A machinist/engineer hybrid lit a damn fire in the MACHINIST group this week after posting a rant about engineering schools barely teaching students anything about actual manufacturing.

And holy shit did the comments explode.

At the time of writing:

The original poster, Jesse Guthritsch, started as an engineer before eventually leaving to run a one-man machine shop out of his garage full-time. He explained that most of his machining knowledge came from YouTube and hands-on learning — not engineering school.

Then came the line that triggered everybody:

According to Jesse, that’s what an engineering student at a prestigious university was told by a professor.

And the machinists in the comments took that personally.

—-

This was probably the single biggest theme throughout the entire discussion.

Over and over again, guys said the same thing:
The best engineers they ever worked with came from the shop floor.

Former toolmakers.
Former machinists.
Former welders.
Former maintenance guys.

The kind of engineers who actually know what it takes to make a part instead of just drawing one on a monitor while sipping cold brew in an air-conditioned office.

One guy summed it up perfectly:

Another said:

Simple enough.

A TON of engineers actually agreed too. Which honestly made the conversation way more interesting than just the usual “machinists vs engineers” cage match.

Several engineers admitted their schools barely touched machining at all. Some said they had one intro class. Others said they learned more hanging around the machine shop after hours than they did in the classroom.

One engineer even admitted:

Respect.

—

Now we get to the fun part.

The comments quickly turned into machinists sharing horror stories from years of dealing with prints that looked like they were designed by somebody who has never touched a machine in their entire life.

We’re talking:

One machinist said engineers act like:

Another guy talked about engineers dimensioning quarter-inch clearance holes to four decimal places because apparently CAD defaults are now considered manufacturing strategy.

And of course… tolerance stacking entered the chat.

One commenter said:

Bingo.

Every machinist reading this has seen it:
A perfectly reasonable part suddenly becoming an expensive pain in the ass because somebody decided every dimension needed aerospace tolerances for absolutely no reason.

And then comes the inevitable question:

Buddy… because your print looks like it was designed by NASA after six Red Bulls.

—

You knew this section was coming.

Half the comments basically turned into:
“Back in the 70s…”

But honestly?
A lot of those guys had a point.

Many older machinists and engineers talked about apprenticeship programs where engineering students actually spent time on the shop floor:

A surprising number of people from the UK, Germany, Canada, and Australia said this used to be normal.

Meanwhile in the U.S., a lot of people blamed the death of shop class.

Older guys talked about high schools having:

Now half the kids graduate knowing how to edit TikToks but not how to read a micrometer.

One guy said:

Hard to argue with that one.

—

Now before the machinists completely storm the engineering department with pitchforks and carbide inserts…

Some engineers made very fair arguments.

Mechanical engineering covers WAY more than machining.

A lot of engineers never design machined parts at all.

Some are dealing with:

And they’re right.

Nobody expects a machinist to suddenly start doing finite element analysis or advanced thermodynamics.

But almost everybody agreed on this:
Engineers don’t necessarily need to become expert machinists…

…but they absolutely should understand manufacturing reality.

Things like:

Because CAD doesn’t give a shit whether your part can actually be made.

One engineer nailed it:

Exactly.

—

Buried underneath all the profanity, engineer slander, and square-corner PTSD… there was actually a pretty solid takeaway from this whole discussion.

The best shops usually have:

The worst shops?
Everybody thinks they’re the smartest guy in the building.

And honestly, a lot of machinists don’t expect engineers to know everything.

They just want them to:

That’s it.

One commenter said it best:

That might be the entire damn article right there.

Now excuse us while we go clean up another print with twelve unnecessary four-decimal dimensions and a square corner at the bottom of a pocket.

Should be easy.

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