Education is overrated and can easily become indoctrination. Learning how to learn is the best skill any person can have. Although I do have formal higher education qualifications, most of the knowledge I use in daily life is self taught.

 

Last edited: May 19, 2021

can a man claim to be a woman in germany or do they need surgery?

 

You ain't one of those Wokes who Identify as Engineers, ain't cha?

 

yall check this out..

 

soon everyone will consider themselves engineers producers, technicians, etc, without any qualifications or education whatsoever, McDonalds employees or any low level counter job (Sales Engineer), Janitor (Facility Engineer), dog walker (Canine Activity Technician). WTF is wrong with everyone today, you sit on a toilet bowl to have a crap and then call yourselves Bodily Function Engineers, you turn on a radio and consider yourselves audio engineers, producers or musicians. Real world titles are earned by years of studies, practice, hard work and earning your qualifications. George Carlin had a good skit about job title euphemisms that will make you laugh

 

lol...yeah yeah...
wtf when you would call a janitor an engineer in (old)germany or EU, they would have brought you right into the asylum
the maximum here would be facility manager eh eh
--
sales engineer - verkaufs ingenieur
-
rocket scientist - racketen ingenieur

 

True and funny - While many of us have some form of qualifications, if any person is truly honest with themselves, does it change who they are inside? No. Does it change what they like to eat? (unless it makes them radically become a vegan or carnivore - no); Does it change anything other than a perceived status quo by some people? No. Does it change anything other than knowledge gained? No.
We are all still the same person. If they do seem to change, then it's all ego, or delusion, an attitude change, a choice - and other people's opinion, nothing more.

 

When you are right you are right.

English especially American English is full of hyperbole and people trying to make themselves sound more important by adding titles that they do not deserve and shortly after making the title meaningless.

This wasn't really the case until about the mid 70s but since then it has become a defacto standard to just add a title to whatever.

Sanitation Engineering used to be a real field that dealt with infrastructure and drainage and waste water systems and like highway and bridge engineering it was a difficult field of work, designs had to last decades and mistakes were costly on state scale. Now it means Janitor... and the guy at the toll both on a drawbridge that takes your 5 dollars to cross is a bridge engineer because he pushes a button to open the draw bridge.

 

I always thought that "engineer" was a title, like "doctor". It's like a hierarchy of competence. Technician<engineer<doctor cause there are doctor in sound, like there are doctor in history or philosophy.

As the doctor title is associated with medecine in people's mind, there is more control on it, so someone who go 6 month in guatemala to study medicinal plant with his hippie friends can't come back and call himself a doctor, or even a nurse.

For sound, there is not such control of the title people call themself cause it's not something that can kill people, but the guy who go 6 month in a formation to become in "sound engineer" is the equivalent of the guatemala guys in medicine exemple.

Even a guy like Dr. Dre doesn't call himself an engineer, even though he mix and master the music he produce (he even got some assistant like a real engineer do). He's probably got more skill than your friend coming back from his 6 month "engineer" formation, but still doesn't use this "engineer" title. Cause engineer is not a profession, it's a degree (the fact that he claim to be a doctor in a funny irony here)

 

If someone puts a bandaid on a scratch does that allow them to call themselves a doctor, and will you let them perform any type of minor or major surgery on you or your family just because it makes them happy to call themselves a doctor. Are you really going to let them do so, there is a reason we attain degrees, diplomas and certifications, life in the real world isn't the fantasy dreamworld of the incompetent.

 

Ehm... DOCTOR Dre

It's not a hierarchy of competence. They are different competencies.

