5 Engineers: Why did you become an engineer?

I have always been curious on how resistors. capacitors. diodes and all the fun stuff that is applied to a circuit board. Been facinated since i was a kid. so my passion pushed me to earn my masters in the eletrical field. I love beeing a geek!

I was facinated by shortwave radio when I was about 12 years old and how to repair them and then TV came along and repairing each of them was like a Sherlock Holmes adventure. Over 15 years I studied radio and radar in the army, went to trade tech school, then junior college & finally was an honors graduate from UCLA. This led to a fantastic 50 year career in aerospace and scientific R&D retiring as a Director of a leading research laboratory.

It looks like selling in the rcolteenic business in Europe, and the changes in the past few years are the same as here in the US.a0 This was a very nice blog, and very true!VA:F [1.9.10_1130]please wait...

I love to build stuff. As a kid I love taking apart my toys to see what is inside them.
I would pull motors off and turn them something useful like portable electic fans
(very useful for the warm weather in the Philippines). In High School I loved science,
biology, chemistry, physics you name it. Found out I was good in Trigonometry too when most
of my classmates hated it. I took up Electronics as a hobby and from then on I was hooked.
I got my degree in electronics and communications engineering and spent the last 19 years
in the industry designing circuits for various applications. My work is my hobby, I can't
imagine doing anything else, plus I get paid for it. I heard somebody once said,
"Find a work that you love and never work the rest of your life!", that is so true.

Engineers build the world for tomorrow especially in automobile industry (go green for all cars, vehicles if you see the gas price nowadays is sky high......)...engineers bring impacts to real life. But sadly to say, in the end of a day, the ones who make big money are the business groups.....does anyone agree with me ?

Because it's hard. When I was 10, my father had a VW beatle than ran great once running, but would only start by popping the clutch on a hill. After reading the entire repair manual, I decided it must be the ignition coil. It turned out I was right. He had put a 12V replacement engine into a 6V chassis. I wanted to be an auto mechanic up to that point, but decided that if I could solve that problem at age 10, I needed to pick something harder. I got my wish and love every minute of my career as an electrical engineer. To quote Neil Peart, "The engine that drives itself chooses the uphill path."

Like many of the posters, an Erector Set, the AC Gilbert "real" Chemistry set, crystal radio in Cub Scouts, an EE prof in a 7th grade career night (he became my faculty advisor in college), seeing the "Oracle" (the computer at Oak Ridge National Labs) as an eighth grader ca 1958. My dad who was a tinkerer and a neat shop. My dad was a Civil Engineer. After college,getting to play with and design really neat toys (did it for 43 years before retiring). Mentoring a FTC Robotics team now.

Because my father said not to. He was a EE during the big defense layoffs in the 1970's and told me "When companies need engineers you have a job, when they don't you get laid off." So, instead, I got a degree in Management Science, and a minor in Computer Science but, while in school, I worked at his company through the university's work-study program. I quickly realized that, not only did I have an aptitude for mechanical engineering, I enjoyed working with smart people and doing rewarding work. 26 years later, I'm a Senior Staff Engineer working in MEMS and Nanotechnology. Thanks Dad!

After disassembling almost everything that I could get my hands on, my Dad bought me an erector set for Christmas at about age 7 or 8. Invented by A.C. Gilbert, Salem, Oregon's finest,it offered me an extensive number of options in building many different motorized toys. Then at age 14, I was hired full-time to repair typewriters, office calculating machines, comptomers, and other office equipment by the Cherokee Typewriter Co. in Knoxville, Tennessee. I was a Sophomore in high school at the time. Basically, I cleaned, repaired, and lubricated this equipment for customers from all types of businesses. I then applied for a job at a local IBM Office and Service Center, where I was told to get an engineering degree and come back to see them later. So I did, and went to work in the manufacturing industry that included the Becton-Dickinson

As a child in the 1960's and 70's I was facinated by the television set. Back then most electronics still used vacuum tubes which needed requent replacement so any time the TV wasn't working my dad would pull the back of the TV off and replace the offending tube. Despite his frequent successful repairs, he could not explain to me how the TV actually worked. Later, while in high school I learned enought to piece together a simple black and white TV that could pick up one channel. It even worked ... for about 5 minutes ... before it literally burned up. Needless to say, I was hooked from that moment on!

I first wanted to become a railroad engineer because trains from steam engines to present day stuff because they were magnificent machines to a six year old. Next the space race fascinated me and I want to be an astronaut. When my slight colorblindness kept me out of the Naval acedemy and flying I figured an engineering degree would allow me to work in aerospace. I always loved solving problems and that is what engineering is. I am a FIRST Robotics Mentor and that helps spread the passion to the next generation.

I never became an engineer -- I assumed that everyone was an engineer from birth, but that some people found another calling. I'm still waiting.
I was surrounded from at least 2 years old with motors, electronic parts, a Dad who would take apart his car and fabricate new parts in the machine shop, a Mom who liked it when I kept her ham radio running when Dad was too busy, an inexhaustible supply of tubes to take apart and compare with the datasheet specifications, some copies of Electronic Design stored in the barn talking about "gates"... the sources of influence are unbounded. Would any other fate have been possible?
I introduced my son to ham radio -- now he's contemplating leaving for college to an engineering school. I'm a FIRST Robotics mentor (lots of fun -- I recommend it). I've been doing some variation of electrical/mechanical/optical/computer engineering/hacking/inventing forever. My wife notes that my "hobbies" at home seem just like my "work".
Overall, it's a good life.
I wonder what it takes to get into bio-engineering?

I touched a soldering iron when I was 5 years old only. My father wanted to have a radio set. I designed my own radio in 10 years old. I liked feel electronical parts and I think they are alive. I came away from home after school for study of radio electronics in the institute (it is equal to the university). I have about 40 years experience in designing of radio equipment. But I think the first step in my engineer destiny was father's radio set in the little plastic soap holder. By the way, my father did not assembly of it.

As I sit here at my short lunch break between fighting to keep the money I need to complete my projects, the barrage of emails requiring me to attend someones meeting whether it fits my schedule or not, and making sure contract work is up to my requirements I wonder why I became an Engineer. It looked more glamorous from the outside looking in.

As to one of your favorite responses, JM Arroyo’s, I do consider myself somewhat of a poet as well as being an engineer. The common denominator
is being curious.... that each day is a "New Beginning" in the quest of discovering "why". Here is one of my original works..
"Anytime Beginning"
Ah a new year with it's promise of spring
reflect but a moment, on the past do not cling.
Set your heart on the journey
that waits just ahead.
Of life's untold adventures
ablaze fire engine red.
Nurture the excitement of a child
that same sense of new.
The sense of awe and wonder
in that child that once was you.
I'll be turning 60 this year and approaching my 38th service anniversary at IBM. I've been fortunate to be involved in cutting edge
technology, in one form or another, for the entire time. I'm truly blessed.
Sign me "forever curious" George

Scotty.

I was probably 11 or 12 years old and ready to go out and become a paleontologist when I suddenly realized that as one, I'd have to a) teach and b) beg for money c) beg for money all the time. It made it an easy choice, especially when I became very interested in electronic music.

I think I am born engineer. Then I started electronics at 12 and became an electronics engineer after studying mechanics (the basis) physics (the frame). I am now 54, still analyzing, designing and fixing things with the same pleasure...

Becouse physics is next to god

It was Voltes V (a Japanese animated robot TV series in the 1970's, Voltes V was designed to save and protect humans from alien invasion) that motivated me study electronics and communications engineering. This year, my R&D enterprise is celebrating its 16th year of designing and developing industrial and environmental instrumentation systems: particularly, for flood, flashflood, and landslide early warning systems that have success stories of helping save lives in the Philippines. "As an engineer, I love to design and build things that have societal benefits."

