Do engineers work harder?

Last week, The New York Times stirred some controversy with an article called "Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace." Authors Jodi Kantor and David Streifeld interviewed hundreds of current and former Amazon.com employees and portrayed a callous, punishing organization that tramples its workforce underfoot in pursuit of profits. The article received hundreds of comments and online responses. Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon, even responded by sending his workforce a company-wide email in which he denied the NY Times claims and stated that he would not tolerate "callous" management practices.

The Amazon article isn't just talking about hard work, of course-- it's alleging that Amazon is guilty of all kinds of cruel treatment towards its employees, and it doesn't focus on engineers. But this got us to thinking: do engineers work harder than other people? Does the ability to solve complex technical problems mean that electronic engineers will always be called upon to work harder than those who lack such skills? Or is a person's capacity to work hard independent of his or her vocation?

What do you think? Cast your vote-- and be sure to click the "Submit" button so it counts!. You can also expand on your answer by adding a comment below.

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amk182 over 10 years ago

I don't really think of as work it's more fun
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DAB over 10 years ago in reply to amk182

You probably never pulled an all nighter making sure that the system worked before acceptance testing.

Trust me, it is work, not fun.

Managers and customers are not amused when they do not get their money's worth.

DAB
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jack.chaney56 over 10 years ago in reply to DAB

How about starting the compiler then heading to the back room to catch a cat-nap until it is done (days of old slow compilers/assemblers), or spending 3 days straight (not going home) trying to get your code to fit on a single, single sided 5 1/4" floppy, or looking up at the clock and noticing 10 hours have passed, and you hadn't gotten up from your workstation. (old video game development days)

Yet I still call it fun.
Jack
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amk182 over 10 years ago in reply to jack.chaney56

know how that was. I started to program with basic back in the 1980's. Game programming was much more fun then, but now it's a monster task to make a simple platform game.

yet I can't help but call it fun with all the hour's that pass
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DAB over 10 years ago in reply to jack.chaney56

I had one project in the late 1970's where I had to load a paper tape for my program on a ten character per second ASR33 teletype.
If everything worked right, it loaded in about 30 minutes, but that was a rare event, so it usually took two or three tries.

After I made any software changes, I had to make a new tape, another thirty minutes.

You young pups just do not know how good you have it today.

DAB
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jack.chaney56 over 10 years ago in reply to DAB

Or... Dropping a COBOL deck for payroll without sequence numbers.
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jack.chaney56 over 10 years ago in reply to DAB

Or... Dropping a COBOL deck for payroll without sequence numbers.
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