What is like to be an engineer?

Being an engineer for more than 15 years, I guess I could share some of my own feeling and experience with you for being an engineer.

First a little bit introduction about myself, I have been working as a computer engineer for more than 15 years. Firstly I was a Test Engineer in a telecommunication manufacture company, and then in a IT vendor as a system engineer, then I jumped from one company to another but I am always an engineer.

So first thing I want to talk about being an engineer is that the salary is usually not too bad. Of couse the pay is also related to the position, the company, the industry etc. But overall, that is not too bad. I mean, it should be more than enough to bring the bread on the table if you are a good engineer.

The most amazing thing for being an engineer is to learn new stuff and use your knowledge to fix stuff or build stuff. I feel ecstatic when I have fixed an issue which has been haunting me for so long. I think that is the same feeling when Archimedes cried out "Eureka!" For me, that is the best part of being an engineer.

One disadavantage of being an engineer I could think of is that we are normally understood by people as geeks or weirdos. Also being engineers could be unnoticeable in the society. We are like a bunch of minions working in the caves to resolve problems for the whole human beings. But gladly, this sterotype is changing because we can see more and more geeks changing the whole world such as Mark Zuckerberg or Larry Page or Sergey Brin.

We are engineers, a bunch of people who really are chaning the world little by little, day by day.

There are many different types of engineers, so this is a tough question to answer - mechanical, aerospace, electrical, civil and chemical are just some that come to mind. They all do have one thing in common; they apply scientific methods to design and build things.

If you have an interest and aptitude in a particular area like trigonometry, calculus, chemistry, electronics, etc., then you can narrow down your choices for what you area you might want to specialize in.

I initially planned on becoming a mechanical engineer, but switched in college to a systems engineering degree. I have worked as a systems engineer and communications engineer as well as other various engineering-disciplined jobs, so I can speak to those positions based on my experience.

A systems engineer works on complex systems from the start to finish of a systems life. System engineers will begin the process by translating a loose set of requirements into a formal requirements document. These requirements will be carefully analyzed to determine what technologies will be used to satisfy the requirements. All requirements might not be able to be satisfied, so it is important to understand which are the most important (must haves) and which are less important (nice-to-haves). This interpretation leads to a conceptual design that can be analyzed and refined during the design process. Each modification to the design has to be analyzed for the effects on the interdependent pieces of equipment and against the requirements - this process can take a long time, but the work done here is much better than trying to diagnose issues with a system once it is deployed.

Systems engineers also work in the implementation of the system with the end customer (the customer was the input for the requirements). The implementation process involves developing a comprehensive test plan, configuring various sub-systems to work specifically as the customer intended and eventually getting agreement from the customer that all the agreed-upon requirements are met satisfactorily.

The final areas where systems engineers will work is to develop maintenance plan and a decommissioning strategy. These activities actually begin their development during the design process, but a system engineer generally manages these activities to account for changes in subsystems and unforeseen changes in technology obsolescence.

The day-to-day activities for a systems engineer are varied - some days are spent interfacing with customers in a design review, others may be spent in the lab modeling system behavior, while others are spent troubleshooting complex systems to find the source of an issue. There is no set day for most systems engineers and that is a something that those who choose this career field enjoy.