The market is grossly over-supplied with engineers, generally, find a specialty by learning something else as well.

I think it all comes down to why you went to engineering school in the first place.

If you like learning new things and building or improving devices, then engineering can be rewarding.

Yes, there are a lot of boring engineering jobs and your opportunities are usually limited by where you live.

That is true for any profession.  For me, it was knowing what I wanted to do, so I went into the aerospace business.

Yes the work was demanding and I sometimes had to work long hours to meet unrealistic deadlines.

Then I got to see the smile on a pilots face after he flew my little box and it exceeded his expectations for the job it was intended.

That smile was worth much more to me than anything.  I had changed an important system to new performance, which was primarily used to save lives.

The key to finding success is knowing yourself, identifying what you want to do and learn to bootstrap your jobs to meet your goals.

If you let yourself get stuck in a bad job, then shame on you.  Carpe Diem.

DAB

>I was guessing that a new Engineer would already have those skills

realistic? maybe but cynical? probably not.  It takes a few years for that.

>being realistic and cynical

I was guessing that a new Engineer would already have those skills

Agree.  but keep in mind you also have to be able to produce.  You may not have to be the TOP producer, but still have to produce.

Though I will admit I've seen people produce nothing before and be valued.  Then again, we all have seen companies go down due to incompetent leadership and/or workers.

I am just being realistic and cynical as it may sound.

I've seen people do nothing and move to the top, and truly brilliant people get left behind.

A lot of people get into Engineering because the technical aspect is enjoyable. But often, to be able to keep doing what you enjoy you will need to be good at communicating and working with other people.

The main thing is to be diverse and versatile.  Being a great engineer alone wont get you very far unless you work for a small company or something you own.

You may have to work as a programmer or a data analyst at times.  Learn programming and modern frameworks.

The #1 key to success in big companies is politics.  I've seen people do nothing and move to the top, and truly brilliant people get left behind.  You can do both but you have to understand that people have to like you and you need to be able to communicate.  If there is a business person who you talk tech babble to you may not last too long. If you try to act like they are stupid, get ready to find a job.  Putting things in terms lay people can understand without making them feel like lay people is very important and a skill once mastered will make you very valuable.  You can be a mediocre engineer but with these skills you can go very far.

The Chinese proverb says:

“He who asks a question is a fool for five minutes; he who does not ask a question remains a fool forever”

However, if you ask the same question 10 times in the first week you are going to get on people's bad books.

Equally, be careful as to how you ask your question as you might offend.

For example: "You told me I had to write unit tests for all my code but this old code you wrote 10 years go has none."

ideas move into and out of favor depending on the technology of the time.  An old technology may come back in a different form, so if you know about it that gives you an advantage over the whipper-snappers.

That's very true, I've seen that several times.

Clem Martins wrote:

 

I would say whatever you see today will be old by the time you learn it.

Yes and no.  The fundamentals like Ohm's Law, Kirchhoff's Laws, Maxwell's Equations, and Boolean Logic haven't changed a bit.  And C programs today look pretty much the same as K&R except for function declarations (thank goodness for ANSI C!)

MOS transistor logic hasn't changed.  They keep making transistors smaller, but they still use them pretty much the same way as mechanical relay networks.

I would add the advice: master the fundamentals.  That's what you can build on.  Learn from old technologies, because ideas move into and out of favor depending on the technology of the time.  An old technology may come back in a different form, so if you know about it that gives you an advantage over the whipper-snappers.

Learn how things fail.  In school you learned about the "ideal case" and "textbook examples" that work when you simulate them.  The real world is much more complex, and things will fail for various interesting reasons that they didn't have time to cover in school.  Learn from these mistakes and how to get around them.  That's how you become an expert.