"The article also purports that the higher level of communication inherent in engineering jobs may be vital. A healthy communication in a marriage is vital for its survival."
Yeah, us software engineers are renowned for our communication skills.
Hey, don't keep pushing that stereotype on us. Software engineering, much like other disciplines, have people from all backgrounds and capabilities. I hate the idea that the persistence of these beliefs can effect the industry further, possibly leading to some sort of self-fulfilling prophecy where good communication skills are not expected.
Routinely software engineers need to give presentations to customers, have to collaborate with other disciplines, and provide clear written and verbal communication.
This type of thinking is, I believe, the same mentality that keeps women out of STEM career paths. Just because you have a small sample set that leads you to believe we are poor communicators, do not broad brush it and assume most software folk are as inept.
But more seriously, software engineers are merely the loudest of all engineering professions. Hardly the end-all and be-all. A significant portion of software engineers, never even had a scientific education(programming doesn't have to be scientific, though it can be, and almost every programmer calls himself a software engineer).
> This type of thinking is, I believe, the same mentality that keeps women out of STEM career paths.
i'm probably going to get a lot of hate for saying that, but
... no offence, you just pulled that out of your ass. people don't generally know what professions are like until they actually start working in them. Law is arguably way more racist, sexist and whatnot, but that doesn't stop women from doing it. The same goes for banking. It's just better marketed in central european culture.
and if you're going to make such an argument be sure to include the socioeconomic background that is relevant to that statement.
i personally had to witness the culture clash, when all the persian part of the family was encouraging a girl on how she's going to be successful doing her engineering studies and all the german part of the family saying she couldn't do it and she should instead just study language. incidently iran is also the country where 2/3s of the stem graduates are women and they recently passed laws for male quotas. when i say family, it includes aunts/uncles/cousins and even friends of the difference social backgrounds.
Not once in the entire discussion did anyone consider the potential work environment, the study environment or anything of the likes, nor would they even know. It was just a difference in mentality. The only people truely capable to make qualified statements on the matter were people that watched her teach math to friends high school friends.
And yes, I know, empirically proven doesn't mean it applies everywhere, but then the same applies to your statement.
EDIT: i kind of knew, but so much hate and not even a comment to justify. so, one just started learning angularjs and has now become a frontend (software) engineer and may now not only speak on behalf of the entire engineering population of the globe, but also on behalf of stem in general. that's at least questionable don't you think?
> A significant portion of software engineers, never even had a scientific education(programming doesn't have to be scientific, though it can be...
Such people can't be called engineers then. I find it amusing when I see titles such as "JavaScript engineer" or "HTML engineer", etc.
> ...and almost every programmer calls himself a software engineer
This seems to be a culture in the USA mainly. From what I have seen, Canada is much more strict about having the proper credentials to be able to call yourself an engineer.
> I find it amusing when I see titles such as "JavaScript engineer" or "HTML engineer", etc.
It is amusing indeed, but for a different reason — because "iron engineer" or "rubber engineer" (in case of hardware engineers) would be just as amusing.
The lack of formal scientific education doesn't mean that engineer in question doesn't have the exact same amount of knowledge — it merely means that he chose other ways to acquire it.
I'm having the hardest time following the flow of your statements, which are riddled with assumptions that I, at their base, don't agree with.
> A significant portion of software engineers, never even had a scientific education
I'm not sure that I follow. What is it that you consider a "scientific education"? where do you get your significant figure from?
>... no offence, you just pulled that out of your ass.
I was not stating any statistical evidence, just a belief I have that if you cast a particular field in a negative light, claiming that a majority of people in those fields are poor communicators, that anyone might avoid that field, which I would imagine includes women, so perhaps I should have abstracted away a bit.
> i personally had to witness the culture clash...
I don't discount that cultural or familial background does not play a role in where a person ends up in his or her career, nor did I claim that work/study environment cannot play a factor. But stereotypes, both positive and negative, can have an impact on anyone's perspective on any field.
As to your Dilbert comment, I'm assuming you're trying to be funny or use some sort of straw-man to discredit my statement? Good job, you did it.
> people don't generally know what professions are like until they actually start working in them.
Which is exactly why stereotypes are so harmful because it puts people off ever trying and learning differently. Your story just reinforced the point, people often make judgements about careers based on stereotypes not actual data so it's detrimental to our industry to encourage these stereotypes.
