原创 What engineers actually do...

I think you will find this silly, but when I was a student at university, I had a recurring daydream in which I had graduated with my degree, I was at a party, and a nubile young lady came up to me and, in a sultry voice, asked "Hello there, what do you do?" (She really was very nubile ... hey, it was my daydream!)

In my mind's eye I could imagine myself standing a little straighter, pushing my chest out, looking her squarely in the eyes, and saying (with a voice reminiscent of James Earl Jones in his prime) "I AM an engineer!!!" (It sound much better when you hear it live ... and yes, there are three very prominent exclamation marks when I say it :-)

The reason I'm waffling on about this is that industry analyst Gary Smith just sent me an email pointing me to an image created by an engineer called Douglas Van Bossuyt (click here to visit Douglas' site, and click here to see the original full-size image).

As you will see from the blown-up pictures below, the first six images show what Douglas' Friends, Parents, Society, Girls, Boss, and Kids thinks he does as an engineer (or, at least, what he things they think, if you see what I mean). The remaining three images are actually quite poignant, being titled "What I want to do," "What I think I do," and "What I actually do."

Actually, I've since discovered that the "What people think I do" meme is currently very popular (Click here and here to see some examples of different callings and professions).

Interestingly enough (as an engineer), the idea for these "infograms" is being credited to an artist with the last name of Hertz! If you click here, you will discover that the first instance of this is said to have been uploaded by artist Garnet Hertz via his Facebook page on February 2nd, 2012. His original chart summarised various preconceived notions and generalisations that are associated with being a contemporary artist.

OK, I'm about to show the blown up images from Douglas Van Bossuyt's offering. But before I do, I was wondering if we could all come up with some better (higher quality, funnier, more interesting) images for his existing categories; maybe we could also come up with some additional categories. If so, please add these as comments to this blog and I will pull them into a larger poster format that I will make available for anyone to download for free.