Expert: Paul Soderman - 9/9/2008

Question
Hi my name is Max im a 10 grader at Blue Valley High School in Kansas and we are doing a interview projects and i just had a few questions for you.
Describe the duties and responsibility of someone working in engineering?

Do you work with people, data, or things?

How long are the projects?

What are the advantages?

Advancement opportunities?

Employees disputed or do they work for themselves, private industry, or government?

What are beginning salary and top salary?

Overtime pay or Hours per week?

Vacations?

Do you have to travel?

Retirement benefits?

Are you able to work from home?

Do you work alone or with others?

Any tests or licenses?

What did you think you were going to do in High School?

When did you know you were going to do your job you do?

Did you get a degree in college?

How long have you been working in your profession?

Anything you would like to add?  

Answer
Max - some of your questions are unclear.  What does... Vacation ?... mean to you.  So I will give you the same summary answer I have given to other students:

Generally, aeronautical engineers design and develop aerospace devices such as aircraft, missiles, race cars, jet engines, etc.  I was in research at NASA Ames Research Center where I was responsible for planning and executing wind tunnel studies aimed at improving our understanding of aeronautics and related technologies.  

A normal day involved examination of scientific literature, planning experiments, writing code for data analysis, analyzing experimental results, meeting with my peers, requesting support from management, writing reports, etc.  I traveled 4 to 6 times a year to various laboratories or scientific conferences.

The quality of work was high.  The pay was good, not exceptional, but government employees have good benefits such as excellent vacation time, sick leave and pensions.  Hours were good, we had the option of working 9 nine hour days and getting a three-day weekend every other weekend.  Job locations in aerospace are limited by the few number of organizations in the field, but jobs do exist all over the country.

Research is never boring, not counting the occasional meetings on team morale or time efficiency that we had to attend.

I often worked with engineers with different expertise such as electronics engineers, mechanical designers, software programmers, system control engineers, etc.

The projects I worked on can be found in engineering libraries - search on my name.  One project I was proud of was the investigation of the hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica.  I did the aero design the gas sample instrument.  We found was causes the hole, which led to the worldwide banning of fluro-hydrocarbons.

For this job you must be expert in math and physics as well as computer programming, electronics, and so on.

I knew in high school I wanted to be an engineer, either to build bridges or aircraft.  I chose aircraft and am glad.

High school students should take all the math and science they can get, especially physics.

I chose U. of Washington for my aero studies, but also studied at Oregon State U. and Stanford U.  They are all good schools, but there are many across the country.
Paul