Fwiw, i feel like that is the key to my relationship. I'm a (mediocre) software engineer, and by far the driving force of the communication in the relationship.
Now, my SO and I are both a bit "broken" individuals, so it's not like we're perfect by any stretch of the imagination.. but i'm certain that without a constant push for communication and a lack of "letting things stew" that we would be in a far worse state at best - and at worst, broken up.
Disclaimer: I'm not trying trying to say that my relationship is somehow more thanks to my efforts.. sometimes i feel like my push for communication can be a fault.
Regardless, it's one of the things i obsess about - being clear and open with each other.. and it's the things i obsess about that i define myself by. I wouldn't be surprised if this personality trait (obsessing about rules/structure/"healthy"-behavior) was more common in engineers. Though, the data seems impossible to meaningfully correlate.
No need for the disclaimer, I completely sympathize with your position and agree that communication is essential. I push constantly for communication and it helps to kill those little nagging voices and thoughts. Sometimes we're shocked at what the other is thinking that we were meaning or thinking! When left in a room alone without communication your imagination can get the best of you.
Communication in a relationship is eminently hackable. On the first month 'anniversary' of seeing my girlfriend I bought her a book (one she'd mentioned wanting to read) and wrote a couple of lines in the front about how well it was going. From there on we've bought each other a book every month and written a short note in the front. We've been seeing each other for almost three years without any 'communication problems'. There are advantages to this approach - namely we get time to think about what to write and we both get lots of books.
The fact you're not great at vocalising your feelings on the spot (something I am definitely not good at) shouldn't be a barrier to communicating. You just have to find an approach that works for you.
To give totally unsolicited advice - 3 years is easy - it doesn't get really hard for another 5 years. Don't stress about it but also don't take it for granted that your communication will always be as great as it is now (without ongoing effort).
In what world do you live where a meaningful 3 year relationship is easy? Thanks for belittling essentially all unmarried people plus some married couples.
A large part of engineering involves problem-solving and designing systems with lots of unknowns, as well as finding patterns and fixing problems (debugging). Persistence is also key - you won't last long in engineering if you give up the first time your design doesn't work!
Perhaps these same skills translate into relationship stability? If something isn't working, try tweaking things.
Or maybe our attention to detail just makes us better in the sack. :D
The general programmer, no. But, at the risk of inflating the title, software engineer is supposed to mean something. Especially in places where they actually are part of professional bodies. In my studies, computer science and software engineering impart two very different experiences. That's not to say that X is better than Y at Z, but the focus is different. I very much do believe that anybody who calls themselves a good software engineer should have great communication skills.
I think this is something I laughed at at first and then very suddenly realized it's actually probably one of the bigger points driving home the lower divorce %'s for engineers. If you can initially put up with the courting of an engineer and you are willing to marry them then you are prepared for their pragmatic and direct approach to almost every situation. Honestly, after being young and playing the run around game that sounds absolutely refreshing.
Everyone thinks they have good communication skills... it's the paradox of self evaluation. You evaluate yourself based on your perception of those you evaluate yourself against - which in turn is largely biased based on your own perception of your self image.
If you hang out with people you perceive as more intelligent than you (which may or may not be true, it's a biased perspective), then you're more likely to evaluate yourself as less intelligent than you'd like. If you then evaluate yourself against people you perceive as less intelligent than you (which also may or may not be true, again a biased perspective), you're more likely to bolster an impression that you're more intelligent than you are - which again, may not be true.
So do people always agree with you? Do you perceive these people as more or less intelligent than you? Do they always agree with everyone? Do you perceive their ideas as valuable as yours?
It's hard to evaluate your own communication skills... because no matter the metric you use to attempt to evaluate them, your interpretation of the metric is biased in one way or another.
>I like to think that I have some pretty good communication skills
You can have excellent communication skills, but there is this 'nerdism' that comes from being totally into computers, and that renders people away from social skills, I feel the OP meant that. So you having pretty good communication skills is an exception rather a norm
I was thinking the exact same thing when I was reading this... amongst all the engineers I know, I don't think there are many - none I can think of who I would consider having a "higher level of communication". They might talk more... but I'll leave that sentence unfinished :P
Many engineers I know take their communication skills for granted, without realizing areas where improvement is needed...especially when it comes to discussing emotions or other areas vital to a relationship.