In 7th grade, I developped a knack in mending things.
I always had great enjoyment in taking things apart and repairing almost all of them.
Later, in engineering school I enjoyed designing HVAC systems. I had a great mechanical engineering career, there were some ups and downs, but at the end of the day, if I have to do it all over again, it will certainly be an engineering profession. I advise young people with science and math skills to really investigate the merits of an engineering career.
Enjoy your trip!

At age 9 my godfather gave me a electronic kit, I built all the experiments and wired our rooms with a handmade telegrah, took a part all electric toys on my reach and became the family electric handyman. The rest is history,. BSEE + MSEE 26 years and going. working in semiconductor

For whatever cosmic reason I have always been drawn to electronics. I am fascinated by the art, if you will, of a beautifully-designed circuit.
In high school my grandmother bought me a Radio Shack 35-In-1 Digital logic kit based on the 7400 Quad NAND gate chip from Motorola.
That was it. I was hooked. From there I progressed to building light meters, Freq counters and at one point a speech-synthesizer driven by a C-64. I took an advanced electronics class in high school and was made to teach a class because I got lippy with the teacher that he was teaching transistor theory incorrectly. So I taught the class how to count in binary, using a single digit 7-seg display counter circuit (555 Timer, 7490 & 7447 chips) to help translate binary to a numeric value.
I work now as a database engineer but my roots never stray too far from electronics. Now I'm in my 50s and love restoring old antique radios and building fully functional flight simulators.

I am 80 years old; still working and enjoying myself as an electronic design engineer in England.
In the 1930s as a boy, I was fascinated with crystal sets,battery radios and anything electrical. Family and neighbors would pass on defective equipment to me to play with or to try to repair.
Although radios were the things that I grew up with I recognized the larger possibilities of electronics and after I had started working in the 50's as a Radio TV repairman, I looked at the possibility of studying electronics in night schools, but there was no such thing as an Electronics course.
The choice then was Electrical or Radio, and I chose the latter.
After studying Radio Engineering for three years towards a Bsc, the City & Guilds decided to make Electronics a branch of the Electical engineering course. Electrical students were allowed credits towards the Electronics course, but discredits the Radio students.
By that time I was holding down a job as Chief development Engineer and I did not bother to pursue the courses. For most of my life I have been teeching myself what I needed to know.
Crystal Sets, Tubes (Electronic Valves in England), transistors, Printed circuits, Integrated Circuits, Microcontrollers, PLCs etc. etc. There is enough stuff here to provide never-ending interest and learning.

Two people motivated me to be an engineer, the first one was my teacher in school who told me what Electronics was all about, and my uncle and friend who himself is an excellent Engineer...
Thanks to them I am enjoying this career...

I ask myself that question everyday.

1) 1981 - 6yrs old - Dad bought a Radio Shack Color Computer II. We both read the manuals and learned to program. He wrote a CAD program to design our house's floorplan. I wrote database and hacker. 2) 1983 - He made the "mistake" of buying his nerdy little 8-year-old some of those Radio Shack electronics kits. I was a goner once it became apparent that if you know how the world works, and how to manipulate it, you can make *anything*. 3) He was a volunteer fireman - there was a Motorola 1-way radio on the dresser than would tell when & where his company was needed. Thought that Motorola company was pretty neat. 4) An excellent industrial arts education in middle school and high school - too bad you don't get years and years of wood shop, metals shop, electronics lab, and auto shop before you graduate high school any more. Because of this background and this education, I was able to work my way from electronics assembler to lead engineer before having a degree. (Turned out I had to get a BSEE in order to be paid like one though - a family's gotta eat, you know.)

I was in my freshman year of college majoring in genetics. The year was 1974. After my first quarter (University of Tennessee had a quarter system when I was there. I don't know if it still does) I had my mandatory meeting with a guidance counselor. He asked me what I wanted to do and I told him I was a genetics major. He said, “You know you can only get an undergraduate degree in genetics here?” I said, “Yeah.” He went on to say, “You need a doctorate in genetics to get any sort of job in the field.” I said, “0k.” He said, “There are only two universities in the world that offer a doctorate in genetics. One is on the east coast and the other is in Europe.” I said, “aah.” He continued, “IF you get a doctorate in genetics there are only about 12 companies in the world where you can work as a geneticist and the majority of them are government funded.” I looked at him for a moment and then said, “I’ve always liked engineering…” That was 35 years ago. I guess I could look back and say, “Wow, look where I would have been if I had gotten that doctorate in genetics!” but I don’t. I’ve enjoyed most of my career as an engineer. Everything has worked out just fine!

I did not have much interest in farming and living in a small rural community, I was not the most outgoing guy in the class, and I was sort of interested in how things work and trying to fix them. After I built my first amplifier for my mono record player, (in 1973 or so) and used it as part of a very “homemade” disco setup, I also realized I was not cut out to be a DJ, so, I went into Electronic Engineering. Now many years later, I can look back and say it has paid the bills, and, I cannot really think of what else I should or could have done.

Curiousity is the fuel of imagination and engineering its is cure. Finding answers to what others cannot explain is majic and since I am a lousy poet the next best thing was becoming an engineer, specially a double "E". Forty years later I still love it and I am still searching for answers.

4 Things: 1) better than average math science skills 2) Robert Corfage - the boringest computer science instuctor EVER 3) Leo Puccaco - a dynamic, cool, influential, motivational undergrad advisor and electronics circuits 1 professor and 4) greed - Leo told us young engineering students that we'd make more money than any other 4-year degree.

My house in my home town faced north and as a kid I used to watch a star in the evenings, fixed in the sky next to the palm tree, which I learnt was the pole star. I was fascinated to learn that these stars are like our sun and many had planets like our earth.I started wondering if people like us lived there. I wanted to somehow get connected to Space when I grew up. I might have been a physicist but ended up as communication engineer designing satellite communication systems.

it began with electrical train and mechanical things, then the first radio at 11 old, amps and speakers to drive our parties and to impress the girls, instruments to keep my old car adjusted and running during my time at technical university with little money, some jobs and finally my own eingineering company for 20 years now. The bottom line is to solve problems instead of creating them and being curious what to design next.I never regretted my decision to become an engineer.

Sputnik, followed by a crystal radio.

Why did I become an engineer? Well, after nearly forty years of 'practicing' engineering I'm still trying, and there's no end in sight to cool learning and rewarding challenges. What a great profession to allow that....and many of my colleagues are second to none!

In third grade I wanted to figure out why a big nail wrapped with single strand of wire connected to a 12V battery attracted other big nails. At that age, I didn't know anything about integral calculus and physics.

I wanted to know what the smoke did before I released it

My father was a carpenter, worked hard, built houses. He wanted me to go to college, so he sent me to his good friend who had gone to college and was a chemical engineer. After talking to him, engineering sounded good. I had a friend several years older than me who was in the Army and studied electronics. He came back from tech school and explained to me the function of every component in the common 5 tube superhet radio. I was impressed and decided on electrical engineering. My Dad retired from carpentry at 65 and my hourly wage then (around 1975) as an engineer was not as high as his. I eventually did pass him and do quite well for which I am thankful.

When I was a bio-med tech in the army I asked who designed this equipement and made it impossible to repair? I was told, engineers. So I became one in the hopes if I ever had a chance to design something I would make darn sure a tech could get at the guts to repair it!

when I was young, my dream job was to be an opera-singer, unfortunately I could not sing. Fortunately I was nature with Math, so I ended up in the engineering.

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

As a kid I enjoyed playing with my older brother's train set. So later when it became time to choose a career, Engineering seemed to be a natural fit. Because my brother's train was electric, I decided to focus on Electrical Engineering. By my senior year at the university I finally got up enough nerve (being the classic introverted engineering type) to ask one of my professors when we were finally going to learn how to drive an actual train. I was a bit disappointed with the answer, but given that I was a term away from graduating I decided to go ahead and get my Engineering degree anyway.

I blame LEGO ;-)

In my teen years I was turned on to Ham Radio by a grandmother as well as some locals in my home town. It was from that introduction that caused my curiosity to develop in how radios worked, which caused me to want to learn how to make (design) them. 40 years later I'm still designing, still learning. There is an indescribable thrill when a project is taken to completion and it works as planned. A unique form of adrinaline junkie. Immense pride of accomplishment.

