September 15, 2004
A: FROM MENTOR KRISTIN TAGHON IN IL
Again - a quick response from my brother-in-law, Cliff Fitzsimmons who has
been in the engineering field for approximately 25 years. Thanks for
taking the time to answer, Cliff!

Do you have assignments that seem to drag on forever, or are they usually
pretty quick?

Most of my individual assignments only take a few days to a few weeks to
complete. However, some projects, especially the large ones, can take
several years to complete. On a day to day basis, the problems tend to
change relatively quickly and the progress is visable, so its not boring.
There is some work that occassionally has to be redone, but its usually
because there is new information that changes the problem or the desired
outcome. I usually have a good sense of accomplishment.

How much of your time is spent on the computer?

I spend about a third of my time on the computer, mostly reading project
related documents, performing analyses, writing my results, and
coordinating the work via e-mail. How you spend your time varies greatly with what your
are assigned to and how long you've been working. When I first started, I
spent most of my time on a calculator performing calculations. Now, most of
this work would be done on a computer. Now, 25 years later, I spend more
time talking to customers, talking to the people who do the work, and
reading documents. I do a lot of analysis related to decision-making, i.e.,
whether to build a project, whether the solution is the right one, does it
have all of the right pieces, and who is responsible for making it work
well. But, I don't do many calculations anymore. This was a choice I made.
Many other engineers choose to stay with the science and math analyses.

Does your job deal mainly with people, data or things?

My job today is split evenly between working with people and reports. The
reports describe the problems that people want solved, they describe the
solutions we might pick between, and they describe why one solution is the
best. I work a lot with the people who want the projects, the people that
write the reports, and the people that approve the reports. I did not
always have this role and had to build up to it through a process that is
typical for most engineers. Right after I graduated from college, my work
was more technical, working mostly with data, formulas, calculators,
computers, drawings and references; and less with people. I would visit a
place that had a particular problem, and then I would return to the office
and figure out what information was needed to define the problem and to
solve it, and then how to get the information. Sometimes I would go back to
the site to get information or others would get it for me. Then I would use
the information to figure out the best plan that solves the problem, and
then I would lay the plan out on paper so that others could understand it
and build it. This was all done working with other people, mostly other
engineers and technicians - but most of my time was really spent with
calculators, computers, drawings and references. As I got more experience,
I became more interested in helping make the decisions to build large
projects. As a result I now work mostly with the reports and the customers,
government officials, and other people interested in potential projects. I
do very little technical analysis anymore - but the engineering training
helped me get here.

I think that all engineering jobs deal with a mix of people, data and
things. Most of the work is done by teams working on the data, analyses and
the products or projects. Engineering is much more oriented towards
analysis work than many other professions, but there are opportunities to
work with people and things. I know engineers that work almost exclusively
with machinery and others that work entirely with people, mostly in sales
work. So there are choices.