The responses to my retirement post are a real eye opener.

[dwayneb]

39. Perspective of an engineer

I am a mechanical engineer and worked in both the automotive (body design) and aerospace (jet engines), for the largest OEMs.

While I loved developing safe and reliable products, and I enjoyed working with incredibly talented people - I hated working for these giant soulless corporations.

I saw a huge change from the late 70's. We are now expected to take on twice the volume of work that we did back then. Design automation software didn't do a thing to improve the quality of life of the average engineer. In fact it made it worse as we are now expected to be tied to a computer screen hour after endless hour, juggling multiple programs.

Most of the jobs I had required 60 hours a week or more to complete the assignments well - the idea of a 40 hour a week job in engineering is simply a pipe dream. At the end of a week, you are completely exhausted, mentally and physically. Things get missed. People get beaten down until they are forced to take short cuts.

It's no surprise that we end up with disasters like Boeing's 737-MAX design fiasco, and hundreds of people needlessly killed. Boeing was squeezing every minute, every dime they could out of the engineers that were responsible for that system.