Last year's raise was 12%, the years before that were about the same. The tech boom took a lot of potential chemical, mechanical, and civil engineers out of the labour pool. There are serious scarcity of labour and problems retaining employees in these fields. Better benefits and piles of cash seem to be the most common way of making sure you have enough people. I'm coming up on 10 years in the business, and I am at triple the salary I started at. That is averaging over 10% for a decade. And there is no end in sight.
Keep enjoying your SUV's.
One of the tough things about engineering
on
Airbus A380 Under Fire
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
I've gone up against a client (big multi-national oil company) who disagreed with me on what was required for a refinery safety system I was designing. I wanted a pretty elaborate and redundant system to take care of what I will admit was a remote contingency. However it is my job to consider remote contingencies, it was what they hired my company for. But they really balked at what I was proposing.
As much as engineers like black and white solutions, there is a lot of grey out there. In my case, I saw the deficiencies one way, they saw them another. The scenario couldn't be practically tested and the academic research on the topic was spotty and a lot of it was unpublished internal data. I ended up putting together reports with experts from two continents to convince this client that there was a problem they weren't seeing.
Standing up on something like this is a lonely place to be. Like the article, I live with the thought of what I do can kill people if I am wrong. Makes me real cautious. But people who I report to are often non-experts, and occasionally they believe things irrationally (to me anyway) and it takes a lot of convincing to get them to see the my side. And hey, I am wrong sometimes too. But to stand up to a company that is paying your paycheque and say that you will not sign off on a design because you believe there is a problem, all the while they are screaming at you that we are behind schedule and over budget, makes for a truly shitty day at work. You get all sorts of pressure to let things go "good enough". Takes a lot of backbone and confidence for a technologist to stand up to economic pressures. We tend not to care as much for the dollars as we do for safety. I admire whistleblowers for this.
Sober up! It's called academic licensing. I learned AutoCAD and 3D Studio on a legit copy of version 12 with an academic license. $300, admitedly 10 years ago. I'm not a programmer, but I'm willing to bet you can get academic licenses for compilers as well.
If little Johnny really wants to learn, it's not out of reach. Stop trying to justify thievery.
Agreed, I'm actually very happy I ended up in a field where I know a little bit about a lot of things. I do a lot of process simulation, so a good knowledge of computers helps. This is how I learned a lot of Unix for example.
I understand most of what is going on when I talk to a MechE about turbines and pressure vessels. I know a bit about what the EE's are going on about when they talk about three-phase 430 V power versus 4130. The CivE's and I can talk water treatment til the cows come home. (Although structures are a bit of voodoo to me.)
I've worked in mining, food additives, water treatment, oil refining, chemicals, and environmental industries. Design, construction, operation. Gotta say, its been a pretty good run so far.
One possible reason for the high value of ChemE's right now might be scarcity. There were quite a few years where obviously computer fields were much more attractive to someone starting college than ChemE. If you were a bright kid, with a knack for such things, you'd be crazy not to be more interested in CompE than ChemE. This led to a drop (at least in the few schools I know about) in relative enrollments in ChemE.
Now a few years after the boom, ChemE's are gold because there are so few of them relatively speaking. I've been a practising ChemE for nearly 8 years and I can tell you we have a hell of a time finding quality people.
And yeah, it is pretty lucrative. I work in mainly the oil refining business and there is still a lot of money to be made.
Nice! I remember my folks would rent one of those players with a couple of movies every so often. It was on one of those players that I watched Apocalypse Now for 10th or 11th birthday. I always wondered whatever happened to that format. Thanks for the link!
Stuff like this makes me really dig being an engineer. Nice to see some recognition being given when an engineer gets it right and disaster is averted. This happens all the time, but no one really ever notices.
I work in the oil business (refining) and I am thinking of safety every day. Reviews are done throughout the design process that question what are the consequences if X happens. And if the consequences are unacceptable, we have to design them out or we can't go any further. It is very humbling to think about the fact that people's lives depend on your work. Humility is a job requirement.
I don't know if you can get an academic license on it, but Aspen Custom Modeller lets you tinker with lots of the goodies under the hood.
I hope I didn't come off as too negative in my previous post. Now that I know more about what you are headed for, I think you have a good chance of putting something together.
I especially wish you good luck with CAPE-Open compatability, I've always thought that it was a great idea but that the big players were dragging their feet because they had a vested interest in their proprietary products.