I had an insatiable interest in parts-of-things. I took apart a wristwatch, and then put it back together, and then saw it was 4:30 AM! I was hooked. Mech Engr degree came next, but like so many, sold it to become a Unix SysAdmin, where I have to close my eyes to see my domain.

My older brothers got a subscription to Popular Mechanics, which came with a complimentary subscription to Popular Electronics. They passed this along to their seven year-old brother, who was interested in other odd things, such as reading the encyclopedia, figuring out how mechanical devices work, and fixing the TV. Nearly 50 years later, having done research and being employed in several areas of electrotechnology and computing, designing and developing products, and teaching over 30 different courses in engineering and computer science, I'm still driven by my insatiable curiosity about all aspects of technology! More, please!

I liked to take things apart and I thought I could produce things faster with better quality. I was right, but to effect a more profound change I should have been a business major. Too bad it took me 30+ years to figure that out.

As a young child, had AMERICAN RED BRICKS (the wooden variety), LINCOLN LOGS, LIONEL TRAINS (before "magnetraction), A.C. GILBERT ERECTOR SET, and a CHEMISTRY SET. After burning a spot in the kitchen table, the chemistry set disappeared. But, by about 7 was repairing the neighborhood's bicycles, including my own. Moved on to the lawn mower. Helped build things w/ my carpenter father. Wired my LIONELS with no help from any adults. By age 12 wired my uncle's garage (the size of a decent Cape Cod house), and the progression just kept building throughout high school into college. Went through a whole sequence of EICO & HEATHKIT projects from test equipment to home entertainemnt projects. The older I got, the more infatuated w/ electro-mechanical things I got. College-bound just kept adding fuel to the fire,which continues to this day. Several degrees (not on a thermometer!) later, I'm still quite pleased to press the ON button to observe a machine come alive. Of course, nowadays, the brains for these efforts are the result of hours of programming skills added into my toolbox of knowledge during these past 50 years of effort.

I grew up in rural Malaysia in the 70s. My second cousin was one of the first Malay engineers to graduate from United Kingdom. I thought he was pretty cool, with his long hair and stuff (almost unheard of where I come from back then), and I wanted to be like him. I used to tinker a lot too. My buddy and I had our tinker shed. We made a door alarm and a wet battery cell. I remember stringing three 9V batteries together and sticking the electrodes on my tongue. Needless to say, it was one of those things I only ever did once. My buddy is now a Math professor at one of the prestigious universities in Malaysia (cop out... ;-))

I had above average aptitude in math and science. I wanted a career that would have some very long legs, so I chose Electrical Engineering and focused on digital electronics and systems. Spent my entire career as a test engineer, finding faults and weaknesses in products and systems and then working to make them better. Besides my big old log fingers made me a lousy electronics technician.

When I was a kid, I used to see these really cool pictures of Engineers sitting around spoking pipes and working on these blackboards filled with complex equations. And I thought to myself, I want to do that! So when I got my first Engineering job, I went out and bought a pipe. But, as you guessed, pipes went out of fashion, and I've regretted it ever since.

When I was in junior high (1954) I became interested in electronics. At one point I disassembled a radio, thinking I could put it back together but that did not work. Using Heathkits I built lots of stuff, radios, HI FI Stereo amplifiers and was always experimenting to get better sound quality out of the stereo I built in the basement. After high school I joined the Navy and became an Electronics Technician. After four years in the Navy got a job as a technician and started going to school in the evenings. After several years finally got my BSEE and have enjoyed working in this area ever since. In fact, I do not have any serious plans to retire completely as engineering has become my life. At 70 years of age, I still thrill at coming up with clever circuits that most people say will never work.
I had a lot of influence with my daughter as she went all the way with a doctorates degree in Nuclear Chemistry.

As far back as I can remember, I was tearing things apart to see what made them work. After that, I found myself drawing plans and sketches of inventions. No, none of them ever worked, but I was bitten with the bug. I graduated with a degree in geology, (Earth is an amazing mechanism), but after a few years, the bottom fell out of the base metals market. Rather than relocate, I went back to school for a retread degree in industrial technology. Since then, I have been designing and building industrial machinery. Few rushes exceed seeing one of your creations working, especially when skeptics have said that the project could never work.

Because, apparently, I'm a masochist.

With a name like mine, you'd think that I would have become a Physicist (no relation though)...
As a child of the 1950s, I had a love of taking things apart to see what made them tick. My parents ordained that I should become an Engineer though I think if dad had another chance at selecting his career, he would have been an Engineer instead of an Accountant. As I got older, kept taking things apart and eventually got good at putting them back together - with enhancements. Always did poorly in school but found out many years later that it was dyslexia. People like me have a different sensory learning style, like taking things apart, rather than by book learning. After working for several places as a tech, my current employer took a chance and hired me on as an Engineer. Been with the firm 30 years now and have had a hand in designing everything we produce.

I wanted to have a formal education and demonstrated experience level allowing me to fix almost everything I break.
Dave Molsberry
Huber, Inc.
Engineering Manager

I discovered that I had the "knack" when out of necessity I had to keep things going at home. My parents were completely impractical and if we wanted electricity now, somebody had to figure out how to fix the fuse.
All bright kids were encouraged to do medecine, but my mother (a psychology student at the time)sent me for aptitude testing and the counsellor told me not to go into medecine/psychology etc. since I preferred not to listen to other people's problems! According to her engineering would be better.
Now as manager I have to listen to other people's problems- maybe I should have gone into medecine.

Love to tinker, create, and build. Always have.

The excitement of getting my first project (a Stylophone) to work has never left me! The other reason was I could get a job anywhere in the world. I now work in Swindon....

Was good in Chemistry in high school. Dad said engineers had better jobs. What did I know? I am glad I listened to him. I love science, math, and computers and any new technology.

First, it was mostly genetics. I didn't so much "become" an engineer as "discover" that I was one. I think scientifically by default--of course, one has to apply much effort to developing one's natural proclivities--and I've been able to make logic a second-nature second language to what I think is an amazing degree. And while I'm only moderately mechanically inclined, it's enough to make it clear what I am. I think I probably should go with the flow...

When I was in the 1st grade, a motorized toy broke and I took out the motor. This was about 1955. The motor had a yellow plastic frame typical of toy motors of that vintage. My brother showed me how to connect it to a battery and make it run; he showed me I needed a "complete circuit" to get the motor to work. I was hooked. By 3rd grade, my Dad bought me a Knight 12-in-1 vacuum tube based project kit ... 3 octal tubes on a plywood base. Never turned back. Still love tubes, by the way.

Because my Dad (who was an engineer) said that engineers could do anything, but other jobs could not do what engineers do. And I was hooked on ham radio.

because i cant spell punctuate or proofreid just look at the other cooments here nayway engineers dont have to communicate just measure stuff and design that suits me

because i cant spell punctuate or proofreid just look at some the other cooments here nayway engineers dont have to communicate just measure stuff and design that suits me

Appart from being facinated by technology,I believed it was my best ticket to working anywhere in the world. This worked out well - Scotland, Colombia, Norway, Cuba, Singapore, India and the US.

Because at the time no one was hiring Physical Chemists and I wanted a job with expensive toys. Name me a job where you get to play with multimillion dollar ion implanters, metal systems, et cetera and somebody else pays for them. Also, I had the silly thought that I kinda wanted to do something useful and/or productive with my life.

Can't dance and it was too wet to plow

Having never went to college, It was the natural progression. Join the Navy, become and avionics technician, get out and be given a title beacause i fix things. Now i am a senior engineer and still fix/re-engineer/create all sorts of things. And the pay is pretty good too! The main thing is it keeps me interested and works the brain. Otherwise? it would just turn to mush. Happiness would not be attainable!

Two words Erector Set

To build spacecraft that go to other planets and to fix my car.

