uziq wrote:
Jay wrote:
uziq wrote:
jay loves it when he gets to talk like he's one of the 'engineers', as if he has an electrical engineering degree from berkeley or something.
it's merely obsequious. it would be like someone with a law degree from a community college making out they rub shoulders in discussions with lawyers at cravath, swaine and moore.
lol, ok
you work in air con. you plug figures into pre-existing formulae. you tick boxes on checklists.
how much actual analytical work or 'creative' engineering do you do? how much do you use college-level math and engineering principles? i would wager 5% of your role, and even then with guidance or oversight.
dilbert sees through you. i trust dilbert's judgment.
Actual analytical work? I mean, first off, you have to understand that mechanical engineers are broken out into several sub-disciplines. He specializes in machine design. What they do is closer to material science. My design work is the application of thermodynamics, heat transfer, and fluid mechanics. Out in the real world, there is software available for much of the work. I don't sit at my desk calculating the heat transfer coefficient for a built-up wall by hand. It would be a wildly inefficient use of my time to do so. Could I? Absolutely. I had to do just that in order to attain my professional engineer license. There were a few questions like that on the exam.
He got bent out of shape because I called the beam that supports the cantilevered section of my deck by the shorthand "cantilever beam", so I'd really take his criticism of me with a heavy grain of salt. He's... quirky.
