Crossposted from https://beehaw.org/post/24258253
This week, meet a reader we’ll Regomize as “Wilson” who once worked as the boss of a welding shop attached to an engineering consultancy.
Wilson set the scene by telling us this story came from the early 1980s, when AutoCAD was replacing drawing boards.
“We had a new structural engineer who those of us in the shop quickly identified as an idiot with a degree,” Wilson wrote.
One day, said idiot decided that the computers used to run AutoCAD needed to be cleaned and that the welding shop was the place to do the job.
Frankly, “doing the actual work” is much less important than you’d imagine. I have yet to hear someone start with “I’ve been doing this job for…” and not end with something stupid.
Plenty of tredies know a lot, and I’ve met a bunch of tradesmen who did try uni but quit. But also, plenty of them have a need to tear down engineers because they feel threatened, and plenty more think an engineer is an idiot because he wants things done differently than “the right way” which is, of course, “how I’ve always done it”.