/diy/ - Do It Yourself

>>1871021
Sorry can't help you.

University as the career path, not work experience/apprenticeships

>>1871021
They have to WANT to get better or NEED to get better. Preferably BOTH.

Otherwise they get their check and don't have to do shit and don't have to change.

>>1871021
>but what happens to them I don't know.
They get work experience as they get paid more than you, to do less work than you, in a better environment than you
Once they arent fresh out of college making simple mistakes anymore, tradies have no more ammunition
Fox and the Grapes

>>1871060
I would imagine that experience will naturally get them into it as long as they have some desire to improve their career, no? Am slightly mechanically retarded MechE student

>>1871110
I'll give you a hot tip, you can be retarded and become a great engineer as long as you follow this one weird trick!

Basically just always ask yourself the question "Why?" and try to answer it.

"So this shaft tang bored out the mating shaft slot. Guess I'll just use a bigger shaft" = Bad

"So this shaft tang bored out the mating shaft slot. Why did this system fail? Was it the materials selection? Did the motor start too hard against the hydraulic pump? Was the customer retarded and let a 10000 lb backforce into the gear box? Was it installed correctly?" = Good

Oh, and mistakes are great things to learn from if you don't over react and panic and go INTJ self-hating mode.

>>1871204
>intj self hating mode
fuck me, I am an INTJ. At least according to the shitty internet tests I've taken, some of them were considered more legit but that's beyond what you give a shit for. Thanks anon.

>>1871021
It's just you. I have vivid memories of watching my uncle try to change the water pump in a '72 mustang with a 302 in like, 1979, and 8 year old me learned A LOT of interesting word combinations over there course of about two days. Well, I think it was a water pump at least... Anyway, yeah, they've been engineering shit weird for at least decades, probably eons.

>>1871021
Hasn't this always historically been a problem?
People that lack any real world experience in either the manufacturing or repair of what they are designing.

>>1871253
i mean yeah, but more people have been majoring in engineering plus in general with technology and all it allows more people to get an engineering education.

feel like those boomers engineers definitely got down and dirty, plus didn't really have a choice either

>>1871258
I imagine it's even worse now, but even if it was still the old breed of people, things would still be getting worse and worse due to at best companies just wanting to cut costs as much as possible,to at worst deliberately making things that you cannot even open or repair.
We went from companies actively telling you how to service products and including tools to do so back during the Model T era, to everything being doused in epoxy, batteries glued in, or shit like plastic oil pans in to save a few dollars or just fucking spite you. Even if you had a engineer who values repair and usability, they'll get fucked by the bean counters.
Lets pray electric cars take as long as possible to roll out so we all die before they become the only option.
If I want to change the battery in my phone, I'll have to use a fucking heat gun because they just use adhesive to attach the shell. Now imagine what it's gonna be like in the future when instead of a $130 phone, you either have spend 7 grand because a cell went dead in your car, or you got to try and heat and cut through 100 pounds of epoxy and hack your car to change it yourself because fuck you faggot this is the iCar.

>>1871264
it's not all doom and gloom though. i have alwyas believed that the future is bright. sure that might be shitty, but we must look elsewhere to see how shit is better in some places.

>>1871021
The majority of young ones have always been crap. The working world then sorts them out post "edubication". Some get provisioned into support jobs, some provisioned to oversight, some get to stay actual field engineers if competent, and others jump to a non technical field or they get fired.

Surprisingly, the autistic ones seem to do the best if they can overcome their utter atrocious social shortcomings and handle the stress.

>>1871070
That’s interesting you said this anon, are you an engineer?

>>1871021
At least for some its a case of working under pressure in different environments to expand your skillset and apply knowledge practically. If you go from uni to desk, there's a much slower up tick in terms of life experiences and ability to solve problems.
Finances also play a massive role in engineering, no one wants to pay top dollar for a solution when half the price and none of the finesse are available to do the same thing. But like everything there's compromises to everything and in the short term no one cares if it will last 20 years covered in shit while being beaten on by chimps with spanners, they want to know it will sell and last long enough to have fulfilled its warranty

I know that sounds simple and cliche, but it hasn't been said yet and well, there it is

From my experience most companies which require specially designed products need engineers, then there's ones who get to custom design their products. When you fly on an airplane an engineer designed it, when you drive to work a mechanical engineer did it. Probably why people go into the profession.

