Useless Conversation

[Merusk]

Yeah, I realized that about 7 years too late.  I've tried going back for engineering but the C's killed my GPA enough that the engineering school won't take me now.   Such is my fate.

ed: It's funny, that's also the one grudge I still carry against my father.  He asked me in the last quarter of college, as I was mid-rant about how much I hated the school and what I was doing, why I didn't just go into engineering.  I recall thinking, "Because I was 16 when I decided what college to go to and what for and I'd never fucking heard of engineering.  16 year olds with sheltering mothers from towns with a 35k population don't fucking know what engineering is!  That's what parents are supposed to suggest!"   Instead I said, "I dunno."

[lamaros]

Hey, at least you got a real degree. My parents went too hard on the "do what you like doing and you will be happy" angle, so I studied Philosophy and then changed to English. All those things that I was good at when I was at school, maths, economics, science, etc got pushed to the wayside. Pretty sure someone who's opinion I respected, rather than the inept school 'careers councillor' could have taken me aside at some point and said "do what you like doing, but get a decent degree at the same time".

I feel I've atrophied that part of my brain so much that I'm tempted to go back to university and study economics or engineering...

[Nebu]

There's nothing wrong with following your passion in college as long as you are aware of where it will lead you professionally.  Studying engineering is worthless if you're going to spend the rest of your life loathing the thought of going to work.  I can't imagine working as an engineer, unless it was in some type of fundamental research capacity. 

[lamaros]

There's nothing wrong with following your passion in college as long as you are aware of where it will lead you professionally.  Studying engineering is worthless if you're going to spend the rest of your life loathing the thought of going to work.  I can't imagine working as an engineer, unless it was in some type of fundamental research capacity.

This is true and my brother in law is one of those people who has found that, having studied engineering (though more to do with the kind of non-eng jobs engineers often get pushed in to a bit).

Still, I think my degree is mostly worthless in hindsight. Most of the stuff I got out of it I think you could get out of any degree, and all the other stuff just comes from life and being interested in stuff.

[Jeff Kelly]

I just went from ap. 3 foot of hair length to 3 mm.   /

Hair on my head that is. 

I did that 9 years ago. I came to loathe my long hair and so I cut it off. Had to convince with my hairdresser before she agreed to do it.

[Furiously]

I used to have Samson like powers too... Then my hair all fell out.

[Jeff Kelly]

It's all pretty surreal. We arrived in Germany two days before all this kicked off and our hotel was one of the main hubs for guild meetings. We were also the only people staying there so we had no clue what was going on and there were secretive conclaves of strangely dressed people at odd hours. We fully expected to have stumbled into a nest of Lovecraftian cults and to end up being sacrificed to nameless, squirming gods in ceremonies too foul for human minds to ken.

If you've ever been to a 'Prunksitzung' (the main celebratory events at Fastnacht) you'd agree that this is not that far from the truth  

Fastnacht or Fasching or Karneval traditions (same principle just different German regions) trace back to medieval times which makes it kind of interesting. Alas it's the one time of the year where the German is allowed to be funny and to party. Imagine a lot of people that are serious the whole year round blowing off steam in those two weeks. A bit like spring break for middle aged accountants and housewives.

So it's lots of alcohol, bad beerfest music and exactly the kind of humor that middle aged German accountants find funny. (So, not very funny)

It's become a very divisive kind of event with lots of people attending and lots of people loathing it.

[Jeff Kelly]

Du musst mehr bier trinken.

Or something.

This suggestion is almost universally true.

[Jeff Kelly]

At the moment I'm quite burned out on being an engineer (studied comp.sci. and I've been working for ten years now).

You will be managed almost exclusively by business people. Those people won't have any clue about the technological aspects of the projects or departments that they are managing and they won't care. They almost exclusively care about the bottom line without the technical background necessary to make informed business decisions and not enough courage to let the technical experts drive the technological decisions.

Even worse you might be managed by an engineer which is exactly the opposite. Then you'll usually discuss ideas that are 'cool to do' instead of ideas that make money and you'll be micromanaged to hell because your manager cares more about the projects than the strategical aspect of management.

I've led discussions with world market leaders for embedded systems (automotive for example) that do 90% of their development with temp workers (temp agencies for engineering work is THE boom industry in Germany) or outsourcing partners. They handed all of their strategical know how to external partners because they don't see themselves as software companies (even if most embedded business today is software). 'We design brake systems not computers' (actual quote). Yeah except that your brake system with anti-lock-brake system and electronic stability program IS essentially a computer.

You have to lobby for years to just get your development process to something that was state of the art 20 years ago, while most of the money the company makes with your work gets funneled to executive and sales bonuses.

At a recent interview the interviewer ended the conversation because he deemed 45 k€ as to much money for my services (that's basically entry level salary for engineers anywhere else). It's really bad right now.

If I had an MBA I would already be department lead with a nice car and a six figure salary instead of seriously considering to leave my own country because right now engineering work is less lucrative than being a craftsman.