I would say the engineers that can't communicate aren't the married ones, thus, not bringing the average down. So yes I agree but that doesn't mean that the article is false either.
If I had to guess I would say it's the cause of 2 factors:
1.Certain professions attract certain personality types so you won't see a lot of extroverted social people choosing engineering as their profession
Extroverts social as they are will always have more options and are less likely to stick around if things get sour.
2.Financial stability means that even if the woman is unhappy in the relationship she is more likely to stick around because it offers stability.
Why do you think all the girls always have a boyfriend even if their not that into him.
Society tells them you're a looser if you don't have a boyfriend so they always keep one around that doesn't mean their not willing to upgrade though :)
Edit: I analogize for generalizing and saying engineers are all men it is mostly true however as pointed out in the comments below not in all cases however I cannot say anything about the reverse case.
Also... there's a huge assumption that more money equals less financial problems. One thing I've learned from the experience of my own finances is that the times in my life when I've been flat broke, I had less financial problems than in times when I've been flush with cash.
The higher your income, the higher your debt load - and this is caused by easy access to credit, social conditioning to chasing the dream, climbing the ladder, bigger house, more expensive cars - because you deserve it! You work hard, you deserve to play hard too and who cares your income doesn't stretch to that, here's a credit card, you can have as much money as you need... as long as you can afford the minimum payment for the rest of your life. Society conditions you towards using your financial abilities to get into more debt than you can afford to repay and the illusion that because you have a high income, you can afford to repay it every month in full... and then as long as I pay most of it... and then at least keep up the minimum payments... and then well, this one's not due until the end of the month, so I'll live on this card and I'll pay the minimum payment and keep this card for emergencies... and then an emergency crops up and hey, I'll just pay my hydro bill with this card instead of paying cash and I'll use the cash to pay my credit card off and the cycle escalates until you lose your house.
Just because you're an engineer and just because you have a high gross income doesn't mean you have the financial wherewithal to maintain a stable financial life.
So yes, none of the assumptions here stand up to scrutiny.
If you treat a credit card the same as cash, then there is literally no difference in how much you should be spending, but you need the discipline to actually do that.
There are a number of benefits to using credit cards that cash doesn't have:
1. Build a credit score
2. Fraud protection
3. Related to 2, but if I lose my card it's not a huge deal, cancel it and get a new one. If I lose 300$ cash, it's just gone.
4. Rewards! ( 1-3% back on 20K spending per year is a few hundred bucks )
5. Extended Warranties. Often times, you can get an extra year or more on warranties through your credit cards. That's why I put my new kitchen appliances on my Amex.
6. Free loans! I re-did my kitchen last year at about a 10K cost. Although I had the cash to do so, I instead signed up for a new card with 18 month 0% interest. That gave me another year and a half of saving before paying that off, so it's less of a hit to my balance at once. IMPORTANT I would not have done this if I did not have the cash to pay this off at any point in time.
It's really, really simple too - just pay off your statement balance in full each month and you'll never pay interest. I can count on one hand both how many times I've paid interest, and how much I've paid in interest. All of them were due to my own screw ups with scheduling payments ( off by a day - oops! ), however I've benefited far more from the cards than I've ever paid out. In most of those cases, the banks waived the fees anyway since there was a track record of 3-5+ years of never missing a payment, always paying in full.
There's a built in assumption here that you need credit... if you don't need credit then all this is moot. Everyone's so keen to be part of the system that they never stop to wonder what they're chasing... there are justifications and rationalizing and whatever else it takes to belong. None of it's necessary. The 1-3% cash back and the air miles and the fraud protection and all these other goodies they promise you are bribery to use their card so that they can get the scale they need to make the system profitable for them. They sell your information, aggregate it to marketing companies, it's a means to track your every purchase electronically etc. etc.
If you'd paid cash you could have got a better deal from suppliers by negotiating cash discounts and nobody would be aggregating your information or tracking your purchases to target advertising to try to further their way into your wallet. If you'd paid the $10K up front, which you had the cash to do so, what did you do with that $10K? Did it just sit in your bank giving you an illusion of a bank balance or did you invest it to make some return to justify putting it on credit and putting off until tomorrow what you could have paid for today? You purchased this kitchen effectively putting a lien on that money, it's no longer yours... but having it in your account still gives you the illusion that it is. It only takes something unexpected happening and that money that's not yours [which is still in your account] is easy to dip into for an emergency with the expectation that you'll pay back into it another day when you can afford that - a day that never comes, until that kitchen you've been enjoying for the last 18 months and now can't live without needs paying for...