What would you call the opposite
One who is good at designing mechanisms and whatnot but as far as he is concerned math is for fucking losers

>>1871396
i believe your term would be “mechanically inclined,” but i don’t know of a term that includes the math part

>>1871384
yeah well some mechanical engineers suck.

>>1871396
Dangerously based is what we call those folks.

Doing university group projects slowly killed my interest because there will always be a guy proposing a perpetual motion machine. Every fucking time.

A lot of "engineers" who can regurgitate what they learn for school but have no actual understanding of how it all translates into the real world. "Good" engineers have strong critical thinking and problem solving skills that extend beyond whatever they specialize in. Too many autistic "specialists" too, which fits with the whole fact/number regurgitation thing I guess.

>>1871396
orks?

>>1871638
>A lot of "engineers" who can regurgitate what they learn for school but have no actual understanding of how it all translates into the real world.

this. My town hired some bridge designers who had limited experience but excellent academic credentials. They designed a bridge that started in the middle of a river and went straight up. Even after it was constructed (20 million bucks later) they still thought it was a good design.

Average iq in the west drops by 1 point every 10 years

>>1871872
Nice bait. I almost fell fo--... Dammit!

>>1871396
This is how I got started as an "Engineer" - failed out of college because I hate math and think it's stupid (past Trig) but growing up loved working on bicycles, then engines, then welding and fabricating stuff for friends and profit. Learned a bit of CAD then went to college for ME and failed out on math classes.
2 months later I talked my way into a job mostly w/ my build portfolio when the company was still small and hiring their first design engineer. Also helped to know a lot more about electronics and hydraulic components (not theory, but components and real-world application) than pretty much all degreed engineers fresh out of college. Knew what size wrenches fit which size bolts, nut and bolt TPI, nominal vs. actual pipe diameters, sheet metal gauge vs. decimal inch, machining and welding since my teens, all much more useful than differential equations, heat transfer or fluid dynamics for machine designers. Now I'm in charge of hiring and it's a weird mix. I've hired guys who were like me and some worked out others were autistic savant retards who could build anything but not draw it. Old boomers who had impressive resumes but never saw anything they designed get built who would argue and hold a grudge for days if someone asked them to move a dimension on a drawing for clarity "well that's not the RIGHT way to draw it!". Fresh out of college guys from the last 2 years seem pretty promising. A lot are hungry having spent their teens living through the recession and we try to get them to work with the welders and machinists to see how their designs are built, and get a feel for what simple things they can do to make things easier to build. Most are very receptive to feedback from 'shop guys' (much more so than boomers) and I think a first job somewhere things are built on site helps a lot. The guys who work for years just sending drawings out think they are doing everything perfect when in reality they have no idea how bad their shit is

>>1871021
Less profit is made by colleges that give practicle knowledge to engineers. Think about how much more money is made if all you have to give students is books and a CAD program vs. a machine shop, motors, hydraulic/electric circuits. Also think about how expensive a lawsuit is if a student gets injured. Now also think about the gradual erosion of Western industry and the familiarity it built up in young people about machines. It is no wonder that many engineers are just formula dudes.

>>1871899
Hubris from the dropout with poor math skills
Pottery

>>1871933
It all worked out for me, I can't complain. Call that hubris if you must.

>>1871070

I dunno, every time I dream up a part it actually fucking works, unlike any engineer i've ever worked with

>>1871021

I don't know about the mechanical side, but on civil our retarded ones are pajeets and women who have zero intuition outside what they learned in school.

Typically you want the pajeets to handle items like traffic or structural because they're the ones who will crunch numbers and QA/QC their work but won't think outside the box or talk to the client. The women you usually just want to hurry up and go on semi-permanent maternity leave.

My problem has been that most of our new hires are just all-around retarded. Or at least they aren't interested in the work.

I did have an exception to this, I had a nice Indian lady at my old job doing drainage who was very good at it.

>>1871021
You're seriously asking that shit here? have you seen the suggestions these guys make?

