[sphelps]

All jokes a side there are good engineers and plenty of terrible ones to, no different than fabricators or any other profession (trust me I could tell some stories). All the engineers I work with directly have plenty of field experience, some more than office. I myself started in manufacturing, first in a machine shop then in heavy equipment, now in oil in gas I often go to site to address issues hands on. This is pretty typical for many engineers, some universities even require field or shop experience.