More on engineering

Following my recent radio interview, I started work on an autobiography. Completing it is going to take years - apart from having limited spare time and energy (especially given a major family illness) and the technical challenges of writing well, this triggers a lot of past trauma.

I've pasted below an extract from one chapter, the second chapter on several on engineering. This is not even a first draft: it is a venting, but I'll get it out into the world in case it is of an use or interest to anyone. There are points in this that those who are advocating for an engineering registration scheme need to consider, as well as a range of people in government who continue to insist on deadnaming/misgendering or invent requirements that reflect their bigotries and inherent biases.

This is a post in my Ethics, Lazy Management, and Flawed Thinking series - see https://politicalmusingsofkayleen.blogspot.com/2019/11/ethics-lazy-management-and-flawed.html.

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Not only was engineering a bad place to transition in the early 90s, it is still, as I first write this in 2020, too often a bad place to work. I’ll help people who have chosen to be engineers, but the problems are so bad I will not encourage people to take up engineering - or any of the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) professions. 

It is getting better - the last three years where I currently work have been noticeably better under a couple of new, more progressive managers, for instance. However, when my partner was diagnosed with cancer in 2019 and I explained my limited availability to a senior colleague, he told me off for getting emotional - unprofessional!

I once had a sort of disagreement with a colleague in what was then termed human resources about one company I worked at: I said it was thirty years behind the times, but he disagreed, and said it was fifty years behind.

I’ve already mentioned the problems with pseudo-intellectualism at Uni: that also applies at engineering - and elsewhere, for that matter. So many people are so out of touch with themselves that they mistake the emotional warm fuzzy of an idea or argument that fits their worldview (usually misdescribed as “intellectually appealing” - intellect has nothing to do with it: it is an emotional appeal) that they think it has validity, even though it may have no evidence.

As an example of this, a couple of younger engineers persuaded the company to allow them to issue a memo saying people should drive with their windows closed and air conditioning on. However, they had made assumptions about everyone having a large car, and had not looked for any evidence (for instance, from the car industry, which has extensive testing programmes on fuel consumption and other matters). They liked the idea, so it must be right. (I got stuck into them on that, and the assumption that either (a) everyone had a large car, or (b) it was OK to ignore the significant number of people who drove cars those two didn’t like. I then ignored their memo.)

Engineering in early 90s (and the 80s and, in some companies, until recently - as, for that matter, was society, last century [and still, in some places]) was afflicted with what we termed an excess of “macho” behaviour and thinking. These days it is more accurately described as “toxic masculinity”.

That afflicts more than just the male sections of engineering: it afflicts other parts of society, and even some women. As an example, a journalist I knew in the 80s got his nose out of joint because I hadn’t told him about being trans before I transitioned. Now, he and his partner were incredibly supportive, but he had the utter misconception (which came out of nowhere - another example, in my opinion, of pseudo-intellectualism) that I had always had transition in my conscious mind - never mind the massive social conditioning driving people into stereotypical gender roles, or his pride in being macho.

And keep in mind the combination of those three factors meant my experience of men who were proud of being men was that they saw anything different to stereotypical macho identity as something to attack.

That also applied to the people I was co-existing with in engineering.

Now, at this point, I want to point out that, as far as technical thinking goes, there is some outstanding, evidence-based thinking in engineering. It’s still subject to the split I wrote about earlier, about cost vs. excellence, but if I want the structural design of a building, a bridge or a road, or the planning of provision of physical services like water infrastructure, the appropriate engineer, with adequate experience (the degree is just a licence to start learning), is the person to turn to.

In the case of the building, bridge or road, that is NOT me. Although I have a civil engineering degree, I, as with many other engineers and professions such as the medical profession, specialised. I specialised in the water industry, have no interest in designing a bridge or building, and was not hired on anything other than my ability to design and operate wastewater treatment plants.

So, much as I wouldn’t go to a cancer specialist for advice on a kidney problem, you don’t go to me for the design of a bridge, building, road etc.

In fact, I’m also cautious of how much I do within the water industry that is outside of wastewater treatment.

But others aren’t so careful, and thus the world has to endure the engineer who also thinks they can pontificate on other matters - not on the basis of being a human being with the capacity for thought and reflection and thus some cautious expressed opinion that admits lack of experience, but arrogantly, assuming that one qualification - which is, as stated previously, a licence to start learning - gives experience and expertise and authority in other areas, including economy, psychology, pollution/environment, etc.

