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Advice To a New Engineering Graduate

pettitda

What piece of advice would you give (or have you given) to a recent graduate in the engineering field to help them start their career?

 

When I was fresh out of college, an older engineer that I worked with told me that when he was coming up he would spend his lunch hours reading and trying to understand the articles in technical journals.  Then he went on to tell me that there was still time for me to go back to school and become a doctor or a lawyer or anything other than an engineer.  Overall, I'm glad I didn't take the second piece of his advice.  image

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  • These days I'd be tempted to offer this advice: "An engineer is an artist.  Expect the same level of pay and job security."  I'm half joking: the pay is quite good in the USA, though job security is non-existent.  Your job could be outsourced to a low-wage country at any time.  If you're working for a large company in the USA, to management you're a "resource" like toilet paper and light bulbs.  Expect to be treated with the same level of respect.

     

    Some people are born engineers.  To them I say to follow your heart, because you won't be happy doing anything else.  Some people want to be engineers because their well-meaning parents told them it would be a good career.  To them, I say: "Become a spine doctor: all those young people bending over their smart phones are going to have 70-year-old spine problems in their 40s and 50s.  You'll have plenty of work."

     

    I would like to mention that I was very lucky to begin my engineering career near the beginning of the microprocessor revolution so I was able to find well-paid interesting jobs.  It was lots of fun back then, but the increased complexity of modern software has taken away most of that fun.  Fortunately, there's still some embedded work which is still fun.

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  • These days I'd be tempted to offer this advice: "An engineer is an artist.  Expect the same level of pay and job security."  I'm half joking: the pay is quite good in the USA, though job security is non-existent.  Your job could be outsourced to a low-wage country at any time.  If you're working for a large company in the USA, to management you're a "resource" like toilet paper and light bulbs.  Expect to be treated with the same level of respect.

     

    Some people are born engineers.  To them I say to follow your heart, because you won't be happy doing anything else.  Some people want to be engineers because their well-meaning parents told them it would be a good career.  To them, I say: "Become a spine doctor: all those young people bending over their smart phones are going to have 70-year-old spine problems in their 40s and 50s.  You'll have plenty of work."

     

    I would like to mention that I was very lucky to begin my engineering career near the beginning of the microprocessor revolution so I was able to find well-paid interesting jobs.  It was lots of fun back then, but the increased complexity of modern software has taken away most of that fun.  Fortunately, there's still some embedded work which is still fun.

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