Fun at the Refinery: It's Like Anthropology of the Stupid.

[Faust]

"Hey, Mike...That arrogance of yours comes cheap!  Only a $10,000 instrument and a ruined batch!"

This is disgusting, that prick will probably squeeze that back out of the people below him. People like that deserve to be shot.

He hasn't got anyone below him.  He has been banned from managing by the president of North American operations.

That is a huge relief.

Engineers tend to suffer from Dunning-Krueger syndrome.  They think that everyone around them are idiots, and that a millwright with 30 years of experience doesn't know what he's talking about because he has no degree.

Worse, if the engineer gets his PE stamp, he suddenly becomes an expert on ALL subjects, and forgets how to say "I don't know" or "Let me look that up" or "Whoops.  I made a mistake."

Basically, the whole field is full of Requia.

My god. Well, they're not scientists. They like to play pretend sometimes, but they're not. It's a technical skill set, like medicine, or psychiatry, not a field of research.

Thats not true at all, there are huge areas of research in electronics, robotics and automation which is primarily dominated by industry.
I agree the word engineer is tossed around too loosely, but there are those that are far more competent scientists then the majority of lazy hacks you see in the public sector and academia.

[Adios]

"Hey, Mike...That arrogance of yours comes cheap!  Only a $10,000 instrument and a ruined batch!"

This is disgusting, that prick will probably squeeze that back out of the people below him. People like that deserve to be shot.

He hasn't got anyone below him.  He has been banned from managing by the president of North American operations.

So what does he do? Aside from being retarded.

He engineers solutions without any input from people who know what's going on, takes any suggestions as an attack on his competence, and rides his plans down in flames.

And he gets paid to do this?

I want his job. I could probably do it better than him.

99% of engineers do this.

It's the other 1% who keep the lights on.

You can tell which camp you'll be in, should you go into engineering, BTW.

This boggles me. Seriously? 99%?

I can see why they tend to turn up supporting creationists now.

Engineers tend to suffer from Dunning-Krueger syndrome.  They think that everyone around them are idiots, and that a millwright with 30 years of experience doesn't know what he's talking about because he has no degree.

Worse, if the engineer gets his PE stamp, he suddenly becomes an expert on ALL subjects, and forgets how to say "I don't know" or "Let me look that up" or "Whoops.  I made a mistake."

Basically, the whole field is full of Requia.

I love to call out a blanket statement, so don't take that personally, but those sorts of engineers probably end up using their degree to do what your idiot does.

In my (admittedly fairly limited) experience, the ones that keep a company up and running are humble enough to say "hey, you know what, I'm not entirely sure that idea wont kill someone, let me go see if I can find some information on it"

I guess my point was the 1% is maybe a bit biased, with reason, based on the sorts that get shipped out to Tuscon.

Not like there's much to destroy out there with incompetence anyway.

Remember a story about a levy and a hurricane and a city named New Orleans?

[Disco Pickle]

"Hey, Mike...That arrogance of yours comes cheap!  Only a $10,000 instrument and a ruined batch!"

This is disgusting, that prick will probably squeeze that back out of the people below him. People like that deserve to be shot.

He hasn't got anyone below him.  He has been banned from managing by the president of North American operations.

So what does he do? Aside from being retarded.

He engineers solutions without any input from people who know what's going on, takes any suggestions as an attack on his competence, and rides his plans down in flames.

And he gets paid to do this?

I want his job. I could probably do it better than him.

99% of engineers do this.

It's the other 1% who keep the lights on.

You can tell which camp you'll be in, should you go into engineering, BTW.

This boggles me. Seriously? 99%?

I can see why they tend to turn up supporting creationists now.

Engineers tend to suffer from Dunning-Krueger syndrome.  They think that everyone around them are idiots, and that a millwright with 30 years of experience doesn't know what he's talking about because he has no degree.

Worse, if the engineer gets his PE stamp, he suddenly becomes an expert on ALL subjects, and forgets how to say "I don't know" or "Let me look that up" or "Whoops.  I made a mistake."

