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04.08

Career Advice for Mid-Career Engineers

By Fred Wise

Whether you work in the semiconductor industry or another high-tech field, as you advance along your engineering career path, some common questions will likely crop up:

• Am I fully developing my capabilities?

• Am I taking the appropriate actions to advance my career?

• Am I going in the right direction?

These are the right questions to be asking. To be rewarding, a technical career path generally requires some form of growth. In addition, if you’re expecting to prepare for increased responsibilities, you’ll be looking to increase engineering, professional and business skills.

When we think of the career ladder, we often picture steps leading upward. However, in today’s world, careers most frequently do not need to advance in an upward direction to ensure satisfaction. In fact, they rarely do.

Steve Pogorzelski’s insightful book, Finding Keepers, (McGraw-Hill 2008) notes that “Career paths today look more like latticework than a ladder, as people shift job descriptions, move across departmental lines, or pick up a new set of skills while relying on the strengths that made them talented in their last position…they get out of a rut and revive the excitement they knew years before when work was new.”

As organizations broaden and create the need for more diverse skill sets, career “enrichment” often takes priority over career advancement. For example, one need only look at how organizations grow: most often through acquisitions or development of new business strategies, opportunities and initiatives. The more overall technical and business skills we can demonstrate, the more value we engineers offer over the long term as the organization evolves and takes on new market challenges.

Demonstrating Your Technical Skills

How do you demonstrate expert technical skills in your given engineering discipline? Are you able to present convincing technical presentations to management and peers? Can you lead complex projects and solve multifaceted engineering problems across organizational boundaries? Can you provide engineering guidance to enhance the skills of other engineers? Can you articulate how your product or technology will affect your organization’s business?

Engineers in the semiconductor industry, for instance, are strongly encouraged to continually enhance their engineering, professional and business skills. At National Semiconductor, the company offers an intensive engineering curriculum that develops expert technical and functional skills in specific disciplines within analog semiconductor engineering. For example, it invites gurus of the industry to teach its engineers Best in Class engineering excellence. Individuals are also encouraged to mentor and support junior colleagues on large, complex projects. New hires are adopted by more seasoned colleagues in a buddy system in order to provide coaching when needed.

Demonstrating Your Business Skills

Stronger overall business skills are another key component to ensuring future career versatility in the rapidly transforming semiconductor industry. For example, are you able to speak the language of upper management? Do you understand the dynamics that drive your company’s financial performance and how you can impact that effort? Does your level of financial acumen enable you to participate when decision makers in your organization are discussing “ROI” and “Inventory Turns?” At National Semiconductor, considerable investment is directed to teaching engineers business terminology, understanding the operational variables influencing the business as well as gaining an appreciation of the company’s business strategy and how to influence its execution.

Common Mid-Career Questions

Some of the other key questions that crop up in mid-career decision making are:

• Should I pursue an MBA to further develop business acumen?

• Do I stay in this product group or move to another?

• Do I stay in my field of engineering or maybe make a change? (This career change is most often towards a complementary discipline, e.g. from design to applications or from marketing to sales.)

• Do I deepen my skills in an area I already know, or get more broad experience across the company?

• How do I contribute to the overall success of my profession while remaining at my company … through mentoring, discovering patents, or research?

The answers to these questions will help engineers in their mid-career decision making. It is important to remember that careers can even take on new dimensions such as project management, adding a new engineering discipline to one’s repertoire, pursuing doctoral study or becoming a technologist/guru in a specific field.

Therefore, in addition to developing your technical and business skills, it is important to realize that career plans typically start with a personal conviction, mission or direction. This is what dictates where you want to go with your profession. This plan should encompass short-term (1-2 years) and long-term (3-5 years) career goals that leverage your strengths. Your plan should also incorporate significant developmental activities in order to ensure success.

Fred Wise is director of the Global Staffing Group at National Semiconductor Corporation in Santa Clara, California. Comments may be submitted to todaysengineer@ieee.org.

Opinions expressed are the author's.