Week 10: A Scavenger Hunt for Information

What is “engineering”? To me, engineering as a discipline is a broad collection of affairs to do with design, efficiency, and problem solving; usually in the context of contemporary technology – but that isn’t always the case. Okay, I realize that this isn’t a very specific definition. To my credit, being an engineer can mean a lot of different things! This is unlike other professions such as dentistry or plumbing. The objectives of a dentist or a plumber may be difficult and require a lot of specialized knowledge, but it is pretty obvious to laymen what dentists and plumbers do (in a general sense, anyway). Engineers do not have that same trademark. Since I began working for an engineer last summer, I’ve had lots of time to try and figure out exactly what it means to be an “engineer”. However, I don’t think I’ve fully got it quite yet. This may appear to be an issue since I’m a literal Engineer-in-Training, although I don’t think it is. Regardless, let me iterate my thoughts to you anyway.

The only thing I know to compare an engineer to is a physicist. Perhaps it’s only because I went to school for physics and have had the “luxury” of spending a lot of time around accomplished physicists, but I believe that the goals & objectives of a physicist are concrete and isotropic amongst the field (again, in a general sense). Theoretical physicists attempt to solve/probe unanswered physics problems using math & philosophy. Experimental physicists test the hypotheses of theoretical physicists with experiments or brute-force computations, in search of favourable (or unfavourable) evidence. Of course, all of this is governed by the scientific method that we adhere to which is a relic of the ruling philosophical paradigm – so in the future, the structure of practicing physics could change. Also note that this is a reductionist view of things; physics as a discipline is more nuanced than just theoretical vs. experimental in the way I’ve described. Nonetheless, it’s reasonably clear to me what physicists are meant to do – engineers, not so much.

The closest I’ve gotten to accurately describing what engineering is was last summer. There was a hoist gearbox malfunction at the mine which impacted a lot of mine operation and took two weeks to fix. Luckily for me, my supervisor was tasked with dealing with the issue which exposed me to a lot of very cool new aspects of hoist operation. The endeavour consisted of a lot of questions that required answers from a lot of different people, thereby providing a medley of little pieces of knowledge that coalesced into a final solution. This included questions to do with why the issue occurred, how it will be fixed, what is needed to fix it, what can be done to prevent it from happening again, when it will be fixed, and so on. Then there was the actual task of fixing it – throughout which I learned a lot about practical mechanical engineering and project management. Then there was a period of testing the hoist to ensure everything was working properly again. In the middle of all this I turned to my supervisor and said: “I know that this is probably not fun for you right now, but if this is what an engineer does then I want to do it. It’s like going on little scavenger hunts for information every single day. There’s nothing more fun than that”. He replied, “that’s the best description I’ve heard for my job. I like that”. Ever since then, engineering is the discipline of scavenger hunts for information, which is then applied to solve problems. This definition – backed by all the exposure to the field I have – is simply the best I can do.

It is true that some engineers specialize in design, some specialize in efficiency, and others specialize in problem solving. Most engineers know a substantial amount of all three. Some engineers are highly technical, whereas some only work in management. This in and of itself is what made engineering so enticing to me compared to physics – there was room for anyone with any skillset or interest. So long as you are willing to always be learning, there is an engineering job for you. Nevertheless, no matter what your engineering career entails, it will require scavenger hunts for information which then must be applied to solve problems. Physics is a lot more rigid than engineering and requires a particular type of sustained energy and emphasis on a few critical skills. For me, that was uninspiring and stressful – but for a lot of people I know, that was acceptable and what they thrived doing (which is totally okay).

You may be thinking, “wait, ‘scavenger hunts for information’ is not exclusive to the field of engineering. Plenty of careers have the same sort of nature. Even physicists, whose entire job (as you described it) is searching for answers to questions”. To which I respond: yeah, you’re totally right. I have nothing to refute there. Although, maybe it’s because all of these careers fundamentally require & embody the discipline of engineering to some degree. Now that I’ve upset all the physicists reading this (engineering is often viewed as sacrilege in physics), I’d like to say that although it’s certainly more rigid, physics is the engineering of the universe. Solving problems by designing theories and a never-ending pursuit to formalize and make knowledge more efficient – sounds an awful lot like engineering to me. Content-wise, engineers utilize knowledge provided to them by physicists, chemists, and so on – this is why people joke that engineers are “physicists-lite”. But in practice, physicists utilize the tenets of engineering (scavenger hunts for information which is then applied to solve problems) every day. With a unique relationship to both of these fields, perhaps it has always been the case that I was meant to go on scavenger hunts for information. As such, my goal is to become an engineering physicist in the mining industry. I don’t really know what this career entails or what it means, but I am certain it will be a lot of fun.

(September 14th, 2020)