It's ridiculously easy to get sucked into the trap of cycling one debt after another and then you're stuck with your only options being: Sell everything you own to pay it off, claim bankruptcy and start again from scratch or strive for a higher paying job, putting yourself under extra stress... and for what? The ability to raise your debt load. It's not really much surprise, the entire capitalist economy is built on debt, without it, there would be no economy. The U.S. currency is loaned (at interest) by the Fed to the U.S. Government, so debt goes right to the very foundation of the entire economy. So it's an ever perpetuating cycle.
There are rationalizations on both sides of the fence. For the record, I'm not dead against credit, I'm just saying that for every rationalization that can be offered to use credit, there are equally many reasons to avoid it.
You do need credit though unless you never intend on financing a car or purchasing a house with a mortgage.
While it may be entirely feasible to get along your entire life without financing a car by either purchasing used cars or inexpensive new ones, for 99% of people ( including myself ), it's extraordinarily difficult to purchase a home in a reasonable amount of time ( 10-15+ years saving required for a barebones house most likely ).
You could argue that prices are like this due to the easy availability of credit ( see 2008 or the problems with student loans/college prices ), but that doesn't change the reality that some things are extremely expensive and for nearly all people will require some type of loan. At that point, not having a good credit score will cost you dearly in much higher interest rates.
As for my kitchen, the reason you gave it exactly the reason that I did it. Although I did net an additional 100$ or so in interest over the course of the year as well due to it being in my savings account ( yay!...kinda? ), the primary reason was in the event of an emergency. Any emergency that would require an additional $10,000 is likely to be medical, family, or loss of job related. Since I have insurance, that means that the most likely scenario is family or job related; in either instance, the availability of cash to help a member of my family out or pay my mortgage for 6 months would be more important to me than the costs associated with financing that card for a period of time. In addition, I would still be able to pay the card off by selling a bit of stock, however I wanted the additional liquidity by having cash on hand. I don't make decisions like that lightly; all of those scenarios were considered before I decided to go the 0% card route.
Having financed my last 6 cars - all bar one of them from new and having made a vehicle payment every month of my adult life, I've learned that financing new vehicles is a fools errand. What you get in perceived reliability (and it frequently is only perceived), you lose in depreciation the minute it gets driven off the lot. When I've paid the final payment on my vehicle this month, I will continue paying that same amount into an account until this vehicle dies or has a repair bill beyond what it would cost me to replace it. I predict (hopefully accurately) that if I continue to look after it well, I should have plenty enough money in the bank to purchase my next (nearly-new-but-used-and-still-has-warranty) vehicle outright with someone else having taken the depreciation hit instead of me. Admittedly, I got to where I did now with credit, so my picture isn't black and white. I could have continued to use my bike for a few years, putting aside the money for a vehicle until I had enough to pay outright, I didn't - but that was the impatience of youth. If I'd had no/bad credit at the time, I'm sure being who I am, I would have found another way.
As for a house, it definitely doesn't take 10-15 years if you think outside the box cultured by our society.
Hopefully you're building up credit some other way. You can still spend the money you have with a credit card. I pay my balance in full twice a month, just to ensure I never pay any interest.
It's better than paying with a debit card because you aren't on the hook for fraud. I learned this lesson the hard way.
> Hopefully you're building up credit some other way.
Literally any installment credit will be better for credit-building than the vast majority of revolving credit individuals have access to.
CCs are far superior to debit cards in almost every way. If you don't possess self-control, maybe that sentence doesn't hold true. There are a number of disadvantages to using a debit card where a credit card can be used instead.
It's not just self control in isolation though. That self control is being assaulted relentlessly by social conditioning from peers, society, media, advertising, corporations and the Government. It's not a wonder the economy is in the state it's in.
With virtually everything around you lying "Go on, spend it, it's good for the economy, you deserve it, it'll make you feel good and fill that pit of emptiness you're trying to fill, credit is better, you need credit, you need to build credit." coupled with the fear ads of "Bad credit, no credit! We've got the solution for you to get it!" and companies that are impossible to deal with without a credit card - I'm looking at you hotels, flight companies and car rental places!
