<VV> RE: Interesting Article ...NOW Engineer (no Corvair)

[N. Joseph Potts]

One of the most-attractive aspects of an engineering career to me (for young
Americans) is that it provides a path for avoiding the draft. (Male) friends
of mine in the Viet Nam era fought that war in the US, making plenty of
money. Some of them thought "Viet Nam" was a customer . . . and they were
right. Of course, you have to get into some sort of defense-related
industry, but the scope of that standard seems to be growing like the
federal budget.

Joe Potts
Selective Service #8 47 44 230
Miami, Florida USA

-----Original Message-----
From: virtualvairs-bounces at corvair.org
[mailto:virtualvairs-bounces at corvair.org]On Behalf Of Dennis & Debbie
Pleau
Sent: Thursday, September 22, 2005 10:33 PM
To: Roger Gault; Corvair List
Subject: Re: <VV> RE: Interesting Article ...NOW Engineer (no Corvair)


As a senior engineering tech with 25 years experience, I echo every thing
Roger says.  First I divide the engineers I work with into two camps,
people who love engineering and people who went into engineering because
they are good in math.  I'm much closer to the first group, and I flunked
out of engineering school  because I wasn't good in math.  The engineers
who are engineers because they are good in math are the whiniest, people
you will ever meet, the engineers who love engineering only whine about all
the meetings they have to addend which take away from the time they can be
improving something.  An example, is we are currently running internal
samples of the next generation WiMax chips, all engineering is on call
(within pager range or have a documented backup)  24 hours a day 2/3 of the
engineers don't have a problem with this, and the other 1/3 are whining up
a storm as usual.  I volunteered to be on call even though I'm no longer in
process engineering.  This could be a billion $ product for the company.

Engineers who love engineering are a joy to work with, the other side of
the discipline suck.  The main reason I'm changing jobs this week is to get
away from working for the most whiny engineer/manager and start working for
the most technically competent engineer/managers within the company.

When I joined this company a lot of years ago every engineer I worked with
was in the love engineering camp, it is now down to 2/3 in that camp and
getting lower every day

Dennis