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As an aerospace engineer for a major aerospace company, I can most definitely say that coworkers who have experienced FIRST in one way or another (as a student or mentor) are consistently more action-oriented and responsive when it comes to resolving work-based engineering challenges.

We all know the schedule is unbelievably aggressive. If I were to compare a project of similar scope to a real-world engineering project (requiring a level of quality acceptable in my industry), it would likely require a design and build timeline of up to 12-18 months.

My estimate above includes everything from concept of operations, to requirements definition, to interface control, and to machining standardization. It would likely be ~6 months before the first piece of hardware is ever purchased or cut.

I enjoy the engineering challenge FIRST gives me even as an industry professional, because it gives me a chance to handle tooling and program in an more risk-free environment (ie try a design concept, and if it doesn't work we didn't just cost the company $10 mil).

Engineers at my company are normally not allowed to be as hands-on at work (labor unions and machinists are the only ones allowed to touch hardware at my company). Anyway, I find it easy to spot an engineer who is involved in projects like these, because they are able to better visualize not just what task needs to be accomplished, but how to assemble a system to accomplish said task.