job search

[howieschoon]

Hello everyone,
I have been looking for a new career for a few months and haven't found anything that I am horribly excited about. I would really like to design engines but I doubt that I will be able to do that for some time. I only have 3 years of production engineering experience in a small engine manufacturing environment. I have looked at monster and careerbuilder quite a bit, does anyone have any other recommendations for finding a design/R&D position that relates to engines?
Thanks,
Howard

[Dusty]

well where are you at

[howieschoon]

Dusty,
I live in NW Missouri right now but would be willing to go just about anywhere for the right position. I must state again that I do not have much experience. The position that I have I got right out of college (BSME), I have rebuilt one engine (8V 4-cyl) but didn't do anything too crazy to it, pretty much just coated it and have read a number of books. I have quite a few ideas but I don't have much in the way of funds (or time, I suppose) to test them. I learn pretty fast and am very focused. Anyway, if you would like to know anything else, just ask.
Thanks,
Howard

[howieschoon]

Hello Dusty,
Can you send me a PM (or an email?) and I can tell you a little more. I would rather the whole world not know where I work.
Thanks,
Howard

[Dusty]

I would say your best bet would be to somehow get yourself down to the PRI trade show in December most every major manufacturer in the business will be there

[seattle smitty]

Howard, you might be surprised to hear that among men who repair and rebuild cars and engines for a living, engineers are a frequent topic of conversation . . . and cussing! Oh, we know that engineers at the car companies have a lot of pressures, a lot of compromises forced upon them by the bean-counters and others. But one of the statements most often repeated by a machine shop owner I know is, "If I owned a car company, I wouldn't let an engineer come to work for me unless he had done at least two years of full-time SHOP work!!" If you work in an auto machine shop, you will rapidly become acquainted with heads that warp and crack, blocks that get hot-spots, crappy factory tolerances, a million problems that could have been eliminated in the design or manufacturing stages. It might be something to consider . . . .

Honda, both on the car an motorcycle sides, has an interesting practice. They take the more promising newly-hired engineers and put them on one of the racing teams right away. You might have guessed that only the best engineers would get to work in the racing division, but Honda takes the position that it's better to have the new guys making their new-guy mistakes on race cars than effing-up cars that will go on the market. It must work, because Honda always rates right up at the top in overall quality surveys. I don't know if NASCAR teams would have a place for a new engineer who has only built one engine, but they have a million supplier firms doing sub-systems, applying high-tech coatings, etc., etc., and maybe one of them has a place for you. In any case, you can't go wrong by attaching yourself to a local team of amateur racers. Hardly anything will educate you faster than racing (unless you're as thick-headed as I was ), nothing is more fun, and no group of guys are better to be around. I have seen more examples than I can recall of young guys who didn't know where they were going in life get involved in racing and discover a love of machine work or welding of tin-bending or, several cases, of engineering. And they become d@mned good engineers!

One of the very best things, from our standpoint, about being Americans is that there are back lots and wrecking yards full of real cheap cars that are ideal for the mechanical education of boys and men (okay, anybody)(I'm OLD, all right?!!). It has been this way for nearly a hundred years, and the fact that lots of city boys and farm boys had grown up busting their knuckles working on machinery was a huge advantage for us during WW2. It is still an advantage we have over much of the world, or can be if we put it to best use. Let us hope it never changes.

[Cammer]

You have no idea what you are talking about.

An engineer does not design anything by himself and his work is checked by many other professionals before going into production.

Many of the problems you assign to engineers have nothing to do with the engineer!

If GM had allowed engineers to put hybrid concept vehicles into production they may have avoided their present problems. GM management sucked the money out of the company instead of using it to keep the product line abreast with the real world!

Engineering is very specific and teaching a new graduate is often preferred over hiring an "experienced" engineer. New engineers often have superior computer skills and experience with the newest technology.

I say all this as an engineering professional and someone not wishing to quell the ambitions of a young engineer!

[seattle smitty]

Read it again, Cammer. I said it wasn't simple.

But I don't back off an inch from my contention that many engineers would do better work if they had significant shop experience. The Europeans recognize this, or used to. It used to be that in Germany, the typical owner of a manufacturing company, with a son wanting to work there as an engineer and presumably later take over the company, would require that his kid serve a long apprenticeship in the shops before sending him off to college. Meanwhile, there are and have been airplanes in the US arsenal which are such a pain to maintain they they spend a hundred hours in the shop for every hour in the air.

I recognize that the new world of engineering puts a premium on computer design and manufacturing skills, skills which are better learned young. (I also observe that the new world results often fall short of the enthusiasts' claims, for instance in the case of Boeing's new airplane, two years late and an endless headache).

For that matter, the same requirement ought to apply to engineering school faculties. I knew several profs at the UW, men who had got their hands dirty in their youth, and who had a solid grasp of practical design. They are long since retired or expired, but if talked to a couple of them, and they say that the school would never hire their kind today. They say much of the current crop of profs, all math whizzes with advanced degrees and many of them foreigners from cultures in which middle-class boys never get dirt under their nails, are great ones for giving each other awards for papers on abstruse subjects but turn out students who aren't ready for the real world. These old profs actually toyed with the idea of starting their own "finishing school" for young engineering grads!!

I can't see where anything I wrote would "discourage" Howard. They're just ideas; if he likes them, fine, if he doesn't, also fine.

[Grey Fox]

Just to keep things interesting I know one of the best degreed race engineers in the business who was recently searching for college engineering graduates to hire. He interviewed and interviewed and came up with the conclusion that 90% of the college engineering graduates had good book smarts but only about 10% of them had the common sense necessary to apply that book smarts properly. Moral of the story is that if you have common sense you can make a place for yourself anywhere.

The problem is that most people trying to fix any problem or trying to come up with a better solution don't go far enough to find the root cause but end up putting a bandaid fix on the problem. Smokey Yunick's great success was due partly to his refusal to accept anyone else's conclusion as to what a rule should be either in engineering or the race governing body's rule book. Remember that Smokey was not a graduate engineer but was a very staunch supporter of education. You can never have too much education to go along with your common sense and should never stop challenging your brain.

There is an old saying " Its' not what you know that counts but what you do with what you know that counts."

[Cammer]

Members of GFN should be advocating higher education rather than trying to discount the importance of a good college degree.

Members say they have spoken to engineers on this topic. I am interested in names and contact information.

Engineering is based on science/mathematics and everything Smokey or any other person did/does is governed by science/mathematics. It is important to note that much internal combustion engine study is based on theory.

Many of the problems with automotive parts presented by members of GFN can be attributed to financial constraints of the business model, the limitations of processes and equipment, and the skill and training of workers.

I live in the USA, am involved in education, and see the future of the USA tied to availability and utilization of higher education by all students.

Students rise to the levels parents, teachers, and administrators set for them!