>>1871021
It's been touched upon ITT, but the root cause is that the recent college-educated engineers never actually built any of the shit they designed. As a matter of fact, 99% of them never built or repaired anything, period. I spent my childhood building all sorts of crazy shit out of literal junk my friends and I scavenged out of the street, junk piles, and other trash heaps, mainly to circumvent having to ask our parents to buy shit at the store (answer was always no, after which there was a lecture about how simply making the request meant I was somehow "bad"). My classmates were simply good at math, in fact better than I was most of the time, but never made anything since their parents had no problems buying them shit on demand. So they could complete the integrals and shit, but they had no idea which equation to apply most of the time. "Apply" here is the key word: that is something only people with experience can figure out.

>>1873622
Collegefag here. I desperately want to build the shit I design but its the faculty staff that fuck me. We've got this massive machine shop but nobody can actually use it for anything. I was supposed to build an aircraft for a club and we wanted to use the wind tunnel and we got shot down, even though literally no one uses it.

I'm trying to build practical diy shit but its so frustrating

>>1873622
Likewise, practical experience is worth its weight in gold.

>>1871021
ive heard tons of shit about engineers being braindead from my step dad (trade worker) and others. I don't know too much but from what I've heard the issues stem from terrible communication skills. I know this because my dads side is almost entirely engineers, along with my stepmom, and they are not amazing at letting me in the know. I love them though, no one's perfect. Fuck, my high school engineering teacher constantly fucked up directions so we were always getting stuck on assignments. I'm trying to get an engineering degree so hopefully I can help turn that trend.

>>1871223
>INTJ
well then take consolation on the fact that MBT is no more than horoscope for nerds

>>1874852
you probably won’t senpai. also an engineering student here, but electrical which is easier with regards to retardation in practical skills imo. you’ll probably get shit on for anything; it’s just the ground that you start on as. seems like tradies to engineers is just like enlisted to commissioned officers in the military.

I manage engineers and what I see is a lot of people going into the field with no actual gift for it. Mommy and daddy wanted them to do it and they went to collage. The other thing is people don’t do mechanical things anymore, stuff is either too cheep to fix or designed not to be.

1. Engineers can't/won't learn how their technology works at the ground level, so you have people using a microcontroller with custom software to blink an LED instead of using a transistor.

2. Engineers don't use the tech they design, so they have no clue about requirements. You think everyone in a Foxconn sweatshop owns a Macbook?

3. Counting the turns on a transformer is too easy, so engineering curricula have to be padded out with shitloads of jargon, confusing notation, theoretical infinite resistor networks, etc. to justify tuition fees.

4. Engineers see their last paycheck approaching and suddenly realize the urgent need for more security measures, convenience functions, standards compliance, or contingency plans. This is responsible for most German "engineering".

5. Massive shitloads of parasitic middle managers that burn your company's capital on BMW payments, catering, seminars, teambuilding retreats, and ugly buildings

6. The Talmud says that work is bad and not to be tolerated. So prototyping is like a giant game of telephone where engineers that can't use a hacksaw or a drill try to manage subcontractors that can't speak English.

>>1876926
>transformers are as simple as counting turns
laffin

>>1871021
True for germany, at least. The reason is the bad american influence on the education system, which makes it possible to graduate without having ever entered a workshop.
For direct comparison: in the traditional german engineering education (Dipl.Ing.) you need to do half a year of internship in production and maintenance, as well as do two half-year projects that usually involve constructing something from scratch.
In the bachelor / master system, you need a total of 4-8 weeks (depending on the university) of learning to file, mill, grind, weld, stamp and cast. It should be obvious that in that time, you can barely learn anything.

>>1876926
Spotted the tradecuck. Only 5. has some truth, and even that mostly in american companies.
Also, I'll believe that german products are "overengineered" when you burgers can prodce something that works just as well.

>>1874854
You're wrong and you're retarded, a common combo

>>1871899
>Also helped to know a lot more about electronics and hydraulic components (not theory, but components and real-world application) than pretty much all degreed engineers fresh out of college
I cannot over stress how important this is. Smaller companies love it when engineers are good at a bunch of different things vs really good at math because most math isn't done by hand anymore because its a massive waste of time and money.
>.t someone who was in a similar boat minus the failing out part

>tfw mechanical engineering graduate
>graduated 2 years ago and can't get a basic low level job because of
>no experience.
I have 6 years experience as an industrial mechanic. I have worked on shit and know the systems better than more than half our engineers, but no job.

