RE: Book Review: Engineer Your Own Success

DAB — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 00:23:18 GMT

I agree, to have a successful career, you need to have a plan for success.

The only person who will enhance your career is you.

That said, you have to be careful about how you accomplish your goals.

First, you have to set goals early. What do you want to do in five years, what does the business you want to enter do, what is its five year plan, how can you help them get where they want to go? Each new job presents challenges and opportunities, be a team player, but make sure that your tasks are always done on time and within budget.

Yes, you will be asked to help those that fail or be asked to take over for someone who left. Being know as someone they can go to in an emergency is an excellent reputation to start, but be careful not to be caught in the catchup or fire fighting mode only. Ask to be in on the start of at least one project so you can show your bosses that you can save them more money by doing things right from the start than you could ever save them by cleaning up a mess someone else created.

Second, learn to communicate in non-technical language. Usually, only your immediate supervisors will be technically knowledgeable. So if you want to rise in the food chain, you need to get to know what the rest of the staff does and how they like to operate. Work with them and they will start to include you in their planning.

Planning is a good thing! Learn the process early. The planning process exposes where the project risks are and it can also identify the best place for you to participate in the project. If you are part of the plan, then you can put yourself into the place where YOU want to play in the project.

The last suggestion I will leave you with is attitude. I used to make most of my hiring decisions based upon a persons attitude. Usually there are several qualified technical people looking for the same job. You need to show that you understand your work and how you can best help the company, not vice versa. I passed on people who had better technical skills if their attitude made them more of a liability to the office than someone who was technically capable, but understood they were not god's gift to engineering.

So start reading these books and begin to learn how to engineer you career. It will keep your frustrations down and increase your chances of getting to pick jobs that you really enjoy instead of taking jobs that you are offered just to fill a square or need to take to survive.

Trust me, I know. I have been on both sides of the process and it is not easy to be successful beyond your technical capabilities. If you have a plan, you can have more control. If you study engineering organizations, the planners are the ones who are still with the company after ten or twenty years. Most engineers stay only about three years and usually are asked to move on long before they would like to move on.

Think about it.

DAB