The truth about engineering in our part of the world.

You know I still remember how everyone pampered me everywhere that you will be an engineer and you will design these big machinery and buildings one day. And my question was always do all engineers design? The answer was always, “of course, engineers design and technicians operate”. Some couple of months earlier I found myself a job. The post designated to me was of an electrical engineer. And two weeks into it , I quitted . I quitted because I saw all my dreams (yes I am a dreamer) shattering in front of me second by second. I used to sit in the office whole day long awaiting something to happen. Nothing really did happen. What most one was to do was to “Operate”, ”Configure”. None of this stuff is wrong or “evil”. Everyone should do this, but there should come a point where you move from configuring to designing and I did not see that happening ever.  

When I left the job, I thought maybe I got stuck in the wrong place. I started looking around me and voila, I realized that most of what everyone was doing was very similar and they were enjoying doing that. The problem was of course related to the paradigm followed by many countries. As I reside in the gulf, the heavily oil dependent economy was the criminal. The gulf works like this : the governments gain revenue by selling oil , they then, through government entities, initiate projects , using of course the oil revenues. There is nothing wrong with this. The thing wrong is that this is the only thing they do ! The rest is taken care by western engineering and technology firms who have offices over there. These offices are primarily for sales purposes only. All the designing keeps taking place in their homelands. And this is where an individual like me, starts to observe the “contradiction” of being an engineer in our part of the world. The case is a bit better in Pakistan as the economy is not oil dependent (which also means they don’t have cash).  But whatever the scenario the truth is you are better of being a technician rather than an “engineer”. You do some certifications and you will work better than most engineers can. You keep learning, irrespective of the degree and you will see you have gained valuable knowledge that’s pretty relevant to what you want to do. Obviously the society does not fall in love with the term “technician” as it does with the term engineer, but who cares , Right ?

I guess the only way out of this mess is to change yourself and those around you and perhaps keep telling other people. But hey, don’t we all want to make a good living and support our families?

Yes we do and that is why we are still the way we are!

The road often less travelled by, is difficult but with a little wisdom, you know its the cure.