How Technology Is Impacting Engineering Careers (and Vice Versa)

BY Bruce Brown

Engineering has long been among the noblest professions. Though they are dedicated to tight budgets and tighter schedules, engineers have long been advancing civilization and ushering much-needed progress. We can thank engineers for soaring skyscrapers and supporting sewers, for military defense systems and civilian city planning, for major manufacturing machinery and minute microchips. Yet, the profession of engineering is changing — and it is due largely to engineers’ own designs.

Technology has advanced such that the traditional engineering career path looks vastly different from what many engineers expect. If you want to be an engineer in the Digital Age — a time when engineers still hold monumental power to effect change — you need to know how technology is changing engineering.

Greater Access to Education

Undoubtedly, the greatest technological tool developed in recent history is the internet. For everyone, engineers included, the internet facilitates communication, helping everyone learn more information at faster rates. The lightning-quick development and proliferation of formal online education should hardly be surprising considering the functionality of the web and the value of knowledge.

Yet, for many years, engineering degrees remained strictly offline. Most engineering requires hands-on practice with tools and techniques, and online environments failed to provide the instruction necessary to train engineers for their careers in the field. Fortunately, e-learning improved, and slowly but surely, engineering programs began appearing in digital classrooms — first with advanced degrees in engineering management, then less physical engineering degrees like software engineering, then nearly every engineering degree option you can imagine.

This greater access to education is advantageous to aspiring engineers for a number of reasons. First, it means that location and schedule aren’t insurmountable obstacles to obtaining an engineering degree. As long as you have the internet, you can learn. Secondly, it means that you can enhance your career more easily. Online master of engineering degrees are still available for current engineers interested in rising to higher-level positions. Thus, thanks to technology, more engineers can be trained, and more engineers can accelerate their careers.

Streamlined Engineering Tools

Engineers apply physics and other sciences to their environments to effect positive change. To accomplish this task, engineers have long relied on tools to measure, test, and build. Before modern technology, engineers’ primary tools were pencil, paper, and adding machine; today, they use a bevy of advanced tech to make their work more accurate, more efficient, and, more importantly, faster. These tech tools are largely computer-based, including imaging applications like computer-aided design and drafting programs (CADD), geographic information software (GIS), and more.

Primarily, these enhanced tools improve engineers’ ability to complete their work. However, they have also altered the engineering career in a less-positive way. For example, because tech tools increase the speed of engineering, many employers are less interested in engineer skill and more eager for a high rate of project completion. This hurts the engineering field overall: Instead of taking time to learn the proper techniques, young engineers strive to finish as many designs as possible; resultingly, young engineers never understand the theory, and their work is inefficient, weak, or even dangerous.

Obviously, the answer is not to swear off technology. Rather, engineers must be committed to developing their skills thoroughly before and during their careers. There are several ways to fight the tendency to rush through projects without understanding theory or recognizing mistakes. For example, you might:

• Spend time observing your designs — or structures in your field of engineering — being built. For example, civil engineers might visit construction sites, and electrical engineers might observe factories. This will help you understand common manufacturing challenges and avoid them in your designs.
• Design one of your projects by hand. To save time and money or avoid mistakes, you might practice on an old project or during your down time. When you don’t rely on systems like CADD, you must pay more attention to the theory behind your designs.
• Use completed designs to guide your new projects. Before starting from scratch on a new project, you should look closely at designs of similar projects. Often, young engineers are asked to design things they’ve never seen. By evaluating an existing design, you have a more practical understanding of its function, so you can improve upon it appropriately.

In many industries, technology is replacing trained workers — and that is true in some engineering fields as well. Still, engineering remains a vital career that noticeably improves the lives and livelihoods of entire societies, and technology is largely helping engineers be better at what they do.