in Engineering, too. Should I say something arrogant to perpetuate the stereotype you have embraced? Nah.

Also most likely to be terrorists: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/12/magazine/12FOB-IdeaLab-t.html?_r=0

Ever read Dilbert? Personally I think it's from lack of sex, we were busy studying while the crazy business majors were out partying. And mine was a five year major, so there.

Go get an engineering degree and you can answer your own question.

:-)

Good question. The first and last person I have blocked on Facebook is an engineer.
I have no time for arrogance, ignorance etc etc. If I want to witness this I go on Parf. Life is too short for ignorance etc but thanks for designing some great cars!

This does not mean that all engineers are insufferable fools. Just some....

Seems like a pretty arrogant question to me.

I work with engineers extensively and have somehow sired two of them.....

Their mindset is a perverse combination of personal aptitudes needed to be a good engineer (mathematical skills, high sense of the tangible, fact oriented etc) and the education. Engineering education starts from the place that if they don't do their job right, people die....and the engineer by virtue of their stamp is personally accountable. There is also a huge amount of bonding in engineering (read: rampant alcoholism and co-dependent relationships) and embarking on no end of mischief (in my son's case building a potato cannon capable of shooting several hundred metres and then assaulting the nearby military college with it).

Result of this perverse melange is a group of people who believe in their own god-like powers, who bond more tightly than a bunch of Muslims in a pork factory and who presume everyone else is "lesser".....otherwise they too would have become engineers.

Thankfully there are relatively few female engineers to mate with, otherwise the infestation of engineers would eventually overrun human kind. It also explains why female engineers become irresistible to male engineers at the age of consent and remain that way until about thirty minutes after their clinical death.

Longer if it's a warm day.

Dennis

Perhaps it's all the self-confidence that isn't projected in person crammed into an internet persona that then becomes over-confident.

I can personally vouch for this. An "at-work" 10 is probably a good solid 5 in the wild.

Your notions are a bit antiquated. There are more and more engineering women in the workplace. In my department, we're at about 40% women.

You are right about one thing, female engineers are irresistible. My wife is an engineer. :)

By the way, our offspring is an MD. :D

Good lord, this is true...

hahaha, well written, and exactly right on.

the only solution to turning in a test in which at no point did you understand any of the problems, and wrote down only crazyness that no one could follow for 45 mintues, is a whole 1.75 of vodka with friends who did exactly the same that afternoon.

female engineers are irresistible, but unfortunately, i typically find them too logical and rational. almost like the type of woman who is attracted to engineering, is that really really rational and logical one, to a fault.

obviously your millage my vary. that just my experience with them, i've dated 3.




and to the topic at hand, i got some good advice from an older engineer once, he said "to be a good engineer, you have to be the smartest guy in the room, but to be a great engineer, you have make sure no one knows that you are the smartest in the room."

I think we can end the thread now.:cool:

BTW, if you want to talk alcoholism, try working on a team comprised of engineers and fighter pilots. Good times......

engineers....pshaw.

You ever deal with a conductor? Think they are so special with their fancy hat and ticket punch.

And don't get me started on those lantern-swinging brakemen.

My undergraduate degrees were at an engineering school. While the lack of sex thing could be part of it (we had only 3 women in the freshman class, and none older, so I immediately walked north to hang out in the pre-med area...) I think a lot of it is that it is requires some talents that most people do not have. OTOH, musicians have the same thing, but are they arrogant?

and, BTW, try hanging out with a bunch of fighter pilots sometime

wow - a trifecta of simultaneity re musicians/fighter pilots! who engineered that?

I would think that engineers are hired for their engineering design ability and not personality. That is why you have salesmen selling Porsche cars. If you had an engineer selling Porsche cars the car would never leave the lot as he/she would be extolling the virtues of its design.

It takes all kinds.....:)

Your not a "Hog Head" are ya?