There’s a lot of noise on the internet from technology worshippers purporting that traditional employment fields are dead, such as mechanical engineering. I posted a comment commending a recent Quora article to the question, Is mechanical engineering a dead field today?

The short answer is a resounding, “No!”

Mechanical engineering is a growing field and continually relevant because, as the author stated, “humans are largely mechanical systems.”

We use machinery to get work done. We convert energy from thermal, electrical, mechanical, solar, wind, and chemical, and we care about the efficiencies and conversion mechanisms.

We don’t want things to break so we do analysis, FEA and engineering design to make sure we don’t get hurt or killed. Safety matters.

This is great news for our mechanical engineering team. We have known that we are here to support ever flowing projects that need assurance, insights and precision.

If a young person asked me today whether they should graduate with a mechanical engineering degree, I would highly encourage the path. Yes, the work is rigorous. Learning the math, concepts and problem solving is difficult, but the reward means you know how to take tools and find answers to problems.

This is valuable across business and life, much less with engineering projects. Life is simply one giant sequence of problems as well as an opportunity for harnessing raw information, resources and tools to make useful products for human beings.

Look around you. There is machinery serving you everywhere. And our desire to innovate and be safe makes that demand funnel far from being exhausted.

Mechanical engineering is alive and well. We need solid, efficient and reputable mechanical engineers serving the public good out there.