Engineers
We looked yesterday at engineering technicians.Today we have engineers which to many will seem like simply a step up in the same profession. This isn’t really quite true. The preparation is different for the career for sure but the actual nature of the job is also very different. As we saw, the technicians are very much hands on types, running down the problems in what has already been designed and built. Engineers themselves are rather more cerebral types.
The training is more cerebral too: a four year college degree in engineering (of one of the many types, aerospace, petroleum, etc) is the absolute minimum for an entry level job. There is one advantage to engineering for those taking a college degree though: it has perhaps the highest entry level pay after graduation of any career (as the BLS tells us).
Given the emphasis on math and science which is central to engineering itself, we might think that this is similarly an exclusively systemizing or male brain type job, as measured by our EQSQ personality tests. Well, sorta, for yes, engineers do need strong systemizing traits. However, modern day engineering is no longer the preserve of the lone genius inventing out in the garden shed or garage. It can’t be, it’s all way too complex for that now. No, these things are done in teams now, huge teams, which means that the empathic side of one’s nature needs to be developed as well.
In fact we might say that engineering is one of those disciplines which is changing its requirements, from the previous pure systemizing type, to the more balanced brain type: still capable of and happy with the science requirements but also more empathic and thus a team player.
