Engineering is so trendy these days that everybody wants to be
one. The word "engineer" is greatly overused. If there's somebody in
your life who you think is trying to pass as an engineer, give him
this test to discern the truth.
Engineer Identification Test
----------------------------
You walk into a room and notice that a picture is hanging
crooked. You...
1. Straighten it.
2. Ignore it.
3. Buy a CAD system and spend the next six months designing a
solar-powered, self-adjusting picture frame while often stating
aloud your belief that the inventor of the nail was a total
moron.
The correct answer is "3" but partial credit can be given to
anybody who writes "It depends." in the margin of the test or
simply blames the whole stupid thing on "Marketing."
Social Skills
-------------
Engineers have different objectives
when it comes to social interaction.
"Normal" people expect to accomplish several unrealistic things
from social interaction:
* Stimulating and thought-provoking conversation
* Important social contacts
* A feeling of connectedness with other humans
In contrast to "normal" people, engineers have rational objectives
for social interactions:
* Get it over with as soon as possible.
* Avoid getting invited to something unpleasant.
* Demonstrate mental superiority and mastery of all subjects.
Fascination with Gadgets
------------------------
To the engineer, all matter in the universe can be placed into one
of two categories:
1. things that need to be fixed, and
2. things that will need to be fixed after you've had a few
minutes to play with them.
Engineers like to solve problems. If there are no problems handily
available, they will create their own problems. Normal people don't
understand this concept; they believe that if it ain't broke, don't
fix it. Engineers believe that if it ain't broke, it doesn't have
enough features yet.
No engineer looks at a television remote control without wondering
what it would take to turn it into a stun gun. No engineer can take
a shower without wondering if some sort of Teflon coating would
make showering unnecessary. To the engineer, the world is a toy box
full of sub-optimized and feature-poor toys.
Fashion and Appearance
----------------------
Clothes are the lowest priority for an engineer, assuming the basic
thresholds for temperature and decency have been satisfied. If no
appendages are freezing or sticking together, and if no genitalia
or mammary glands are swinging around in plain view, then the
objective of clothing has been met. Anything else is a waste.
Dating and Social Life
----------------------
Dating is never easy for engineers. A normal person will employ
various indirect and duplicitous methods to create a false
impression of attractiveness. Engineers are incapable of placing
appearance above function.
Fortunately, engineers have an ace in the hole. They are widely
recognized as superior marriage material: intelligent, dependable,
employed, honest, and handy around the house. While it's true that
many normal people would prefer not to date an engineer, most
normal people harbor an intense desire to mate with them, thus
producing engineer-like children who will have high paying jobs
long before losing their virginity.
Male engineers reach their peak of sexual attractiveness later than
normal men, becoming irresistible erotic dynamos in their mid
thirties to late forties. Just look at these examples of sexually
irresistible men in technical professions:
* Bill Gates.
* MacGyver.
* Etcetera.
Female engineers become irresistible at the age of consent and
remain that way until about thirty minutes after their clinical
death. Longer if it's a warm day.
Honesty
-------
Engineers are always honest in matters of technology and human
relationships. That's why it's a good idea to keep engineers away
from customers, romantic interests, and other people who can't
handle the truth.
Engineers sometimes bend the truth to avoid work. They say things
that sound like lies but technically are not because nobody could
be expected to believe them. The complete list of engineer lies is
listed below.
* "I won't change anything without asking you first."
* "I'll return your hard-to-find cable tomorrow."
* "I have to have new equipment to do my job."
* "I'm not jealous of your new computer."
Frugality
---------
Engineers are notoriously frugal. This is not because of cheapness
or mean spirit; it is simply because every spending situation is
simply a problem in optimization, that is, "How can I escape this
situation while retaining the greatest amount of cash?"
Powers of Concentration
-----------------------
If there is one trait that best defines an engineer it is the
ability to concentrate on one subject to the complete exclusion of
everything else in the environment. This sometimes causes engineers
to be pronounced dead prematurely. Some funeral homes in high-tech
areas have started checking resumes before processing the
bodies. Anybody with a degree in electrical engineering or
experience in computer programming is propped up in the lounge for
a few days just to see if he or she snaps out of it.
Risk
----
Engineers hate risk. They try to eliminate it whenever they
can. This is understandable, given that when an engineer makes one
little mistake the media will treat it like it's a big deal or
something.
Examples of Bad Press for Engineers:
* Hindenberg.
* Space Shuttle Challenger.
* SPANet (TM)
* Hubble space telescope.
* Apollo 13.
* Titanic.
* Ford Pinto.
* Corvair.
The risk/reward calculation for engineers looks something like
this:
* RISK: Public humiliation and the death of thousands of innocent
people.
* REWARD: A certificate of appreciation in a handsome plastic
frame.
Being practical people, engineers evaluate this balance of risks
and rewards and decide that risk is not a good thing. The best way
to avoid risk is by advising that any activity is technically
impossible for reasons that are far too complicated to explain.
If that approach is not sufficient to halt the project, then the
engineer will fall back to a second line of defense: "It's
technically possible but it will cost too much."
Ego
---
Ego-wise, two things are important to engineers:
* How smart they are.
* How many cool devices they own.
The fastest way to get an engineer to solve a problem is to declare
that the problem is unsolvable. No engineer can walk away from an
unsolvable problem until it's solved. No illness or distraction is
sufficient to get the engineer off the case. These types of
challenges quickly become personal--a battle between the engineer
and the laws of nature.
Engineers will go without food and hygiene for days to solve a
problem. (Other times just because they forgot.) And when they
succeed in solving the problem they will experience an ego rush
that is better than sex--and I'm including the kind of sex where
other people are involved.
Nothing is more threatening to the engineer than the suggestion
that somebody has more technical skill. Normal people sometimes use
that knowledge as a lever to extract more work from the
engineer. When an engineer says that something can't be done (a
code phrase that means it's not fun to do), some clever normal
people have learned to glance at the engineer with a look of
compassion and pity and say something along these lines: "I'll ask
Bob to figure it out. He knows how to solve difficult technical
problems."
At that point it is a good idea for the normal person to not stand
between the engineer and the problem. The engineer will set upon
the problem like a starved chihuahua on a pork chop.
