Who is an engineer?

Recently I have gotten a lot of questions about why I chose to be an engineer and not a scientist. And to this moment I have made light of theĀ  question, making jokes about how I actually chose to be a ECE major. I have come to the conclusion that I should explain my choice more clearly.So here we go!

Welcome to the dark side of knowledge!

Engineer focus on solving a problem in more efficient and effective way. Some people believe that an engineer is not fully invested in learning the science but more interested in how they can use science to solve the problem. This concept, in my opinion. dates to the time that scientists provided clear tools that engineers could use without fully appreciating the background of it. However, that time has passed.

For example in my research, I need to know the back-end of compilers to be able to do my hardware optimization. Even though, compilers is a course from computer science and not many people associate it with ECE.

Engineers welcome challenges and chaos! Now, I am not gonna quote from game of thrones and say “Chaos is a ladder!”; but I am gonna say this engineers learn skills as they go. This is an exhaustive process, both physically and mentally. You need to be prepared to say you don’t know something and you need to be OK with that. You need to develop the skill to chose what you “need” to learn and what you can live without.