Career advice for a young player

[ganymede]

Hello everyone. For some background, I'm a student in my third year and I'm interested in power electronics. I've landed my first ever electronics interview last year in June at a big automotive company, did well at the interview, solved all their exercises and was offered an internship on the spot In the power electronics team. I was excited that I could finally use the knowledge that I've gained so far in uni. Fast forward to today and so far all I've done is write documents and waste a lot of time in meetings, time that I could have otherwise spent studying to get better at power stuff. The contract will end this month and they want me to continue, but I'm 60% leaning towards not doing it and just find a job in a smaller company.

I'm not sure what I should do... Stick to the live-sucking job hoping that I will get the opportunity to actually contribute or try to find another job, assuming one will come up - not many power jobies where I live. Or perhaps finish uni and then put myself on the market again...

[RJSV]

   That's a tough one, but I'm wondering about more details:
   Is it a contract, in absence of any unemployment benefits, assuming you get to end of this contract ? And does that cover all your living expenses, or are you doing both school and work?  Part-time ?

   Even more to the point:  Do you, there, have a senior engineer, that provides valuable teaching, as you
work ?  That alone might be factor to stay on a bit.
   What about the university; are there advisors that can help with the choices ?
   Probably would have helped myself, to have been in a real related job, while still in school.  Asking your questions here is good, and might establish a source you know, for more questions, as they come up.
What I mean, there, is that you might go a few rounds, on this eevblog site, and wander off, for a short time, but then you will know, more precisely, what resources are (here). 
   Course, things change, but asking questions here, can't beat the body of expertise.  Some, here, are highly accomplished.  Generating documents, by the way, is needed, so you are doing work of value, even if seems boring or non-drama.  (I've worked, also, in SECURITY, dept. so a drama-free, boring day was a good thing !)

- - Rick
...(you can send Personal Message, if you need)

[nigelwright7557]

The paperwork can be a pain but its a vital part of design.
If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.

[nctnico]

Hello everyone. For some background, I'm a student in my third year and I'm interested in power electronics. I've landed my first ever electronics interview last year in June at a big automotive company, did well at the interview, solved all their exercises and was offered an internship on the spot In the power electronics team. I was excited that I could finally use the knowledge that I've gained so far in uni. Fast forward to today and so far all I've done is write documents and waste a lot of time in meetings, time that I could have otherwise spent studying to get better at power stuff. The contract will end this month and they want me to continue, but I'm 60% leaning towards not doing it and just find a job in a smaller company.

I'm not sure what I should do... Stick to the live-sucking job hoping that I will get the opportunity to actually contribute or try to find another job, assuming one will come up - not many power jobies where I live. Or perhaps finish uni and then put myself on the market again...

1) Finish your university education. Without that, your chances of getting hired for a real electronics job are small.
2) Find an internship where you get to build actual circuits and / or do this at home. Some hands on experience is important to get hired for electronics design jobs

Likely you ended up doing paperwork due to the lack of points 1 & 2.

For the rest it depends on your abilities whether you pull it off or not. In case of the latter, do find a job you can enjoy.

[Dr. Frank]

Hello,
I don't understand (maybe yourself as well) what you want to do.

Studying and getting into a company, especially Automotive, is in any case 'tough', but what do you expect, otherwise?
Building your own life and working on a job is the task for everybody being young, and being a student.
I recommend to make your engineering bachelor and master @ university, best is if you already have a (big) company in the background, so you don't have the fear what's about the future. The company may also propose an interesting master thesis. I think, that's a big advantage, and I as well do not understand, why you think over leaving that company at all.

If you gain some experience later in the job, and if you are a little bit clever, you have all chances to get even better / easier jobs in the whole European Community.
My Romanian Engineering colleagues are very well trained and very diligent, and much sought-after. 

I guess, you are either located in Timisoara or in Iasi, and you are currently @ Bosch, or @ Continental AT.
Power Electronics - that sounds more like Bosch, but you might as well investigate what the other company offers about Interior / HMI electronics. Latter has a big future ahead in E-mobility as well.

I can only recommend to you, to stay at either of both companies and look for your  fortune, in every kind of meaning of this word.
The Eastern countries of Europe will prosper, as the stupid German and Brussels government are currently driving most industries out of western Europe.