The devil made me do it.

I was driven as a kid to understand how complex devices worked and then to make them work better. However, it was a few years after high school before I realized that I was meant to be an engineer. Better late than never...

Because I was captivated by Bell Labs films like, "A Star called the sun", "Hemo the Magnificent", "The Internal Combustion Engine", then Alan Sheppard's and Yuri Gagarin's flights, then my brother's telescope and the strange parts my father brought home that he made as a tool and dye maker and finally my first chemistry set.

My choice of EE over physics was validated when I found that a BSEE was respected over both BS and MS in Physics at a national research laboratory. What they thought about, we did.

I was born with "the knack" as Dilbert says. I repaired radios and such through grade school. Electricicity was facinating and still is. No altruistic or 'save the world' urges. I'm 67 and still love it. Engineering was a way to learn about electronics and get a good job. Physics did not offer as much oportuinty but would have been fun. Even went back for a MSEE in 1990. Now I design RF datalinks for missiles.

I wanted to make a better world for you and me. My first job in industry taught me that industry realy doesn't care.

Like most of the comments above I liked to tear things apart and then try to make them "better" and also when I enrolled in college I asked what was the "toughest" program and that person said Mechanical or Electrical engineering so I wanted a challange... Also Criminal Justice classes were all full!!!!

When choosing my path I looked for honest work that paid well. I had equal aptitudes for math and English, but I didn't find having to please an audience to earn my bread all that appealing. With engineering, I thought, your stuff either works or it doesn't. I also figured that I could always write the Great American Novel as an old man. I doubted that I could pursue science with a young man's zeal after a career in letters. As it turns out, there's a lot of audience-pleasing no matter what you do.

As a young kid I always liked putting things together, didn't have much, but it was always fun. At the same time solving problems, "thinking outside the box", this was a natural progression for me. Everyday is a different problem, keeps the mind sharp.

I overheard the best reason and I think it explains me also. He said, "I think I have the best job in the world. I get to work puzzles for a living."

I became an engineer because I saw it as a way to drive solutions in ways unimaginable as a child. Like most Engineers, I envision the world as a continuing series of problems looking to be solved, opportunities to apply knowledge and experience with a deep passion for excellence. Engineering powers the innovations that amazes people everyday, and yet take for granted that they will work, and reliably so. Electronics, bridges, stop lights, and the list goes on. I saw engineering as my way to contribute to a better world....

Like has been said before, you are born an engineer. We didn't have much money when I was a kid, but mowed lawns and delivered newspapers got me cool kits and stuff I saw in catalogs, which got the juices flowing. Heathkits & Ham Radio, later built things without the kita thanks to WWII surplus stores & 'old guys' around town. Technical specialty during military service convinced me that I could design things just as good or better than I was working on, if I had the school & opportunity. I was right. My stuff has flown in space, gone under the sea, and survived floods and earthquakes.

I guess the first signs were there when my parents caught me hiding under the headboard shelves taking apart my snoopy pull toy when I was about 4. I needed to know what made the barking sound when the wheels went around. My younger brother got all the cool toys so I convinced him that ones like the Fighting Lady just had to come apart. Like so many others here I went on to be the fix-it guy. I needed to take everything apart to see how it worked - even if it wasn't broken. As a teenager, I also took advantage of all those wonderful Knight and Heath Kits. I loved building and fixing things. I thought I might be a mechanic or tech but my parents convinced me that I would have a beter life if I went to school and became an enginner. Turns out they were right! My father and his father were both EE's while my other grandfather was an inventor. It was inevitable.

So far there have been some pretty good answers. I would like to say that seeing the Apollo missions or space shuttles taking off started me in engineering, but it wasn't. It was just plain curiosity. How does it work? How can I make it better? If it doesn't exist, how can I create it? I think that is what drives most of us to be the engineers that we are today.

My 5th Grade teacher, Mr. Dawson, brought a crystal radio he had build to class and let us play with it during recess. A wire wrapped around a piece of 1x2, a wax paper and aluminun foil capacitor, and "rock" and cat whisker crystal made a radio. I have been a captive of the magic of electronics for the last 43 years.

I was 5 years old when they launched Alan Shepherd. I thought that it was really neat. I didn't want to fly in the rockets. I wanted to build them. So at 5 years old, I decided to become an engineer.

I grew up during WW11 in a small town with very few technical people. If you graduated from HS you were a brain-mostly you went to work in the mill or into the service. As a kid I wondered about many things that no one could tell me about. I ran across the word "superhetrodyne" and since there was nobody to question what that meant, I started finding answers in radio books in the tiny local library. When I was 14 I got my ham radio license and went on to become an Electrical Engineer

Do something that works for living.

Not THE reason, but one of them... When I was a kid, my parents gave me an electronics experiments kit for Christmas. It made me feel like I could do real magic.

High schools in the 1950s encouraged all kids who did well in math or sciewnce to pursue engineering careers -- the jobs paid well, and the country needed more engineers. As a part-time disc jockey at a small-town radio station, I was having a hard time understanding how radio transmission worked; therefore, electrical engineering was the pace to learn it. More than half a century later, the choice still stands -- lots of new things to learn and plenty of problems to solve.

Maybe we never "became" engineers; rather, we found engineering. In high school, I excelled in science, mathematics and computers; just the opposite in history or English. I believe people choose engineering as a trade because of the way their minds work. My mind doesn't remember inconsequential details about King Louis VIII's rise to the throne; it attempts to solve a mysterious problem of converting electrical energy to mechanical energy in the most efficient manner possible. I didn't have the coordination to type at 90 words a minute or break the school record in football rushing yards, but I did have the ability to diagnose and repair an issue that causes a Ford Ranger to guzzle gas - with the replacement of a single diode!

I don't know! I just followed the path decided by the God. As a child I was more interested in opening to see what is inside a chopper or a car instead of playing with it. At 45, I resigned from boring managerial job and now I run my own company playing with Oscilloscopes and multimeters.

I don't remember making the decision. It just sort of was my destiny. Several years after I graduated, I encountered a guy I hadn't seen since grade school. As recognition dawned on our faces, he exclaimed "I remember you, you're the science nut." There just wasn't anything else I could be.

Beats working for a living ;)

Engineer gets up in the morning, finds his kitchen on fire, starts throwing water on it until it goes out. Having applied a good enough solution, goes back to bed. Physicist gets up, finds kitchen on fire, calculates bare minimum amount of water needed to put out the fire, taking into account the growth of the fire while calcuating, applies that amount of water, having applied the most elegant solution, goes back to bed. Mathematician finds kitchen on fire, calculates precise minimum amount of water to put it out taking growth into account, having shown there exists a best solution, goes back to bed. I like solving problems in the real world.

Couldn't get anyone to pay me to bodysurf.
So, for a real job, engineering seemed to make good use of my love of math, physics, taking things apart to understand why they work (& putting them back together to see if they still did).
Glad I did and managed to be part of the incredible development and growth of the semiconductor industry starting in the '80's.
Definitely a field that required you to learn and use more than what you thought you learned in the university.

I grew up watching petrochemical plants blueprints that my dad had on the dining table whenever he was up to something. He was a process engineer in the 60s and 70s.
I knew I was going to be an engineer I just didn't know what branch of engineering I was going to embrace.
Math and Science came natural to me and I could always work on computer and electronics without a problem designing and fixing problems way before the internet. Back then, a magazine article could spark an idea and helped solve problems.

As Arthur C Clarke said, "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic". Becoming an engineer is the closest thing to becoming a wizard as the universe seems to allow and in the end may even be equivalent. At first, I just had a burning desire to understand how the hot glowing things inside the back of the old black & white television were able to make a picture.

I always liked taking things apart to see how they worked. I also always liked repairing things. Also, Chicago was the electronics center of the world in the 1950's and '60's.
I also like creating and inventing.
Lane Technical High School and I.I.T. were great schools to learn from, especially the very broad spectrum of courses offered and/or required.
This has allowed me to manage both electrical and mechanical design groups.

