Have been mulling over this one for a couple of days. Wondering whether gas installers and washing machine repairmen being called “engineers” is symptomatic of the reason why this country is in such deep **** (I’m ignoring our great leader for the time being). They surely wouldn’t be allowed to use such a title in Germany, a country which can still sell it’s products on the basis of superior engineering. Meanwhile in this country science and technology is sneered at.

feeling unloved aracer? 🙂

In the public mind I think youre right, but to the people who matter (those considering their career choices and education path) Id like to think that the meat of the matter is more important than the name of the cut.

There was a thread on the old forum asking folk to sign up to one of them No. 10 petitions trying to limit the use of the term Engineer to those who belonged to a chartered institute (or something).
Rather predictably the OP and those who expressed support for the idea had a certain amount of urine removed 🙂

trolling ****

classic “engineers”mentality
and precisely why gas installers and presumably w/m repairers find “i’m an engineer'” types the most obnoxious customers
we really are not worthy

They are engineers. And I belong to a chartered engineering institute.

beb – play the ball, not the man – are you telling me there’s no correlation at all between the attitude to engineers in Germany and how much more respected German engineering is?

i promise to never call myself an engineer again
hope this gives you the respect you deserve

Q: What is the difference between an Engineer and a Scientist (to the general public)?

A: Scientist wears a white jacket, Engineer wears blue overalls.

BTW: 8 years after my degree, I finally qualified as a Chartered Engineer (CEng). But I stopped paying the subscription fees when I realised that no-one cared, so I’m not any more.

If I re-applied I would not get it as they raised the bar even higher by disqualifying my degree.

It’s a mockery

In Germany an “engineer” is like being a “doctor”, you have to do xnumber of years at uni

yeah bet they still cant install central heating or fix their own washing machines

Get a job with a protected title then.

?

yeah but they still cant install central heating or fix their own washing machines

The first only because I’m not legally allowed to – done plenty of the latter.

You guys are so missing the point though. Notice the lack of swearing and getting angry in the OP? It’s a philosophical musing, not a rant – I’m so over the issue of having no status at all.

status schmatus if you’re good at what you do be happy with that 🙂

Don’t think German engineers are any more / less respected than British engineers, apart from the marketing BS put out by Audi/VW/Braun.

To the OP I would agree, the term Engineer has been diluted over the years by anyone just using it to make their job title sound impressive. Domestic engineer for one and the guy that came and installed our photocopier (took out of box and plugged it in) was an engineer apparently, waste removal engineer (bin man).

The professional institution should have been protecting the title, instead of just taking cash and handing out postnomials.

I work for a huge German engineering company that nobody here will have heard of. It is true, in Germany an Engineer his held in higher regard than over here.

Here is a little tale of the British mentality. One of my German colleagues had a doctorate, one of my former English engineering colleagues refused to call him doctor because “a doctor is the bloke that I see when i’m ill”. The same bloke used to get upset when a central heating engineer called himself an engineer “he’s not an engineer, he just fits boilers”.

From my perspective I didn’t join the I MEch E because nobody that I met could give me a good enough reason why I should.

Harry, was the head ot the company also an engineer? From personal experience an engineer is highly respected in Austria and Germany on a par with the (medical) doctors in UK.

Most of the top guys are Engineers. The company started out a couple of hundres years back as locksmiths and is still family owned (with 30,000+ employees).

are you telling me there’s no correlation at all between the attitude to engineers in Germany and how much more respected German engineering is?

IME if they were so **** good i wouldn’t spend so much of my working life trying to work out how to convince them to stop coming up with ‘solutions’ to problems that don’t exist, dealing with issues with little or no feedback beyond ‘it doesn’t work’, and generally wiping german’s arses for them.

in Germany an Engineer his held in higher regard than over here.

whilst this is undoubtedly true, it doesn’t make them any bloody use at all, again IME.

yep – another roll over here please.

yours, N.Otanengineer

They do have their “moments”, i’ll give you that!

theres a good bike shop in manchester called ‘the bicycle doctor’
i wonder if real medics hate that ? undermining their status and bringing the country to its knees

I hate it when salesmen call themselves ‘marketing executives’.