I won't offer to help, sadly, since I couldn't code my way out of a wet paper bag. Too many years since me and Fortran were on a first name basis. Let alone any more "modern" language.
The Sim in my user name refers to process simulation, this is what I do. Mostly steady state but I do do some dynamic work. I design oil refineries.
If the submitter is following the thread still, I'd be interested to know more of what exactly they'd be interested in using this for in control systems. Are they interested in tuning controllers, training simulations, RTO? Different needs require different tools.
Most of the important points have been made. Thermo package is going to be a big concern. A lot of money is invested in these things. The algotithms are often published, but the coefficients and implementations are proprietary. Without good reliable thermo, your results won't be of much interest to anyone.
For dynamics, another concern is flow driven versus pressure driven. Each has it's advantages and more importantly serious compromises.
Unit operations aren't actually that bad to model mathematically. Having a good flash algorithm will go a long way. Converging distillation with any kind of speed will take some cleverness, but is conceptually pretty simple. It is just scaling the VLE over many components.
I've written simple stuff in Matlab pretty easily. Binary distillations, as an example.
The biggest hurdle you will face is crediblity. Aspen, Simulation Sciences, and the like have been around a long time and have a pretty good track record. Engineers are comfortable with them enough to base design decisions on them. Even at that, any time a new version is released we are probably 6 months away from adoption due to our validation cycle.
The company I work for is really near the top of the game as far as modelling refineries especially. And even with all of our experience and expertise, we are really wary of dynamic simulation. The concepts are really easy, and it doesn't seem like that big of a jump from steady state. But we take an awful long time to develop a dynamic simulation to the point where we are comfortable using it for design work. So much of it has to be hand-crafted as opposed to the simple drop-and-connect of many of the steady state packages.
Long development cycles are big dollars, and most clients aren't prepared to spend them unless the carrot is big enough. Relief system modelling is where we see it the most often.
I hope I am not being too discouraging here. Engineers by nature a fairly cautious lot. If something I design screws up, there are dead people and a smoking hole in the ground.
Oh, and if the question of sequential modular versus equation oriented doesn't mean anything to you, I would walk away.
I started a project over a year ago. When we started we were well staffed and on schedule. I was being thorough and documenting things very methodically. Then management started to take staff away, and things got a bit messier. Then the client changed their mind and kept the same schedule. And I started putting most of the design together off the top of my head, figuring I'd write it down later. Well, now we are almost done, there is a fundamental flaw in the design basis that the client is blaming on us (me). And my bosses want me to do things even quicker and dirtier, just to get it finished. I get blank stares when I tell them that that's what got us into this problem in the first place.
Oh, and I'm not talking about coding. I'm an engineer and I design oil refineries. Sleep well on that knowledge, I know I don't.
This looks like it could be some crafty timing to move some inventory of G4 Powermacs out the door. Lots of folks have said they are waiting on new hardware purchases since the latest G4's don't boot into OS 9, rendering them useless for Quark.
And once the inventory is moving, in advance of WWDC, who knows what might be announced there...
Martin Gardner edited this collection of essays which contains essays from a number of scientific bright lights. Big names include Einstein, Steven jay Gould, Sagan, Darwin. But some of the authors I hadn't heard of, like Lewis Thomas, were the real revelation for me. This collection of essays led me to purchase longer works by a number of the authors.
The collection is a bit dated, originally published in 1984, but really quite accesible. There is also a bio of each author preceding their essay.
However another book by Gardner on pseudoscience Did Adam and Eve Have Navels? was a real dissapointment. I'd have to say he is a much better editor than author.
The submitter should have looked at the article on Canada pulling out of Kyoto a little closer. It is from May '02, we have ratified our commitment in parliament since then so really, pulling out isn't really on the radar anymore.
I just did some quick figuring with what I have at hand, but I think LNG has a higher energy density than these hydrates. I get something on the order of 600 cubic metres of gaseous methane per cubic metre of liquid natural gas, using a molal volume for liquid methane of 37.7 cm^3/g-mol. (Reid, Prausnitz & Sherwood, 1977) Didn't use any compressibility, just ideal gas, but the difference is big enough that it shouldn't make enough difference to go the other way.
Re:Interesting...
on
Gas Goes Solid
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Yep, I'm thinking that a bit of heat would be all you need. Then some separators to do the bulk water-gas separation and some dryers to get it to pipeline spec. No real technology show stoppers on the other end.