Frank   

[dobsonr741]

I've done is write documents and waste a lot of time in meetings, time that I could have otherwise spent studying to get better at power stuff.

What did you learn about the company culture, teamwork, the role of the mid and senior engineers on the meetings?
Did you find a role model among the mid or senior engineers?

That's what you buy into and invest your time in. 

[IanB]

Hello everyone. For some background, I'm a student in my third year and I'm interested in power electronics. I've landed my first ever electronics interview last year in June at a big automotive company, did well at the interview, solved all their exercises and was offered an internship on the spot In the power electronics team. I was excited that I could finally use the knowledge that I've gained so far in uni. Fast forward to today and so far all I've done is write documents and waste a lot of time in meetings, time that I could have otherwise spent studying to get better at power stuff. The contract will end this month and they want me to continue, but I'm 60% leaning towards not doing it and just find a job in a smaller company.

I'm not sure what I should do... Stick to the live-sucking job hoping that I will get the opportunity to actually contribute or try to find another job, assuming one will come up - not many power jobies where I live. Or perhaps finish uni and then put myself on the market again...

Not clear here. Have you graduated yet, or not?

If you do an internship while still still at university and before graduating, you will not get to do any real technical stuff. You are not qualified yet. Your goal is to get paid money and to observe how other people do their work.

If you do an internship after graduating, you shouldn't be doing an internship at all, you should be hired into a full-time job. But then you should be on a training path where you get real work to do with appropriate mentors.

So really, it depends on your situation. What do you mean by "finish uni" in your last paragraph? This totally confuses me.

[coppice]

Hello everyone. For some background, I'm a student in my third year and I'm interested in power electronics. I've landed my first ever electronics interview last year in June at a big automotive company, did well at the interview, solved all their exercises and was offered an internship on the spot In the power electronics team. I was excited that I could finally use the knowledge that I've gained so far in uni. Fast forward to today and so far all I've done is write documents and waste a lot of time in meetings, time that I could have otherwise spent studying to get better at power stuff. The contract will end this month and they want me to continue, but I'm 60% leaning towards not doing it and just find a job in a smaller company.

I'm not sure what I should do... Stick to the live-sucking job hoping that I will get the opportunity to actually contribute or try to find another job, assuming one will come up - not many power jobies where I live. Or perhaps finish uni and then put myself on the market again...

Most engineers don't like writing documents, so I can understand them giving as much of that as possible to the poor sucker... I mean intern. However, if you are young, and still learning, what exactly are you expected to bring to all these meetings? A notepad to take minutes? Some inefficient organisations will keep more senior people tied up in meetings most of the time, but junior people usually escape most of this productivity sucking activity.

[HuronKing]

Others have asked the right questions so far. If you're a 3rd/4th year student doing an internship... you're pretty much exactly where you ought to be in your career progression. You're tasked with writing documentation (no one likes doing that) and being included in meetings which hopefully are discussing designs or organizational details. Yes, meetings suck but they are opportunities to identify mentors and listen to how decisions are made.

No one is going to entrust an intern to do *actual* power engineering work. You might be super smart but you're not yet qualified to perform the work.

Finish university, learn everything you can at that company, and if the work they would offer you as a full-time engineer does not look satisfying, move on to another position.

[RJSV]

   Actually,...I've gotten a lot of professional satisfaction in that very activity, which is producing carefully written materials for engineering dept.
I've done some, limited, technical writing on (my own) patent application, some 400+ pages.

   Funny thing, in older years office meetings were held, closed doors, often having AT LEAST two chain-smokers, and often they were in 'higher' management.
I mean, (I) could tolerate the coffee cups everywhere, but the 'rights' to clean air, in the conference rooms was, well, to be snickered at!
Yay :  THAT little tradition, smoke-filled meeting rooms, doesn't seem so prevalent, lately!

[bookaboo]

It's hard to give a holistic piece of advice without information such as what the opportunities are in your present company, what the opportunities elsewhere are etc. However why not build up your home lab and learn there too? I'm not saying that means stay necessarily but it might be a good compromise.
Also the grass may or may not be greener, do you think the small companies are going to cater to your needs? Or just give you the bottom tasks until you bootstrap your skills up, in fact for either choice.... self educate yourself and don't expect your employer to do it all.

