• Question: What do you think is required to be a good engineer? A good degree or natural talent?

    Asked by zeeraka to Ben, Dan, Gary, Samer on 17 Jun 2013.
    • Photo: Ben Drumm

      Ben Drumm answered on 17 Jun 2013:

      You don’t NEED a good degree, some engineers I work with (I’m a mechanical engineer) don’t have degrees and did apprenticeships instead and are very competent.

      I think in either case you’ll need some ‘natural talent’ (I’m taking this to mean being pretty clever) to either get a good degree or to excel in an apprenticeship…

    • Photo: Gary Boorman

      Gary Boorman answered on 17 Jun 2013:

      All of the good engineers I know started, when they were young, by taking things apart, to try and find out how they worked. After a while, they also learned how to put things back together. A good engineer is always trying to understand how a things works, and then to try and improve things.
      Natural talent, or interest, is very useful, but a degree can help you to be even better.

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