Learning by Making Rockets & Robots

[Jon Stratis]

Originally Posted by Garret

Many people who go to school to become engineers don't actually end up doing pure engineering work, my dad for example was a process engineer but now is a US patent Agent. Especially if you want to work at a start-up or even in today's job market. I can guarantee you that any engineering company will take an engineer that has good communication skills (as well as meeting job requirements) over the most brilliant engineer in the world. Engineering is very collaborative and requires engineers to communicate effectively with both other engineers and non-engineers. Furthermore if you don't have the skills to sell your idea to your manager, it won't get implemented in most cases.

Don't let yourself lapse into the faulty "I'm an Engineer, I don't need English" mentality I see far too often with students and classmates.

I could go on and on about stories my dad and numerous guest speakers (usually VP of Engineering at various companies) have told me about how important communication is to being a successful engineer and competitive job applicant.

To expand on this a bit, I always tell my students about how the company I work for hires. We're a fairly large medical device company... but we contrary to popular assumption, we don't hire a lot of biomedical engineers. It's easier to hire a good mechanical, electrical, or computer engineer and teach him/her the biology they need for the job, than it is to teach a biomedical engineer the in-depth knowledge of a particular engineering discipline they need.

I went to school for Computer Engineering/Computer Science, and kept myself fairly well rounded. My interview process for an internship here years ago went like this: They came on campus to do interviews. I talked with one guy for about half an hour. He asked me to come back to talk with another guy, who then interrupted another interview so a third guy could talk to me as well. They had hundreds of interviews at my school that week, all with engineering students with grades just as good as mine. As an interviewer, seeing "yet another" resume with a 3.8+ GPA doesn't mean much. Making a connection with a student that can communicate well and tell his/her story in a compelling way does. Then I got hired here and spent 1/4 of my time the first year in a classroom learning about the human heart and cardiovascular system. I don't need the in depth information a doctor does... we have doctors consulting with us for that. Rather, I need to know "just enough" to understand what they're saying and translate it into design requirements.

Being a good engineer isn't all about engineering. It's about being able to use engineering for a practical application, and to successfully communicate your research or development results to people who aren't engineers (aka management, marketing, sales, etc).