Are all engineers the same?

The world of engineering is vast.  Engineers come in all shapes and sizes, and sometimes without formal engineering backgrounds.  Requirements vary country by country, making international trade interesting for the profession.  What’s compliant in Germany may not pass muster in the USA and vice versa.  In this article I’ll discuss what the major types of engineers are, commonalities, specialties, cross pollination, and evaluation of what makes a “good” engineer.

Traditional Engineering

Engineers have been around as long as there have been monuments and infrastructure.  Some ancient feats of engineering continue to puzzle modern day historians.  Look no further than the pyramids of Egypt, Roman aqueducts, or the Great Wall in China.  In the USA, the modern profession took shape starting in 1852 with the formation of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), although there was certainly an engineering community existing to have formed the society.  My own alma-matter, Georgia Institute of Technology , was founded in 1885.  Engineering began with a focus on infrastructure and buildings.  As the needs of the industry evolved, other professional disciplines were added, such as mechanical engineering and electrical engineering.  Specialty engineering began to splinter off this core, including automotive engineering, aerospace, computers, and fire protection.   More recently, engineering has become synonymous with computer science, where most programmers or developers are considered software engineers.  In traditional engineering, an engineer will attend a 4-5 year technical college before entering the profession in an apprenticeship model, where junior engineers train under an engineer of record (EOR).

Professional vs Trade Specific

The term Professional Engineer, or PE, is used to designate an engineer that has been recognized by a state be able to lawfully practice in the discipline of engineering.  PE’s have multiple requirements, including education, experience, standardized tests, and peer endorsement.  A PE designation will come with a state awarded license and a stamp used to certify designs and calculations.  Look at the end of my name and you’ll see the designation “PE” attached.  Trade specific engineers may possess the same skills, however  they operate in a space that is not recognized by state licensing bodies.  Engineers at NASA and SpaceX are much less likely to be state recognized, however their expertise in propulsion, structures, and aerodynamics is the best in the industry.  To professionally practice engineering, continuing education and special insurances are required.

Commonalities

Engineers are bound by a code of ethics, requiring integrity and public safety to be at the forefront of their decision making process.  Engineers all possess the ability to self-perform designs and calculations or to manage teams of discipline experts that can implement the design concepts.  All engineers should operate in an ownership mentality, that they own the consequences for the designs and decisions they make.  Finally, engineers should operate on a “see something, say something” mentality, such that if they witness or suspect unsafe work of others it is incumbent on them to say something and seek the issue to be rectified or defended.  This mentality necessitates 3rd party inspections and peer reviews.  Engineering opinions are like that of a medical doctor – often best understood after a 2nd opinion.  In engineering, iron sharpens iron.

Specialties

Every engineer has one or more specialty, but all engineers have a specialty.  In the modern world, that is a mix of infrastructure, mechanics, and digital technologies the specialties are too vast to list in this article.  However nearly every major industry in the world requires specialty engineers that have unique understanding of the product, materials of design, and business objectives.  For example, take the engineer that designs ketchup producing machines, it would be an easy transfer for them to start producing salad dressing production machines.  The learning curve would be anywhere from several months to become functional to 2 years to become an expert.  However, the same engineer would likely take 5+ years to become a self functioning petroleum or refining engineer.  Specialties in engineer are analogous to law or medicine – to become great an engineer must choose a specialty and commit to learning the details and nuance of a particular industry.  In the growing

Cross Functionality and Cross Pollination

The modern engineering team must be cross functional.  Mechanics, electronics, safety, structures, software, sensing, and user interfaces exist on nearly every modern product.  I often marvel at the engineering in my Sonos, Inc. sound system.  The project may have started with an audio engineer, but the industrial design is nearly equally important.  The same product communicates over WiFi and Bluetooth, creates a mesh network, and integrates with every music app and my iPhone.  What did this engineering team look like? Cross functional, with the engineers of different specialties using their individual expertise to cross-pollenate the design into a robust and amazing product.  Products like this are a true marvel of engineering… and they surround us in our everyday lives.

Good Engineers

Not all engineers are “A” players, and you don’t want them to be.  I’d argue there is no room on the team for “C” level engineers.  What are “B” level engineers?  They perform most of the production work and are generally non-creative.  Withing a paradigm or specialty they can be efficient and often populate 60% or more of an engineering team.  They are compliance driven and usually err on the side of caution, favoring robust factors of safety to ensure nothing goes wrong.  American engineering has the reputation globally for being over-engineered.  That’s not a bad thing, it leads to safety and robustness.  The A players usually lead team specialties, such as lead structural engineer, lead software engineer; or they lead the team overall, which is usually called the principal engineer.  On a personal level, that’s a title I usually take on teams, since I prefer to manage across disciplines and recruit new expertise to the team when the needs arise.

Conclusion

Engineering makes the world go round.  Well, gravity makes the world go round, but everything in the world that gets built or moves requires engineers.  As we think about our future as a nation we should also think about the investments we put into raising up the next generation of great engineers.  That’s one reason you see so much emphasis going into STEAM programs (science, technology, engineering, arts, and math).  I predict that the engineering community will need to expand as a percentage of population.  As we continue to add more specialties and as our built environment becomes more complex, we’ll need the engineering to get it built.

I do not believe it matters what school an engineer goes to - great engineers can come from anywhere. Schools can be used as a proxy for intelligence and motivation, however don't fall into the trap of believing good engineers only come from good schools.

To do my part, I serve on the Davis College of Business and Technology advisory board, collaborate with Northwestern University Invo program, perform research at Georgia Tech Research Institute , and work with the leadership of FAMU-FSU College of Engineering . I also hire, mentor, and train young engineers in the Robotics and Professional Engineering trades. There are 3 little ones in my house, my hope is that at least one of them follows this path.