And another thing – I've got nothing against the accountants and financial officers, other than they do everything they can to prevent me from doing my job.  As an Engineer,  the company employs me to spend money.  Design and install new plant and equipment or improve existing plant and equipment.  The financial guys do everything they can to put barriers in the way and stop me from doing my job.  As an Engineer, I want to do the best job I can and that means using the best available contractors and components.  From my point of view, money should not come into the equation.  Get it right the first time,  walk away and don't have a need to come back.  I think it was Sir Henry Royce, of Rolls Royce motor cars who said,  “The quality will be remembered long after the price has been forgotten”
But I have a constant battle with accountants – get 3 prices,  why aren't you using the cheapest quote, you are over budget,  make it cheaper,  you need to cut costs.

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I'm guessing that there must have been several million words written about the current economic meltdown, with several more million coming very soon from experts and pseudo experts
So why do I think that my thoughts will be of any value to anyone?

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Have you ever seen that marketing executive drive by in his Ferrari or that sales rep pass you at the lights in his Porsche and wonder why you only drive a 1990something Ford despite the fact that the job you do probably entails far more important work than what the sales rep or the marketing exec does? Well wonder no more because today we take a peak at the future for engineers and I can foretell the goodness. The geek shall indeed inherit the earth.

This represents a difficult question to answer. After much pondering and deliberation (and just a sprinkling of wasting time on the net), I have come to the conclusion that no single best tool that an engineer can posess exists. It turns out that a combination of 2 tools that work together makes the best solution. One becomes the ying to the others yang. The combination comprises the hammer and duct tape. Indeed one posesses the ability to destroy virtually anything while the other has the virtue of fixing virtually anything and make almost anything.