'I have never yet come across an engineer who can turn his hands to business'

right, I’ve had a few beers so I might get a little carried away, but here goes.
I’m an engineer. Mechanical to be specific. As I mentioned earlier, I’ve a masters degree and am slowly working towards being chartered. I’ve had a varied career, working with an awful lot of people in different industries and I’ve come to the conclusions that engineers tend to be bl00dy good at their jobs and tend to be held back by idiot management, production monkeys and marketing f’ckwits.
BUT engineers who sell out and move into management themselves, tend to be good businessmen/women. So, Alan Sugar is a n0b and clearly wrong.

and don’t get me started on the technician/engineer argument. Poddy seems to have done that himself.

‘I have never yet come across an engineer who can turn his hands to business’

The Engineer’sanswer:

“An engineer is a professional practitioner of engineering, concerned with applying scientific knowledge, mathematics and ingenuity to develop solutions for technical problems,”
Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineer

“A businessperson (also businessman or businesswoman) is an entrepreneur or someone who is involved in the management of a company esp as an owner or executive”
Ref:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Businessperson

Sugar is a tw@

Hmmm. Well my stepdad was (is) a distinguished engineer specialising laterally in ROVs, hyperbaric stuff, mini-submersibles and general sub-sea spannering.

He was promoted to office work (project manager or somesuch) and so far as I could tell, he absolutely hated it – difficult to say as ex-navy types are even more emotionally retarded than most of the rest of us.

When he finally ‘retired’ a few years ago, he set up a down-pipe patent business and does very well indeed out of it, satisfying long supressed legal urges and making the most of his background and experience. Mr Sugar is just an expert at producing soundbites IMO…

….and good for him.

Unlike Mr sugar who gave up on business and turned to soap opera

As an engineer, I’d respond to Sir Alan’s comment with ‘I never met a person in business who could dial a number on a telephone without someone telling them how to do it.’

HTH Mr Sugar.

Tom Peters (in search of excellence) Civil Engineer

Jack Welch (youngest ever and most successful CEO GE) Chemical Engineer

Michael Porter (marketing guru) Aerospace Engineer

work out what’s required, design a solution, inplement the solution and test it

hallelujah – verging on the waterfall model

Tom Peters (in search of excellence) Civil Engineer

Jack Welch (youngest ever and most successful CEO GE) Chemical Engineer

Michael Porter (marketing guru) Aerospace Engineer

Let’s not forget Lord (Paul) Drayson
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Drayson,_Baron_Drayson

nuff said…

And following my last post ^^^

cheez0 – Member
Can an engineer make a good businessman?

Engineers tend to be ‘thinkers’ (Check out NLP)

Thinkers weigh up the risks involved with starting a business, throwing their house/ relationships/ money into a ‘hair-brained’ scheme and most will turn away from that, preferring a little more security.

Entreprenuers, on the other hand may be ‘entertainers’ ignoring the risks and not caring about the facts in order to make their idea a reality. If the idea works, they become successful businessmen, and even if they dont they will likely try again.

I tend to agree with the Sugar.

I also agree with this to a degree… I am a show-off barsteward with the analytical thinking qualities of a slug – I just happen to have been lucky enough to hit upon a business idea which ‘makes my idea a reality’ and pays the bills. Had I sat down and properly thought about it, I’d never have got off the ground.

Maybe for every ten chancers who end up begging for food at Charing Cross, there’s one guy who makes it.

Engineers are rarely allowed to get to the point where they can risk everything, their first day on the job is usually enough time to determine if they’re talking sense, or out their arse. The latter, aren’t engineers.

ir_bandito – Member
I’m an engineer. I’ve had a varied career, working with an awful lot of people in different industries and I’ve come to the conclusions that engineers tend to be bl00dy good at their jobs and tend to be held back by idiot management, production monkeys and marketing f’ckwits.
Alan Sugar is a n0b and clearly wrong.

Yep that’s me as well.

Funny thing is our US operation promote engineers as they understand how the business operates on many layers.
Yet in the UK unless your in sales… bugger all chance of promotion???

With engineering comes responsibilty. Engineers aren’t chancers

Spare us a quid for a cuppa mate? There but for the grace of God go I 😉 And on a 10-1 chance too!

Entreprenuers, on the other hand may be ‘entertainers’ ignoring the risks and not caring about the facts in order to make their idea a reality

…great if youv’e got a clown face and a unicycle!

Well, I do happen to own a uni…. Lidl special….

EDIT; and as a wedding photographer with a conscience and proper training, I don’t dare take risks either – must have got that from my engineer stepdad!

But it makes good telly, innit. I don’t watch it.
I have a cnc milling machine. When I write code for it I am a techie. The person who did the operating system for it was an engineer. The cad model I use was made by a cad designer, who was following the brief of an engineer.
The engineer is the person who decides how the thing is going to work, what material and all that kind of thing.

“100 idiots make idiotic
plans, and carry them
out. All but one justly
fail. The hundredth idiot
whose plans succeeded
through pure luck, is
immediately convinced
he’s a genius.”
—Iain Banks, Matter

I have a mate who is as well: He’s currently building his second MTB frame, welded up in a jig he made himself, with tubing from a pipe bender he made himself becasue commercial ones are rubbish. He has lathes and a pillar drill in his garage, and swarf on the floor. THAT’S engineering!!