Society makes it painful at every turn to live without a credit card and then when you do find a way, people look down on you like you're somehow a freak of nature, shunning the natural order of things.
A higher income means more options. Yes, you have more options to get yourself into trouble, but you also have more options to keep yourself taken care of.
I was making about $12/hour before I finished my CS degree. I had no debts and some money in the bank because I had no real expenses.
Now I make about twice that, but I got my own place with my fiancee and raked up far more debt (on top of student loans) than I can afford to pay at my current salary. My quality of living has actually been decreasing.
Does this mean I have more financial problems than I did before? No, not really. I have plenty of options now that I didn't before. In the worst case scenario, I can declare bankruptcy and start from scratch, where I'll have no debts (aside from student loans) and still have twice the income I would have otherwise, and be able to find a maintainable quality of life significantly higher than I would have with the lower income.
A low income doesn't mean you have less problems, it means you have fewer options and have to simply accept a worse outcome.
Nevertheless those assumptions are true more than false, which is what matters if you want to make broad sweeping statements about a diverse population. Well I don't think #1 is true, but it's also a straw man. Women do care about money and stability, surprisingly much depending on the culture.
Just to clarify, in your view women: don't work, can't be engineers, always want to be in a relationship, and are terribly unfaithful and will leave you for somebody with more money? Also, maybe stop calling adult women "girls".
There's a big difference, calling someone "boy" or "girl" instead of "man" or "woman" is demeaning. How often do you honestly refer to male engineers as "boys"?
> don't care enough to pay attention
Surprisingly, it doesn't matter how much you care.
Software engineers are great communicators, which is why they are often awkward and unpopular. Getting along in groups and knowing your place in the social hierarchy order is much more dependent on effective lying.
Being a great communicator equals selling ideas in terms that your audience can easily ingest with the intent for which it was served. Nothing more. It doesn't mean lying, it doesn't mean not lying. Social politics is often grey. For better or for worse, selling an idea often involves playing on the emotions of your audience. Getting buy in means selling your ideas in a way people can relate to.
...and knowing your place in the social hierarchy is irrelevant.
Knowing how to speak such that your place in the social hierarchy is blurred enough that everyone assumes you're at their level is the most useful approach. Not having people look down on you because you're socially beneath them, but also not having people write you off because they feel you think they're below you. Being a good communicator is being able to stand head to head with the CEO of a multi-billion dollar corporation and discuss your ideas with the respect of equals in terms they can understand, and also speak with the homeless person on the street with the respect of equals in terms they can understand.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men [and women] are created equal"
Believe this, I mean truly believe this and treat people with the respect this statement garners and the rest is easy. You are not above anyone else in the social hierarchy and they are not above you. That huge mansion they live in and the country club they belong too were purchased with the money. Their access to money doesn't make their life more valuable than yours. You hold different jobs because you have different training, social conditioning and peer groups. So I think there is little value to knowing your place in the social hierarchy. All it does is serve to allow society to write your destiny. Is that what you want or would you prefer to write your own destiny?
I'm reminded of a scene from Scrubs where Turk tells JD: "I love how kids of divorced parents swear they have the market cornered on family dysfunction...". Point being - I don't view "not divorced" as a significant metric for a successful / happy marriage.
"Divorce is always good news. I know that sounds weird, but it's true because no good marriage has ever ended in divorce. That would be sad. If two people were married and ... they just had a great thing and then they got divorced, that would be really sad. But that has happened zero times."
In college I had a sociology class where the professor had studied happiness in marriage. He ran a survey asking how happy people were with their marriage. 5 years later, he ran a follow up survey to people who said in the first survey that they were unhappy in their marriage and the only reason they would not get divorced was because of (children, religious doctrines, etc).
He was shocked to find, that of these marriages that were the least happy, something like 20% went ahead and got a divorce anyways, but, of the other 80%, their happiness scores were no different from the general population.
Moral of the story, perhaps people are a little too quick to pull the plug on a marriage.
With a few exceptions, divorced marriages are all moderately unsuccessful marriages. The truly horrible marriages are the ones that last, but shouldn't.