Yup. It's the chicks.

It could be profitably argued that the world population can be divided into Creators and Users [albeit we are all Users]. If you have the ego and the talent to create physical things for Users, you're are probably an Engineer.

I was born in the year when Sputnik was launched, the B movies of that time showed scientists, irregardless of motives, as having fun, and I always had an intense interest in science and technology. To me, hands on was just as important as theory, so when in late elementary school/early junior high as I wanted to get my hand on materials on nuclear materials ( Yes, I would have been the kid shot by Will Smith in MIB ), I wrote the Atomic Energy Commission asking for copies of the relevant regulations and the 18" tall stack of documents was nice to receive, but disappointing because I quickly realized that I could never meet them while living in my parent's home. I also explored what it would take to build an atomic particle accelerator. A linear design would be easier to achieve compared to a cyclotron or synchrotron, but as a teen, I just never had the money to put anything together. So, what steered me to electronics was it's accessibility - I could afford $120 Intel 8008 CPUs. Lafayette Radio Electronics and Heathkit also made electronics easy to play with. ( I still have my original Heathkit IM-18 VTVM on my bench ) Other fields of science that I played with included photography - because of the fun of optics, quantum electro dynamics, chemistry; which I then applied to other activities such as astronomy and model rocketry, but in the end when looking for a job bridging high school and college, it was my electronics background that landed me a job with Dionics in Westbury NY, a small semiconductor manufacturer that's still in business, designing microchip topologies and eventually led into wafer fabrication process development that solidified by career path.

I had to. Play for me as a kid was taking things apart and then using the parts to build something. It just came naturally. I hated school but loved to learn. Now and then a great teacher came along, both in and out of school, and made a big difference. Retired now from Bell Labs, building a company. UGH!

Control, control, and more control

All my life I have been a fan of Science, mostly thanks to Cosmos and Dr. Carl Sagan. Then came Science fiction to my life. Also I hacked electrical things and almost got electrocuted twice. And the My brother who was was in Engineering School when I was about ten years old and came home and I saw his Engineering Graphics drawing plates, there I saw a drawing of the Arecibo Radio Telescope and was so impressed on how it was built. Now I am a Chemical Engineer who dabbles in all areas. :)

I became engineer (Mechatronic) on 2006 and my history on engineering became really early, at home, my father work on engineering but when I was young I just hear about the things like motor, transformers, drivers... Around my 14 years Discovery Channel arrived on my TV and I got amazed about robot and the electronic world on that time Mechatronic was starting on the University and it was a new course soo two to tree years later I start it... On the half of the course I got a teacher that was really good, one that have patience to teach and explain to the students about electronics, on that time I saw that electronic open to you a huge door to build anything, THAT'S WHERE PARTY BEGIN...
After that I got my graduation on 2006/02 and came back to my hometown and start a new department in a company where we started to develop electronics products to agriculture and here I'm where now I can't see me doing other thing instead of creating new stuffs or I would say: HAVING FUN...

Because I grew up fixing things until they worked or I had to (No not throw them away) dismantle them and build something else from the smoking remains. Face it, how many people do you know play CD's and iPods through a stereo built from salvaged 833-A vacuum tubes rescued from the local radio station???
You either have the "Knack" or you don't!

I became an engineer as a natural outgrowth of fixing everything that broke at home when I was a kid. I took it apart, found the broken wire or put the spring back on the post, and I learned what made things work. As an engineer, I make somthing from nothing, take an idea and turn it into a real thing. It is exciting knowing you can do that.

I loved taking things apart to see how they worked from an early age This led to fixing things and then building projects. Heathkits and then Ham Radio helped my development. I was fortunate to have several mentors to help me along. They helped focus me on a EE degree so I could be a designer. 40 years later and the rest is history!

When I was in high school I had the coolest workshop in my basement with a lot of home-made test equipment. There was a certain romance I associated with being up late at night sketching out ideas with the soft noise of the equipment fans running and LEDs twinkling. I'm also a musician, (guitar and bass) like several of the previous posters and I always thought that EEs got a bad rap for being labelled nerds. For myself, I was enchanted with the walls of amps at a concert, computer-driven laser light shows and animatronics. Cool stuff indeed.

I never thought of myself as an engineer - I studied Maths, Physics, Computer Science (when it appeared) & and anything else that came up. I thought that I was a Programmer, Electrician, Systems Analyst, Hardware Designer, System Designer, Poet, Inventor, Pyrotechnician etc., depending on what I was doing at the time. It was only recently that I was labeled a "Professional Engineer" - and then I retired!

I am amazed how many commenters say they are born engineers. I too was born with "the knack" - to this day my parents take a sadistic pleasure in regaling my friends with tales of my early feats of (mostly reverse) engineering, and just recently my mom pulled out a sheaf of papers containing "circuit diagrams" that I drew when I was 3, on which she had labeled all the components as I explained them to her. I almost abandoned electronics when I discovered computers in the mid-60s, until I realized that FORTRAN was just an easier way of soldering circuits together. With computing and electronics thus unified in my mind, I bounced between computer and design jobs until they finally invented a name for me: embedded systems engineer.
I guess in a nutshell I became an engineer so companies would give me a sandbox and pay me to play in it.

Because no one was hiring physicists!

Oh easy. I became an engineer because of my father's comment:
" You better be an Engineer because you will NEVER be a Mechanic !!"

Because I like to design, create, build, fix and operate things!

Per my parents, my first conquest was the door-knobs in our house. I had the first deraileur 5-speed bike in town assembled as a project. By age 12 the workshop in my parents house was mine. The ham across the street got me interested in amateur radio and my first transmitter was built out of an old TV. I collected rocks forever and growing up in Michigan's Copper Country there were a lot of them to choose from. I went to Michigan Tech courtesy of the GI bill and got a degree in Geological Engineering, and most of a degree in EE and ME until the money ran out.
I worked for Ford as a underbody structural engineer until I couldn't stand the big city any more. I still like to design cars but do so now as a hobby. I worked for ANR Pipeline as a gas storage engineer and helped to design and drill the first horizontally completed gas storage wells in the country. I worked for Hydaker-Wheatlake and designed tower structures for the communications industry as well as the transmission power industry. I still enjoy building and designing radios and electronic control equipment.
The thing that made me become an engineer was the challenge of taking an idea and using skills learned turn it into a viable creation. Whether it is electrical, mechanical, or geological I love the creation aspect of it all. If you can inspire young people to spend more time taking stuff apart and doing hands on tinkering and less time in front of a computer screen you can create more engineers... it's just imagination.

What great reasons given so far! I also fell under the spell of electronics for most of the above reasons, ham radio since 12, radio/TV service since 13, and love of tinkering and building electronics projects. I actually majored in Physics, since my older sister (while she was at UCLA) said "engineers are such bores", so I majored in a subject that would still get me employed as an EE and keep her happy! I did take some subsequent grad classes in EE, but never told my sister about them!
I was blessed with a full 34 year career at Rockwell/Boeing working on the Apollo/Saturn, GPS, Space Shuttle, classified programs, and Remote Sensing systems worldwide, and later on contract supporting the Delta IV program. I taught Junior College and University Electronics and Electrical Engineering courses for 26 years mostly in the evenings, concurrently. In retirement, I became a licensed electrical contractor, which I pursued for 10 years. Now mid seventies, I stil do some electrical work. I would not have wanted it any other way! Viva Electronics!

Really simple. I want a good life and a respected job doing something I could enjoy. From there it's simply a process of elimination for me. Doctor: I don't like dealing with sick people, blood, dead people, etc..., Lawyer: I am not really good at telling lies with a straight face, Business Owner: I am not really that great of a risk taker, Engineer: sure, why not, it sounds cool!

I became an engineer because I didn't want to be forced to join an Acme Market employee's union. I quit and a neighbor said why not apply at Bell Labs. I did, became a draftsman, went to college, graduated with degrees in EE and physics and went on to be a scientist and finally a manager.

