ENGINEER IDENTIFICATION TEST

You walk into a room, and notice that a picture is hanging crooked.
You:

a) Straighten it
b) Ignore it
c) Buy a CAD system and spend the next six months designing a
solar-powered, self-adjusting picture frame while often stating aloud
your belief that the inventor of the nail was a total moron.

The correct answer is C , but partial credit may be given to anyone who
writes "It depends" in the margin of the test, or simply blames the
whole stupid thing on Marketing .

ENGINEERING SOCIAL SKILLS

Engineers have different objectives when it comes to social
interaction.  Normal people expect to accomplish several unrealistic
things from social
interaction:

   * Stimulating and thought provoking conversation
   * Important social contacts
   * A feeling of connectedness with other humans

In contrast to normal people, engineers have rational objectives for
social interactions:

   * Get it over with as soon as possible
   * Avoid getting invited to something unpleasant
   * Demonstrate mental superiority and mastery of
     all subjects

FASCINATION WITH GADGETS

To the engineer, all matter in the universe can be placed into one of
two categories:

   * Things that need to be fixed
   * Things that will need to be fixed after you ve
     had a few minutes to play with them.

Engineers like to solve problems. If there are no problems handily
available, they will create their own problems. Normal people don't
understand this concept, they believe that if it ain t broke, don't fix
it.  Engineers believe that if it ain' t broke, it doesn' t have enough
features yet. To the engineer, the world is full of sub-optimised and
feature-poor toys.

LOVE OF STAR TREK

All engineers love Star Trek. This is because engineers on the Starship
Enterprise are portrayed as heroes, occasionally even having sex with
aliens.
This is much more glamorous than the real life of an engineer, which
consists of hiding from the universe, and having sex without the
participation of other life forms.

DATING AND SOCIAL LIFE

Dating is never easy for engineers. A normal person will employ various
methods to create a false impression of attractiveness. Engineers are
incapable of placing appearance above function.  Fortunately, engineers
have an ace up their sleeve. They are widely recognised as superior
marriage material: intelligent, dependable, employed, honest and handy
round the house.
While its true that many normal people would probably prefer not to
date an engineer, all normal people harbour intense desires to mate
with engineers, thus producing engineer-like children who will have
high- paying jobs long before losing their virginity.

Male engineers reach their peak of sexual attractiveness later than
normal men, becoming irresistible erotic dynamos in their mid-thirties
to late forties, for example, Bill Gates and MacGyver.

Female engineers become irresistible at the age of consent and remain
that way until about thirty minutes after their clinical death. Longer
if its a warm day.

HONESTY

Engineers are always honest in terms of technology and relationships.
That is why its a good idea to keep engineers away from customers,
romantic interests, and people who cant handle the truth.

Engineers sometimes bend the truth to avoid work. These lies sound like
lies, but technically arent, as no-one could possibly be expected to
believe them. The complete list is:

   * I won't change anything without telling you first
   * I ll return your hard-to-find cable tomorrow
   * I have to have new equipment to do my job
   * I m not jealous of your new computer
   * Of course itll be finished within budget and on time

FRUGALITY

Engineers are notoriously frugal, not through cheapness, or mean
spirit: it is simply because every spending situation is simply a
problem in optimisation - How can I escape this situation whilst
retaining the greatest amount of cash?

POWERS OF CONCENTRATION

If there is one trait that best defines an engineer it is the ability
to concentrate on one subject to the complete exclusion of everything
else.  This sometimes causes engineers to be pronounced prematurely
dead. In fact, some funeral homes in high- tech areas have started
checking CV s before processing the bodies. Electrical Engineers and
Computer Scientists are propped up in the lounge for a few days to see
if they pop out of it.

RISK

Engineers hate risk. They try and avoid it at all costs.
This is because whenever an engineer makes a mistake, the media treat
it as a big deal or something.

Examples of bad press for Engineers:

   * Hindenberg Disaster
   * Space Shuttle Challenger
   * Hubble Space Telescope
   * Apollo 13
   * Ariane 5
   * Channel Tunnel Fire
   * Piper Alpha
   * Ford Capri

The risk/reward calculation for engineers looks something like this:

Risk: Public humiliation and the death of thousands of innocent people

Reward: A certificate of appreciation in a nice plastic frame

Being practical people engineers evaluate this balance, and decide that
risk is not a good thing. The best way to avoid risk is by advising
that any activity is technically impossible for reasons which are too
complicated to explain. If this is not sufficient to halt a risky
project, then the engineer can fall back to his second line of defence
- Its possible, but will cost too much.

EGO

Ego-wise, two things are important to an engineer:

   * How smart they are, in relation to everyone else
   * How many cool devices they own (Cars, bikes,
     computers, digital watches, etc.)

The fastest way to get an engineer to do something is to declare that
it is impossible. No engineer can walk away from an unsolvable problem
til its solved. It soon becomes a personal battle between the engineer
and the laws of nature.

Engineers will go without food or hygiene for days to solve a problem
(other times, its just because they forgot). And when they succeed in
solving a problem, the ego rush is better than sex - including the sex
where other people are involved.

Nothing is more threatening to the engineer than the suggestion that
someone has more technical skill.
Intelligent non-engineers can use this to extract more work from an
engineer. When an engineer says that something can't be done (Code for
its not fun to do), the intelligent normal person has learnt to look at
the engineer with a look of compassion and pity and say something like
I'll ask Mark to figure it out. He knows how to solve difficult
technical problems.

At this point, it is a good idea for the normal person not to stand
between the engineer and the problem, as the engineer will set on the
problem like a starved Chihuahua on a pork chop.

      Here ends the ENGINEER EXPLAINED