It is appalling how many engineers of one type (insert a type or specialisation, such as mechanical, chemical, bridge, water treatment, wastewater treatment, etc) I have come across who think one aspect of the nuclear debate, for instance, that appeals to them (the use of advanced technology, or the short term reduction of operational GHG emissions, for instance) outweighs other aspects (such as the risks associated with storage of nuclear wastes - especially long term geological risks [it is weird to listen to an engineer of one type who would, in the course of their normal duties, refer a geotechnical investigation to a specialist, thoughtlessly start spouting about the acceptability of underground storages - without adequate evidence]).

To be fair, this is something that afflicts other professions. As an example, I once heard a journalist, who didn’t like wearing bike helmets, rubbishing new laws requiring the wearing of bike helmets. My response was that I wasn’t prepared to express an opinion until I had spent time in a hospital ward caring for people with brain injuries (interestingly, someone else I knew at the time later wound up caring for people with ABIs [acquired brain injuries] ), which was all I could think of at the time.

A better response might have been along the lines of:

• what are the statistics on loss of life + severe loss of quality of life to people with ABIs and their significant others (including friends) + people who take up bike riding because they feel safer,

as a balance against

• the loss of quality of bike riding for a proportion (smaller, I suspect, than the proportion claimed by this person) of bike riders from wearing bike helmets + reduced exercise / exposure to outdoors by a proportion of people who give up bike riding.

However, the person wasn’t arguing from a position of rationality: they were arguing from the position of emotions - and that is fine, as good emotions are what make life worth living, provided you are honest about it, and don’t claim it is something else.

In other words, provided you don’t disguise it under the pseudo-intellectualism banner.

In the 90s, we had what is termed “Value Engineering” introduced. In that, a design is prepared to a certain extent (functional design is best, in my experience), and then the basis and details of the design are challenged. Thus, if, for instance, the design is on the basis of the works have a normal “design life” (i.e., the period things are meant to last for), but it is only wanted for a shorter period, the materials and techniques would be changed to something less expensive and with a shorter design life.

All well and good, but the practice seemed to always be biased towards “what is cheaper” - not “what is best value-for-money”, just “what is cheaper”. It might be phrased more nicely, as “less expensive” rather than “cheaper”, but it was, in truth, straight out of the “engineering is about saving money” camp.

My approach to better value includes operational and reliability issues, but those have been separated out into HAZOP (Hazards and Operability) reviews, from which matters not directly related to operator safety, such as process reliability and monitoring were excised and combined with some great techniques and thinking from the food industry to HCCP (Hazards and Critical Control Point)  reviews. 

So yes, there is still, from time to time, some very good thinking and acting in engineering AND other areas of life, but the pseudo-intellectualism plague is still with us.

Going back to transitioning, I encountered one jerk in the 90s who thought it was acceptable to use misgendering to drive home a safety message. The jerk’s “thinking” was that misgendering would be so annoying that the one woman in that section of the company (me) would be so annoying it would somehow make me more inclined to act on the safety message.

Huh?

That bigot was like the military amathiac who said something along the lines of “to save the town, we had to destroy the town”.

Apart from the fact that being riled up by such blatant bigotry and stupidity is going to be a dangerous distraction, as I have repeatedly told such people in engineering, misgendering kills.

It took many TGD people working for decades before the medical profession slowly and reluctantly started to come to grips with the fact that negative outcomes from transition / surgery for TGD people wasn’t related to the transition / surgery, it was related to the bloody-minded discrimination that society foists onto anyone from the latest minority group that society feels uncomfortable with - flummoxed by the unfamiliar, or FBTU, as I term it - and is lashing out at with fear, anger at the mild discomfort of having to change into something better, and lie and myth driven hate. 

Over the centuries and millennia those groups have included women (actually a majority), and “others” - defined on  a varying basis, which has covered “outside the tribe”, “outside the city-state”, “outside the religion” (and thus Catholics were a target in the late 1700s and 1800s in Australia), “outside the nation-state” (a problem the evil John Howard scribed deep into the bedrock of Australian society, in my opinion), and “outside my mindset/worldview”. 

Several of these have combined, from time to time, and thus homophobia and transphobia have had a religious aspect (which is unfair to those religions that are inclusive - a fact which the mainstream media seems to keep wilfully ignoring), but shortcomings as human beings is also a problem. 

