Engineers/Engineering

Haven't read the whole thread but just wanna mention how engineers are thought of in my country Cyprus.

1st) Whoever listens to the fact that i'm studying Engineering says: "why didn't you go at a garage or something?"
2nd) The pay is less than half of what you get in the UK while the cost of living is about the same if not more.
3rd) I'm currently in my 3rd year studying Mech. Eng. and when I get my degree I will not be able to work in my country as an engineer simply because three year degrees are considered incomplete and you cannot register to a professional body.

My point? Stop complaining about pay, recognition etc. I find that the UK is amongst the best countries to be for engineers.

P.S. A friend of my cousin's was working in the UK and found an ad from a Cypriot company asking for engineers with a 50,000euro pay per year, whereas if you called to the offices from Cyprus, they wouldn't even say they were looking for someone for a job opening. This shows that the 4 year degrees taught in the various "Universities" are not better than the 3 year degrees over here, bad worse, and this shows how bad the infrastructure is for finding jobs.
 
Something that winds me up more are those pretentious bunch of hipster web designers calling themselves:
Web architect
Back-end development architect
GUI architect
User experience architect

'I am a passionate user experience architect, I design wonderful W3C standard sites and love my clients'

Bull**** you copy 'web 2.0' design trends, use fancy fonts you found in a catalogue and use a stylesheet to put it together. NOT an architect in anyway shape or form.
 
shifty_uk said:
Something that winds me up more are those pretentious bunch of hipster web designers calling themselves:
Web architect
Back-end development architect
GUI architect
User experience architect

'I am a passionate user experience architect, I design wonderful W3C standard sites and love my clients'

Bull**** you copy 'web 2.0' design trends, use fancy fonts you found in a catalogue and use a stylesheet to put it together. NOT an architect in anyway shape or form.
Click to expand...

The architect stuff came from enterprise software devs as in the guy who designs high level object structure, not web designers but monkey see, monkey doo.
 
I work in a large engineering company. The coffee machine in our area is currently broken. The contractor who supplies it has put a notice on it "Out Of Order - Engineer Called". I feel a post-it may be used to annotate that notice...

If the title is allowed to be used like that in an engineering company, I don't hold out much hope for getting the message out to the public!
 
sldsmkd said:
The distinction really is a developer writes small pieces of code (functions / objects) with defined inputs and outputs to spec - it's equivalent to a technician. An engineer designs and oversees complex systems comprised of a multitude of objects / components. The distinction is clearer in operations where you have operators and admins performing the technician work and systems engineers and architects performing the engineering work. Software is a bit fuzzier, but it's usually a lead developer or architect doing the engineering work.
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I know but many software engineers develop a lot of code as well as designing larger code structures, which is different to most field of engineering where the engineers don't do any implementation work but may oversee the operation.
 
D.P. said:
I know but many software engineers develop a lot of code as well as designing larger code structures, which is different to most field of engineering where the engineers don't do any implementation work but may oversee the operation.
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I read a description (think it was by Uncle Bob Martin) that I think makes a lot of sense.
Engineers produce designs for things, but not the actual products.
In software the code can be thought of the design and the product is the artefact(s) produced by the compiler rather than the code being the product.

Obviously in the physical world we don't have compilers to simply make a physical object from a design, but the developer is the one who produces the design, i.e. the code, in software development similar to how an engineer may produce a design for a car engine, which could then be manufactured into multiple products.
 
M1k3H said:
Haven't read the whole thread but just wanna mention how engineers are thought of in my country Cyprus.

1st) Whoever listens to the fact that i'm studying Engineering says: "why didn't you go at a garage or something?"
2nd) The pay is less than half of what you get in the UK while the cost of living is about the same if not more.
3rd) I'm currently in my 3rd year studying Mech. Eng. and when I get my degree I will not be able to work in my country as an engineer simply because three year degrees are considered incomplete and you cannot register to a professional body.

My point? Stop complaining about pay, recognition etc. I find that the UK is amongst the best countries to be for engineers.

P.S. A friend of my cousin's was working in the UK and found an ad from a Cypriot company asking for engineers with a 50,000euro pay per year, whereas if you called to the offices from Cyprus, they wouldn't even say they were looking for someone for a job opening. This shows that the 4 year degrees taught in the various "Universities" are not better than the 3 year degrees over here, bad worse, and this shows how bad the infrastructure is for finding jobs.
Click to expand...

