Wannabe Engineers

What prompted me to write this post was this utterly shocking piece of news:

“80 per cent of the 1 million engineers graduating every year in India are not real engineers.”

To me, as a student who dreams about developing ground breaking software and giving wings to creativity and innovation in the industry, this sets a grim fog over my bright visions.

Since there has been such a rampant encroachment of the populace on the engineering arena, the true essence of what it means to be an engineer seems to be lost in the chaos.

It would be wrong on my part to define something I do not truly understand yet. Moreover, stating a few characteristics would mean pigeonholing myriad personalities into a baser identity. What would be an inherent trait is that a true engineer is anyone who can realize ideas and theories into practical, working machines. 

(Please do not get the false implication here that engineers are some sort of demigods and the rest are just lesser mortals. I too accept your worldview that the world needs all kinds of minds to develop.)

Anyway. Having had the opportunity to be in close observation of pseudo engineers, allow me to point out a few characteristics of this species.

You are a ‘Wannabe Engineer’ if:

• Machines and nerdy talk bore you to death.
• You subscribe to the popular belief system that no other degree is as easy and prestigious as an engineering degree.
• You think creativity is just about art, music, literature and not code or circuits.
• You think owning an expensive smartphone and being a pro at the latest games makes you some sort of a whiz.
• You are unaware of your inherent inclination.
• You’re too lazy to dream beyond the Great Indian Engineering Dream
• You cannot imagine using the Internet for purposes other than copy pasting and social networking.
• You’re completely oblivious to the tricks of your trade; plagiarize research papers and fake your projects.
• You're getting offended by now.

Now, entrance examinations have gotten insanely hard to crack (which should've avoided this fiasco) but these filters have been rendered useless by an increase in the institutions accepting everyone from dummies to genuinely passionate ones who couldn't prove their mettle in the rush for prestigious institutes. Moreover, these pseudos cram their way up the corporate ladder armed with an MBA degree to belittle the ones who choose to stick to their not so flashy technical backgrounds.

The humble engineer is then bound to lose direction in this melee of carving out an existence..

This desperately needs to change! What we need is a radical shift in consciousness. 

I beg, literally beg, to all those on their career crossroads to introspect and make informed decisions about their own futures as well as the future of the integrity of the entire engineering community standing on the brink of a bleaker tomorrow.

To non pseudos, instill every bit of your soul into the projects you develop. Let this shattering news item embolden you to catalyze a change in scenario. The perks are awesome and the jobs sure yield a fortune but let that not be your sole motivation. The world needs intrinsically fueled people doing things because they matter to them, even more.

As long as people refuse to discover their own dreams, wannabes will continue to exist shielding themselves with excuses, laziness, mediocrity and societal pressures. 

I hope this changes, rather I want this to change. I am no schadenfreude but the extinction of this ‘Wannabe Species’ would give me a joy impossible to put down in words...