Sounds more like a school metalwork class.

Both engineering and business are skills, ones that can be learned by a wide range of people with a reasonable level of intelligence, common sense and time. A degree of aptitude benefits both, but I know people who toil away at both without any and get by. I do both, I find both hard, but I’m successful at both. If I had my choice I would probably do neither as the levels of stress and responsibility are too high.

I have no time for the technician/engineer debate. If that is the most important thing you have to worry about in your job you are doing ok, believe me. As for chartered engineers, well, fair play for making the effort to get the qualification, but it’s just a series of tests and you can train a fresh graduate to pass them if you want to, so it means nothing to me, get over it. I only value track record on the job.

Transferring from engineer to manager or engineer to businessman or the reverse can be very hard as different skills are required. If people are unwilling or unable for whatever reason to learn the skills then they will probably do a poor job, naturally. There is nothing unique in engineers in this regard.

Make of that what you will.

Recommended read – Jeff Schmidt “Disciplined Minds”

Sounds more like a school metalwork class.

Yeah, but if you can’t use a lathe, you’re just a product designer rather than a proper engineer 😀

You’re all shit , we should have been on mars by now you lazy ****.

Believe me, if there were rare and valuable minerals on Mars, we’d be there by now – think Avatar.

But it’s a frozen dustbowl that’s only of interest to science – science not considered important enough by the public to fund that kind of exploration.

Engineering has many sub-disciplines, but they all involve aspects of both creative and methodical thinking/design. While there are often hands-on aspects, these are not defining.

Re Software – do you imagine that 2-5 people could successfully engineer software, ~280,000 lines of code over 5 years, to operate a 3 billion Euro safety-critical multi-satellite system, without a high degree of imagination and technical rigour?

All of my engineering courses so far have had a module in business or industry. I doubt business courses touch upon the rudiments of engineering.

Re Software – do you imagine that 2-5 people could successfully engineer software, ~280,000 lines of code over 5 years, to operate a 3 billion Euro safety-critical multi-satellite system, without a high degree of imagination and technical rigour?

Indeed. I don’t think that’s in dispute (well apart from say the Ariene 4 to 5 cut n paste special). However other professions also have those qualities, but for instance we don’t call creative accountants fiscal engineers.

we don’t call creative accountants fiscal engineers

….for the simple reason that….

“An engineer is a professional practitioner of engineering, concerned with applying scientific knowledge, mathematics and ingenuity to develop solutions for technical problems,”

Re Software – do you imagine that 2-5 people could successfully engineer software, ~280,000 lines of code over 5 years, to operate a 3 billion Euro safety-critical multi-satellite system, without a high degree of imagination and technical rigour?

a key difference is though, that you have to be a chartered engineer with the imeche (or equilvelent for civil eng etc) where as in software in the past people have worked on high level and safety critical projects without being a member of a professional institution…

the BCS exists but you can be a software engineer without being a memeber or having any involvement with it

cant do that as a Doctor or Engineer

So there were no engineers before any of the professional engineering bodies were formed?

So you’d be happy to go under the knife by someone who calls themselves a Dr, as opposed to someone who the BMA call a Dr?

So you’d be happy to go under the knife by someone who calls themselves a Dr, as opposed to someone who the BMA call a Dr?

…depends on the circumstances.

a key difference is though, that you have to be a chartered engineer with the imeche (or equilvelent for civil eng etc) where as in software in the past people have worked on high level and safety critical projects without being a member of a professional institution..

This is quite right. Software is engineering with no regulation, recognised training or experience, and the people paying for it have no idea if it’s any good or not.

Which is why on any project you get some good people and enough idiots in high enough positions to wreck it… Unfortunately.

Turn it on its head. The number of bizniz people who’ve managed to transition into successful engineers? Square root of nack-all. End.

Square root of nack-al

Have you investigated the limit of the square root of nack-al? If so which direction are you tending to nack-all from?

Gosh, this is all a bit worrying.
I studied software and electrical engineering.
Last I looked I’d done alright.
Haven’t met Lord Sugar though.
He sounds like a d1ck.

Nzcol, but are you as successful as AS? See, he has a point 🙂

4 pages of posts discussing something Alan Sugar said?

Robert Noyce
Gordon Moore
Andrew_Grove

Haven’t done too badly out of engineering.

True , good point well made

There are engineers and engineers. As has been said if you wan’t to have medical treatment you want a Dr accredited by the BMA.

Proffessional Engineers are accredited by the Engineering council.

The skills I need to be a Charterred Engineer are as below…

http://www.ice.org.uk/mgn3

Note that its not all teckie, I have to have commercial and leadership skills to. That is the difference between a proffesionally qualified engineer and …. well an engineer. No disrespect to Engineers as we all do a craxcking job.

If Al Sugar had said he’s never met a engineer that can turn his hand to buissness, well for some engineers that may be true (although I doubt it would be a fair comment). To say that a proffessionally qualified engineer can’t turn his hand to bussiness is ridiculus …as that is what we are trained to do (as well as the teckie stuff!)

like the x factor – its about the T.V. Show not the outcome

we need to remember they’re T.V. shows! they’re not about the apprentice or finding a pop star – they’re about ratings

Gordon Moore

“Sugar’s Law” presumably says that the amount of tat you can sell people doubles every two years?