Engineers Don’t Tend to Fib

You’re Fired

I like The Apprentice. As entertainment it works well. As a lesson for any kind of life it is however a disaster. This was brought home to me last night when “LordAllan” fired someone because he had never known an engineer who could succeed in business.

Ugh. I think what “LordAllan” means is that engineers have more difficultly telling porkies than folks in other branches of business, particularly marketing. Telling whoppers about a financial product is a lot easier than lying about whether or not a bridge is strong enough. And in the marketing game you can blame “market forces” when the shares tank and everybody loses their money. Where as in engineering it is a bit tricky to blame gravity when everything collapses and a train plummets to the bottom of the ravine. Engineers are expected to do their sums and get it right, whereas other folks can get away with telling the version of the truth that will get the deal.  Ho hum.

Update on Tuesday, June 21, 2011 at 07:13PM by Rob

Having thought a bit more about this post I've decided that it is not the case that you have to be good at telling lies to succeed in business. Just that "LordAlan" thinks that you do.

And I'm sure that none of these comments are in any way influenced by the fact that I once bought an Amstrad amplifier and all the knobs dropped off...

Comments

[Jules]

And would you really want to employ one of those 'Apprentices'. They seem to place great emphasis on being agressive and domineering to their fellow contestants. Great entertainment, but not at all realistic as to building effective teams or even good leadership skills. Lord Sugar, his fellow panel and his interviewer team, all seem to praise the same dubious values.
Ho humm. Its sad that these low values are sometimes viewed as being a strength. But then I never bought into any of that rubish Amstrad technology.

[Jon]

I thought that comment was quite silly really. Has Sir Al not heard of Dyson?