[shelterguy]

The big change that I have seen over the years is that the top guy on the job usually started with a broom in his hand and learned the business from the ground up. Every stage of it.

Now, most of it is run by kids who never stepped outside in their lives. Their experience comes from whatever the computer tells them. They can’t visualize or realize that what they are doing on the computer doesn’t always work in the real world.

[Hootowl99]

I understand what you're describing. Coming out if college, your head is stuffed with what to think and not how to think. They are not the same thing. I believe that when a person has not matured to the point of knowing how to think that they are quite limited in capability. They are mostly compatible with more narrow and probably repetitive tasks and not trouble shooting or otherwise non-routine situations.

I am a double STEM guy with degrees in microbiology and chemical engineering. My career started in R&D so that's a clear path to hardcore nerd city. Right? Lol! We had a ranch in the family so I grew up with cattle, horses, pickups and tractors. I think there is a disconnect somewhere in there.

I was hired out of college into process engineering R&D and 1 week into it I was in a junk yard supervising a work crew modifying a large fiberglass tank to be used in a pilot plant. I had no idea what I was doing. It was June on the gulf coast, hot and humid and the crew didn't speak English. What a baptism.

My career has been radically nontraditional but does give me the capability to flip between nerdome, hardhat engineering and business. Heck, I have even been able to flip a bit of the ranching roots into my work. One time, I was tasked to review a new type of skid mounted equipment to be used in the Permian Basin in West Texas. Pumps and controls ok, science appears ok. Layout and structure, we've got a problem. Control and electrical boxes dangling out on supports, lots of cattle, no trees, cattle like to scratch their backs, ergo these dangling boxes are going to be knocked off by cattle. I had the manufacturer rearrange some things and cattle proof their system. Also my roots let me mess with a jerk lawyer one time while giving a deposition in a lawsuit. This was in New York and the lawyer asked me if I thought this other engineer was a "cowboy". This ticked me off because he intended it as an insult to that person and I took it as an insult to me and my family. I about lost my temper but instead told him that the guy wouldn't recognize the south end of a north facing cow if it was staring him in the face, he ain't no cowboy. The lawyer never really understood what my answer was and the court recorder was having the control herself from laughing.