What Drove You Towards a Career in Engineering?

My entry into the field is a little unusual and I am not sure that it is where I will stay...

Like most of the posts here I grew-up taking things apart, sometimes putting things back together, and sometimes re-purposing components. I never really thought about engineering or had a clear career path in mind, I still do not.

After school I went to university and chose subject for interest sake rather than career opportunities, I ended up majouring in Physics and Computer science, though from that vantage point all software jobs where for code monkeys and in the commerce world, as a founding member of the unofficial society for the Prevention and Rehabilitation of Charted Accountants, I was not interested in a career in mainstream software development.

entering the job market in 2010 was not easy as the economic turmoil meant that the job market was flooded with professionals with actual experience. I took up a job as a process technician at a cable manufacturing company, the first job offer I got. It was interesting I did cable designs for high power cable, telephone copper and fiber optic cable, though after a few months I had written software that did 80% of my job description. I was in a different league to my peers and quickly got bored (this seems to be a common theme). I always enjoyed learning electronics and self studied electronics and embedded software development. So I figured, why not let some one pay me to learn more? I moved into an electronic engineer position at a new company, got bored there moved again to an embedded developer in a Linux environment, got bored and am not moving to a RF specialist position.

In retrospect the boredom I experienced has little to do with the actual engineering, and more to do with the industry, and perhaps my flexibility to become adept at any task relatively quickly. I rapidly became the go to guy for any task that was not specifically assigned to some one. Career one - I became the repairman for all the test equipment in the quality control department because I helped the maintenance team fix one machine once, after that it became my problem "because you are the one who know the machine" or "we need to get this out now and maintenance will have to call the service center". Its fun to fix something once, its like an adult size toaster to take apart. similar things happened at career two, third time is the charm I now fiercely defend my engineering time.

The engineering industry here is way out dated, we have stringent working hours and have to clock in and out, essentially treated like high paid labour. The freedom and trust that software companies give their employees is the only reason I sometime consider moving in that direction.

One last thought I feel that while there are many career opportunities for a person with strong problem solving abilities, engineering allows more creative freedom than other field.

My entry into the field is a little unusual and I am not sure that it is where I will stay...

Like most of the posts here I grew-up taking things apart, sometimes putting things back together, and sometimes re-purposing components. I never really thought about engineering or had a clear career path in mind, I still do not.

After school I went to university and chose subject for interest sake rather than career opportunities, I ended up majouring in Physics and Computer science, though from that vantage point all software jobs where for code monkeys and in the commerce world, as a founding member of the unofficial society for the Prevention and Rehabilitation of Charted Accountants, I was not interested in a career in mainstream software development.

entering the job market in 2010 was not easy as the economic turmoil meant that the job market was flooded with professionals with actual experience. I took up a job as a process technician at a cable manufacturing company, the first job offer I got. It was interesting I did cable designs for high power cable, telephone copper and fiber optic cable, though after a few months I had written software that did 80% of my job description. I was in a different league to my peers and quickly got bored (this seems to be a common theme). I always enjoyed learning electronics and self studied electronics and embedded software development. So I figured, why not let some one pay me to learn more? I moved into an electronic engineer position at a new company, got bored there moved again to an embedded developer in a Linux environment, got bored and am not moving to a RF specialist position.

In retrospect the boredom I experienced has little to do with the actual engineering, and more to do with the industry, and perhaps my flexibility to become adept at any task relatively quickly. I rapidly became the go to guy for any task that was not specifically assigned to some one. Career one - I became the repairman for all the test equipment in the quality control department because I helped the maintenance team fix one machine once, after that it became my problem "because you are the one who know the machine" or "we need to get this out now and maintenance will have to call the service center". Its fun to fix something once, its like an adult size toaster to take apart. similar things happened at career two, third time is the charm I now fiercely defend my engineering time.

The engineering industry here is way out dated, we have stringent working hours and have to clock in and out, essentially treated like high paid labour. The freedom and trust that software companies give their employees is the only reason I sometime consider moving in that direction.

One last thought I feel that while there are many career opportunities for a person with strong problem solving abilities, engineering allows more creative freedom than other field.