[rstofer]

It sounds like the OP is in a great position for the time being.  Might as well know now that engineering is more meetings than design.  Large projects will always be broken up into teams and teams need to coordinate.  You have the CPU hardware, CPU firmware, sensors and sensor drivers, actuators and actuator drivers, applications software and interface code, and so on.  On large projects, each of these might be a separate team with the applications team swearing they can't even start until everybody ahead of them is complete.  This type of thinking kills a project!

The key is to get people to make commitments for schedule and then track their performance to that schedule in periodic (weekly) meetings.  PUBLISH the schedule and make apparent those teams that are falling behind.  Drive the project to completion, don't just ride along.

Have fun with Gantt charts and PERT diagrams.  Microsoft Project can help with scheduling.  Schedule is everything!  A product that is late to market is usually dead on arrival - somebody else owns the market!

Team leaders are negotiators, not necessarily top level designers.  They have the unenviable task of trying to keep the top level folks on task.  "Whirly Birds" comes to mind.  It's a lot like herding cats!

In any event, everybody starts at the bottom and works up (except the genius folks) and the fact that the company is providing an internship to the OP is all good.  I would have a tendency to stay with the company after graduation.  The only caveat is that sometimes "the company that trains you doesn't pay you".  It's still about the money!  "If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing for money!".

I spent most of my career as a project manager (pays better).  I bought engineering the same way I bought construction.  I was driving the train, not getting pulled along like a caboose.

[jwet]

Definitely finish getting your degree!  It should be illegal for companies to offer starving student interns full time employment a year before they graduate.

Internships offer a learning opportunity.  What it sounds like you've learned is that there is lot of documentation requirements in the stuff you're doing or this company's approach.  These tasks tends to roll down hill as few enjoy it.  The value of an internship is seeing first hand what the job is, how people interact and who is having fun.  You won't get an opportunity like this ever again- take advantage, be nosey, be curious- get your grunt work finished and then wander around.  Not a lot is expected of interns and if you've nominally got your assignment finished, no one can fault you- you can even tell your supervisor that this is your intention.  Its a win win for everyone, you learn, they get their grunt work done for a fraction of an experienced engineer's wages and you learn.  Also, internships don't really count in job experience much- its basically part of schooling and you won't be judged if anyone even looks at it.

Get back to school, study hard, learn more about your specialty and have fun.  I think working for a big company is good to see how the big guys do things.  You might have already learned that.  You might want to look at a small division of Tier 1 in automotive or a Tier 2.  Automotive is nearly as paperwork intensive as miitary in general, the further you get from the OEM's, the less formal.

[bookaboo]

I guess it's location dependent but where I'm based (Belfast) what should be illegal is the universities offering starving students "engineering" courses.   

[Psi]

It can be annoying because the fun/actual electronic work tends to be stuff that every engineer at the company wants to do.
So the documentation and boring tasks all get offloaded to the new guy so the more experience engineers can "do the fun stuff".
So you only doing paperwork when starting out at the company is not all that unexpected.

You will find the smaller the company is the more real engineering work you get to do, especially when starting out.
It will be more fun but also usually more stressful as you will have more responsibility if stuff you made fails and costs the company money.  Ideally you want a smaller sized company but one that also has proper signoff and reviews of projects before they get released. Having another engineer to check your design and sign off on it is really good at caching mistakes you missed.
Badly run small companies tend to skip this. Where you design something and are asked to put it into production without anyone checking it. It's very high risk and i would avoid companies like that.

Smaller companies tend to pay less but not always. so it's a tradeoff.

[armandine2]

so far all I've done is write documents and waste a lot of time in meetings, time that I could have otherwise spent studying to get better at power stuff. ...

Yes a career is all about time - to progress you will be expected to cover various demands that are secondary, and there is no otherwise.

[ebastler]

Hello everyone. [...]

As a general bit of career advice: If you ask people for advice, they tend to appreciate if you actively listen, provide feedback and follow-up, get a dialog going.

It's been more than a week since you asked your question; a dozen people have contributed to the thread; you have been back on the forum regularly -- but have not acknowledged any of the replies here, or provided clarification in response to questions asked. This comes across as impolite, and does not help you to get value out of the advice provided. The same holds true for your interactions and learning on the job, of course.

Edit: Typos.

