Discovered the reason why Engineering feels "rewarding" (psychology)

College Majors Engineering Majors
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<p>Ok, I shouldn’t say discovered this, as I was simply reading an article just now: </p>

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<p>The article itself does not have to do with engineering, but it does have to do with the “reward system” of the brain and goes into why most people do not like their jobs.</p>

<p>*Why do so many of us have that void? Because according to everything expert Malcolm Gladwell, to be satisfied with your job you need three things, and I bet most of you don’t even have two of them:</p>

<p>Autonomy (that is, you have some say in what you do day to day);</p>

<p>Complexity (so it’s not mind-numbing repetition);</p>

<p>Connection Between Effort and Reward (i.e. you actually see the awesome results of your hard work).*</p>

<p>I looked at that and thought, wow, that fits engineering perfectly! I was originally into Civil Engineering for the money, but the more and more seminars I go to about it, the more I realize this is kind of the perfect job. It encompasses all 3 of the above - we certainly do have to come up with our own ideas, we generally will pursue multiple types of work for complexity, and we DEFINITELY (over time) see the results of our work, whether physically or electronically. </p>

<p>I feel bad for all the accountants and whatnot who just work at numbers on a screen, or workers who have some repetitive task assigned to them with no choice. </p>

<p>In fact the entire article is true. They say games like WOW give us “immediate satisfaction” that the brain craves so badly - it’s all manufactured psychologically. For me, it happened with Brain Age - if you’ve ever played the game, it’s just quick logic or quick math problems - but you are immediately rewarded with a giant green check mark and pleasurable animation. Just thought, maybe elementary kids would like math more if they had this type of system :)</p>

<p>This is what most of us don’t get in everyday life–quick, tangible rewards. It’s less about instant gratification and more about a freaking sense of accomplishment. How much harder would we work at the office if we got this, and could measure our progress toward it? And if the light shot from our crotch?</p>

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<p>Complexity and Effort/Reward are big for me. I couldn’t imagine having a job like such as an automobile assembly line worker. I would go crazy from the boring repetition of the job, but some people like those kinds of jobs because they are simple and they know exactly what to do everyday.</p>

<p>Effort/Reward is not always financial. I know an engineer who left the profession to become a lawyer. He said pushing papers for 10 years (patent law) because he never saw much of a tangible product. He went back into engineering (equipment repairs) and he said at the end of the day you feel good about yourself because you have repaired some equipment and returned it to service.</p>