Would you encourage your children to become Engineers?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.