Here are the questions I need answers to:
1. What excites you most about engineering as a career?
I solve problems, create many things, and directly see the results of my efforts first hand. Sometimes I like it because it's just plain hard and there aren't many other things that I would find both interesting and challenging. You make a decent amount of money at it too, but it's more about the fact that I really like what I do; money really is secondary. Once you experience it, you'll understand.
2. What made you decide to become an engineer?
The hand-me-down Tandy computer my dad gave me when I was in 2nd grade, and legos. In high school it was fueled designing trick plays for our football team and then running them. Oh yea, and calculus was really easy so I figured college wouldn't be
that bad, right?
3. In your job, how important are good communication skills (written and spoken)?
They're as necessary as the job I do. If I can't properly communicate an idea to my team leads via proposal or presentation, it will get rejected for a sometimes lesser idea. If I can't report proper status to my managers, they don't know how much money to allocate to our project or our future projects. If I can't communicate with my coworkers, well, really no one would get anything done.
4. Do you primarily work alone or in teams?
Both. When I code, I'm alone but I have peer reviews and collaboration with other devs. When I do h/w, it's almost always at least paired.
5. Is it important for an engineer to understand strength of materials concepts (stress, strain, deformations)?
Extremely important, even for software/electrical engineers. Sure, we don't care about the shear strength of silicon, but we do care about scattering, heat, processor load, and everything else under the sun. In a multi-million dollar system, if you've never considered stresses of indepedent systems upon each other you are in for alot of frustration and heartache.
6. What kind of engineering did you study?
Electrical Engineering
7. What kind of engineering do you do now?
Software & Electrical
For the FRC team I do mechanical since we have plenty of electrical engineers. Go figure
