As per opinions shared by individuals on Quora as highlighted below are some of the reasons for the respect for Engineers in whater field of study:
@Jessica su
- Engineers are valuable to society. You spend your time building things that are useful to people (like bridges, highways, or Facebook). Most things around us were designed by engineers, so engineers have a very visible role in making the world a better place.
- Engineers are “harmless”; they receive much of the credit for building things, and very little of the blame when things go wrong. If some company releases an annoying feature, it is usually blamed on leadership, not on engineers.
- Engineers are smart and good at math.
- Engineers get paid a lot.
@Slack-Man stated
It really does not seem that way at times, when society seems to adore entertainers or sports stars more than anything else. On the other hand, the average income for both groups is half what an engineer makes, even when taking into account the few very successful individuals.
That said, most people respect engineers for a number of reasons.
First and foremost, their educations are extremely difficult (of course that is relative, as many will tell you that they blew through their math courses).
- I had to study, but I did survive!
- I personally knew people who failed out of engineering but ended up with other degrees (he was one of my former interns, and ended up with a degree in Environmental Science, but I suspect it was due to his laziness as opposed to his IQ)
Second, they create the value for the companies that they work for. Everything that is manufactured was designed by an engineer. Including the process that build it.
- Yes, the production workers have to build the product. Someone has to purchase the components, schedule the work, the & train the workers. Without them I’d just be a consultant.
- In one of my earlier projects, I was told that we have a potential client that wanted something we had never tried before. By then my boss must have known me well enough, because he added that he didn’t think it could be done. To me that was “challenge accepted.” That little project (that took me two weeks) ended up with a relationship with a customer that resulted in over $50 million in sales to date.
Third, they solve the hard problems. The majority of issues an organization faces often can be solved with some common sense, a knowledge of the process, and a few basic tools that most people can learn. But common sense will only take you so far, beyond that you need analytical thinking and various “tools” (control charts are often used in manufacturing).
A recent example, some of our managers were trying to solve a quality issue with one of our suppliers. It was impacting our customer, as production had been stopped, and we were sending all the components back. Why they contacted our supplier without involving engineering is beyond me, except I assume they thought the supplier was at fault, and they just need to apply some “pressure.”
- I reviewed the defects, and determined that damage was caused during shipping and could be solved by better packaging.
- Some of what we were defining as a defect was in fact not an issue, determined by actually asking our customer if our alleged “defect” was an issue. I sent two items overnight for them to review, and when they asked me what the problem was, you realize that perhaps we were rejecting good parts.
- I also created a simple hipot test to screen questionable parts, it completely eliminated “opinion” from the equation.
- All this was done within one working day. And once the above was implemented, we were able to resume production and within a few weeks got caught up with our delivery schedule.
I also found that the more blunt we are, the more respect we get!