For most people, engineering is seen as being a “practical” field. However, it is important to note that this is a over-simplistic view of the field. After all, there are those who would call engineering the “theoretical” field compared to engineering technology, which would be called the “practical” field.
In short, if engineering is focused on designing things, then engineering technology is focused on translating those designs into functional products. As a result, there is a fair amount of overlap between engineering and engineering technology, as shown by the engineers and engineering technologists who wind up working in much the same roles in much the same processes. Sometimes, interested individuals can find engineering technologies helping out engineers, while other times, interested individuals can engineering technologies leading entire teams of engineers. Based on this, it is no wonder that people confuse engineers and engineering technologists for one another even though there is a clear line of separation drawn between the two.
What Do Engineering Technologists Do?
As stated, engineering technologists are supposed to handle the tasks involved in translating a design into a functional product. As a result, this means that a lot of engineering technologists are focused on the development process that exists for the purpose of producing improvements in a particular design by incorporating the lessons learned through their experiences and other useful sources of information. Likewise, there are a lot of engineering technologists involved in the implementation of designs, which can see said individuals performing tasks that range from the actual fabrication of things to the testing of the things that have been fabricated by them.
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With that said, it is important to remember that there is considerable overlap between engineers and engineering technologists, which makes sense because a lot of real world processes can’t be separated into neatly compartmentalized steps but instead see those steps flowing into one another in a more-or-less seamless manner. Based on this, it is not uncommon to see engineering technologists involved in tasks that might be more associated with engineers in the popular imagination. For example, there are plenty of engineering technologists who are involved in product design in one way or another, which is perhaps unsurprising when they possess a lot of the same expertise and experience as their more “theoretical” counterparts. Moreover, it should be mentioned that engineering technologists have similar opportunities to engineers for advancing in their careers of choice, which is why interested individuals can find plenty of engineering technologists who have wound up as management as well as plenty of engineering technologists who have wound up as the owners of their own businesses.
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