Friday, February 17, 2006

IT Engineer & Engineer Engineer

It never occurred to me to think about the difference between the two until recently. Afterall, most of jobs I took on took me far from computer sciences and information technology. I work for the technology arm of a relatively big corporation now. And I'm surrounded by...engineers! Erm..I'm not going to talk about how cute they are because none of them are.

But the stark difference between the IT engineer and engineer engineer is great. They speak, talk and think differently although they are thinking of the same thing.

The IT Engineer says
  1. User Requirements
  2. Design
  3. Development
  4. Testing
  5. Implementation

The Engineer Engineer tells you

  1. Study
  2. Construction
  3. Implementation
  4. Operations

A couple of months ago, I had a conversation with my manager, an EE by training. He casually asked how things were going. And what I thought of things. I asked, "what if, one day, we have to revamp all our applications?"

Anyone who has been into applications development will know that we need to revamp the systems every now and then. By that, it means, throwing away whatever you already possess and redeveloping a whole new application, because times have changed, business have changed and technology has changed. It is really a tedious process.

"Will that day come?" That was the royal answer I received.

IT Engineers build a software application to last for at most 5 years before deciding that it will be reaching EOL pretty soon. Engineer engineers build a building to last 20 years?

I can only conclude, that must be that must be the difference between engineers and information technology. Which is why I understand none of what they are saying only to discover that at the end of the day, we are referring to the same thing.

Posted by LiTTle-FooT at 1:39 AM with 0 comments