My dad was a aeronautical engineer and my father-in-law is an electrical engineer. I would say their work was not really like my wife's (when she was a scientis

My dad was a aeronautical engineer and my father-in-law is an electrical engineer. I would say their work was not really like my wife's (when she was a scientist). The scientists in my life have seemed more like chefs coming up with the recipes and the engineers more like line cooks making the operation of the restaurant actually happen. That's probably a really terrible analogy. I don't mean at all to say that the engineers don't understand the science (I have no idea! and it probably varies from eng to eng), but the actual work I hear or heard them talk about over the course of decades seems very different, whereby "scientist with thumbs" doesn't really seem accurate. Although maybe that is more true now than in the past? For the last 10 years or so, my f-i-l's main complaint is that newly graduated engineers only understand theory and models and have zero practical experience coming out of a degree program. Though, he ... let's just say, he exaggerates a lot, so I don't know how accurate that is. My engineer-for-45-years father seems very little like a scientist.