Oh and I despise those skill tests. I have more than ten years of experience designing and coding wireless embedded systems and I've already managed projects with budgets of more than 4 Million Euro and you want me to write a strsort function? WTF?

At one point I'll be seriously tempted to punch the stupidity right out of some snotty HR representative.

[Merusk]

Heh, you run into those situations as any professional.  I've heard the same sort of problems form accountants, legal processors, sales managers and the women who did closings & deed transfers.   MBAs run the business world and drive everyone batty.

Truth be told I'd rather be a structural engineer.  Still involved with construction, but you make a hell of a lot more money for a hell of a lot less work. 

[Ironwood]

Fuck people who say they're going to call and don't.

Christ, now I sound like a woman.

 

[Selby]

At the moment I'm quite burned out on being an engineer (studied comp.sci. and I've been working for ten years now).

I was bitter after 5 years in the private sector.  Got into a research organization and feel much less stress and pressure and anger over the MBA\sales types.  We now reserve our wrath for physicists who don't understand, not MBAs giving themselves gozillion dollar bonuses.  And besides, how can I ever be truly upset when I get to play with high voltage all the time?  It's such fun!

[Murgos]

Truth be told I'd rather be a structural engineer.  Still involved with construction, but you make a hell of a lot more money for a hell of a lot less work.  

Do you have to have finaid to pursue a new degree or can you make it for a while on your own dime?

The dirty secret of graduate engineering is that if you can pay your own way and have held down a job that's at least a little related they pretty much won't give more than a cursory glance at your GPA.  I know your next argument will be, "But don't I need an undergrad Eng degee?" and the answer to that is no.  You may not be able to get into any of the 5/6/7 level courses until you pick up some of the prereqs but, whatever.  As an architect I imagine you are already pretty familiar with most of the concepts in structural engineering if not really able to rigorously apply the theory so it shouldn't be that hard a transition.

Enroll as non-degree seeking at the college you want to attend, take a course & pass it and then apply to become degree seeking.  Admissions requirements are high because of the competition for finaid, if you don't need one of those precious slots then you could probably go to a top 10 school without having to jump through too many hoops.

[Paelos]

Fuck people who say they're going to call and don't.

Christ, now I sound like a woman.

 

Hope they bought you dinner at least.

[Sky]

I got "C"s in design classes because I was too practical.  I hated my school for shoving design in front of things like structure, HVAC considerations and usability of the building.

Merusk, you are obviously an engineer at your core.

These two quotes do not compute. The engineers I've dealt with, or the products of engineering I've dealt with, have very little connection to the real world. It actually seems like an mmo in a way, they've calculated the way they think things should work and design around that, completely ignoring the way things actually work. So we have an engineer-designed HVAC that can't heat and cool properly, an engineer-designed massive flat roof in a snow region (that nobody can fix), and a parking lot with artful arcing curb curves that get in the way of traffic flow.

But going back to Merusk's quote about not fitting into the questionable status quo, I had similar difficulties in recording school. I wanted these real hot basic live-sounding tracks for my project and all the engineers were still in the over-processed, reverb- and chorus-drenched 80s. They really liked my skills, but I got crap grades for the final products because it didn't fit what they were teaching. I've wondered if the guys who slammed me ever regretted it when grunge took off like a year later. If I had stayed in school, I'd probably have gotten a lot of jobs that year!

Page 385 commentary: Since the library is pretty much doomed and a local college is (supposed to be) offering some free tech courses, I'm about to be back in college. Problem is, I'm not sure if I really want to stay in IT. It's a massive pain in the ass. For a long time I've thought about getting licensed as an electrician, but the thought of starting an apprenticeship in my 40s (and having house and truck payments) is off-putting. Hearing almost everyone gripe about MBAs, I've begun to wonder if I shouldn't work to an MBA and be the jackass boss everyone hates (that makes $$ and takes credit for everything while deflecting any blame). Sounds awesome!  

[Ironwood]

Fuck people who say they're going to call and don't.

Christ, now I sound like a woman.

 

Hope they bought you dinner at least.

Dinner ?!  I didn't even get a handjob !

[Viin]

Page 385 commentary: Since the library is pretty much doomed and a local college is (supposed to be) offering some free tech courses, I'm about to be back in college. Problem is, I'm not sure if I really want to stay in IT. It's a massive pain in the ass. For a long time I've thought about getting licensed as an electrician, but the thought of starting an apprenticeship in my 40s (and having house and truck payments) is off-putting. Hearing almost everyone gripe about MBAs, I've begun to wonder if I shouldn't work to an MBA and be the jackass boss everyone hates (that makes $$ and takes credit for everything while deflecting any blame). Sounds awesome! 

An MBA isn't a magic bullet, and you better well like the managerial aspects of running a business. You'll be in meetings 9hrs a day *and* still have other work to do, with responsibility for a P&L that you ultimately rely on others to affect, and you will not be hands-on for anything except powerpoint slides. It will take some experience to get to the point where you are running a business strategically.

