{"id":7750,"date":"2016-02-25T11:27:17","date_gmt":"2016-02-25T10:27:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.mentor.com\/colinwalls\/?p=7750"},"modified":"2026-03-26T16:48:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T20:48:12","slug":"why-i-became-an-engineer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/2016\/02\/25\/why-i-became-an-engineer\/","title":{"rendered":"Why I became an engineer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This week is <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/National_Engineers_Week_(U.S.)\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">National Engineers Week<\/a> in the US. I was asked to write a very succinct summary of how I ended up being an engineer. I have written about this topic <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.mentor.com\/colinwalls\/blog\/2016\/01\/28\/engineers-and-a-belief-in-magic\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">in more detail<\/a> before, but this time brevity was required. Here is what I came up with:<\/p>\n<p>When I was a kid, I asked questions.<br \/>\nOften it was: how does this work?<br \/>\nWhen I approached adulthood, I became fascinated with finding out how things work for myself.<br \/>\nThe next step was to ask myself: how can I make this better?<br \/>\nThat is why I became an engineer.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/colinwalls\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-6579\" src=\"http:\/\/s3-blogs.mentor.com\/colinwalls\/files\/2014\/01\/linkedin.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"40\" height=\"40\" \/><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/colin_walls\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-6583\" src=\"http:\/\/s3-blogs.mentor.com\/colinwalls\/files\/2014\/01\/twitter.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"40\" height=\"40\" \/><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/colinwalls.author\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-6591\" src=\"http:\/\/s3-blogs.mentor.com\/colinwalls\/files\/2014\/01\/facebook.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"40\" height=\"40\" \/><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/plus.google.com\/116301748426290440139\/posts?hl=en%3Fhl=en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-6587\" src=\"http:\/\/s3-blogs.mentor.com\/colinwalls\/files\/2014\/01\/google.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"40\" height=\"40\" \/><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/www.slideshare.net\/ColinWalls\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-6595\" src=\"http:\/\/s3-blogs.mentor.com\/colinwalls\/files\/2014\/01\/slideshare.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"41\" height=\"41\" \/><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.mentor.com\/colinwalls\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-6599\" src=\"http:\/\/s3-blogs.mentor.com\/colinwalls\/files\/2014\/01\/wordpress.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"44\" height=\"44\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This week is National Engineers Week in the US. I was asked to write a very succinct summary of how&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":71677,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spanish_translation":"","french_translation":"","german_translation":"","italian_translation":"","polish_translation":"","japanese_translation":"","chinese_translation":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[302],"industry":[],"product":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-7750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-off-topic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/71677"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7750"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7750\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10446,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7750\/revisions\/10446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7750"},{"taxonomy":"industry","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/industry?post=7750"},{"taxonomy":"product","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product?post=7750"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=7750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}