>>1877049
I'd rather count turns and use trial and error than bother with figures and formulas to get the same result.

>>1876926
>1. Engineers can't/won't learn how their technology works at the ground level, so you have people using a microcontroller with custom software to blink an LED instead of using a transistor.
this is a big one. the use of standardized or defacto standard project boards for Fucking Everything has led to people being lazy about design. you see the same sorts of stuff in software, too -- the same code reused over and over and over so every application is a bloated pile of kludged garbage.

>>1877049
well a tiny one you'd use on a board is, not like a giant cabinet one but one for a little hobby project yeah, but no one winds those themselves, and why not use a solid state one, and is another good example of the type of learning you probably should get but will never, ever use on the job, ever

>>1877198
it's alright that you prefer to bang rocks like an illiterate ape to get a satisfactory result, but don't scoff at engineers because they feel differently

>>1871021
Practising engineer for about 7 years now:

-School taught us very little about whatever job we're current tasked with doing. School was meant to teach you some basics, to know what you don't know. The real knowledge is from on-the-job. That's a big difference compared to most trades, where trade schools have you practice your field.

-Anybody who is good at school (memorization, basic math, studies) can get a degree. Doesn't make them smart. Doesn't mean they can solve problems. >>1871204 put it nicely: there's people who are bad at asking "why" and even worse at figuring out the answer. It's not the same mindset/mental skill as doing math from a textbook question or memorizing formulas.

-Many have little to no in-field experience. This is a huge factor. It's very difficult to design things properly if you've never used them. Imagine designing a car having never driven before, or a frying pan if you don't cook.

Fix it: make apprenticeships (co-op, summer job, whatever you call it) in some sort of related field mandatory during school. Mech Eng? Be someone's lab bitch at a production facility. Elec? Help an electrician run wire and label fuse boxes. Software Eng? Summer in India. Just being in proximity will help immensely. Also, generally having experience working with other people and problem solving.

This will weed out people who don't like the work before they've spent the full amount on 4+ years of school, and also give people actual experience to relate to and think about in their future engineering positions.

>>1877053
>The reason is the bad american influence on the education system, which makes it possible to graduate without having ever entered a workshop.
Aren't you supposed to learn by working on your own projects?
Back in my first year, I tried to get coursemates involved in a related project, building a positioning device to be tested on a ship. I ended up doing it on my own and later with a non-engineer girlfriend since those lazy fuckers weren't interested in doing any non-mandatory work. I got my current job from the expertise I gained working on personal projects. Most of my old coursemates are busy sending off CVs.

>>1871204
it blows my mind that people dont think this way by default

my girlfriend who is a very smart person generally, will do things completely automatically without any thought

>>1871204
>Oh, and mistakes are great things to learn from if you don't over react and panic and go INTJ self-hating mode.
ah fuck. is there any hope

doubt every engineer collegefag is useless. somehow shit keeps running honestly. probably some sense of “purity” of how often and how many rocks one bangs together, not that banging rocks is inherently bad.

I love engineering hate threads. Bunch of fucking illiterate monkeys. Learn math you retards

>>1878734
Learn practical application instead of just "it looks gud on duh cumpooter" pajeet

>>1871204
>mistakes are great things to learn from if you don't over react and panic and go INTJ self-hating mode.
There are people who aren't self-loathing?

retarted is a bad word

I'm the rare engineer that does not have a degree. I look at it like this - your job as an engineer is to solve problems. Your math, physics, programming, etc. chops are tools in your toolbox. It's of course great to have these things, and in many cases they are necessary. But just like a technician having all the best tools, it doesn't always translate 1:1 with knowing how, when, and why to utilize the tools in the process of solving a problem. It's MUCH harder to verify if someone is a good problem solver though, even via extended technical interviews, than it is to verify someone has the tools.

>>1877545
>I got my current job from the expertise I gained working on personal projects
How? How did you fabricate anything with no shop and no cash?