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I don't think the posters who suggest that our role is to let the
engineers engineer are being sycophants. You don't have to grovel at
the feet of your engineers to make this point clearly.
Engineers want to engineer, not write. Every survey of technical types
ranks writing reports right up there with colonoscopy on their list of
favorite activities. The correct approach isn't to devalue our work,
but rather to show its value to the engineer... letting them do what
they were hired to do (engineering) and want to do (not writing). No
one can do two things at the same time. Our job is to write, not
engineer. Together, we do more than we can do separately, which is
called synergy, not sycophancy.
--Geoff Hart #8^{)}
geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
Disclaimer: These comments are my own and don't represent the opinions
of the Forest Engineering Research Institute of Canada.
