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Top 10 Ways To Screw-Up Your Engineering Career
By Jim Anderson
How long will your engineering
career last? Do the math and you'll realize that
your career takes up about half of your life.
Anyone can give you helpful career advice, so
let me do something completely different — would
you like to know how to screw-up your
engineering career?
Let’s assume that you wanted to
stop your career in a spectacular fashion. What
would be the best way to do this? Here are my
suggestions for the best ways to sink your
career all by yourself:
#10: Don’t Go To College /
Don’t Finish If You Do Go
Do you know why you went
to university? People get confused and think
that they spent those four to six years learning
a specific tool or methodology so they could get
a job — wrong! The reason that you spent all
that time going to school is, amazingly enough,
so that you could learn how to think. You
learned how to learn — you were exposed to a
whole range of ideas and topics that you
previously knew nothing about. Yes, tools are
good to know now; however, they won’t
support a 40-year career. Your ability to
constantly learn and use new ideas will.
#9: Be The Best Problem
Finder That You Can Be
Engineers have a fatal flaw — we
can quickly identify problems. A good way to
kill your career is to become known as the
person who always shows what is wrong with every
new idea. Your career can take off like a rocket
if you can learn to anticipate and solve
problems before they happen instead of just
pointing them out when they show up. Just
finding the problem won’t do anyone any good.
#8: Don’t Sweat The Small
Stuff
Your company employs more people
than just you. What you might consider “small
stuff” like time reporting, expense reports,
security precautions, badge rules, etc. is
probably the responsibility of one or more other
people. If you decide to skip doing something
then you are basically showing disrespect to a
lot of people. Listen to the voice of experience
on this issue: this is never a good idea. Save
yourself a lot of grief and do it the right way
— your career will thank you for it later on.
#7: Bee A Reel Fast Tiper
What you learned in school was
correct: spelling and grammar count. In
the 21st Century, your career will
live and die by email — more people will know
you by your typed word than by meeting you
face-to-face. You can minimize the damage to
your career that emails can cause by counting to
10 before hitting the send key on each email (so
that you can proofread your message for spelling
and grammar errors). If you make people work to
understand you, then you are out of luck — they
just don’t have the time.
#6: Fall In Love With Your
Employer
I’m sure that your job is a
great place to work, but be careful. Hopefully
you will grow to love your job — the people, the
place, the challenges. However, your company
cannot and will not grow to love you — because
it can’t. Someday you may decide that you want a
new relationship or the company may decide the
same thing — this is the real world. However,
while you are in this relationship you will get
out of it what you put into it. Spend your time
wisely and keep your engineering skills sharp
and you will be better off for having done so.
#5: Only Be Nice To the
Important People
Man, this is so true. However,
there is one problem — there is no way to
determine just who the important people are.
What this means is that you need to be nice to
everyone. Guards, secretaries, cafeteria
workers, contractors — everyone deserves your
respect.
#4: Let Your Work Speak for
Yourself
The engineering thinking goes
something like this: “… if I create really
clever code, process, design, etc, everyone will
realize how important I am and will love me for
it.” Sorry, life does not work this way. You
need to be able to communicate your ideas and
solutions in order for people to realize your
unique value.
#3: Always Use Email for
Everything
Email is a very 21st
Century curse. Its value has almost been
overwhelmed by abuse. I’m not even talking about
spam; rather I’m referring to the volume of
workplace email that you have to pick your way
through just to uncover the important stuff. Use
email when it's appropriate, but also pick up
the phone or walk down the hall when the need
arises.
#2: Never Make a Decision
Without Having ALL of the Facts
You will never have
all of the facts that you need. The ability
to reliably estimate scope/size/time/cost
quickly and correctly is invaluable. You’ve
heard the sad engineering stats: 80% of projects
fail due in part to poor estimating. Projects at
your company have lots of things that need to be
estimated: schedule, cost, staffing levels,
risks, etc. Keep your eyes open and learn how
experienced folks come up with their estimates.
#1: You Got A Degree — Now
You Are All Done Learning!
The key to having a successful
career is in becoming a subject matter expert
for your area. Going forward, your value will be
determined by how you can help your employer
solve its problems, and in order to do this you
have a lot of learning to do as you grow to
understand how it runs its business both today
and tomorrow.
I have shared a few ways that
you can stop your career in a dramatic fashion.
The choice is yours: how do you want your career
to turn out? If you decide that you want to have
a great career, then you will need to continue
to study and learn, seek new work challenges,
meet and help new people, and look for tough
problems to solve. Everything changes — never
ever stand still!
Dr. Jim Anderson is president of Blue Elephant
Consulting [www.BlueElephantConsulting.com],
which provides “Unforgettable communication
skills that will set your ideas free…” Contact
Dr. Anderson at
jim@BlueElephantConsulting to
enquire about speaking engagements.
Comments may be submitted to
todaysengineer@ieee.org.
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