A lot of those shortcomings as human beings and the other pernicious influences can be overcome by education, but being the member of a minority who has to educate people in order to have the common decency of not being misgendered is exhausting - especially after three bloody decades. 

I’m in the relatively fortunate position of only knowing around half a dozen TGD people who have died by suicide, and one who survived a murder attempt. Others have known many more. (I’ve also had relatively few attempts at physical assault of me. Being able to run in the past has helped me [I sometimes feel like referring to exercise as “my martial arts practise”], and on one occasion I escaped by getting onto a tram, and was helped by the police hwo the tram driver called for me.)

 

In my opinion, informed by my lived experience, much of the driving force for suicide comes in the form of deadnaming (especially on official forms) and misgendering. I have long suspected that the bigots in engineering don’t believe that, or, in a twisted variation of the jerk who thought he was promoting safety, think I should be so grateful at transition that it will outweigh the other abuse. (I’d love to see how those idiots who “think” the latter would cope with, say, being accused of being a child abuser - would they then say the truth of knowing they are not compensates for all the rest? And before anyone raises the issue of murder attempts and assaults on child abusers, re-read what I’ve just written about murder attempts, assaults, and being driven to suicide for TGD people.)

 

A few days before I started writing this, I came across a passage in CN Lester’s “Trans Like Me: A Journey for All of Us” which describes the suicide in 2013 of a trans teacher, Lucy Meadows: the coroner clearly through the transphobic hysterics and abuse of the media had played a role in this, so there is some slowly gathering “official” evidence backing up what we TGD people have been saying for decades. 

Eventually, misgendering and deadnaming will be as unacceptable as using the (racist) N word. The choice people now living, including engineers and other professions, have is: what side of history do they want to be on?

By the way, CN Lester’s book is well worth reading. The passage I referred to above starts at location 54  . There are lots of other good passages, but the comments on “production of ignorance” starting at location 121  are also particularly relevant. In fact, If I start quoting other relevant locations, I’ll be here for several pages, so just get and read their book - published by Virago in 2017, ISBN 978-0-3490-0861-5.

Going back to engineering, other points I wish to make (to be expanded when I get time and energy to do more writing) are:

·       specialists such as myself may have up to half a dozen projects at a time underway, but most planning and assumptions are based on one all consuming project;

·       the best way to manage a project - especially with regard to finances - is not necessarily to plan it to the n^th degree: it is generally to use equally skilled (not qualified - the degree is just a Licence to start learning, and even with that, people have differing levels of talent) resources who are available: clients insisting on a particular name doing the pre-planned x hours are not being “smart”;

·       I have found some engineers who assume the answer to an investigation will be X when there are other equally viable options to properly consider: needless to say, that annoys the hell out of me (to be fair, it has been a few years - decades, actually - since that was a major problem);

·       my biggest mistakes in engineering have been because I have no interest in office politics, and assume other engineers will be fair and reasonable;

·       too many project managers have become mini-economists / maxi-accountants with a dash of rigid time management, and have lost the art of project management - which does, in my opinion, require at least a basic knowledge of the technical aspects of what is being managed (there are idiots I’ve come across who thought jumping up and down about money would solve a latent or other technical issue);

·       engineering is not science or applied science - which means engineering should NOT be represented by the Chief Science Officer;

·       also, just because something is on Excel does NOT mean there is no IP or advanced thinking - my spreadsheets involve dozens of interactive equations, and some of it is possibly patentable (I am old fashioned on that, and consider the company owns the IP). Conversely, just because the software wrapper is fancy, that does not mean the content is sophisticated. As the old saying goes, GIGO (garbage in, garbage out);

·       engineering has fads and fashions!!! 
·       people who think experience that is more than five years old is questionable, challengeable, or of limited value are idiots. The principles of the activated sludge model we use get tweaked, but the fundamental principles still apply; the lagoon model I developed in the 80s and 90s still apply and have NOT been superceded (it’s not like software, you fools!), and the principles of good project management I was taught or learned under my own steam in the 80s have not been superceded - but some people now are emphasising one small part of those to the exclusion of the other, equally essential aspects; 

·       in many topics, including gender identity, leadership, and politics, there is a learning curve. Many people who find themselves on the start of the learning curve think they’re a bit like kids who’ve just discovered sex, and think that they know more about it than their parents. This point will be expanded, possibly to a complete chapter on its own; and

·       the many traumas of past abuses are with me still. Just improving things now does not deal with the still living pain of the past.