Divorce rates are also linked to income. Engineering is typically a more stable and better paying career than something like dance (given as the counterexample in the article). How much of the difference in divorce rates is attributable to that?
I wonder if a small part of the dancer/bartender vs engineer situation is that engineers (statistically usually male) often are working mostly with other men. My sister is married to a ballet dancer (who just retired to start studying to become a nurse) and he obviously was in pretty close contact with the opposite sex.
Yeah, those are two occupations where men can pick and choose. I've read somewhere that the relationships where the woman is more attractive than the man are the most stable, because the man feels lucky and will do his utmost to keep the relationship going. These occupations basically increase the man's effective attractiveness by placing him in a dating pool almost devoid of men. I would guess the same is true for male nurses.
I think the main reason is the unpleasant fact that desirable women under 30 like to have fun with attractive men (men that create a lot of interest amongst younger women and can exchange them frequently), which from 90% excludes all engineers. Once the age issues hit women, they look for reliable and stable partners that would consider them a win at their age, for which engineers are prime candidates. Sorry for being cynical, as a photographer I handle a lot of desirable women and talk to them about what is important to them at various ages, and as an engineer can observe this basic dynamics - i.e. a no-longer super attractive woman rejected by most desirable men because her attractiveness falters hooks an aging engineer that had a crush on her while she was in her prime, and stays with him due to a lack of better options and desire for some stability, while he is happy beyond measure to get such a (formerly) attractive spouse.
Man, they took the least-informative numbers from that article. Much more interesting is the difference from their predicted divorce rate (which corrects for race, gender, and income, but not age, unfortunately).
Quite a few of the engineering professions have 50-60% the divorce rate of the national average, but after accounting for the above three covariances it's not quite as striking (putting them at 60-90% of expected). Agricultural engineers are still way down at 12% of expected, but they don't list the N for non-LE occupations.
Have you walked into the average engineering classroom? I remember my EE class had 90% male population. We were not exactly the coolest or most attractive looking group of guys. I think being grateful to finally meet someone that likes us plays a little role.
More seriously, people with engineering backgrounds tend to be analytic and may have made more logical choices prior to marriage, that result in longer lasting relationships. I think that that problem solving mentality could also contribute.
Everyone's an engineer in one way or another - that's just who we are as people. Just because the stereotype tends towards "engineers" (traditional meaning) being into mechanics, logic, programming, structures etc. doesn't mean that everything can't be viewed this way.
The popular guys at school and politicians are social engineers. Footballers look to solve the problem of helping their team to win. Dancers and bartenders look to solve the problem of how to get people to spend/tip the highest amount of money they can. We look to manipulate logic to get machines to do what we want. Others may look to manipulate emotions and perspectives to get people to do what they want - i.e. spend more money, help them earn more commission. It's all engineering in one way or another.
So to assume that we make more logical choices prior to marriage that result in longer lasting relationships might be a touch narcissistic. We are no different than anyone else, it's just that we're machine nerds. Other people are people nerds, football nerds, modelling nerds, advertising nerds, music nerds, history nerds, science nerds, food nerds etc. They all have problems they're trying to solve and they all use their problem solving and logical skills to solve them, everyone a nerd in one way or another.
To typecast "engineers" (reading between the lines) as desperate does us a disservice. Everyone suffers from self image problems in one way or another - you can thank the media for that courtesy of beauty magazines, wrinkle cream, modeling mags, diet mags, a constant barrage of advertising telling you how to solve body problems and look better to get that hotter partner who also suffers from poor self image problems. You may suffer from poor self image of your perception of your lacking social skills (you really just never had the social training for how to talk with people) but want a hot model type. She may have poor body image because the beauty magazines make her feel ugly and you're all she can get blah blah blah. It's all quite nauseating really.
We all live in this Venn diagram of people we're attracted to that would make good life partners. The intersection of which is where we'll find long term relationship satisfaction (I'll refrain from calling that happiness, because the relationship isn't the whole picture of happiness)... but nobody knows where the intersection is and that's the joy of life. When you're not true to your Venn diagram, it's painful. When you are and you find someone who intersects with yours in the right way, it's amazing.
Just to add to this comment: We do not function in isolation as a single typecast. We are all dynamic people. The football players or "popular people" could also be software engineers.