[Bud]

I spent most of my career as a project manager

That is why you like Microsoft Project. Engineers do not give shit to Microsoft Project. It is the project manager's job to create schedules and chase people down. If as an engineer I start waving my MS Project's schedule in front of my colleagues demanding them to meet the schedule on their part it is a sure way for me Not to get a result. Getting results from the peers is achieved using different means and is 80% behind the scene.

Edit: and by the way, nobody would assign an intern to be a project manager because of the simple reason that he does not have intimate knowledge of the organization yet, let alone having relevant experience.

[nigelwright7557]

Rather than just dump the job you have, stick with it while looking for something better.
I was in a job with vindictive boss who was always trying to replace me but couldn't.
I just waited for a better opportunity to come along then left.
3 months later first company went bust.

[Rick Law]

Perhaps they are attempting to discern your communication skills as well as your attitude.  People are often enthusiastic in dealing with things they like doing, but lethargic in dealing with things not of their interest.  Most jobs or projects will have necessary tasks that are interesting, as well as having necessary tasks that are boring, annoying or repetitive.  One needs to get all necessary tasks done, interesting or otherwise.

To discern what you will be doing as you gain experience, look at those already experienced.  Do they attend lots of meetings?  Write a lot?  If so, that is the culture of that organization, take it or leave it.  If not, you know as you gain experience you will eventually "graduate" out of having to do those meetings and writings or at least doing less of that.

Writing and meeting are actually good ways to make yourself known in your organization.

Others reading your document will likely consider you knowledgeable for that subject matter.  They may even consider you an expert for that subject matter.  They may draw on you as a consulting resource in the future.  Opportunity may come from that.  Their opinion of you certainly will be formed in accordance with the quality of your writing.  You can give a good first impression to others without even knowing them.

Meeting affords you face time with others -- some may have projects you like more, some may be able to pull you up the ladder, so look at writing and meeting as opportunities rather than chores.  You will find ways to benefit from these boring tasks if you do them with equal devotion and enthusiasm.

[IanB]

I think this is another "drive-by poster". No feedback, no response to questions.

[Psi]

Engineers do not give shit to Microsoft Project. It is the project manager's job to create schedules and chase people down. If as an engineer I start waving my MS Project's schedule in front of my colleagues demanding them to meet the schedule on their part it is a sure way for me Not to get a result.

Ah yes, the age old problem.

The managers and higher ups want a well managed and well scheduled project with deliverables on time and on budget.

Meanwhile the engineers are dealing with a project to create a new product, something which does not exist until after they have created it. Something with many unknowns and even worse, unknown unknowns.
The project may get to 99% complete and some totally unexpected and totally unpredictable issue might pop up requiring the design go back to square one RnD.

[rstofer]

I spent most of my career as a project manager

That is why you like Microsoft Project. Engineers do not give shit to Microsoft Project. It is the project manager's job to create schedules and chase people down. If as an engineer I start waving my MS Project's schedule in front of my colleagues demanding them to meet the schedule on their part it is a sure way for me Not to get a result. Getting results from the peers is achieved using different means and is 80% behind the scene.

Edit: and by the way, nobody would assign an intern to be a project manager because of the simple reason that he does not have intimate knowledge of the organization yet, let alone having relevant experience.

Of course an intern won't be a project manager but it might be good for the intern to shadow a project manager for awhile.  Maybe they will learn to detect when they're being played.

In my case, not only was there a multitude of players, they all worked for different companies.  There were often severe financial penalties for non-performance, at least to the owner.  I worked for the owner and we weren't in the business of building buildings, we wanted to make chips but we couldn't make chips until the building was complete and first to market always wins.   Second place to market is the first place loser.

Every contractor used the same software for setting up their schedule and these were stuffed back in the master schedule.

Another use of the master schedule was to determine what percentage of completion we were looking at when it came time for the contractors' monthly progress payments.  By nature, contractors overestimate the percent of completion and owners underestimate it.  The man with the master schedule controls cash flow!

I didn't do engineering, I bought engineering.  I never really wanted to do drafting board level engineering and I didn't care for CAD all that much either.  I wanted to go out and play.  The education was just table stakes.

[Ed.Kloonk]

I think this is another "drive-by poster". No feedback, no response to questions.

Makes you wonder, doesn't it?

[strawberry]

1) Finish your university education. Without that, your chances of getting hired for a real electronics job are small.

possible reason noone is even considering to hire even I am teaching those educated in electronics about what is transistor... fun stuf