Re:Methane hydrates
on
Gas Goes Solid
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
OK, I did a Google search and couldn't come up with anything on White Crude. Are you talking about GTL or gas-to-liquids technology? Reacting C1's to C5+ molecules to make them stable at room temperatures for shipping etc.
A little thin on the details
on
Gas Goes Solid
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
If I was at work today, I'd fire up the LNG simulations to see exactly how many scf's of natural gas will fit in a cubic foot of LNG. I'm willing to bet it's more than 180. So you'd have to transport much more hydrate than LNG for an equivalent amount of natural gas.
Also annoying that they mention nothing about pressure, as the fun way to get hydrates that I know about is to flash a high pressure stream of natural gas with a bit of water across a valve to lower pressure. Hydrates form and plug up the valve. Not a good thing, But the point is that pressure=compression costs. Nobody ever seems to give lifecycle energy costs for these new & improved technologies. And yes, I realize they are using a tank reactor, but I bet there are still some decent pressures involved to get reasonable yields.
LNG has always been borderline on whether it makes economic sense. Places like Trinidad and Qatar are into it because they have such huge natural gas supplies in relation to their oil reserves that they can build huge plants and get some economy of scale. Customers are places like Japan (hence this bit of research) and the U.S. believe it or not. Latest numbers I heard are that LNG is competative with pipeline natural gas at about $4/MMSCF, depending on how far you have to ship it. With the strong prices of the last couple of years, the pace of projects is accelerating.
Ah, McMaster, how I miss thee. I heard through the grapevine that the pranks were pretty good this year. My year the Kipling pranks were poorly organized and thus sucked. Nice work guys.
Looks like they set that up in the new student centre that I paid for for 5 years but never got to see. Enjoy it.
Off for my morning coffee, in my Kipling mug in honour of it's new found fame.
Heh, in my case I was thinking more like "They have some interesting refining technology, but their upstream work in places like Nigeria is a bit sketchy." (Shell Oil, who I have in fact contracted for in the past.)
OK, I'll bite, how do you use a single ethernet port iMac for a firewall?
I have an old iMac that will be relegated to the second string soon, which I'd love to find a use for. Every homebuilt firewall I've looked into has 2 ethernet cards as a pre-requisite. What am I missing?
Re:Bug in the webserver? No, webserver in the Bug!
on
Server In A Fly
·
· Score: 1
Kudos, man. In 5 years of/., this is the single funniest comment I have ever read!
Gotta love when people get way out of their element. This guy really needs to get over his persecution complex. FMC and Degussa likely aren't "jerking you around" for shits and giggles. There is a pretty substantial liability issue with fun stuff like peroxide, and even legitimate buyers likely have a whack of paperwork to wade through. I used to run through some of the paperwork to buy chlorine gas for water treatment plants. Chemical companies kinda want to know who you are before they go selling you potential weapons of mass destruction.
Plus, $100K worth of peroxide may not be a big order to these guys. Small order means that they don't care as much about you, especially if you want some custom spec on it.
What would be better for him to consider is a really experienced procurement specialist, who knows the market and can source things properly. Much better use of money than building your own production facility. Hire someone already in the chemical brokering business to handle the paperwork and pay them a fee for it. Way safer than some enlightened amatuer thinking that it can't be too tough to purify peroxide.
For me it comes down to social responsibility. Engineers are the only profession that are not ultimately responsible to an individual but to society as a whole. Doctors and lawyers only look out for a particular client. If an engineer fails, the results are bad for society. The fact that we work with imperfect materials keeps us awake at night. Things like the Columbia make me physically ill because I empathize with every engineer involved in that project.
And from my, admittedly narrow, view of software engineering, I don't see that sense of social responsibility. I design oil refineries for a living, and to do so I use some high end engineering software packages to simulate new plant designs. Using software allows me to evaluate more options faster and to design to tighter tolerances. This is more efficient, and engineers and their clients love efficiency. But if there is an error in the software I use to design this plant, the software company will in no way take any responsibility. I know this going in, and because I have a lot of experience with what does work, I know how to spot a software result that doesn't. The ultimate responsibility lies with me. And until I see software engineers taking that kind of responsibility for their products, I really can't see considering them as engineers. I have yet to see any piece of critical software that doesn't have disclaimers on it.
Hey, I'm a professional, and like other professionals, I have a vested interest in maintaining the standards of my profession.
