• Question: How does politics affect your work?

    Asked by Joe on 17 Dec 2014.
    • Photo: Andy Hearn

      Andy Hearn answered on 17 Dec 2014:

      I tend to try and steer clear of any kind of politics while at work, to keep things simple and practical – I like being pragmatic 🙂

      Probably all forms of decision making by those in the Government, Board of Directors, and the like of any company would affect anyone indirectly as well as directly.

      I think the only things that could affect my kind of software engineering are choices of tools, languages, and operating systems made by someone else higher up for “political reasons”.

    • Photo: Peter Green

      Peter Green answered on 21 Dec 2014:

      I am pleased to say that politics has very little impact on my work. That said, perhaps engineers should become more political as a way of demonstrating how their work impacts our everyday lives?

      It is an interesting exercise to keep a note of all the technology you come into contact with or rely on in just one day. You will be frightened just how reliant you are!

    • Photo: Paul Murcutt

      Paul Murcutt answered on 30 Dec 2014:

      Politics can affect engineering as much as it can any business, but generally it is a positive influence. Recently research money has become available to stimulate many engineering fields such as Robotics.

      That said what has been given can be taken away =)

    • Photo: Fiona Dickinson

      Fiona Dickinson answered on 5 Jan 2015:

      Politics not very much, even student fees didn’t change my everyday working life, but my work is reliant on taxes. In the UK a huge amount of research conducted at universities and research institutes is funded by the government and the nations taxes, over the years this research has lead to the UK being a leading player in the world of science and engineering, it has been the bedrock of our economy, and has given us things like the jet engine and radar, as well as missions to mars, and understanding of modern medicine. Scientific research is massively important, and it is essential its continued funding is secure, the budgets have been cut massively in the last 10 years and it is important we not fall behind the rest of the world. Amazing research happens here, you guys are the next generation of that.

    • Photo: Mousumi Roy

      Mousumi Roy answered on 28 Jan 2015:

      Politics wouldn’t have much affect, if any, on the day-to-day life of an engineer. As my colleague puts it, on the whole, as a species, engineers try to steer clear of office politics, because they have much more interesting thigns to do! I cannot agree more with that statement.

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