Engineer or Technician?

Bob Jordan, PE

Engineers and technicians think differently and behave differently. An engineer may have the education and the license to be an engineer, but really be a technician. Conversely, a technician may well be an engineer who’s waiting (that is, working toward) for his formal education to catch up. Here’s what I mean:

An engineer thinks process, systems, long-term, repeatability. He thinks production, creativity, and adding value. He wants to do the most with the least. He’s entirely at ease working through breaks and lunch, and working extra hours. Now, it’s not just engineers who do this, many persons do this from the world of finance, operations, sales and marketing. In these instances, like the engineer, the persons are professionals with a professional mindset of getting the job done. They also love what they do.

The technician, often like the hourly employee, thinks differently. He thinks 8.000 hours of work per day, takes breaks on time, takes lunch on time, leaves on time. The technician doesn’t like paperwork, but rather wants to do “real work” and only work on the hardware. The technician finds what’s wrong with the world and with management and is quick to point it out. They take far more sick time than do the engineers. Engineers crawl in sick, technicians call in sick.

This may seem harsh but it’s what I’ve observed, as a rule, over the past 25 years. To expand on an earlier statement about education, let me point out that there are non-degreed technicians that are really engineers, and there are degreed engineers that are really technicians. Some engineers get the title and the pay but act like technicians. Then, there are the technicians that bust their butts and behave like engineers, but are only paid as if they were technicians.

So here’s what to do about it: managers must recognize the engineers in their midst and encourage formal education. This is required in design engineers, and highly desirable in other engineering fields (manufacturing, quality, materials, and project engineers). To move from company to company, or even industry to industry, the bar of entry is a degree. And you can count on moving from company to company these days.

Additionally, the manager should recognize when he’s got a degreed engineer on his staff who is really a technician. In those cases, to keep a good example before this staff, and to keep morale up, the so-called engineer should have the expectations of an engineer firmly established. If he doesn’t respond, move him out of the organization. Why? Because this so-called engineer is drawing a higher salary than he deserves, and that is not good for the business or for the staff. It’s a needless distraction.