View Poll Results: Are you an engineer, or is your job in some other discipline?

I'm an engineer / studying to be one / retired from being one / something similar

52.63%

I do something else for a living

47.37%

Voters: 133. You may not vote on this poll

Are you an engineer, or are you something else?

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May 27, 2008 | 03:24 PM

#51

jackalope

Registered User

Joined: Sep 2004

Posts: 1,351

Likes: 0

From: Brazoria

I'm a Production Technician for BASF, but I kinda fell into it. I did go to school for BioChemistry for awhile.

I think if I didn't suck s hard at chemistry, I'd go back to school for a chemical engineering degree....I really love learning about the science behind alot of the products we make, but I have a hard time dong to the class work

May 27, 2008 | 04:22 PM

#52

Chris Stack

Joined: Sep 2005

Posts: 3,668

Likes: 20

From: Arlington Heights, IL

Quote:

Originally Posted by ace123,May 27 2008, 04:40 PM

My cousin is a CPA. Interesting field. I thought it was all crunching numbers until I talked to him. Sounds like CPAs effort goes into figuring out how to best allocate money to reduce taxes--one big optimization problem. On a high level, that really sounds a lot like my career in aerospace structural design. Our designs have to carry a given load with the least amount of material by moving things around. You have to handle a given income with the least tax burden by moving things around.

In both fields--certainly in mine--I'd bet what makes a good worker is making good assumptions before you start--simplifying the real system into the best idealized (structural or tax) model. Then it becomes simple optimization, unless you were wrong or forgot something.

That's more of a public accountant. I'm corporate. My job is best described as IT crossed with a plumber. Yeah, a plumber. Basically, a whole bunch of systems feed into each other, moving charges and money around, and I sit at the intersection of all of them, making sure everything gets where it needs to go, removing clogs, etc.