Like some other kids I was entranced by dinosaurs. Some one told me that one cannot make a living as a paleontologist and I believed them. So I studied pre-med. After three years I decided that I could not sit in a class room for another four or five years. They agreed to grant me a BioE degree if I would just finish up and go away. It has been a lot of fun, but I know now that no one ever told the same thing my friend who has always been a paleontologist or my brother who is a whale biologist. I think they may have had at least as much fun.

Why did I become an engineer? I had no choice. When I was a teenager it hit me like a diamond-tipped drill in the head--I realized electronics was in my blood. Why does a guy climb a mountain; why do people write poetry; why are some gamblers addicted to the sound of roulette chips clicking together; why does a mechanic, who already owns two cars, spend 18 months converting a rusted hulk into a gorgeous automobile? Being an engineer is a compulsion, an obsession. Do you remember the sweet colorless thrill of using a vacuum tube voltmeter to measure the resistance of the first resistor you ever cut out of the chassis of an old broken television? Do you remember fixing a vacuum tube radio, amazing your family, by merely finding a tube whose filaments were open?

I had the wrong personality for accounting, and unlike a lawyer, I think facts are relevant.

I became an Engineer when my love of music and sound processing compelled me at 16- I HAD to be the guy who knew how to build the insides of the MXR Distortion-Plus guitar effects pedal. I have spent my life since then injecting a sense of design and art from my poet-sculptor parents into the tools and methods of Engineering. I was project lead for the first BlackBerries, and, at the risk of immodesty, changed the world with that philosophy. And I still pull apart everything I own... just because I need to know. And yeah, I now AM the guy who knows how to build the insides of the MXR Distortion+...and more... how cool is that?

Sometime creating something on a blank paper or territory with a pencil is incredible thing.

As a poor kid, I made a deal with Uncle Sam to trade my time for his college money. In the military, I saw that the engineers hang out in the labs and visit all kinds of fascinating things upon Osama while the infantry stopped his bullets. Once an engineer, I found that the toys are way cool and they pay me to play with them. And, more so than any other job, I can really make life better for those who use my products.

I had 5 older brothers, 4 of whom became engineers. They always got the cool toys, electronics sets, chemistry sets, RC airplanes etc, while I got the Easy Bake Oven. Now I get to play with the cool stuff too. 20 years as an EE and counting. Firm believer of role models to get more girls into engineering.

As a kid I tended to take my new toys apart. The innards seemed WAY more interesting then the toy itself. Whenever my kids ask me this question the answer's always the same "blinking lights..."

I wanted to work 10 times harder than 90% of the students in college and eventually be replaced by 9 people who'd work for 10% of my salary.

It wasn't a decision I consciously made, It was just the thing to do.

I became an engineer because I wanted to know how to design better ham radios, antennas and other cool things. Then I became an engineering professor so I could help others enjoy the fun too.

I have the best job in the world; my employeer buys me cool toys and pays me to play with them.

When I was in grade school, I loved to make things happen "over there" with me staying safe
"over here". Archery, dirt clods, sling shots, catapults, and guns fascinated me. Then I
discovered Radio, TV, Telephones, and electricity could let me see or hear what was
happening "over there" with me staying safe "over here". Radio control planes, cars, and other vehicles caught my attention later in school. When I worked on these things, I kept
thinking, "I can do better than this." Shop classes were my favorites in High School. Since
my name is late in the alphabet, it took several years before I could take small engine
repair or metal shop. I had to take drafting and electrical shop while waiting. By the time
I entered college, I looked at salary projections and picked engineering (general). I got my Associated degree between dates and fixing my vehicles. When I had to pick a specific engineering major, I went to the College Placement Center and asked for the "Average number of job offers per graduate by degree" and found out electrical engineering graduates were getting five times as many job offers as any other engineering graduate. As I was working on my Bachelor's degree, the Navy picked me up as an intern, paid for the rest of my education and hired me before graduation. I'm still working as an engineer for the Navy and will be until I retire. After retirement I will still be engineering somewhere else. I
agree with "the knack" theory.

I became an engineer because everything electrical/electronic seemed like magic. After 35 years of doing and managing this stuff, I realize it really IS magic.

Wanted to know why the TV and radio had so many different kinds of parts. Always loved math and science and really loved high school physics, especially electronics.

Didn't want to work for a living, managed to always find some idiot to pay me for doing what I enjoyed....

Howdy,
I was in the military during the Vietnam War and was almost killed, due to faulty Military Equipment. I vowed that I going to fix that problem and to date, I have never lost a pilot that was being protected by my equipment. So opposite of Mark Rackin, I chose EE to blow up things, to keep our Pilots safe, so they could come home to their families.

At one year of age, my parents were puzzled as to why fuses kept blowing in our house. My mother used to give me the metal plates out of a hand meat grinder to play with. They said they finally caught me unplugging cords from outlets, holding the plates over the outlets and reinserting the plugs. Then I would unplug it. So I became an engineer to stay in electronics once my mother took the grinder plates away.

My mother said when I was barely out of diapers, I asked her what made the light work and wasn't satisifed with her first answer of the switch on the wall. she had to go all the way back to the generating plant before I was satisifed. She knew then before I did that I would be an electrical engineer. At 10, I developed a fascination for radio listening to distant AM broadcast stations which increased when I got a CB band walkie talkie. In high school, I joined an explorer post sponsored by SW Bell and my fate was sealed when telephone tech explained ohms law to us at a meeting and all the light bulbs in my head lit up as I grasped the applications of that law.

Because my father was an accountant and my mother was a Biology teacher. I didn't want anything to do with that crap and because I wanted to understand how everything works. Almost everything now a days has some sort of electrical or electronics involved with it.

I wanted to solve problems, create things, make a difference, make people's lives better.
Little did I realize . . . .

I was 10 years old, an avid reader of "Astounding Science Fiction and the rest of that genre, and was busy making batteries of Cu, Zn and lemon or vinegar in my basement lab. There wasn't the slightest doubt in my mind that the future of mankind lay in advancing science, and the engineers were the ones who would bring the products to fruition. It hasn't changed What went wrong? Why do we monitor the auto exhaust for combustion and not our oil furnaces. Why do our electricity guzzling appliances see miniscule improvements in function and efficiency. The money-changers in the temple?

I enjoyed making things that moved, flew, and needed programming as a child...what other choice was there.

Looking at all the multicolored bits and pieces in my uncles tv repair shop as a child is probably part of it. But also, I keep remembering a scenario at home at about the same time... My dad trying to repair a well hidden part in our home washing machine, muttering "some engineer ought to have this up his %#((#%" :^)

To understand how things work or why they don't work.

When I was very young (about 5) I saw a steamroller roaring and clanking along and wanted to spend my life playing with such things. However I excelled at chemistry and got a place in university based on that. Halfway through the first trimester I set my hand on fire in the lab and changed to electrical engineering (which I got stuck on while electrocuting myself....).

It wasn't my fault, I was born this way.

Because I was good at Math and needed to know "why" things worked (I don't care about taken them apart or puting them back together).

A friend was accepted at an engineering school, wanted some company for freshman orientation. I went, enjoyed myself, and ended registering and going to classes. I wasn't formally accepted as a student until mid semester, they didn't realize I'd been attending classes all semester. Engineering and I just fit.

Been fascinated with science as long as I have been able to read. Knew that I would be some kind of scientist. About age 12, picked up a copy of "SOS At Midnight" by Tommy Thompson and decided that I would do something in electronics. Took a few more years to figure out that meant I wanted to be an engineer - nobody I knew was an engineer or even knew what one was. Nobody before me in my family had even gone to college.

Probably a lack of creativity and self-esteem.

Because I like to take guff from a MBA drop-out company president and get paid like a shop foreman.

I became an engineer out of an affliction of technical idealism but these days I practice to worship entropy firsthand.