 

Other countries, other customs.
In Germany, there is no school-based training for "audio engineers" or "Ton-Techniker". At least none that is recognized and certified by the state. There is only the "Mediengestalter: Bild und Ton". Which, with the focus on editorial work, is a completely different profession than mixing a band. And there is the IHK-certified "Audio-Fachkraft" (useless, there are no job advertisements for this "profession") and there is the "Veranstaltungstechniker", who specializes in events.
Apart from that, the higher education paths are also geared to other tasks. The university training to become a "Ton Ingenieur" as well as the "Dipl. Tonmeister" or the "Medien Techniker" does not fulfill the same purpose as the "audio engineer". Just as the audio engineer fulfills a different purpose than the stage hand. So there is a big GAP in germany. Why should a Ton Ingeneur bother with a rock band or a pop singer when mixing the state orchestra?
BTW the english term "audio engineer" is more appropriate in relation to the task than the term "Ton-Techniker" used in germany, because engineering audio is exactly what an audio engineer does. How many "Ton-Techniker" do you know of who perform the job of a technician and repair, maintain or calibrate technical equipment? This is the work of the Medien-Techniker. Even "Tonmeister" are not necessarily able to do this (and the introduction to electrical engineering is part of the training), unless they have specialized in the field of electrical engineering during their university studies. But all people who have one of these degrees and deal with the processing of sound are "Ton-Techniker". It is a designation for a professional group. Like Handwerker or Sportler.

Besides, most audio engineers (or Ton-Techniker) I know are not autodidacts. They have studied at a state university or private collages or have completed a corresponding media training. It's quite simple: if you have a 4-year apprenticeship or a level 6 degree (BA) in audio, it's absolutely legitimate to call yourself an audio engineer.

 

Last edited: May 20, 2021

If you _need_ someone to think of you as an Engineer, then you are weak. If you _care_ if someone thinks you are an Engineer then you probably are not one.

 

Merriam Webster Dictionary:- "Troll" = Irritation Engineer - with or without a Degree in Outrage Science

signed Ad Heesive PhD
(Pisshead Dipstick)

 

I'm sure there's something to it. It's similar in Germany. My BA has a lot more boastful words than necessary, which almost embarrasses me when someone asks what I've studied....

But now I ask myself:
What do you call the guy or gal with a master's or doctor's degree who designs a bridge?

 

an orthodontist and or a stomatologist if my memory serves me correctly, am I right? since they both design and work on bridges

 

hochbau ingenieur i guess

 

In 'merica?

 

sry

 

My experience in the UK:
Since probably the 70s there have been these following terms.
And the terms each involve formal training and each involve knowing all about electrical engineering and the related maths plus the maths of the sound wave.

Recording Engineer: This person is trained in all aspects of the required equipment and in its maintainance.
Not only can they choose the correct mics for each instrument and track up the session, they can also fix everything physical or fix anything in the mix with their knowledge.
There is no guess work.
They can even give a rough mix.
Mixing Engineer: The same level of knowledge of the gear, yet skills focused on the mixdown.
Can sometimes give a pre-master.
Mastering Engineer: Same as above, understands their own specific tools and the output format in a very deep way.
Sound Engineer: Usually applies to micing and mixing live performances, but can be in other fields of audio.
The same applies to a recording engineer here in regards being able to find where a fault may be and to quickly solder a fix!
Monitor Engineer: Providing mixes onstage for each musician and often side-fill systems. Equally as the others, being able to fix gear is a must on the road.

If working in these positions, one has learnt as much if not more from experience than from the training and maths of it.
So I would expect anyone in any position termed engineer or technician to be able to deal wih anything, regardless of how they came to be in that position.

From my experience being trained as onstage monitor engineer, it would seem that all these job positions involved understanding of electrical engineering and maybe some maths, at least to the level of someone with academic training in such.
I wasn't too good with the electrical side of all that! lol
Luckily a lot of the responsibility of these postions becomes about using common sense really too.

Oh and it's all just words, eh?
We say "mixing desk" in the UK.
And in the US they say "soundboard" or "sound desk".
I'm good with the word technician too, but as long as it also means they are trained in all aspects in a formal way? And hopefully qualified at least with the knowledge, or maybe even a written qualification?
I wonder if some 'artists', 'producers' or 'musicians' are just audio technicians with good computers.

 

Last edited: May 21, 2021