“Selling” doesn’t equal “Marketing”

‘From my perspective I didn’t join the I MEch E because nobody that I met could give me a good enough reason why I should. ‘

‘payrise was’ a good enough reason for me to go MICE. it depends on what area of your field you work in tho.

the engineering council has not come down hard enough on fake ‘engineers’ in the past which has belittled the name. historically an engineer in the uk was a powerful title.

The payrise thing didn’t apply at my place (this was before being absorbed into the huge German outfit), and probably still wouldn’t apply now. We have a history of training our engineers up from 16-18 year old apprentices and putting them through tech and college. I think that I was the first graduate trainee that they took on, and waltzing in with a title (other than B Eng Hons) wouldn’t have got me any more cash.

TBH the last graduate that got taken on was a complete dud and didn’t make it through probation. His (much better) replacement was straight out of 6th form and has been put through tech on day release.

There is a continually greying area between Engineers and Technicians.

Engineers were traditionally people who were highly sklled in their chosen area of work, you only have to look back to the industrial revolution to see how highly engineers were held in society, they were considered to be on the same level as doctors, lawyers etc.

In the present day, as posted previously, the engineer tag has been attached to numerous jobs that don’t even reach the levels that would’ve determined Technician status a few years ago.

I remember having a conersation with my now sister-in-law a while she was still @ uni doing geography with plans to do Law afterwards (why she just didn’t do law in the 1st place baffles the hell outta me), that in her eyes Engineering was the term applied to people who worked in factories making things and how could they ever expect to earn what lawyers etc can earn when they don’t do things that are as important as what lawyers etc do (worded badly I know, but hey).

When it comes down to it, bin men are bin men, not waste disposal engineers.

People who design & are in charge of building projects, construction projects etc are engineers, the people who do the actual building of said projects aren’t, they’re the labour involved; from general operative to technician level. The engineer is the person responsible for ensuring that section fo the project is done correctly.

Well thats my 2p’s worth anyway, have a ncie day y’all

personaly i agree with the OP

I’m not a doctor, so i dont call myself one, im an engineer.

Similarly the guy who fixes cars down the road is a technician.

The crucual difference is his work is done from a book/taught and he very rarely strays from that. The engineer thinks through a problem and solves it. So yes the technician does some engineering, but i wouldnt say he was an engineer, anymore than he is a pot washer because he washes up his tea mug (infrequently).

Who cares what the title is? Someone at some point will ask you what you actually do, and that’s where the reckoning is? It’s just a word, not that big of a deal. Like when Polytechnics became Universities – people just started asking where your degree was from and basing their judgement on that.

Wondering whether gas installers and washing machine repairmen being called “engineers” is symptomatic of the reason why this country is in such deep ****

What’s symptomatic of the problems with this country is people whining too much 🙂

Meanwhile in this country science and technology is sneered at.

Some British industries doing really well:

Biotechnology
Space research
Games software

No science or engineering there then…

‘proper’ engineering in teh uk is quite highly regarded. the civil and structural engineers we produce are some of the best in teh world.

its only the uk that doesnt respect its own real engineers. because of the over use of the name.

alot of this is down to miseducation. as school teahcers and kids to draw what an engineer does and they will show people fixing cars and washing machines.

the various engineering institutions fell back on their laurels too much in the post war period and now, because they missed educating people about engineering, all engineers are suffering in this country from a lack of respect.

The thing is, if you say ‘I’m an engineer’ you think of machines, bridges, roads etc etc. If you are a ‘waste removal engineer’ or a ‘gas installation engineer’ you don’t tell people you’re an engineer when asked what you do. If you did, you’d get found out and that’d be embarassing to us Brits.

So don’t worry about it. I doubt many bin men describe themselves as anything other than that. If they did in seriousness, they’d get the p*ss ripped out of them by their mates.

[qoute]are you telling me there’s no correlation at all between the attitude to engineers in Germany and how much more respected German engineering is?[/qoute]

What do you reckon to Spanish engineering, then? I don’t think it’s regarded highly anywhere and yet they have to study as long as doctors at university.

I would argue that German engineers and engineering is highly regarded because for years and years they’ve suplied the world with well-made cars (amongst other stuff).

Not sure you can complain about the regard that UK engineers are held in, though – I thought they were pretty respected globally, no?

I think I used to be an engineer in the distant past. The memory gets a bit vague with age……