General > General Technical Chat
How do I get out of power?
EEVblog:
--- Quote from: PythonGuython on September 25, 2020, 06:09:08 pm ---I've got two more years at school and I've done an internship at the largest power company in my part of the country. It went well and it's safe to say that I have a career in power for the rest of my life. That's the last thing I want to do with my life. Is it hard to pivot industries within EE? There's so many fields I'd like to work in: tech, drones, aerospace, biomedical, electronics design, low-level programming, RF, semiconductors, but power is the one field that does not make that list. How do I convince an employer in those industries to hire me when the only professional experience I have is at a power company?
--- End quote ---
Easy, you work on that stuff.
I'm not talking as your day job, but "midnight engineering" working on your own projects and/or side contracts if possible. Then you take your designs and whatnot along to the interview to show off. And then you be honest about say you have all this power industry experience, but your real passion is *insert here* and then show them your projects. Any good company worth working for will eat that up.
Well, when I say "easy", you have to put in the work. Could take 6-12 months hard work on your own time to have a project or two worth showing off.
Cerebus:
--- Quote from: IanB on September 25, 2020, 11:43:21 pm ---One is that for a fulfilling career path in engineering, your work and responsibility will grow and expand beyond the simply technical, into areas like cost, schedule, client relationships, team management, supervision, planning, safety, environment, legislation and compliance, and a multitude of other things that increase your scope and responsibility.
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Again, that's a "one man's meat is another man's poison" thing. One of the worst things that many organizations do is turn good engineers into bad managers or poor administrators, by having no career advancement paths that don't eventually lead to "general management". A very few provide a growth path for engineers that keeps them engineers (if that's what they want) - Sun, when it still existed, excelled at have these rĂ´les available so that good engineers didn't go to waste as bad managers. If progress towards general management is someone's forte, that's fine, and a traditional career path will suit them. But that path is not, and should not be seen as, the only way to progress in one's career if that doesn't suit one. That said, it can be hard to avoid as enlightened companies, like the pre-Oracle Sun was, are few and far between.
I do, however, heartily encourage any and all of my competitors to stick to the "management is the only upward career path for engineers" strategy.
fourfathom:
--- Quote from: Cerebus on September 26, 2020, 12:18:11 am ---And treated as a "local hero" for doing engineering? Pull the other one.
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It happens. It happened to me, at least "local in our corner of the industry". I loved it, but pretty quickly decided that it wasn't good for me to have my ego stroked so much. So now I only accept a moderate amount of ego-stroking, and have tried to move out of my technical comfort-zone.
I agree with the general consensus here: Don't get pigeonholed early in your career, learn what you can where you can, do your best work wherever you are, be flexible and open-minded. Expect to be pleasantly surprised at how interesting the challenges you will be facing are. Don't be afraid to move on when there better opportunities, but do so ethically. There will be trials and tribulations, learn from these with grace and don't give up on yourself. One of my most valuable experiences was being fired from my technician job; I learned that companies hire and fire for their own reasons, it's not a "'til death do us part" relationship.
This advice may seem contradictory in places, but so is live. Have fun.
Cerebus:
--- Quote from: fourfathom on September 26, 2020, 02:09:27 am ---
--- Quote from: Cerebus on September 26, 2020, 12:18:11 am ---And treated as a "local hero" for doing engineering? Pull the other one.
--- End quote ---
It happens. It happened to me, at least "local in our corner of the industry". I loved it, but pretty quickly decided that it wasn't good for me to have my ego stroked so much. So now I only accept a moderate amount of ego-stroking, and have tried to move out of my technical comfort-zone.
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Y'all know I was just joshing, right?
fourfathom:
--- Quote from: Cerebus on September 26, 2020, 03:21:56 am ---Y'all know I was just joshing, right?
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You do it with a very straight face!
As for management track vs engineering track, there do seem to be many more opportunities to "advance" into management. When I retired I was at Cisco (we were acquired two years previously) and I had shifted from being a good engineer and a poor manager (I was managing, but had kept some design responsibilities), back into a pure engineering track. Cisco had a good path for me, but few engineers were offered the opportunity. In contrast, there were vastly more middle and upper-level management positions than there were upper-echelon engineering jobs. But that sort of makes sense, given the way large businesses operate. It's not some sinister management conspiracy, it just reflects the operational needs of the company.
I used to have the motto "Don't get good at something you don't like doing" but that advice can be damaging to your career if you carry it to an extreme. You do need to be someone who will step up and get the job done, even if it's not your favorite thing. And hay, you might learn something interesting and useful!
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