Anecdotally, one of the most athletic people I knew in school ended up double majoring with a 4.0 in mechanical and chemical engineering. I never went to a school where there were over-the-top movie quality cliques. Our athletes were also our 4.0's, who where also our popular kids, who were also our geeks. So be who you want.
Exactly... If I have problems with my car, I take it to a mechanic. He's an engine nerd... something at which I suck, he's awesome at it. If I have legal problems, I go to a lawyer. He's a legal nerd... again, something at which I suck. If they need software written, [or more likely, their computers fixed, again. Don't get me started] they'd most likely both come to me. They might both be awesome photographers and play on the same hockey team, have largely the same peer group and just be fascinated by different things. They may have different conditioning due to their family background. One's father might own a car shop, the other's mother might be a judge. They might have grown up as neighbours, gone to the same school and been in all the same classes together. One may just have had a large exposure to the way law works growing up and one may just have had more of an interest in hanging out with Dad in the garage tinkering with engines because his Dad was a race car mechanic. The mechanic's mom may have taught both of them to play piano and they may both be concert grade music nerds. The nuances are endless.
lol - may as well. It's largely a meaningless word anyway ;)
Engineering is just the art of manipulating pieces of a puzzle [whether that be things or people] to serve a solution to a problem. What does that leave unaccounted for?
I agree with you and you make good points, but hivemind has decided the "good communicator" is a 1:1 mapping with being a slick salesman or marketing consultant or lounge lizard, whereas obviously they're referencing communication WRT deep analytical study of communication, mostly in datasheets and textbooks but also product specs and legal regulations.
An engineer needs to be able to get past the marketing blather and dive deep into communication to figure out if a 15 volt rated capacitor will or will not short out and if it does how to prevent a house fire or about 1e6 similar engineering analogies, and how does the related ESR of the cap impact circuit performance etc etc.
Its not a huge analogy jump to seeing past a spouses likely very positive "marketing" message and analyzing all their forms of communication to figure out if a long term commitment to that specific implementation of "spouse product" will result in horrific crash and burn or perhaps it can be proven to work.
I looked thru the ranked list of engineers with an eye toward "long term sustainability" and "ease of do-overs" and was totally unsurprised to find the nukes and CivEng and ChemEng with the best stats and software engineers not doing so well. There are some outliers like the naval architects which I'm guessing is some kind of life-work balance thing, ship engineer going on a multi month cruise might lead to marital problems, or making a career of emergency flights out to some international port to supervise exotic structural or engine repairs might impact lifestyle at home quite a bit.
I find that male engineers are more difficult to handle by their wives, but if they can be handled, the engineer will hardly ever switch marriages or give up on the one thing that he's got that actually works.
There is also stability of income and quality of life that comes into play. When there is stability in the professional field, an engineer has more time to dedicate to his family. That is a gigantic luxury in itself.
Don't forget the valuable engineering skill of managing your manager, and I think nobody is better at that than engineers. She thinks she's in charge and she thinks she's ordering me to do her bidding, but methodically managed reality makes things somewhat more complicated.
I believe Chris Rock said it best: "A man's only faithful as his options". Engineering is a male dominated field so the opportunity to meet someone you might want to cheat with is far lower than for bartenders or dance instructors. Case close, as far as I'm concerned, let's not let this go to our heads.
Without having read the original study, it would be worthwhile to see if the there was any attempt to normalize by education level, income and age. It's likely that these are more salient factors and profession is acting as a proxy for these.
What is interesting is the last three "engineers" in the list are not engineers-by-education ("white collar") type engineers, they are engineers-by-trade ("blue collar"). The "engineers by trade" typically have a lower education level and probably lower income level.
Locomotive engineers and operators 15.77
Stationary engineers and boiler operators 16.99
Operating engineers and other construction equipment operators 18.97
The "blue collar" engineers have a substantially higher divorce rate than most of the "white collar" engineering professions, but the transition by percentages compared to the those preceding them in the list was a lot smoother than I expected.
I know that the most common reason cited for divorce is finances. So it may indeed be that higher income professions in general have a lower divorce rate.
Probably a linked variable or two here. Thinking aloud:
1. Higher income. Like, substantially higher income.
2. Later marriage. People don't tend to get married in college, and I expect to find that people who get married early have higher divorce rates than average.
If you look at the Myers-Briggs personality types listed at TypeLogic, you'll see for the INTJ type (most often associated with engineering types) as being said to often "Work at" a relationship.
