Except for my very first career, where I flipped burgers and got burned by hot grease (not to mention also learning how to swear in Spanish), the career I had when I was an electrical engineer is the most memorable for me. I spent three years of my life designing digital chips for telecommunications. And I could have done it for the rest of my life if I had to because the work was interesting and the pay was awesome for work that doesn't involve lying or various body parts.
I worked a lot in a CAD lab. That's a big, dark room with a lot of expensive workstations running expensive software. I usually sat at a Sun SPARC 10 with a big 20" monitor. By today's standards, I suppose that machine is considered average, but it sure decoded JPEGs faster than I've ever seen my PC do. I never liked the CAD lab. I always thought that IC designers should get a workstation on their desks in their offices, but I was working for a big military contractor, so I had to unload my stuff in my office in the morning and then hike to another building to get a workstation to build my chips.
There was one benefit to working in the CAD lab, however, because you got to meet a lot of your fellow engineers. I liked a lot of the people I met in that CAD room. Whenever I work with other artists or animators, they eventually discover that I used to be an engineer and they're really shocked to learn that my Master's degree is in electrical engineering. To them, engineering seems like such an opposite world - so cold, non-creative and unfeeling. I explained to many an artist that animation and engineering are more similar than they are different. Here are some questions from the artistic mind that I've had to answer:

Q: I don't think I could have been an Engineer. I wasn't very good at math in high school. Didn't you have to use a lot of math at work?

A: While its true that engineers have to take a lot of math and science courses in college, I'd love to see a show of hands among all the working engineers just how often they've had to evaluate a triple integral or solve a differential equation on the job. Gee, I don't see too many hands out there except for the scientists in the back who wannabe engineers or have engineering titles. As a digital engineer, about the only math skills I needed was the ability to count from ‘0' to ‘1'. Much more important were my skills in programming a computer, writing reports and getting along with threatening, angry, cynical co-workers who aspired to be gun-toting postmen. As an animator, you have to have the skills to count from ‘1' to ‘10', deal with stuff like how 24 frames per second in film convert into 30 frames per second in video, and whether or not the can of Pepsi in the vending machine is worth a $1.00 or not. There! You deal with about as much math as the typical engineer!

Q: Engineering is so exact, cold and logical. I like art because I like to be creative. That's probably why you changed careers, right Dave? How could you stand it?

A: One of the greatest myths about engineering is that it is non-creative. Nothing could be further from the truth! In fact, Engineering is about one of the most creative jobs on this earth you can get paid to do! (This is especially true for software engineers). Engineers get paid to solve difficult problems. It almost doesn't matter how the problem gets solved, as long as the solution doesn't cost too much, isn't too heavy to move and is less annoying than the problem it replaced. By necessity, most of the more elegant, cost effective solutions involve technology, but that doesn't make the engineer any less creative. Solving problems (whether technical or not) requires creativity and inspiration. If it didn't require creativity and inspiration, then any moron could do an engineer's job, right?
The reason this myth persists is because most engineers believe it is true too! They seem to think that their jobs are, in fact, dull, uninteresting and non-creative. I met many a bitter engineer who felt this way and I remember feeling sad that they had lost sight of the magic in technology. Except for the very very few, the vast majority of us who live in America get paid to do stuff other people think is either disgusting, dangerous or otherwise not fun. The more unsavory it is, the more you get paid to do it because there are fewer and fewer people willing to do the job. Doctors have to deal with death and disease every day. Salesmen have to bend the truth to get you to part with your money. Teachers have to listen to irate parents who don't understand why their child is getting a D in English. Cops put their lives on the line every day for a paycheck.
But engineers, on the other hand, have it figured out! They've disguised their profession so that society at large thinks that raw technology is ugly and that engineering is something very mysterious and specialized and that you have to be very smart in order to understand it. Good thing for engineers! That's why salaries are so high! I keep telling artists that they have to do the same thing. Like engineers, artists have to disguise their work as something that is disgusting, dangerous or otherwise not fun. Then, the salaries will go way way up! 3D computer animators have lately just figured it out. They know that society at large fears the computer and that working on one must be difficult; hence, not fun. The result? 3D computer animators are getting paid as much as engineers! Is painting with a computer any more difficult than painting with watercolor? Truth be told - NO! But because most Americans ate their watercolors in Kindergarten, they think any child can do it! Add to it that most artists make it look so easy and fun, and guess what? Salaries for artists are low!

Q: Didn't you work all by yourself in a sterile lab devoid of any humor and life?

A: The lifestyle and working conditions aren't too much different from the animation studio, believe it or not! Here are some examples:

Outward Physical Appearance
Engineer	Casual dress 5 days a week, disheveled hair, clothes unintentionally do not match.	Animator	Casual dress 7 days a week, disheveled hair, clothes intentionally do not match.
Working Conditions
Engineer	Shoved into drab room with a bunch of other engineers, papers strewn all over the place, hunched over a keyboard.	Animator	Shoved into a drab room with a bunch of other animators, papers strewn all over the place, hunched over a light table.
Engineer	Arrives late in the morning, works until late hours of the evening.	Animator	Arrives late in the morning, sleeps overnight in the studio.
Communication Skills
Engineer	Freely criticizes other people's work under the guise of logic, but becomes terribly inflamed when other people criticize his work and refuses to make any changes.	Animator	Cautiously criticizes other people's work and deftly accepts criticism, but still refuses to make any changes.

Q: Engineers seem awfully dull and uninteresting. Is that why you're like that?

A: If I'm dull and uninteresting, that's just because I'm a producer and you're not talking about the one thing that will wake me from a coma (that'd be money). But isn't that the way it is with everybody? People don't feel comfortable talking about what they don't know or care about. That's the same for artists and engineers alike. I'm sure that my engineering buddies would just love to join in on a lively conversation of the highly anticipated children's television fall line-up, or on the hot topic of licensing and the modern animator, or even on the riveting subject of which racy underground comic book might make the leap to the big screen next. Yeah, right! My engineering buddies would probably be bored silly and walk away thinking animators are nothing more than full-sized children! So before you go accusing engineers of being dull and uninteresting, better check first what makes yourself so darn dynamic and intriguing.

Q: So how come you don't want to be an Engineer anymore?

A: Its not that I don't want to be an engineer anymore. In fact, the last thing I want to do is to turn my back on a profession that is still one of the most decent and upstanding ways to put a roof over your head and food on the table for your family. When I announced to my engineering co-workers that I would be resigning my post, several of them congratulated me for escaping this thankless profession. That's not the way I like to think of it. The career of a producer is so uncertain. It amazes me how a producer can be gainfully employed and one day out of the clear blue be out on the street. That's scary! If that day ever comes for me, I might have to go back and be an engineer again, but if I do, I'll be happy about it because it was something I liked being.
There's a lot of things I want to do with this life of mine. Producing is just one of them. When the right opportunity came up, I just jumped at it and that's why I'm not an Engineer anymore. It wasn't out of hate or loathing for the work or the profession. It had everything to do with timing and a bit of luck. I've met other engineers who've wanted to follow my path, but I'd have to say truthfully that I've never met any artists who want to be engineers! Maybe only to me, but I feel that's kind of sad.