Slashdot Mirror
You can right click on the board and and choose "Numbered Board" to turn on the descriptions for the coloured squares.
Last year's raise was 12%, the years before that were about the same. The tech boom took a lot of potential chemical, mechanical, and civil engineers out of the labour pool. There are serious scarcity of labour and problems retaining employees in these fields. Better benefits and piles of cash seem to be the most common way of making sure you have enough people. I'm coming up on 10 years in the business, and I am at triple the salary I started at. That is averaging over 10% for a decade. And there is no end in sight.
Keep enjoying your SUV's.
I've gone up against a client (big multi-national oil company) who disagreed with me on what was required for a refinery safety system I was designing. I wanted a pretty elaborate and redundant system to take care of what I will admit was a remote contingency. However it is my job to consider remote contingencies, it was what they hired my company for. But they really balked at what I was proposing.
As much as engineers like black and white solutions, there is a lot of grey out there. In my case, I saw the deficiencies one way, they saw them another. The scenario couldn't be practically tested and the academic research on the topic was spotty and a lot of it was unpublished internal data. I ended up putting together reports with experts from two continents to convince this client that there was a problem they weren't seeing.
Standing up on something like this is a lonely place to be. Like the article, I live with the thought of what I do can kill people if I am wrong. Makes me real cautious. But people who I report to are often non-experts, and occasionally they believe things irrationally (to me anyway) and it takes a lot of convincing to get them to see the my side. And hey, I am wrong sometimes too. But to stand up to a company that is paying your paycheque and say that you will not sign off on a design because you believe there is a problem, all the while they are screaming at you that we are behind schedule and over budget, makes for a truly shitty day at work. You get all sorts of pressure to let things go "good enough". Takes a lot of backbone and confidence for a technologist to stand up to economic pressures. We tend not to care as much for the dollars as we do for safety. I admire whistleblowers for this.
Sober up! It's called academic licensing. I learned AutoCAD and 3D Studio on a legit copy of version 12 with an academic license. $300, admitedly 10 years ago. I'm not a programmer, but I'm willing to bet you can get academic licenses for compilers as well.
If little Johnny really wants to learn, it's not out of reach. Stop trying to justify thievery.
Agreed, I'm actually very happy I ended up in a field where I know a little bit about a lot of things. I do a lot of process simulation, so a good knowledge of computers helps. This is how I learned a lot of Unix for example.
I understand most of what is going on when I talk to a MechE about turbines and pressure vessels. I know a bit about what the EE's are going on about when they talk about three-phase 430 V power versus 4130. The CivE's and I can talk water treatment til the cows come home. (Although structures are a bit of voodoo to me.)
I've worked in mining, food additives, water treatment, oil refining, chemicals, and environmental industries. Design, construction, operation. Gotta say, its been a pretty good run so far.
One possible reason for the high value of ChemE's right now might be scarcity. There were quite a few years where obviously computer fields were much more attractive to someone starting college than ChemE. If you were a bright kid, with a knack for such things, you'd be crazy not to be more interested in CompE than ChemE. This led to a drop (at least in the few schools I know about) in relative enrollments in ChemE.
Now a few years after the boom, ChemE's are gold because there are so few of them relatively speaking. I've been a practising ChemE for nearly 8 years and I can tell you we have a hell of a time finding quality people.
And yeah, it is pretty lucrative. I work in mainly the oil refining business and there is still a lot of money to be made.
Nice! I remember my folks would rent one of those players with a couple of movies every so often. It was on one of those players that I watched Apocalypse Now for 10th or 11th birthday. I always wondered whatever happened to that format. Thanks for the link!
Stuff like this makes me really dig being an engineer. Nice to see some recognition being given when an engineer gets it right and disaster is averted. This happens all the time, but no one really ever notices.
I work in the oil business (refining) and I am thinking of safety every day. Reviews are done throughout the design process that question what are the consequences if X happens. And if the consequences are unacceptable, we have to design them out or we can't go any further. It is very humbling to think about the fact that people's lives depend on your work. Humility is a job requirement.
I don't know if you can get an academic license on it, but Aspen Custom Modeller lets you tinker with lots of the goodies under the hood.
I hope I didn't come off as too negative in my previous post. Now that I know more about what you are headed for, I think you have a good chance of putting something together.
I especially wish you good luck with CAPE-Open compatability, I've always thought that it was a great idea but that the big players were dragging their feet because they had a vested interest in their proprietary products.