[Sky]

I was a manager for a few years and enjoyed making the best use of a workforce and putting people to their best use per their abilities. I also enjoy meetings and get asked to attend meetings I don't really have business being at because I provide a solid no-bullshit perspective to keep things in line and also have no time for dicking around a subject so I move things along when some folks get long-winded. In retrospect, I guess most people at the meetings hate me, since the do-ers are far outnumbered by the dick-around-ers.

[WayAbvPar]

I also enjoy meetings

This is a warning sign of a deep psychological disorder. Seek help before it is too late!

[murdoc]

Meetings are how busy people get a break and useless people feel productive

[Abagadro]

I like meetings if I can sit in the back and post to f13 or play tower defense games on my phone.

[Polysorbate80]

So you're in a meeting now?

[Abagadro]

Nah, took the day off. 

[IainC]

I used to hate meetings too but a few of us chipped in together and filled the meeting room with about 400€ worth of assorted Lego bricks. Now meetings are more productive and infinitely more interesting.

[Murgos]

.

These two quotes do not compute. The engineers I've dealt with, or the products of engineering I've dealt with, have very little connection to the real world. It actually seems like an mmo in a way, they've calculated the way they think things should work and design around that, completely ignoring the way things actually work. So we have an engineer-designed HVAC that can't heat and cool properly, an engineer-designed massive flat roof in a snow region (that nobody can fix), and a parking lot with artful arcing curb curves that get in the way of traffic flow.
[/quote]

Yeah, man!  All those other HVAC systems and roofs and freeways that were built by the plucky working man from designs given him from the revealed wisdom of his ancestors fucking ROCK compared to those engineered pieces of shit.

[ghost]

I hate meetings because I'm invariable the person giving the two hour lecture. 

[Sky]

Yeah, man!  All those other HVAC systems and roofs and freeways that were built by the plucky working man from designs given him from the revealed wisdom of his ancestors fucking ROCK compared to those engineered pieces of shit.

I see what you did there. Actually, it's more about modern engineering and contract bidding. But our historic building, with the steeply-pitched slate roof and boiler/radiant system is not even comparable to the modern garbage that barely does what it's supposed to do, and costs more money to do so. Not to mention aesthetics. A beautifully-engineered building with style and grace AND functionality, even the radiators were pieces of art, wonderfully cast. The "new" (70s) building is a rectangle of leakage and the new hvac units are...rectangles of sheet metal. Something has been lost, from both functionality and form.

[Yegolev]

Fuck people who say they're going to call and don't.

Christ, now I sound like a woman.

I'm going to give you some credit and believe this is about a job.  I mean a paying regular job, too.

[RhyssaFireheart]

From what I understand, crooks start with smaller charges to test the card, so as to not tip-off the card companies. Buying $2000 tickets overseas or something similar is an immediate red-flag.

Also, if someone gets a card, they may not immediately know what they want to pound your card with, so they test it while thinking of all sorts of silly shit to buy, like scuba gear.

Well, most of the charges dropped off this morning, only about $300 worth left on there.  I may still need to go to the bank in the morning to dispute some charges, but we'll see.  It does help that the husband is a bank manager himself, just for a different institution.

Strazos, the funny thing is that scuba gear wouldn't trip any worries, because the husband is a (now retired) master scuba instructor and I'm also certified.  :-D  I'd just think he was getting new gear or something, lol!

[Ironwood]

Fuck people who say they're going to call and don't.

Christ, now I sound like a woman.

I'm going to give you some credit and believe this is about a job.  I mean a paying regular job, too.

It is indeed.  "Don't worry, we want this one to go quick, we'll let all five of you know by tomorrow."

That was two days ago and it's now the weekend, so I'm fucked again.
I really, really, really hate this.

And yet.  I'm still happier than I was at that fucking place.

[ghost]

Maybe they are having a tough time deciding because you interviewed so well.  Don't give up hope!

[Paelos]

If you don't hear from them by Monday morning, it's completely professional to call them and inquire where they are in their decision making process.

[Selby]

A beautifully-engineered building with style and grace AND functionality, even the radiators were pieces of art, wonderfully cast. The "new" (70s) building is a rectangle of leakage and the new hvac units are...rectangles of sheet metal. Something has been lost, from both functionality and form.

Beautifully engineered stuff costs money.  Making things out of parts destined to last 40-50 years costs money too (and also means it won't be replaced in 5-10 years).  No one wants to spend what it costs to make the modern equivalent of that anymore so most companies don't invest any time or effort into it.

[Ironwood]

Maybe they are having a tough time deciding because you interviewed so well.  Don't give up hope!

Yeah, except I'm the type of guy that thinks '4 of us are wondering what's going on and 1 of us is in the pub celebrating.'

I hide it well on the boards, but I'm actually fairly pessimistic.

 

[Selby]

Yeah, except I'm the type of guy that thinks '4 of us are wondering what's going on and 1 of us is in the pub celebrating.'

My experience with this was always "5 wondering what's going on without ever hearing back and management deciding to promote from within or not hiring anyone at all due to budget cuts yet too chickenshit to actually have the balls to tell the candidates."