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Describe your engineering job.

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charliex:
Free food is great, but ain't a perk ;)

Rhythmtech:

--- Quote from: Simon on June 09, 2010, 06:52:07 am ---
--- Quote from: EEVblog on June 09, 2010, 02:20:41 am ---
--- Quote from: Rhythmtech on June 08, 2010, 05:32:43 pm ---Average Day:

1. Email, Coffee, Email
2. Answer questions to boss about ongoing projects
3. Go to meeting about the ongoing projects
4. Look at 20 year old VB3 code, then some VB6 code, then write a mock up of a piece of software in VB .Net
5. Get call from lab, figure out why there is a voltage imbalance on the power stats
6. Turn around and the other lab has a problem with the software crashing
7. Check out how electrician has the power meter hooked up on the locked rotor station, so we both have peace of mind that we are either both right or wrong.
8. Talk to the lab manager about life in the lab
9. Post on Forum
10. Catch up on mountains of administrative everything work....

--- End quote ---

That sounds a lot like my old job!, minus the coffee.
Wank-word-bingo was a competitive sport.
And we'd spend hours just sitting around bitching about how crap the company was, when the retrenchments would happen, and if we had a camera setup set up to record every management encounter how we could have made millions on the reality TV show rights...

The new job has no meetings and no paperwork, free food, and a lot of people walk around in bare feet.

Dave.

--- End quote ---

hm maybe i should consider emigrating  :o well there's one thing that's certain: when our Engineering bunch/technical department tell me they are snowed under and have not the time to correct that drawing that's been wrong for years or don't have time to digitalize that old paper drawing which is the last copy we have and is falling apart I think of them as a lazy bunch of wankers, what we do do we get horribly wrong so what do they do up there ? nothing ?

--- End quote ---

You, my mother, and my fiancee would have a ball figuring that out.  I have attempted in all manner of ways to explain the bottomless pit that design, experimentation, research, and improvement that permeates my work, life, and car. In my particular role, I often stand alone with no technical support staff while attempting to update and redesign mid 80's and early 90's test systems, maintain the late 90's early 2000's equipment, and trying to come up with ideas for brand new equipment from scratch when new needs arise.  It is admittedly difficult to quantify thinking and producing ideas, especially when it is broken up with maintenance and support work.  I often struggle with a sense of anti-accomplishment because at the end of many of my days I have to be happy having ended up where I started because I can't predict when equipment will break, when the boss will reprioritize my time, or which algorithm I thought I had ironed out produces complete crap. 

Edit Add:  Aside from that, every half completed non working project in the pipes was handed to me shrouded in a fresh wrapper of insincere excitement.

Simon:
no in my case they do not a lot but have meetings so that everyone that works in the same room can keep up to date, I'm the nobody that had to stomp up their and tell them about back emf while they tried to figure out what to tell the customer

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