To be the type of person feared by lawyers, politicians, and bankers. To receive the adulation of the millions of math groupies. To make artists and rock stars tremble in my presence.... Never mind. Wrong planet. No, Wrong universe.

I have been an engineer now for 36 years. I got started in electronics through Ham Radio in high school. Post High School, in 1970, I joined the Army Signal Corp to get the GI bill for college after. At that point I didn't even know what an EE was. I just liked electronics. While in signal school I met an EE that had been drafted. Meeting and knowing him impressed me so much that it was then that I wanted to know what he knew and be able to do what he could do. Three degrees later I have never worked (in the traditional sense) a day in my life. I love what I do. My vocation is a vacation.

How things worked always fascinated me, but that wasn't enough: I wanted to create things for which I defined how they worked. My initial choice was in Engineering Physics but I ultimately studied Electrical Engineering in the Electronics option. Most of my design work was in instrumentation involving electronics, optics, infrared and ultraviolet spectroscopy, mechanical and system design.

Way back in 1976 when I had to make that college choice most everything came natual to me except what happened inside things like radios and TVs, so off I went to learn about the magic in the box so I could fix them and make them better!

I became an engineer because I wanted to understand the mysteries of amps and volts and electromagnetic fields. What inspired me was the the work of Thomas Edison, and especially Nikola Tesla. It was the only profession I could go into that would satisfy my longing to understand and apply the mysteries of science. I wanted to understand how radios, televisions, and computers worked and invent new electronic devices and systems. As an inquisitive young boy, I smashed the tubes out of a good old radio to see what was inside of them. I loved amateur radio. I never did learn or understand just what a magnetic field or electric field actually was, but nobody does. I did not go into it as a career for its promise of high salaries, but because of the satisfaction in being able to design and apply the knowledge to solve problems and ameliorate the condition of humanity i.e., to be of service to society in that way. I have never regretted going into electrical engineering and I know I never will.

Because nothing beats the rush you get when something you designed starts working for the first time!

Oh hell, don't keep reminding me...

In 1918 my father enetered Purdue University for Engineering, but never graduated. He stayed active in hobbying, and we both became Amateur Radio Operators while I was in grade and high school. I got math ability from my father, and with enjoyment from the Amateur Radio activities, I aimed for an Engineering career. I graduated from Drexel, enjoyed interesting work with RCA, GE, and the FAA, including 3 years overseas in a missile range community in the Pacific, and I wouldn't trade a thing.

Like many of you here, I was infatuated with how things worked. I played with RS 50-1, 100-1 and 250-1 electronics kits. I serviced and/or rebuilt every internal combustion engine in the neighborhood. I loved doing it so much, I regularly took less than what my services were worth. Then one day my uncle took me to his place of work, Chrysler Sterling Assembly Plant(SHAP). I was only eight years old, but that was when the lights went on! I knew from that moment, engineering was for me. I now have complete assembly plants I have engineered the machine controls for in multiple states and countries. More than likely, you are driving or flying a vehicle today that I helped build. I am still laughing that I get paid to do what I love. I hope that you should be so lucky!

To attract a suitable mate. This way I could wear a t-shirt that stated "Engineers can even fix your broken heart..."

I wanted to be like Mr. Honey 'the boffin' in 'No Highway in the Sky'

Way back then I joined the Navy, took their battery of tests and they said "Hello electronics technician." That was in 1964 and much much more time and schooling later, I can say "I R an engineer."

It's like Math, but LOUDER o_O

Because I allways wanted to drive a Train.

As a kid on the farm in western Canada, my mom who hated television, would say " go out and find something to do". We learned to build things. The "something" I found was to take apart old radios/TVs and see how they work, and put them back together. The electronics shop course in high school sealed my fate that i was going to work in electronics. First as a technologist then to get more knowledge and open more doors I became an engineer, so I could not only fix but design things. Still at it 35 years later. I am sure glad my mom hated TV and would not let us watch it very often.

When in grade school I struggled with Math and most of my teachers wrote me off. Then I got to Middle School and my math teacher introduced me to Binary & Hex & Octal number systems. That was when I realized I knew what I was doing I just had the wrong number system.
After that I started to enjoy math and I took as many computer classes as where available. Now I love building embedded systems where I use a lot of Binary and Hex in my thinking.

Having built many electronic things as a kid and winning a science fair prize, I thought I could become an engineer. Since I liked the idea of helping people and wearing a white coat, I thought I could become a doctor, too. In the end I chose to become an engineer. ... My friend's older brother wanted to become an engineer. He had a car, a girlfriend and a soldering gun. All good things, right? My most fulfilling job then was in Medical Electronics.

Babes.

I always knew I'd be an Engineer when I got my first of many Radio Shack kits as a child. I would always modify them to do additional things (sometimes burning them up). Engineers are indeed born, not made. As an older Engineer friend of mine would say, "You don't think that way because you're an Engineer, you're an Engineer because you think that way !"

I became an Engineer because during my childhood my mother used to tell me "you are a talented child, but to use your talent properly you have to have the right tools, you should study Engineering". and that was what I did.

It was inevitable having a father that worked on the Apollo program and took me to watch all those Saturn V launches … it really made me wonder how it was possible … now I know!

tired of working construction and roofing jobs and with a small family pressuring me for $. i went to the tech school and asked what paid the most. if diesel mechanic or chef would have paid more, i would be a mechanic or chef but electronics paid more so.... I was born to be a biology teacher. you don't have to be born to do something, just being professional in your approach is enough.

I was more interested in pulling the heads off & on my barbie dolls than playing with them. Twist...pull...pop...push...click and repeat. As I got older, my interest migrated to taking apart electronics. My dad and I would head straight for the screwdriver after opening gifts christmas morning. My mother was a saint. I'm taking my daughter to a robotics activity tomorrow. :)

We all do stupid things when we are young!

It may seem strange, but in the 5th or 6th grade, I recall being asked what I wanted to be, and I replied "an engineer", for no specific reason that I can recall. There were no engineers in my
family. In any case, I have stuck to my guns, and
don't have any major regrets 60 years later.

I was interested in both Computers and EE 40 years ago (before the PC), so I found a way to do both... It's very rewarding building things, and seeing them come to "life"! Weather it's Power Plants, Substations, or a new electric-grid Control Center in my day job; or race engines & transmissions, or electric cars as my hobby; turning them on and having my computers control their operations continues to be very rewarding.

Love to solve problems

because I was too short and honest to be in sales or Marketing, too lazy to be in manufacturing and too smart to be in Quality.

As far back as a child I was fascinated with machines and electricity. I found out I could get paid to do this.
Oh, and to meet chicks!

I wanted to be a theoretical physicist but wasn't smart enough.

So I'd feel like I was working harder than my friends.

A good question with a bad answer, that will likely annoy the 'pure' engineers.
I became an engineer because I couldn't be a technician any more.
I grew up being told 'our kind' didn't go to college. I had excellent grades in high school, taught myself trig in 3 months. Told I was "*&%$% useless egghead" at home. Wanted to be a body and fender man and build hot rods. Went to a military recruiting office, got the highest scores they had ever seen. They guaranteed me electronics tech school...good thing I took it.
Many years of technical work led me to believe I could design better than the guys that designed what I repaired, because NOTHING was designed to be repaired (that hasn't changed). By then, my knee that I had blown out in the military was toast, couldn't be a technician any more. VA said they'd pay for voc rehab, I said I wanted to be an Electrical Engineer, VA said OK. Wandered into the VA hospital and found Biomedical Engineering. Still at that 22 years later.

I grew up during the race to the moon. My dad asked me if I would rather build spaceships or fly them. I realized that I would rather build them than sit in them for hours or days. Looking deeper at why, I believe I was made in the image of my Creator, and that's one part of His innate character that He gave me.

I became an engineer because I was put into that position while working as a designer, and as the company started downsizing, I had to become both and do the work of 2.

As a child I loved to take things apart and did put back some of them together, though not necessarily in working order! Natural curiosity, coupled with interest in science and maths naturally propelled me to engineering and problem solving. Happy with my choice and believe that world is a better place because of engineers.