Basically, the whole field is full of Requia.

I love to call out a blanket statement, so don't take that personally, but those sorts of engineers probably end up using their degree to do what your idiot does.

In my (admittedly fairly limited) experience, the ones that keep a company up and running are humble enough to say "hey, you know what, I'm not entirely sure that idea wont kill someone, let me go see if I can find some information on it"

I guess my point was the 1% is maybe a bit biased, with reason, based on the sorts that get shipped out to Tuscon.

Not like there's much to destroy out there with incompetence anyway.

Remember a story about a levy and a hurricane and a city named New Orleans?

but yeah, I get you.  I have personal experience working on a project with a few Army Corps of Engineers guys.  Only one of them didn't display the habits Roger mentioned, and he was young and still learning, so always asked a lot of questions.  Hell, I'm not so young anymore but am always still learning, so ask a lot of questions.  I think Rog is correct though, something about that degree and getting a job in their respective field makes some of them think they can stop learning.

[Kai]

"Hey, Mike...That arrogance of yours comes cheap!  Only a $10,000 instrument and a ruined batch!"

This is disgusting, that prick will probably squeeze that back out of the people below him. People like that deserve to be shot.

He hasn't got anyone below him.  He has been banned from managing by the president of North American operations.

That is a huge relief.

Engineers tend to suffer from Dunning-Krueger syndrome.  They think that everyone around them are idiots, and that a millwright with 30 years of experience doesn't know what he's talking about because he has no degree.

Worse, if the engineer gets his PE stamp, he suddenly becomes an expert on ALL subjects, and forgets how to say "I don't know" or "Let me look that up" or "Whoops.  I made a mistake."

Basically, the whole field is full of Requia.

My god. Well, they're not scientists. They like to play pretend sometimes, but they're not. It's a technical skill set, like medicine, or psychiatry, not a field of research.

Thats not true at all, there are huge areas of research in electronics, robotics and automation which is primarily dominated by industry.
I agree the word engineer is tossed around too loosely, but there are those that are far more competent scientists then the majority of lazy hacks you see in the public sector and academia.

I hope you're right.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Other than kilns and vats, I have no idea what kinds of machines you have there, so I just made one up that sounded like the kind of thing you would have. In my imagination, your plant is full of nightmare machines, machines with teeth and whirly bits and rotary razorblade assemblies and jets of gaseous acid.

Pretty much.

It's like Disneyland for sickos.

This is still the most accurate description of my job that I've ever come up with.

[Suu]

I just got a visual of Filthy Assistant being made of plastic and singing, "Small World".

For some reason, I feel that that may not be too far off.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I just got a visual of Filthy Assistant being made of plastic and singing, "Small World".

For some reason, I feel that that may not be too far off.

If he wore Official Harley Davidson everything, and fucked the words to the song up, you're pretty much right on it.

[Phox]

Oh, this story makes me horny in the cockles of my black little heart. 

[Cain]

Engineers tend to suffer from Dunning-Krueger syndrome.  They think that everyone around them are idiots, and that a millwright with 30 years of experience doesn't know what he's talking about because he has no degree.

Worse, if the engineer gets his PE stamp, he suddenly becomes an expert on ALL subjects, and forgets how to say "I don't know" or "Let me look that up" or "Whoops.  I made a mistake."

Basically, the whole field is full of Requia.

Precisely this.  My dad is an engineer (well, engineer/surveyor), so I've met quite a few, and the automatic assumption of nearly every engineer is that you are stupid and that they are right.

This personality type tends to mesh quite well with certain bizarre belief systems and violent organizations which are also convinced they are 100% correct and everyone else is an idiot, which is why engineers are over-represented in intelligent design circles, terrorist groups and the leading cadres of the Chinese Communist Party.  I believe more than a few articles have been devoted to trying to explore these particular phenomena, but it basically comes down to the supreme arrogance of your average engineer, and whatever they have fixated on before, during or since their training.  Or because everyone else is just TOO STUPID to see the TRUTH that an engineer's superior intellect allows them to understand.  Probably the former, though.