This is, I know, a weak argument at best, but I would toss out as something to ponder that perhaps there's a higher incidence of analytic types to dissect and improve their relationship.
...or simply inclined to remain with the status quo. You decide.
I've heard of a lot of the criticism about the MBTI as well, and I agree with a majority of it. I'd thought my disclaimer sufficed enough to ward off the down votes.
In any case, it was thrown out there to see what sticks. "What makes a relationship work" is hard to measure at best. But I have to think, just as the article makes some generalized assumptions from some rough figures, there might be a correlation to other rough observations, even if they don't hold up to scientific levels of scrutiny.
tl;dr: I don't think any of what's being discussed is able to be isolated as a defining factor of what makes marriage successful. But it's interesting to speculate.
INFP engineer chiming in. While MBTI is not scientifically credible, nor is Freudian psychoanalysis but it was a big deal in it's time. But hey, you're a fire sign.
You can't throw the baby out with the bathwater, and while we're at it, check out the FFM [1], it's got stats and everything!
While INTJ are most often associated with engineers, most engineers are not. INTJ is pretty rare, I think somewhere around 1%, which would make it only account for roughly 20% of engineers and scientists [citation needed].
Honestly, with money being one of the leading causes of divorce, I would say a reasonable assumption is just that engineers make more of it and are more likely to spend what they do have wisely.
> I would say a reasonable assumption is just that engineers make more of it
And have a low chance of suddenly getting laid off, and good chances at quickly finding new employment (at least compared to the vast majority of jobs).
Really? My family is full of 50+ year old engineers and I can't think of any engineers that I know that changed careers as they got older. Sure some of them may have taken on more management responsibilities as they got older, but non of them left engineering.
If you're thinking of only the 50+ engineers you know, of course those ones haven't changed careers. You'd have to think of some 50+ year old actors or chefs you know and find out if they used to be engineers.
Fair point. Let me rephrase. Of everybody I know how's done a late career switch, engineers are extremely underrepresented, to the point I can't think of any. The closet I can come up with is a surveyor, which I suppose counts an engineer in some places.
The most common educational backgrounds to lead to a later life career switch in my limited observation is either teaching or banking/finance.
Very odd. The list concludes with three skilled trades that share the name engineer, but don't have the same requirements for education and certification as (say) civil or electrical engineering. Now, I expect that the insurance companies see to it that all of those working as locomotive engineers have more rigorous training than many of us working as software engineers, and the same may be true for some operating engineers. Still, the list suggests a certain carelessness.
Engineers are more likely to take a pragmatic approach instead of a sentimental "Oh no! He/She doesn't have exactly the same taste in vacations/home decor/friends/whatever, we must not be soulmates after all!"
Seems pretty obvious to me that the amount of contact with the opposite gender plays a huge part. Since most married couples are heterosexual and Engineering is still dominated by men, so contact of any kind is more rare.
On the other hand, dancers and choreographers are very likely to be dancing or choreographing with someone other than their spouse, at a very close physical distance to very fit partners who are nearly always the opposite gender. Jealousy and infidelity probably both play a part there. Same goes for bartenders -- the chances somebody comes to my engineering firm looking for a hot date? Not much, but a bar? That's a little more likely.
And lastly, I had to chuckle at agricultural engineers. All I can picture is a guy designing a combine, alone, in the middle of a cornfield. Good luck meeting someone ;-)
Its a little ironic that the group of people who laugh at "designing a GUI in visual basic to track the killer's IP address" apparently thinks that an agricultural engineer sits in the middle of a cornfield with a bunch of charts on an easel sketching out what piston goes into what shaft... as opposed to, you know, an office.
That was just a bit of comedy at the end. I don't actually think that agricultural engineers are likely to have a desk in the middle of a corn field. :-)
I agree. Looking more into the study, massage therapists are up there in divorce rates, as well as "entertainers" which I believe would include actors.
The thought I had about agricultural engineers is that they would tend to be much more religiously conservative than other types of engineers.
This is true, but I'm not sure if the study went into male vs female (and I'm not up for paying the $40 to find out). Either way, though, my point about the male-dominated force was that there's less gender diversity, which does seem to correlate with the divorce incidence rate.
Yeah, us software engineers are renowned for our communication skills.