“We live in an engineered world. Every second of each day is mediated by some product created by a team of engineers. Your clothes are made on machines that are astonishing to watch in action. A humming infrastructure feeds power, water, and data into our homes. No matter what sort of transportation we use, from the bicycle to spaceship, it is the product of an obscure group of engineers. This Christmas season electronics flew off the shelves. How many teenagers ever stop to think about the design efforts poured into that iPod or Wii?” [Embedded.com via]
7 Comments
robmcbell
You are welcome.
-engineer (in training!!)
Ian Anderson
oh well.. *sigh*
Steve M
Engineers, those wonderful people for whom “the glass is neither half empty or half full, simply the wrong sized glass”. Best wishes to all engineers.
blog.3dbloke.com/
Hear, hear! I’m not a qualified as one, but I’ve always felt I am an engineer at heart. Great respect and thanks for so many “ordinary” items we all take for granted.
I don’t know about the States, but here in the UK the term “engineer” has become devalued through incorrect use. Too often I hear someone say something like “I’ve have called out an engineer to fix my heating boiler”, when they have actually called out a technician. It’s not just the public, even the maintenance companies sending the technician will refer to him/her as an “engineer”. Makes me sad, to think that great (and not so great) engineers are now put in the same group as mere technicians.
Luther
Engineers–cheap commodity.
http://www.ieeeusa.org/policy/POLICY/2002/12nov02.pdf
“New Economy Workforce Utilization Practices Are Putting American Engineers at Risk
One of IEEE-USA’s principal concerns is that recent increases in engineering unemployment
may not be a short term, cyclical phenomenon, but the result of a much more fundamental
structural change in engineering utilization that could have a long-term negative impact on our
nation’s security and economy. We are apprehensive that current engineering workforce
management practices are driven by cost savings that shorten the careers of U.S. engineers,
while increasing our nation’s reliance on temporary foreign workers, short-term contract
employees (perma-temps), and the exportation of engineering work to lower cost, off-shore
locations. The corporate mantra seems to have become more, better, faster, cheaper; and when it
comes to workers, more is always better and cheaper is best.
These changing labor practices make engineering jobs less secure and careers more tenuous than
ever. U.S. engineers – new graduates, middle age and older professionals – are having a harder
and harder time getting and keeping jobs in an economy in which technologists are treated as a
disposable commodity.
snyderxc
Agreed, as a teen myself, I can vouch for the fact that almost no teens can appreciate the hard work. Additionally, very few can appreciate openness. (Darn iPhone) Thank you to all the engineers that make our lives better!
Kelly Abbott
I find it hard to *not* see Design (with a capital D) in the Wii and iPod. They are designed in such a way where design is noticeably minimalist. Regardless, the sentiment of this quote is spot on. Thanks for sharing.