I won't offer to help, sadly, since I couldn't code my way out of a wet paper bag. Too many years since me and Fortran were on a first name basis. Let alone any more "modern" language.
The Sim in my user name refers to process simulation, this is what I do. Mostly steady state but I do do some dynamic work. I design oil refineries.
If the submitter is following the thread still, I'd be interested to know more of what exactly they'd be interested in using this for in control systems. Are they interested in tuning controllers, training simulations, RTO? Different needs require different tools.
Most of the important points have been made. Thermo package is going to be a big concern. A lot of money is invested in these things. The algotithms are often published, but the coefficients and implementations are proprietary. Without good reliable thermo, your results won't be of much interest to anyone.
For dynamics, another concern is flow driven versus pressure driven. Each has it's advantages and more importantly serious compromises.
Unit operations aren't actually that bad to model mathematically. Having a good flash algorithm will go a long way. Converging distillation with any kind of speed will take some cleverness, but is conceptually pretty simple. It is just scaling the VLE over many components.
I've written simple stuff in Matlab pretty easily. Binary distillations, as an example.
The biggest hurdle you will face is crediblity. Aspen, Simulation Sciences, and the like have been around a long time and have a pretty good track record. Engineers are comfortable with them enough to base design decisions on them. Even at that, any time a new version is released we are probably 6 months away from adoption due to our validation cycle.
The company I work for is really near the top of the game as far as modelling refineries especially. And even with all of our experience and expertise, we are really wary of dynamic simulation. The concepts are really easy, and it doesn't seem like that big of a jump from steady state. But we take an awful long time to develop a dynamic simulation to the point where we are comfortable using it for design work. So much of it has to be hand-crafted as opposed to the simple drop-and-connect of many of the steady state packages.
Long development cycles are big dollars, and most clients aren't prepared to spend them unless the carrot is big enough. Relief system modelling is where we see it the most often.
I hope I am not being too discouraging here. Engineers by nature a fairly cautious lot. If something I design screws up, there are dead people and a smoking hole in the ground.
Oh, and if the question of sequential modular versus equation oriented doesn't mean anything to you, I would walk away.
I started a project over a year ago. When we started we were well staffed and on schedule. I was being thorough and documenting things very methodically. Then management started to take staff away, and things got a bit messier. Then the client changed their mind and kept the same schedule. And I started putting most of the design together off the top of my head, figuring I'd write it down later. Well, now we are almost done, there is a fundamental flaw in the design basis that the client is blaming on us (me). And my bosses want me to do things even quicker and dirtier, just to get it finished. I get blank stares when I tell them that that's what got us into this problem in the first place.
Oh, and I'm not talking about coding. I'm an engineer and I design oil refineries. Sleep well on that knowledge, I know I don't.
This looks like it could be some crafty timing to move some inventory of G4 Powermacs out the door. Lots of folks have said they are waiting on new hardware purchases since the latest G4's don't boot into OS 9, rendering them useless for Quark.
And once the inventory is moving, in advance of WWDC, who knows what might be announced there...
Or I could just be talking out of my ass.
Martin Gardner edited this collection of essays which contains essays from a number of scientific bright lights. Big names include Einstein, Steven jay Gould, Sagan, Darwin. But some of the authors I hadn't heard of, like Lewis Thomas, were the real revelation for me. This collection of essays led me to purchase longer works by a number of the authors.
The collection is a bit dated, originally published in 1984, but really quite accesible. There is also a bio of each author preceding their essay.
However another book by Gardner on pseudoscience Did Adam and Eve Have Navels? was a real dissapointment. I'd have to say he is a much better editor than author.
Watched it last night, some of it was OK but the very end was a bit of a cop out and a disappointment.
Although the Trogdor reference made me laugh my ass off.
The submitter should have looked at the article on Canada pulling out of Kyoto a little closer. It is from May '02, we have ratified our commitment in parliament since then so really, pulling out isn't really on the radar anymore.
I just did some quick figuring with what I have at hand, but I think LNG has a higher energy density than these hydrates. I get something on the order of 600 cubic metres of gaseous methane per cubic metre of liquid natural gas, using a molal volume for liquid methane of 37.7 cm^3/g-mol. (Reid, Prausnitz & Sherwood, 1977) Didn't use any compressibility, just ideal gas, but the difference is big enough that it shouldn't make enough difference to go the other way.
