EP49 – What Skills Do Aerospace Engineers Need in 2021?

STRUCK: An Aerospace Engineering & Lightning Protection Show

In this special episode, Allen and Dan discuss aerospace engineering and the skills that are more important, relevant and evolving in 2021. As aircraft become more and more complex, work shifts increasingly online and remote, and companies push their employees to be more productive, what does the the modern aerospace engineer look like? Watch this episode on YouTube here. Learn more about Weather Guard StrikeTape segmented lightning diverter strips. Follow the show on YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit us on the web. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! EP49 Transcript - What Skills Do Aerospace Engineers Need in 2021? you're listening to the struck podcast i'm Dan Blewett i'm Allen Hall and here on struck we talk about everything aviation aerospace engineering and lightning protection all right welcome back to the struck podcast on today's episode we're going to have a little bit of a different format kind of do a Q&A dialogue with Allen about the state of aerospace engineering and engineering in general talk about jobs and education and some of the different skills that are really important especially now in 2020 as you know the landscape is changing and communication digitally and in person rapidly changing and so we'll kind of dive into that today so Allen let's start um you know you have just recently hired a new engineer to the team so let's start with some of the skills that you value today and then we'll kind of double back um through you know your education and some of those skills that are maybe more valuable when you were younger and uh you know a young blood engineer but let's let's talk about your your new hire and some of the things that you are looking for in an employee it is unique in the aerospace world when you're trying to bring somebody new on and we we are constantly looking for the best engineers we can find and so when we we come across one we tend to grab them and what do i mean by uh really good engineers what i mean by that is they have a couple of different skill sets uh what scott adams would call a talent stack so i want to steal that term but it's a talent stack and that talent stack is uh things that are developed uh usually outside the office place uh and or the office environment uh from what i've seen um it's a combination of one being able to work with others to play well on the playground right and that that you can relate to others that have uh you know have a little bit of fun but also be serious at the same time and uh negotiate right i think part of it's just a negotiation in engineering is a lot of negotiation a lot of times and being able to do that and on top of actually having some engineering skills having the the book knowledge that you need to have an engineering degree and to do it well on top of having the ability to turn a wrench and to understand what it means to turn a wrench or have not be willing be willing to get your hands dirty if needed those those skill sets really combine into what i always feel is a very useful versatile engineering person let me run with one of those for a second so we've talked about boeing a lot on the show and in the past boeing did a lot more of their manufacturing in-house right they produced much more of the entire aircraft themselves now speared air systems those you know huge sections of the fuselage and and and with airbus also not just boeing you know you're essentially getting huge pieces coming together to be assembled so i can imagine that if you're uh an engineer for boeing and now you've got to work with engineers from spirit and everything's got to be kosher everything's got to fit snugly together with these incredible tolerances that's where it seems like it you can't just be the engineer because i know engineers have you know my dad's an engineer they have the reputation sometimes of being you know just they're at their desk and they're really good at what they do but don't talk to them right t...