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What Got You Started in Your Career in Engineering?

tariq.ahmad

In the Comments Below:  Let Us Know How You Got Started in Your Career!

 

“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.” - Steve Jobs

"You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future." - Steve Jobs

One of my favorite speeches of all time was the Stanford commencement speech that Steve Jobs gave toward the end of his life.  Many of you have careers in engineering, and you come to the element14 community, the first online community for engineers, because you have a passion for engineering and technology.  During my first year working on the element14 community, one of the most exciting things that I have been a part of was the Bit by the Bug campaign where you shared what made you fall in love with engineering & technology:

 

     How Were You 'Bit by the Bug' of Engineering & Technology?

 

Your love for engineering and technology is what helps make this community special.  Hopefully, we all are doing something that we enjoy doing, even if everything is not perfect, but we've all had to start from somewhere.   Sometimes, we can go down many paths during the course of our lives and this could involve having to start over.   We're currently working on a webinar that is geared to those people that are just getting started, or perhaps starting over (or again?) down a path that may lead to a new (or different?) career in engineering.image

 

You're Invited to Be a Presenter!

In the past we've focused our career webinars in the past on IoT.   They're still very relevant and worth checking out if you haven't already:

 

 

This time around we would like to do something that speaks about engineering as career.   recently reached out to the top members to see if any of the Top Members  were interested in joining us as a panelist for a webinar on engineering.   I would like to extend this invitation to the rest of the community at large.   During the Project14 livestreams, I found that having members come on as hosts led to a very interesting discussion.  We'd like to do something similar with the upcoming webinar!

 

You don't have to prepare slides, prepare a speech, or prepare statements or anything like that.  Every career path is unique and we want to hear from a number of different perspectives and have a casual conversation on engineering as a career.   You'll have an opportunity to voice your opinion or tell us about your experiences.

 

In the Comments Below:  Let Us Know How You Got Started in Your Career!

 

 

If you are interested in being a presenter for this webinar contact me directly at or comment below to let me know you are interested.

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  • I'm not exactly sure I'd define myself as an Engineer, I spent 25 years in the military as an Aircraft Avionic Engineering Technician  -  so technically I'm a techie by trade.

     

    How I got there is unusual, it was my birthday one day at school, and the local gang of bullies was looking for me. I don't consider myself a coward (25 years in the military remember), but I do recall being fearful as one of their own had recently had a birthday - and they broke his collarbone in the subsequent 'roughing up' he got. This was the West Midlands (UK) in the very early 80's.

     

    As I said, I'm not a coward, but I'm not stupid either, so I hid where no self respecting bully would be seen dead, the school's careers office . . . . . .  .

     

    I looked thru the brochures and all that and, well, July of 1985 I joined up. 25 years later I left (having luckily never deliberately being shot at - a muppet shooting rabbits near a fence almost got greeted with 7.62mm return fire from me, his error was explained by my oppo and he judiciously elected to run away . . . . . . ).

     

    I now teach other avionic technicians how to diagnose and fix faults on the Eurofighter Typhoon.

     

     

    My personal interests started many years before, and I have detailed the ins and outs of that on here before, I'll not bore you with the minutiae (but stuff used to 'fall apart' after I had been near it with tools from when I was around four)!!  -  According to my parents at least!

    Now though I try to keep my hand in a constantly evolving field, not always successfully. Tinkering with Nerf Blasters is a nice side hobby too, and many years of figuring out how and why stuff works, added to a desire to 'improve' stuff and a liberal dash of 'enjoying tinkering' has dragged me back to places like this and the BritNerf forum to satisfy my thirsts.

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  • I'm not exactly sure I'd define myself as an Engineer, I spent 25 years in the military as an Aircraft Avionic Engineering Technician  -  so technically I'm a techie by trade.

     

    How I got there is unusual, it was my birthday one day at school, and the local gang of bullies was looking for me. I don't consider myself a coward (25 years in the military remember), but I do recall being fearful as one of their own had recently had a birthday - and they broke his collarbone in the subsequent 'roughing up' he got. This was the West Midlands (UK) in the very early 80's.

     

    As I said, I'm not a coward, but I'm not stupid either, so I hid where no self respecting bully would be seen dead, the school's careers office . . . . . .  .

     

    I looked thru the brochures and all that and, well, July of 1985 I joined up. 25 years later I left (having luckily never deliberately being shot at - a muppet shooting rabbits near a fence almost got greeted with 7.62mm return fire from me, his error was explained by my oppo and he judiciously elected to run away . . . . . . ).

     

    I now teach other avionic technicians how to diagnose and fix faults on the Eurofighter Typhoon.

     

     

    My personal interests started many years before, and I have detailed the ins and outs of that on here before, I'll not bore you with the minutiae (but stuff used to 'fall apart' after I had been near it with tools from when I was around four)!!  -  According to my parents at least!

    Now though I try to keep my hand in a constantly evolving field, not always successfully. Tinkering with Nerf Blasters is a nice side hobby too, and many years of figuring out how and why stuff works, added to a desire to 'improve' stuff and a liberal dash of 'enjoying tinkering' has dragged me back to places like this and the BritNerf forum to satisfy my thirsts.

Children