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Comment by jay-saint | Hacker News Reader

Have you walked into the average engineering classroom? I remember my EE class had 90% male population. We were not exactly the coolest or most attractive looking group of guys. I think being grateful to finally meet someone that likes us plays a little role.

More seriously, people with engineering backgrounds tend to be analytic and may have made more logical choices prior to marriage, that result in longer lasting relationships. I think that that problem solving mentality could also contribute.

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I think this may be a narrow view of humanity...

Everyone's an engineer in one way or another - that's just who we are as people. Just because the stereotype tends towards "engineers" (traditional meaning) being into mechanics, logic, programming, structures etc. doesn't mean that everything can't be viewed this way.

The popular guys at school and politicians are social engineers. Footballers look to solve the problem of helping their team to win. Dancers and bartenders look to solve the problem of how to get people to spend/tip the highest amount of money they can. We look to manipulate logic to get machines to do what we want. Others may look to manipulate emotions and perspectives to get people to do what they want - i.e. spend more money, help them earn more commission. It's all engineering in one way or another.

So to assume that we make more logical choices prior to marriage that result in longer lasting relationships might be a touch narcissistic. We are no different than anyone else, it's just that we're machine nerds. Other people are people nerds, football nerds, modelling nerds, advertising nerds, music nerds, history nerds, science nerds, food nerds etc. They all have problems they're trying to solve and they all use their problem solving and logical skills to solve them, everyone a nerd in one way or another.

To typecast "engineers" (reading between the lines) as desperate does us a disservice. Everyone suffers from self image problems in one way or another - you can thank the media for that courtesy of beauty magazines, wrinkle cream, modeling mags, diet mags, a constant barrage of advertising telling you how to solve body problems and look better to get that hotter partner who also suffers from poor self image problems. You may suffer from poor self image of your perception of your lacking social skills (you really just never had the social training for how to talk with people) but want a hot model type. She may have poor body image because the beauty magazines make her feel ugly and you're all she can get blah blah blah. It's all quite nauseating really.

We all live in this Venn diagram of people we're attracted to that would make good life partners. The intersection of which is where we'll find long term relationship satisfaction (I'll refrain from calling that happiness, because the relationship isn't the whole picture of happiness)... but nobody knows where the intersection is and that's the joy of life. When you're not true to your Venn diagram, it's painful. When you are and you find someone who intersects with yours in the right way, it's amazing.

Just to add to this comment: We do not function in isolation as a single typecast. We are all dynamic people. The football players or "popular people" could also be software engineers.

Anecdotally, one of the most athletic people I knew in school ended up double majoring with a 4.0 in mechanical and chemical engineering. I never went to a school where there were over-the-top movie quality cliques. Our athletes were also our 4.0's, who where also our popular kids, who were also our geeks. So be who you want.

Exactly... If I have problems with my car, I take it to a mechanic. He's an engine nerd... something at which I suck, he's awesome at it. If I have legal problems, I go to a lawyer. He's a legal nerd... again, something at which I suck. If they need software written, [or more likely, their computers fixed, again. Don't get me started] they'd most likely both come to me. They might both be awesome photographers and play on the same hockey team, have largely the same peer group and just be fascinated by different things. They may have different conditioning due to their family background. One's father might own a car shop, the other's mother might be a judge. They might have grown up as neighbours, gone to the same school and been in all the same classes together. One may just have had a large exposure to the way law works growing up and one may just have had more of an interest in hanging out with Dad in the garage tinkering with engines because his Dad was a race car mechanic. The mechanic's mom may have taught both of them to play piano and they may both be concert grade music nerds. The nuances are endless.

| Everyone's an engineer in one way or another

Great, so we expand the word to mean anything, lets just toss the word out because its meaningless at that point.

lol - may as well. It's largely a meaningless word anyway ;)

Engineering is just the art of manipulating pieces of a puzzle [whether that be things or people] to serve a solution to a problem. What does that leave unaccounted for?

And everyone is a hacker, a salesman, scientist, clothing model, barista, and archivist too.

I agree with you and you make good points, but hivemind has decided the "good communicator" is a 1:1 mapping with being a slick salesman or marketing consultant or lounge lizard, whereas obviously they're referencing communication WRT deep analytical study of communication, mostly in datasheets and textbooks but also product specs and legal regulations.

An engineer needs to be able to get past the marketing blather and dive deep into communication to figure out if a 15 volt rated capacitor will or will not short out and if it does how to prevent a house fire or about 1e6 similar engineering analogies, and how does the related ESR of the cap impact circuit performance etc etc.

Its not a huge analogy jump to seeing past a spouses likely very positive "marketing" message and analyzing all their forms of communication to figure out if a long term commitment to that specific implementation of "spouse product" will result in horrific crash and burn or perhaps it can be proven to work.

I looked thru the ranked list of engineers with an eye toward "long term sustainability" and "ease of do-overs" and was totally unsurprised to find the nukes and CivEng and ChemEng with the best stats and software engineers not doing so well. There are some outliers like the naval architects which I'm guessing is some kind of life-work balance thing, ship engineer going on a multi month cruise might lead to marital problems, or making a career of emergency flights out to some international port to supervise exotic structural or engine repairs might impact lifestyle at home quite a bit.

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