Yep, I'm thinking that a bit of heat would be all you need. Then some separators to do the bulk water-gas separation and some dryers to get it to pipeline spec. No real technology show stoppers on the other end.
OK, I did a Google search and couldn't come up with anything on White Crude. Are you talking about GTL or gas-to-liquids technology? Reacting C1's to C5+ molecules to make them stable at room temperatures for shipping etc.
If I was at work today, I'd fire up the LNG simulations to see exactly how many scf's of natural gas will fit in a cubic foot of LNG. I'm willing to bet it's more than 180. So you'd have to transport much more hydrate than LNG for an equivalent amount of natural gas.
Also annoying that they mention nothing about pressure, as the fun way to get hydrates that I know about is to flash a high pressure stream of natural gas with a bit of water across a valve to lower pressure. Hydrates form and plug up the valve. Not a good thing, But the point is that pressure=compression costs. Nobody ever seems to give lifecycle energy costs for these new & improved technologies. And yes, I realize they are using a tank reactor, but I bet there are still some decent pressures involved to get reasonable yields.
LNG has always been borderline on whether it makes economic sense. Places like Trinidad and Qatar are into it because they have such huge natural gas supplies in relation to their oil reserves that they can build huge plants and get some economy of scale. Customers are places like Japan (hence this bit of research) and the U.S. believe it or not. Latest numbers I heard are that LNG is competative with pipeline natural gas at about $4/MMSCF, depending on how far you have to ship it. With the strong prices of the last couple of years, the pace of projects is accelerating.
Ah, McMaster, how I miss thee. I heard through the grapevine that the pranks were pretty good this year. My year the Kipling pranks were poorly organized and thus sucked. Nice work guys.
Looks like they set that up in the new student centre that I paid for for 5 years but never got to see. Enjoy it.
Off for my morning coffee, in my Kipling mug in honour of it's new found fame.
Cheers,
James, Chem Eng '96
Heh, in my case I was thinking more like "They have some interesting refining technology, but their upstream work in places like Nigeria is a bit sketchy." (Shell Oil, who I have in fact contracted for in the past.)
OK, I'll bite, how do you use a single ethernet port iMac for a firewall?
I have an old iMac that will be relegated to the second string soon, which I'd love to find a use for. Every homebuilt firewall I've looked into has 2 ethernet cards as a pre-requisite. What am I missing?
Kudos, man. In 5 years of /., this is the single funniest comment I have ever read!
Gotta love when people get way out of their element. This guy really needs to get over his persecution complex. FMC and Degussa likely aren't "jerking you around" for shits and giggles. There is a pretty substantial liability issue with fun stuff like peroxide, and even legitimate buyers likely have a whack of paperwork to wade through. I used to run through some of the paperwork to buy chlorine gas for water treatment plants. Chemical companies kinda want to know who you are before they go selling you potential weapons of mass destruction.
Plus, $100K worth of peroxide may not be a big order to these guys. Small order means that they don't care as much about you, especially if you want some custom spec on it.
What would be better for him to consider is a really experienced procurement specialist, who knows the market and can source things properly. Much better use of money than building your own production facility. Hire someone already in the chemical brokering business to handle the paperwork and pay them a fee for it. Way safer than some enlightened amatuer thinking that it can't be too tough to purify peroxide.
For me it comes down to social responsibility. Engineers are the only profession that are not ultimately responsible to an individual but to society as a whole. Doctors and lawyers only look out for a particular client. If an engineer fails, the results are bad for society. The fact that we work with imperfect materials keeps us awake at night. Things like the Columbia make me physically ill because I empathize with every engineer involved in that project.
And from my, admittedly narrow, view of software engineering, I don't see that sense of social responsibility. I design oil refineries for a living, and to do so I use some high end engineering software packages to simulate new plant designs. Using software allows me to evaluate more options faster and to design to tighter tolerances. This is more efficient, and engineers and their clients love efficiency. But if there is an error in the software I use to design this plant, the software company will in no way take any responsibility. I know this going in, and because I have a lot of experience with what does work, I know how to spot a software result that doesn't. The ultimate responsibility lies with me. And until I see software engineers taking that kind of responsibility for their products, I really can't see considering them as engineers. I have yet to see any piece of critical software that doesn't have disclaimers on it.
Hey, I'm a professional, and like other professionals, I have a vested interest in maintaining the standards of my profession.