Sorry but what you are saying is that the engineering companies in Cyprus prefer engineers from the UK over Cypriots, not that they don't recognise the qualifications, just that they don't want cypriots working for them.

Different kettle of fish.

KaHn
 
KaHn said:
Sorry but what you are saying is that the engineering companies in Cyprus prefer engineers from the UK over Cypriots, not that they don't recognise the qualifications, just that they don't want cypriots working for them.

Different kettle of fish.

KaHn
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No, the guy is cypriot, they were just looking for someone who studied in the UK.
 
I do call myself an Engineer. I have a B.Eng with honours. I develop these:
systemsstoragediskstorw.jpg


That counts right?

Also, design is a very small part of engineering, even if it is the job that most engineers have in common. I design testing some of the time, but level 3 support (they're usually developers/testers doing support) don't get as much call to design stuff.
 
KaHn said:
So then its your universities.

KaHn
Click to expand...

I know.... but the professional body in Cyprus does not recognise UK 3 year degrees while it recognises the equivalent degree from Cy "Unis" because its 4 years (and this does not mean that they are taught more stuff, I could have 100/100 without reading there), though proving my point that there are worse places to be!
 
BigglesPiP said:
I do call myself an Engineer. I have a B.Eng with honours. I develop these:
http://img16.imageshack.us/img16/3024/systemsstoragediskstorw.jpg[img]

That counts right?

Also, design is a very small part of engineering, even if it is the job that most engineers have in common. I design testing some of the time, but level 3 support (they're usually developers/testers doing support) don't get as much call to design stuff.[/QUOTE]

You develop luncheon meat dicers?
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M1k3H said:
I know.... but the professional body in Cyprus does not recognise UK 3 year degrees while it recognises the equivalent degree from Cy "Unis" because its 4 years (and this does not mean that they are taught more stuff, I could have 100/100 without reading there), though proving my point that there are worse places to be!
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You have to have a four-year degree (or three-year with a topup) to receive chartered accreditation from the Institutes here as well. This is the case with IChemE; I presume it's the case with the other institutes as well.
 
[TW]Fox;20462312 said:
I am not an engineer and never will be yet I care.

A proper engineer is A highly skilled occupation. Engineers design things. Engineering is hard. Not everyone can do it.

Fixing a pc is not engineering. Connecting telephone cables and installing virgin media is Not engineering.

If you don't qualify for chartered status then in my opinion you are not an engineer.

You are right that most don't care and this is A crying shame. People should care. We should respect engineers not dilute them by pretending technicians and fitters are the same.
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Agreed entirely.

Furthermore, in Germany I believe, people use the title "Engineer" instead of Mr or in the same way doctors have "Dr" as it's a revered title.
 
Freefaller said:
Agreed entirely.

Furthermore, in Germany I believe, people use the title "Engineer" instead of Mr or in the same way doctors have "Dr" as it's a revered title.
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What happens to German engineer's who also have a PhD? Do we call him Dr. Engineer Hans? :D
 
Dave said:
You have to have a four-year degree (or three-year with a topup) to receive chartered accreditation from the Institutes here as well. This is the case with IChemE; I presume it's the case with the other institutes as well.
Click to expand...

That's not what they told us when IET came to the uni :/
Anyway I wouldn't mind if the 4 year degrees they recognised were more credited in the engineering side, but all they do is study what I did in 1st year and maybe some of the second and then cover the credits with Modern Greek and High School math, which is unfair to us regularly studying here in the UK, while they get credits for lessons they did 5 years ago and get scholarships from the government with their high grades.
Example is in a lesson they were learning how to use MS word while drawing flowers and houses in MS word, and this goes towards credits which is b******t!
 
I am technically / academically, an engineer, although not chartered as doing so would be a right pain at the moment. If I was to work in my chosen academic field, financially I'd be very well off, but getting into those jobs was always going to be a challenge. Instead, I just consult. However, none of my consulting relates to my actual degree in any shape or form.
 
alx said:
I'll check with my Mum about this, have a feeling it's true!
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IT's just something I picked up whilst I used to work there - I may have been misinformed or misunderstood.

Personally I find it laughable that technicians call themselves "Engineers". i.e. a BT "Engineer"...
 
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