So your'e telling me Dr.that although I was an Incorporated Engineer with the qualification IEng MI Mech E from the Institute of Mechanical Engineers ( a body started by George Stevenson ) that because I used to get my hands dirty I was just "a mechanic " ?
No, I'm taking exception with those who seem to think that word 'engineer' has something to do with the word 'train driver', which is a pet peeve of mine. I probably should have used that instead of the word 'mechanic', sorry.
I also love to get my hands dirty, although being an electronic engineer that's in a different way to mechanical engineers. It's a good day when I can't get the solder flux smell out of my nose.
I could solder when I was 8 years old. At least, 'desolder', ask my mum, she had to buy a new coffee machine when I couldn't get it back together again.
By the time I was at uni, I could solder 0.4mm pitch SOIC ICs without a microscope using a soldering-iron tip that I filed down needle-sharp.
It was those skills that got me my first jobs, reworking boards with anything down to 0402-sized components.
And it was also around that time that my university course included a lesson on how to solder, for the EEE students. In fricking 3rd-year. 18 months before we graduate and they finally decide to teach an electronic engineer how to use possibly the most useful tool of their profession.
Even worse, it wasn't even in Practical Electronic Design III (or II). In there we just used breadboards (like I'd started using 15 years before that). No, this was in a freaking Project Management course.
Don't get me started on how graduates don't have any real-world skills (although it seems I have), I was complaining about them (and especially the quality of the courses) while I was at uni the first time.
But also, I just worked for 3 years in something called an 'engineering department', that was the biggest joke ever.
My judgement is rather clouded by a colleague who made my life hell for those 3 years, but still, there was nothing 'engineering' about that place. Certainly not the job description, nor the pay scales, nor the attitudes of the colleagues.
They didn't follow standards, didn't even (seem to or want to) know about them, in one meeting after trying to convince them "if we don't follow this standard and still sell stuff we're possibly breaking the law", the responses I heard included "we don't have to follow the standard".
So glad I'm out of that place, for my own liability if nothing else (yes, I've got the paper-trail of reports I wrote proving that I tried to change stuff that at least covers my ass WTSHTF).
But to be fair, there were a few very good sparkies who were there. I actually said straight out to one of them, "why aren't you an engineer, you act like one", after he was doing a quick risk assessment of something before he started on it, none of the rest of the people there (especially not in the so-called 'engineering' department) knew what that even meant.
But I digress. In short, some of those technical-level people should have stayed where they belonged in the manufacturing section, they certainly didn't deserve the title of 'engineer'.
But on the other hand, some of the best "engineers" that I've worked with had no qualifications whatsoever beyond experience. I supervised a team of 10 repair technicians in europe (MBO/HBO-level for dutch people), and two of my best guys there weren't even that, they were Ham-radio enthusiasts who knew their way around a PCB.
To me, engineering is more about attitude and behaviour than what the piece of paper says.