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Asked by JeetS on 2 Nov 2020.
Question: We're you recognised as a key person throughout your life?
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Declan Vogt answered on 2 Nov 2020:
No. I only started to become recognised as a key person when I’d been contributing to projects and showing my value – and that continues: being a key person is about contributing.
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John Chinner answered on 2 Nov 2020:
Not really – I have been recognised as the “nerdy one”, or the person who can fix anything. Being an engineer isn’t just about making and breaking things, but also about working well in a team, and being able to communicate your thoughts to other people, by voice or writing.
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anon answered on 2 Nov 2020:
No – space is an incredibly complex domain and it requires a massive concerted team effort to achieve all the exciting things you see and read about in the media. Whether this is designing, testing, building, or operating spacecraft, every stage requires an enormous amount of team work. Working in this industry is quite humbling because you realise that there is so much to learn and it’s really just not possible for one person to do everything. Being a key person is about working effectively as part of a team.
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Roy HAWORTH answered on 2 Nov 2020:
I have always been really interested to understand everything about whatever it is I am working on when I was in the Navy I wanted to know how every part of the ship worked not just my own area so I soon became a reference point for lots of colleagues as I understood how all the systems connected together, in my current job I am learning a whole new area of Digital Tools for Design and Manufacture and hopefully within a few years I will be again that reference person that everyone calls to answers their questions.
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Marina Ruiz Sanchez-Oro answered on 2 Nov 2020: last edited 2 Nov 2020 3:45 pm
I’m still only 24 and really early on in my career so unfortunately no! It also depends on what scale you are talking, I do feel recognised within my research group (around 20 people in my university) but outside of that, I still haven’t made it very far! I don’t mind so much though, I’m really happy doing what I do, and that’s the main thing for me 😀
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Calum McInnes answered on 2 Nov 2020:
No, in an engineering team someone shouldn’t be the only person responsible for a large task. Engineering, whether in a university or company is a very collaberative working environment where everyone contributes to solving a problem. You can take charge of a task but you can also help train others in your expertise – passing on knowledge is a very important part of being an engineer!
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Steve Williams answered on 3 Nov 2020:
No I don’t think I ever have been considered a key person. I am content to be seen as a solid engineer who is known for delivering work on time that meets the requirements. That might sound easy but it often isn’t.
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Yannick Verbelen answered on 3 Nov 2020:
It depends on what you define as a key person probably, my family definitely thinks of me as a key person in their lives!
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Tris Warren answered on 3 Nov 2020:
No – I’m not worried about being recognised as a key person. I just enjoy building things and working out how things work. Thats ultimately what I get to do at work. A lot of engineering is done now in very large teams – the space missions I’m involved with have teams with at least 100 people in them working on different bits. So its really a team effort.
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John Davies answered on 12 Nov 2020:
That’s a very profound question and you’d need a pretty big ego to say Yes. Really it is up to other people to say if your role is ‘Key’. I’m valued for the work I do in a particular bit of a much wider project, but I can, and probably soon will, hand that on to a new person and they will probably do it just as well as me. So I agree with most of the other people here, in big projects like space and aircraft and construction it is a huge team effort and being able to work with a team, to disagree on technical things but stay friends and accept that your idea might not have been the correct one is what is really important. I have seen a coffee mug which asks what is an indispensable person?
The answer is something like ‘look at the hole left when you take your hand out of a bucket of water’.
Of course there is no hole, because no one is indispensable. -
Abbie Hutty answered on 23 Nov 2020:
No, not at all, I’m pretty normal! Obviously I’m important to my family, and I like to think I’m a key person in some of my friends’ lives.
Working as an engineer you’re often part of a big team creating the mission you’re a part of. And a team relies on each and every member to make the mission a success. So in a team no-one can succeed with out the success of everyone else, and we are all key in our own different bits that we’re working on.
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