To fix my VCR and attract the hot babes.

Because I wanted my job to be outsourced to India.

Electrical engineering was the shortest line during collage enrollment.

Because I wanted to own a company where I could make anything I want when ever I want and do the design and creation of a project from start to finish. I've done that now for 35 years and love it.

I became an engineer because I love to build my own toys.

Because I love trains (lol)!

I became an engineer because my Dad and older brother were engineers.

Because I am an idiot! I love to solve challenging problems.

For the women.

I'm to spend an afternoon at my local high school next week answering (hopefully) teens questions on how I got into my field, engineering, and what it is that I do. I'm hoping that if I come across an aspiring engineer I can somehow give them a nugget that will help them on their way. I'm saddened by the shoulda, coulda, woulda near engineers that are out there that were held back because of lost opportunities or lack of vision. I'm an engineer because that's what we did in my family and because schools, businesses and government agencies opened their doors to me to show me what an engineer does before I ever became one.

for me it was a childhood interest in electronics and a lot of time in the local radio shack store and then a teenage interest in Amateur Radio.

I was enrolled to be an English major and a friend gave me a pamphlet from his College (Clarkson Univ). I compared the starting salary of Chemical Engineers with English majors and decided that engineering was for me...30 years later, still think it was the right choice.

I became an engineer because, as a kid, I excelled in math and sciences. It came natural to me. I always loved taking things apart and putting them back together again, to learn how things worked inside. Electronics always fascinated me, just think of where it got us. It took us to the moon and back; wireless communications; technology will always be the future.

Because too many "Why" questions were not answered when I asked them to the annoyance of many people. Figured I need to do it myself. Nice to deal with black and white problems...

Born that way...always taking things apart, twiddling dials on the washing machine to figure out how it worked, asking Dad why the car radio faded in a tunnel on AM but not FM, etc. Tinkering led to mentoring by a neighborhood ham operator, we built a vacuum tube xmitter. Guess it's just "The Knack" (Google knack dilbert)

There was really no choice. There was nothing left for me to do.

I found out I had an innate talent for it when I was lighting vacuum tubes up in my dad's HAM shack at 5 years old. Later I wanted to build amplifiers because I loved music. Popular Electronics was one of the mags my dad had and it made it easy to learn.
I also read Thomas Edison's bio when is was a kid and that left an impression on me.
Then the music thing took hold so my life has been a dance between 2 creative fields - engineering and jazz. I became a bassist and am on several albums with Houston Person and Etta Jones and I designed and manufactured the Moscode hybrid (tube/mosfet) audio amplifiers.
So for me both are important creative outlets.

When I was a kid watching James Bond movies, I realized I wanted to be "Q", the guy who made the gadgets, rather than Bond himself. And, after making every Radio Shack electronics kit available, I told my Dad that I wish I could design one of these kits to do what I wanted it to do. So, he told me I to become an engineer.

I was not fulfilled with fundamental research. I am convinced only 2 people read my thesis, me and a colleague that proof read it. And one of them (me) can't even understand it any longer.
Applied research and engineering solved problems people were actually interested in. Very cool.

Sometimes I think that engineering chose me. Even as a kid, my favorite subjects were math and science. I loved solving problems. When I was thirteen, ham radio found me. I spent more time studying electronics than I did on my school homework. In college, I couldn't decide whether I wanted to major in EE or physics, and finally graduated in Math. By that time, I had already been employed as an engineer for five years. I just had to be engineer; I never had a choice. Still doing it after 45 years...

As a toddler I survived near electrocution while trying to learn what was inside the slots in the wall that made the table lamp light through its cord set. That hooked me in wanting to know more about the strange world of electricity. And as they say, "the rest was history."

When I was a kid older family members used to always say "what are THEY going to come up with next", or "where did THEY come up with this?" and I always wondered who were the 'THEY' these family members were referring to, and why can't it be YOU?

I served in the Navy on a submarine as an electrician nuclear qualified. It took years in school and then years onboard the sub to learn and memorize everything that engineers had thought out and designed. In all of the years on the sub I never thought of anything that had not been previously thought of and design decisions made about the matter. At the time it amazed me that it took years of effort just to learn what engineers had thought of and designed and I always wondered what they must have learned in college to be able to think up and design all of the systems that kept me alive more than a 1000 feet under the ocean for months at a time without coming to the surface. Years later due to an injury I had the chance to go to college. I am now an electrical engineer and I am the one designing and building complex devices and systems and now I know what they learned before me.

b/c at age 11 I fiddled with an apple II computer, and I could not understand how it could possibly do what it did. And I could make it do things! open it up, and rows of little black rectangles on one of those large green things electronics are mounted on. how does this work?? 31 years later, I'm still learning new stuff every day...

Because I though I would be able to drive a train..

To see products and systems appear out of nothing but ideas.

If I knew I could get paid to break things (HALT/HASS), I would have gotten here a lot faster.

We are surrounded by things. Things made by people. I wanted to make the things that had yet to be made. Tangible the intangible! Invent, combine, make, imagine. Imagine! So many things that were never born because the skills and education weren't there. Now I'm an EE.

To figure out how things work, and to make them work better.

Because the best thing in life is doing things that people said you couldn't do.

I wanted to be able to fix all the electronic stuff I broke and/or disassembled as a kid. That, and to deisgn things to be more childproof.

I became an engineer because, as a kid, I always loved taking things apart and putting them back together again (except for that adding machine that blew apart into a thousand springs... no hope for that one... sorry Mom), wanting to learn how things worked inside. Electronics especially fascinated me, so it easy choice (and I'm thankful for it).

Because it looked like I'd get to play with high-tech toys all my life. Maybe even build high-tech toys some of the time.

Because of my birthday. I had a low draft number & the army said they would give me electronics training. That sounded safer than carrying a gun in the bush.

I became an engineer because when I was little, I put the Big Ben
alarm clock back together again, and it ran better!
Engineering is the most fun you can have with our clothes on!
Now 40 years later, I'm still designing and building new stuff!

By mistake, but I'm happy with this

Cause I had to know the secrets of the black boxes.

I became an Engineer for the High Pay, Women, Celebrity Status, oh wait. That's what I want from my next job. I became and Engineer because it was the logical step for me. I totally agree with an earlier poster, engineers are born, not made.

when I was little my dad was driving me somewhere on a cold Chicago morning. There was a guy digging a hole in the cold. My dad said see the guy in the hole he probably did not graduate. The guy above him telling him to keep digging, probably is related to the owner of the company. Somewhere in a nice heated office is the draftsman that drew the hole and intersection, he has a 2 yr degree. In another office is the engineer scratching his head thinking we need a hole. 4 year degree required.

You don't become an engineer you are just born this way - society provides the label.

When I was 9-10 years old, our next door neighbor was an old "mad scientist" type, only with electronics (think Doc Brown in "Back to the Future). After a series of summer evenings watching him build all kinds of cool gadgets, I was hooked.

To get chicks! I wanted sufficient income to be marriagable. I am 64 years old and the outcome has been most satisfying.

After 7 years in the Air Force and one year as a technician, I took the next step to double my income and keep my wife and three children from starving.

Cause I was an Amateur Radio Operator (HAM) and I enjoyed fiddling with electronics, antennas, etc, etc...

I became an Electrical Engineer (M.I.T. '60) because I believed I would like being given a complex system problem that required a physical, tangible, state-of-the-art solution that no one had ever done before. The idea that it was not available off-the-shelf appealed to me. Using only the most basic electrical and electronic components and weaving them into a unique solution was a great experience.

To get around the foreign language requirement in college.

I was torn between EE and chemistry. I finally figured out (based on the things I liked to do in each area) that employers would pay me well to design circuits and systems, but wouldn't pay me well to blow things up!

I became an engineer to actually DO something. I create things, fix things, and make things work. Many people just process things in their jobs, virtual and physical.