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?

If you were an engineer you would realize that you havent collected enough data to suport your hypothesis.

n = 20 for a minimum of statistical significance

alfa = .05

is that dr stranglove in your avatar and is your username at all related to the finest rube goldberg inspired paintball marker ever made?

Then there are the hierarchies within engineering - also observed elsewhere in OT today. Among my peers at school it seemed like the chemical engineering students were pretty sure they were on top.

Of course I'm above all of that nonsense. I'm a metallurgist.

(heh)

Bah!

all of those observations are correct :)

Amen brother. Daughter is a chemical engineer, son is a chemical engineer and engineering chemist (dual degree).

They KNOW they rule the universe. Daughter will take over the world some day...I am staying on her good side just to be safe...

Dennis

the hyarchy we agreed on at our last super secret meeting:

1. mechanical engineers
1a. aerospace engineers
2. electrical engineers (hardware)
3. chemical engineers
4. civil engineers
4b. environmental engineers
.
.
.
.
.
.
99. janitors (sanitation engineers)
100. software engineers

My wife has an IE degree from ASU. 5 years. She didn't party much, but had plenty of sex. I made sure of that.SmileWavy

Have you considered that the first statement might be true; that in comparison to most people they do know almost everything?

A doctor also has a four year degree. A lawyer has a three year degree....most people have a no year degree.

But the shocking part of your hypothesis is that you judge engineers as a group based on your observations in PARF. You could also look at astronauts and draw a different conclusion.

You must be talking about me...be brave next time and just say who you are talking about. I won't complain, never do.

I have a MS in Systems Engineering. Two undergraduate degrees.

It means nothing. What I do know is my Bravo Sierra sensor is highly tuned, so I can say with global warming accuracy that you are full of it.

bwahahahaha

What is your point of reference here? Do you have a similar degree?

Forget you being a lowly systems engineer farmer, I'm more concerned about the helicopter pilot thing. Unholy overly complicated death traps with no wings! How can you fly with no wings?!

The more an engineer knows the more they realize they don't know.

The most experienced engineers will provide an assessment/analysis based on observables and available data. Rarely will you get a definitive answer, unless the question posed has a very obvious outcome. Even then, project management will usually receive the answer in the form of a risk assessment. At that point management will need to weigh technical, schedule and cost risks to choose the path forward.

Less experienced (younger engineers) are more prone to acting like they know it all, and usually need some humbling experiences to realize how little any one person knows about complex issues with many variables.

(mind you, this is the typing of a cockerpunk 1a with 35 years in the industry)

I trusted the aerospace and mech engineers:cool:

While overly complicated, they can take you places in the air that make the whole death trap thing palatable.

Aschen - "If you were an engineer you would realize that you havent collected enough data to suport your hypothesis."

Exactly the kind of smartass arrogance that turned me off to engineering. No matter what you say, you are wrong. If three engineers get together and someone asks what time it is:
One will give you the time
One will tell you he's wrong
One will spend an hour telling you how to build a clock
In the end, you still don't have any idea what time it is, except you wasted an hour by asking engineers.

CP - "the hyarchy we agreed on at our last super secret meeting:

1. mechanical engineers
1a. aerospace engineers "

Thanks CP! I left my job as a mechanical engineer at Delco Moraine (when it was still part of GM) and went to work as a rocket scientist for the University of Dayton Research Institute.

We are not arrogant, we just happen to be smarter than everyone else.

Just kidding, I am an Engineer and not the least bit arrogant. I happen to be a very extroverted person however.

I think the arrogant Engineers are making up for there social awkwardness and insecurities. Same as every other arrogant person out there.

Just my two cents.

My father always use to say to me the most intelligent man out there can learn something from the least intelligent man.

Uh oh! Both examples are after a 4 year undergrad degree!


BTW - the hierarchies within engineering change over time. During the era of massive public works projects in the US and IIRC elsewhere, Civil engineers were looked up to. Then they became piffle. Now, that infrastructure is need of replacement and env'l concerns are also creating a need for different massive projects, so civil is on the upswing again (not in PRAF tho).

In fact, a friend's daughter just got into Berkeley for a civil eng. program and they are all overjoyed. Of course, she is just a lowly radiation oncologist with one of those 4 years degrees (from Stanford - does that help? -- she was at USC but transferred, so she must be smart, right?).