Would you encourage your children to become Engineers?

Alas, I encouraged my kids to pursue jobs they thought they would enjoy.  The one who took childcare classes sells insurance.  The degreed teacher did childcare and now leads a team of hospital support staff.  The degreed IT one load trucks for FedEx.  None of them are where they thought they would be when they were 18.

Absolutely encourage them to be Engineers!  Also encourage them to work in the trades.  There is great honor in building and fixing things.  I'm WAY more directively encouraging with my grandkids.

I would encourage them to be Engineers, but most of the time in their teenage age they’ve already getting familiar with their dreams and goals in life. So, it’s a matter of convincing them to confidently steer towards the thought you have for them. Personally, if I can win their hearts I think they’ll come thru as long as they found the enormous passion and success in Engineering. 

Very good points and something I have also noticed--engineering professionals typically seem to be a particular amount of risk-averse/risk-taking. Too much risk aversion can be just as detrimental as the opposite.

I have a one year old daughter, so this is something I think about lately. As much as I would like her to pursue an engineering career, I don't want to push her towards anything. Rather, I want to expose her to a variety of fields in her school years and let her choose whatever she finds her passion in. This is what my parents did, and all of us siblings knew what they wanted to do much before we had to decide. I have seen many people finishing school not knowing what interests them. I always felt they had not been exposed to enough variety of things to find their calling. I could be wrong but that's what I still believe. 

Personally, I wanted to be a fighter pilot since I was small,..until I got medically unfit 3 years into the airforce academy. I felt devastated for 2-3 months, but then I quickly realized I loved to build things. Engineering it was. And I've never regretted it to this day!

You might be right about the decision-making issue.

I have seen some very smart people totally paralyzed when it came to making a decision.

I tried to teach them the process for letting data drive the decision, but they just could not face the prospect of being wrong.

I learned a long time ago that it was better to make a quick decision and then adjust when you got better data.

Mistakes are how you gain experience and experience helps you make better decisions quickly.

Indecision costs time and for a project on a budget, time is priceless.

robogary said:

My daughter didn't appreciate engineering either, went into nursing

I see that as almost biological engineering :D

DAB said:

I have seen a lot of students take the classes and some of them do fine with the school work problems, but when they started real work, they found that they just did not have the intuitive insight needed to be a good engineer

I suspect it's the difficulty of teaching self-reliance and deductive reasoning, or as some people call it, critical thinking.

A lot of establishments are very good at teaching the ability to consume information and relay that on demand, but there are very few assessments in ways of teaching and assessing critical thinking to apply and understand what they've read.

It's possible that experiences outside of academia or training have forced them to learn this skill.

Sometimes it's associated with not being afraid to make a mistake, and even suggesting this opens it up to an entire line of conversation over 'play' and culturing a 'safe environment' to make mistakes and learn from them to be comfortable with critical thinking.

I'd agree that steering your kids is pointless. I encourage them in anything I can and see where that takes them.I'll show them how to code, use power tools, etc. If I make sure there's nothing in their way and that they have the opportunity, then the rest is up to them.

My boys are 11 and 9 and already their interests are surprising me. The one I felt was more techie is into English and the more boysterous one is developing a real flair for maths. That may well change, of course.

Yes - I encouraged all my kids to be an engineer, be a badass like dad and mom (yes both are EEs) , it was an no brainer. Regardless of their final destination in life, all my kids naturally can wire houses, do auto maintenance, use DVMs and troubleshoot equipment, and are masters with electrical tape & duct tape.

The kids were rebellious tho about being engineers professionally. No way. No how.

2 sons did end up engineers on their own volition.

My 3rd son studied communications (as a user) and is a sports media director for a local university. He does have the coolest job tho of all the kids, hob-knobbing with famous college athletes and coaches and is occasionally on the TV during away games. Home games -> the director is in the control room. He has an advantage over others that he likes work on the equipment.

My daughter didn't appreciate engineering either, went into nursing. She beat us all - nursing is really a lucrative field right now. She is better on house maintenance than her hubby. 

I have a 4 year old grandson that is registered in my Early Engineer Training Program with a plastic gear set & legos. He loves my robots. It wont hurt my feelings if he would choose another vocation path, because his youth engineer training will last a lifetime.                

Having worked with many students over the years I have come to the conclusion that engineers are born, not made.

I say that because there are specific personality traits that make a good engineer.

You cannot teach those traits.

I have seen a lot of students take the classes and some of them do fine with the school work problems, but when they started real work, they found that they just did not have the intuitive insight needed to be a good engineer. I steered many of those people into management. They had enough understanding of engineering principles to help manage those people who did the actual engineering work.

So if I see someone with the right traits for engineering, I encourage them to take up the task of becoming an engineer.

Otherwise, I try to see what aptitude the person has and work with them to find the right profession for their personality.