After having a dinner with an Aviation person, who was unusual smart & up to the point, I was stumbled upon the argument she made at end, "Engineers are boring". Of course, it was not meant for anyone in particular, in general it appeared that she wasn't happy to have an engineer’s company. For me, it was all about how you perceive people- in biased or unbiased manner, looking just beyond his/her profession. Sometime looking through professional lenses doesn't guarantee you a real assessment of a person. I can be wrong too!

Some years back while reading Robert W Lucky's article in IEEE, he mentioned the same fact about engineers. In a party, which he attended, no one in particular was interested in talking to him except few fellow engineers who had rather same experience with others. And today, after several years of reading the article, his observation came exactly true. But this time, through others lenses. Is it so? Are we engineers really boring? If so, then why?

I didn’t join engineering to please someone. It can be said in general, no one joins any particular stream of career on the basis of social evaluators. Though, people perceive the social side of their jobs differently, some jobs are highly social in nature, some aren’t. Those social jobs many times involve lots of interaction with people, face-to-face, which make them interesting. So perhaps, when I chose engineering, my parents didn't mind their son doing problem solving for people, nor did I. But then living in a engineering career for few years and doing same things again and again made me think of the dullness that eventually came to my social life.

For me engineering was/is a fascination, a fascination of solving real world problems. Perhaps, this fascination gave me enough reasons to stay with my job and my life still is in sync with it. But then I don't do my job 24 hrs. I do have a friend circle and friends have their own circle of friends. We are equally social, not only for social but also on many personal occasions. Except very few, almost all of my friends belong to engineering background. It wasn't choice I made; it was the choice we made. We felt engineering bonded us together more than anything else. But engineering isn't only reason and our active social life always had many facets, sometimes beyond comprehension. I felt I am a part of social groups called ‘Engineers’.

But after having a meeting one-to-one with an aviation expert, who perhaps carries habit of judging people with some prejudice, it was obvious for me then. Perhaps, profession tends to make people boring. It could be because, we fail to understand the complexities involve in some jobs, howsoever important they are in real world. Or rather, we avoid details. Details of engineering jobs are always monotonous and drab. It reminds me the fact that after initial formal greetings, we hardly have anything to talk among each other. Should we ask an engineer, what GSM parameters he changed today or what software bugs did he/she solve today? Does it make our description more interesting? Knowing few things more about engineering doesn't add any value to non-engineer's life, who often felt engineers as drab and colourless people. It could be partially true. What a telecom engineers does whole day? Does he climb on a telecom tower or creeps on ground, should we all bothered about it? Who dares to care?

At the end, I feel profession itself isn't boring. It is what we make & break out of it makes us feel the same. Perhaps an engineer can be a interesting person, if he/she is working on some special projects like Delhi Metro, Bandra Sea Link, Konkan Railways etc, which involves lots of tryst with technology, nature and forms the basic core of human quest to achieve something worthy & meaningful. Engineering can be a way of life to achieve something meaningful or it's just a profession like many others. We do perceive professions differently, we do all, but engineers are often made scapegoat of a drab social discussion, which engineers are hardly bothered about. So it's all how we perceive people, don't judge them based on their professions, you could go wrong completely.