In which I criticize the antiquated feelings of Ye Olde Mechanikal Engineer

In a Lawrence Journal World blog, Dave Klamet writes about changing trends in education, especially the increasing competitiveness of non-American engineering talent. And then we get a long-winded comment from Devobrun:

I am an engineering graduate from KU in the 70s and 80s. 3 degrees. After running two companies over a 25 year period of time, I quit. The engineering mind and the engineering way of approaching life and its troubles is not valued in post-modern America.
Engineers use math and physics to design, build and operate machines. The result is a thing, a substance, a physical reality. Young people don't value stuff. They value relationships. More and more those relationships are virtual. Actually doing something is hard. Simulating that something is easier and less likely to get yourself in trouble.

Doing things pollutes.
Building things can cause damage that leads to law suits.
Building stuff is so....old school.

There are no machine shops anymore. Nobody works at a factory anymore. There are no role models for kids to emulate. Manufacturing and engineering are done over seas. It is fun to watch machines in China build stuff, but we don't do that here anymore. So we just watch the work on "Modern Marvels" on TV.
The entrepreneur is expected to make zillions of dollars on some new social network scheme. Actually building something that might make a living is for suckers.
I now teach high school physics. On one hand, I inspire kids through my experience and enthusiasm for the material. On the other hand, they wonder why I now teach instead of being an engineer. The answer is that I love the kids and I have the money already......but I avoid telling them that there are very few jobs for engineers today. Most of those jobs are related to building games, or some unproductive environmental cleanup that really doesn't need to be done anyway.
Finally, the engineer used to be the person who advanced through a company to CEO. The rational, organized mind was valuable in making tough decisions about corporate actions. Today that job is done by people who come from psychology or marketing, or other mind manipulation backgrounds. Companies exist to build cultures. When there is no product to build, you build cultures. The office is all about managing people and their relationships. The engineering mind is far too rational and demanding for this new virtual existence.
Read: "Shop Class as Soulcraft" by Matthew B. Crawford for an erudite explanation of the loss of physical connectedness that exists in our world today.

Now, as you can see I have already replied to Devobrun in the comments. I won't repeat it here. Rather, I want to suggest that engineers who read this blog understand that you can love the past without staying in it. One of TAE's great loves is using the mill and lathe in the machine shop here at work. There is something wonderful about using your hands to "create." But I also live in a modern, post-industrial country, where dangerous work can be outsourced to other nations quite easily, thanks to the internet, which frees up American labor resources for better quality, safer work.

The snowclones of Devobrun sound like many an old mechanical engineer, lamenting the death of the old factory engineer. Whereas the mechanical engineers of old sat at the pinnacle of Industrial AMerica, iIncreasingly, the job of the mechanical engineer is dependent upon the labors and intelligence of electrical and computer engineers. Of course the Modern Age is a hostile one! In my own projects, as a mechanical engineer, product design is almost totally driven by the real estate needs of the electrical engineer. Further, my devices are exquisite paperweights if not for the programming provided by the software engineers.

Devobrun complains of the death of the machine shop. I, however, see the machine shop as a perfect example of evolution in engineering. The old lathe was entirely mechanical. It had no brain, simply a motor and clever gearing to enable various speeds and actions. Modern 3-axis CNC lathes can be programmed remotely, or simply given a 3D model of a part, and autonomously cut and carve that part with sub-micron precision, all while the operator eats a sandwich in the breakroom. Should the machine catastrophically fail, and throw hot metal parts at nearly the speed of sound in every direction...humans are nowhere near the blast. Tell me how this is a bad thing?
Further, these parts can be done in a fraction of the time, because the machine can quickly change its own tools, it can quickly and effectively plan the shortest route to the finished part, and it can easily make multiple copies of a part if so desired. Tell me how this is a bad thing?
Further, company efficiency is increased even more by the fact that design iterations can happen faster. If I send a part down to the machinist at the end of the day, were it 50 years ago he would then get started the next day, and if he could finish it in one day, I'd get it on the morning of the third day. Now, I can send a part to the CNC lathe at the end of the day and the part will be cut overnight, and be ready for me in the morning. I have essentially cut my design time in half.

Look, to use my own snowclone, I don't want to see good jobs disappear overseas. But the honest truth is that the total number of engineers in America is growing, not shrinking, as more and more product is manufactured overseas. The fact is that the US economy is actually strengthened by exporting labor, and importing intellectual property. Suggesting otherwise just makes you sound...crotchety.
And the most important fact is that the world will always change. Change with it...or go extinct.


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