What Personality Qualities Do Engineers Have?
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by Auston Matta
Demand Media
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The products you use in everyday life are all designed. The development and construction of these products have a specific plan, and engineers are responsible their creation. Even the seemingly simple packages of food you purchase at the grocery store often require a packaging engineer to ensure freshness and safety. Mechanical engineering has been around for quite some time, but dramatic improvements in technology since the 20th century have given rise to new fields like biomedical and computer engineering. Even with all the differing disciplines of engineering, commonality exists between the personalities of those who work in the field.
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Critical Thinking
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Engineers are problem solvers. They are the people who figure out how to make your smartphone smaller, laptop faster and car more fuel-efficient. For example, in order for a smartphone to become thinner, an electrical engineer must determine how to redesign existing electrical components. Once the concept is developed, a manufacturing engineer must determine how to mass produce the new components for the consumer market. These new iterations of products and processes require engineers to solve problems and think critically about possible solutions.
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Resourceful
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Engineers must be resourceful. They must rely upon the concepts they learned in school or other training programs. They must reference textbooks or engineering guides to better understand the concepts related to the problem they are solving. For example, when facing a thermal design issue, a mechanical engineer may not necessarily know the unit conversion from British thermal unit — or Btu — to watts, but he must know where to look for the information. The field of engineering is not about memorization or completing repetitive tasks but knowing where to find the information required in order to solve the problem at hand.
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Inquisitive
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Most engineers you encounter are highly inquisitive. Engineers are often fascinated by how things work and the science behind the operation. As children, many engineers dismantle their toys just to figure out how to put them back together. This inquisitive nature becomes very handy in the field of engineering, because engineers must understand how the current product or process works prior to making an improvement or fixing an issue.
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Cooperative
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An engineer needs to be effective at working together with his colleagues. Teamwork among engineers is almost always required to complete a job. Teamwork is especially important in engineering because most jobs require several engineers to complete. A simple package of coffee beans, for example, may require five engineers to design the package, test the performance and manufacture the final product. A complex product like a laptop computer could require hundreds or thousands of engineers to support the development. Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering, for example, has specifically designed an entry level-course named Design Thinking and Communication, which requires engineering students to work in groups throughout the six-month course.
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A PERSONAL NOTE
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BY DR. CHARLES GOSHEN M.D.
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A DIPLOMATE OF THE AMERICAN BOARDS OF PSYCHIATRY AND NEUROLOGY.
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THE ENGINEERS’ MOST OBVIOUS CHARACTERISTIC IS HIS PRECISION, HIS METICULOUSNESS, HIS ATTENTION TO DETAIL AND ACCURACY – HIS PERFECTIONISM.
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ANOTHER STRIKING QUALITY IS HIS INTELLIGENCE.
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Money: Retirement: "The Unvarnished Truth" - Dan Zwicker, P. Eng. 