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Do engineers really make better spouses?

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Re: Do engineers really make better spouses?

#101

Post by balabaster »

dpeck wrote: post #86
balabaster wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 proble…

| 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?

Re: Do engineers really make better spouses?

#102

Post by rada »

andrewstuart2 wrote: post #18

Seems pretty obvious to me that the amount of contact with the opposite gender plays a huge part. Since most married couples are heterosexual and Engineering is still dominated by men, so contact of any kind is more rare. On the other hand, dancers and choreographers are very likely to be dancing or choreographing with someone other than their spouse, at a very close physical distance to very fit partners who are nea…

If that were true, female engineers would have higher divorce rates.

Re: Do engineers really make better spouses?

#103

Post by 15155 »

mattdotc wrote: post #80
Fuxy wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have a credit card for this exact reason. I get at least 5 invitations by mail every week but i don't really need it. Spend the money you have not the money you can get.

Hopefully you're building up credit some other way. You can still spend the money you have with a credit card. I pay my balance in full twice a month, just to ensure I never pay any interest. It's better than paying with a debit card because you aren't on the hook for fraud. I learned this lesson the hard way.

> Hopefully you're building up credit some other way.

Literally any installment credit will be better for credit-building than the vast majority of revolving credit individuals have access to.

CCs are far superior to debit cards in almost every way. If you don't possess self-control, maybe that sentence doesn't hold true. There are a number of disadvantages to using a debit card where a credit card can be used instead.

Re: Do engineers really make better spouses?

#104

Post by andrewstuart2 »

rada wrote: post #102
andrewstuart2 wrote: post #18

Seems pretty obvious to me that the amount of contact with the opposite gender plays a huge part. Since most married couples are heterosexual and Engineering is still dominated by men, so contact of any kind is more rare. On the other hand, dancers and choreographers are very likely to be dancing or choreographing with someone other than their spouse, at a very close physical distance to very fit partners who are nea…

If that were true, female engineers would have higher divorce rates.

This is true, but I'm not sure if the study went into male vs female (and I'm not up for paying the $40 to find out). Either way, though, my point about the male-dominated force was that there's less gender diversity, which does seem to correlate with the divorce incidence rate.

Re: Do engineers really make better spouses?

#105

Post by andrewstuart2 »

cozuya wrote: post #94
andrewstuart2 wrote: post #18

Seems pretty obvious to me that the amount of contact with the opposite gender plays a huge part. Since most married couples are heterosexual and Engineering is still dominated by men, so contact of any kind is more rare. On the other hand, dancers and choreographers are very likely to be dancing or choreographing with someone other than their spouse, at a very close physical distance to very fit partners who are nea…

Its a little ironic that the group of people who laugh at "designing a GUI in visual basic to track the killer's IP address" apparently thinks that an agricultural engineer sits in the middle of a cornfield with a bunch of charts on an easel sketching out what piston goes into what shaft... as opposed to, you know, an office.

That was just a bit of comedy at the end. I don't actually think that agricultural engineers are likely to have a desk in the middle of a corn field. :-)

Re: Do engineers really make better spouses?

#106

Post by oldmanjay »

halcyondaze wrote: post #56
protonfish wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software engineers are great communicators, which is why they are often awkward and unpopular. Getting along in groups and knowing your place in the social hierarchy order is much more dependent on effective lying.

Being a great communicator != never lying.

well and let's undercut the ridiculous conceit directly, being an engineer also cannot be equated to never lying.

Re: Do engineers really make better spouses?

#107

Post by balabaster »

15155 wrote: post #103
mattdotc wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hopefully you're building up credit some other way. You can still spend the money you have with a credit card. I pay my balance in full twice a month, just to ensure I never pay any interest. It's better than paying with a debit card because you aren't on the hook for fraud. I learned this lesson the hard way.

> Hopefully you're building up credit some other way. Literally any installment credit will be better for credit-building than the vast majority of revolving credit individuals have access to. CCs are far superior to debit cards in almost every way. If you don't possess self-control, maybe that sentence doesn't hold true. There are a number of disadvantages to using a debit card where a credit card can be used instea…

It's not just self control in isolation though. That self control is being assaulted relentlessly by social conditioning from peers, society, media, advertising, corporations and the Government. It's not a wonder the economy is in the state it's in.

With virtually everything around you lying "Go on, spend it, it's good for the economy, you deserve it, it'll make you feel good and fill that pit of emptiness you're trying to fill, credit is better, you need credit, you need to build credit." coupled with the fear ads of "Bad credit, no credit! We've got the solution for you to get it!" and companies that are impossible to deal with without a credit card - I'm looking at you hotels, flight companies and car rental places!

Society makes it painful at every turn to live without a credit card and then when you do find a way, people look down on you like you're somehow a freak of nature, shunning the natural order of things.

Ugh...

Re: Do engineers really make better spouses?

#108

Post by Ensorceled »

khill wrote: post #52
drpgq wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if a small part of the dancer/bartender vs engineer situation is that engineers (statistically usually male) often are working mostly with other men. My sister is married to a ballet dancer (who just retired to start studying to become a nurse) and he obviously was in pretty close contact with the opposite sex.

If that was the main factor, the divorce rate for law enforcement would likely be lower as well.

Is law enforcement on the engineering side of the comparison that was just made or the bartender/dancer side?

Law enforcement has it's own issues that are quite independent of most other occupations.

Re: Do engineers really make better spouses?

#109

Post by schrodinger »

onion2k wrote: post #41
zelos wrote: post #7

"The article also purports that the higher level of communication inherent in engineering jobs may be vital. A healthy communication in a marriage is vital for its survival." Yeah, us software engineers are renowned for our communication skills.

Communication in a relationship is eminently hackable. On the first month 'anniversary' of seeing my girlfriend I bought her a book (one she'd mentioned wanting to read) and wrote a couple of lines in the front about how well it was going. From there on we've bought each other a book every month and written a short note in the front. We've been seeing each other for almost three years without any 'communication probl…

Where the heck do you keep all those books?

Re: Do engineers really make better spouses?

#110

Post by [deleted] »

herbig wrote: post #92
andrewstuart2 wrote: post #18

Seems pretty obvious to me that the amount of contact with the opposite gender plays a huge part. Since most married couples are heterosexual and Engineering is still dominated by men, so contact of any kind is more rare. On the other hand, dancers and choreographers are very likely to be dancing or choreographing with someone other than their spouse, at a very close physical distance to very fit partners who are nea…

I agree. Looking more into the study, massage therapists are up there in divorce rates, as well as "entertainers" which I believe would include actors. The thought I had about agricultural engineers is that they would tend to be much more religiously conservative than other types of engineers.

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