JPL/NASA Anyone want to work there?

[KarenH]

Originally Posted by phrontist

Engineering is high stress though...

I think its more important to be good at what you do then to do what you want and suck at it. Engineers are the only thing preventing the technological meltdown of modern soceity. A minor mistake could kill many, many, people. Remember, with mass manufacturing, your mistake could copied millions of times.

I think I wanna be a highrise apartment engineer, nuclear power-plant engineer, or how about designing assembly lines for slaughterhouses. Yeah, those'd be a low-stress jobs

Honestly I think it would be hard to have enough confidence to be a professional engineer.

Actually, the mistakes made by California P.E.'s can be pretty dumb. Go to:
Complaint and Enforcement Information and click on one of the "Disciplinary Actions Against Licensees" to view a whole slew of idiotic mistakes made by these people. The causes seem to be mostly ignorance or ethical deficiency. Most of these are civil-engineering cases, and most of them result in gross financial inconvenience for the customer, not injury or death.

I've been fascinated to read about these cases, ever since my husband got his P.E. license (he passed the exam on his second try, after gaining more mechanical experience in one season with a FIRST team).

The Board has also stated that there is a shortage of land surveyors in California, so if someone likes working outdoors, has good spatial reasoning abilities, and doesn't want to be an engineer, he or she could look into being a surveyor.