What are the top 3 engineering skills needed to be a good engineer?

Question

In other words: What 3 skills do you consider to be vital for an engineer to have in order to do the job effectively? What are the top 3 skills employers look for when hiring? What are the top 3 skills you as an engineer wish you'd had when you graduated, that have been most valuable to you in your career?

Please answer with engineering specific skills (so things like "ability to work in a team" or other skills that would be useful in general in a lot of careers are out!)

Please also let me (and anyone else who is interested in this questions answer) what qualifies you to answer - i.e. you are an engineer or hire engineers.

Thanks for your answers!

Answer 1

1. Solve problems with incomplete data because most of time that is what an engineer has to work with.



2. Be able to know what they don't know and be able to ask someone else to help. Too many engineers tend to think they need to know it all and will try to bull their way through rather than ask someone else.



3. Understand the value of time and money and not try for a perfect result but one that is good enough. There really is no perfection in engineering;.

Answer 2

3 things, some of which are probably more than one item. And with a lot of overlap between them...



1) The ability to think on your feet.

Anyone can memorize facts and numbers but they can go obsolete. A good engineer will be able to work things out. The most important parts of an engineering degree aren't the facts, it's the ways of thinking about those facts that matters.

When interviewing someone I will ask them an engineering problem that I have no expectation of them being able to answer. (I warn them that I don't expect them to know, this isn't an attempt to make them panic). I'll then slowly give them the information they need to solve the problem and see how they think their way through it.

Getting the answer isn't important, being able to come up with ideas on how to get to the answer is. It doesn't even matter if the ideas or approach they come up with would work or not in the end as long as it is practical and not obviously flawed.



2) A willingness to learn and adapt.

You'll never know everything you need to know since technology is always changing. An engineer that wants to always stay in their comfort zone using only parts and techniques they are familiar with will soon be useless. Similarly you need to avoid clinging to your own ideas or rejecting ideas due to the "not invented here" mindset, I've seen many projects ruined by that.

This has to be tempered with the ability to balance risks and benefits of different approaches. New and shiny is great but the costs and risks involved don't always justify it even if it would make the project far more fun.



3) I don't care if it's generic, you've got to be a team player.

I've seen incredibly capable engineers passed over for jobs because people didn't think they would work well with the rest of the team. Engineering is a massive collaboration, working well with and communicating clearly with others is as important if not more important than any technical skill. And not just with other engineers, you also need to be able to communicate technical things to non-technical people at times.

You've got to know your strengths and weaknesses and those of the rest of the team, don't spend hours on a problem that someone could tell you the answer to simply because you don't want to look stupid. No one expects a fresh graduate to know much beyond the basics, there is a big difference between theory and practice, knowing when to ask questions is important.

Argue your side in strategy/design meetings but once a decision is made stick to it, don't complain or try to work around it. And try not to say I told you so too often if it turns out your were right and the decision was wrong ;-)

Answer 3

1. The ability to learn, from manuals, books, online, where ever the information to be learned is located. Doesn't often need formal training, at least in smaller things, such as learning a new computer language, familiarity with a particular mechanism or protocol, etc. This includes a sense of inquisitiveness, to dig out details about the object of an investigation, even when not immediately needed. The ability to build situational awareness by one's self, on the fly.



2. The ability to logically troubleshoot problems, to arrive at procedures to find solutions to problems.



3. As Robert Heinlein put it, "A human being (engineer!) should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."

Answer 4

You do need advanced math to get an Electrical Engineering degree -- trigonometry, calculus, differential equations, etc. You need the math background to understand the theory behind electricity and electronic components. If you don't want to go through all of that, you may want to become an electronics technician, you'll still get to work with electronic components, but instead of designing circuits, you'll be building them and troubleshooting them. You can become an electronics technician with an Associates Degree, so you wouldn't even need to go to school for 4 years. I don't see how your cousin could have gotten an EE degree without advanced math -- perhaps she didn't go to a full four year program? It's true that you may not use advanced math every day in your job, but you still need it to get a good understanding of the theory.

Answer 5

Don't know about this...