Unsure about my future career as EE - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: engineerguy
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: February 17, 2018, 12:32:11 am
content: This is something of a multifaceted topic. My main query involves my current job, and my future career: I work as a hardware/electronics engineer, a job I was grateful to be offered after graduating a few years ago, before taking a year to find any engineering work (whilst also having 3 false offers). But I'm finding myself question a lot of aspects of the company, the co-workers, and my work overall. Prior to being offered this job, my previous work was as an RFID technician (which quickly became boring and dreadful due to daily tech calls), and I had an internship at an RF engineering company in my last year at university. I really liked working at this company because I wanted to get into the RF industry, plus I was using Altium and CST Microwave studio (the latter I was already very familiar with owing to my final year thesis), so I was gaining a lot of experience. I was excited to go into work, and the other engineers I worked with were all very helpful and patient in explaining the many aspects of work involved. I really wanted to continue working there, but the company went downhill in my last week, so they couldn't offer me anything...a few months after my internship finished, I found out a fair few engineers had left (keep in mind the R&D team had over 30 engineers).The current company I'm at is a lot smaller, and the main senior engineer I work with has been there for a while, so he knows how everything works inside out; a lot of the staff have to ask him how certain things work before something can be done. Unfortunately, during my first year I found it very difficult to work with this engineer because he rarely had the patience to explain a lot of things that were obvious to him, but weren't obvious to me (relating to the products we make/design). A lot of the times my questions would be answered with "Don't worry about that, do something else for now"...which eventually meant that I couldn't complete a task properly. Whilst I was gaining a lot more experience using Altium, I found it frustrating that I wasn't able to learn as much from the senior engineer, since the main reason I was employed was to alleviate his workload. The first time we sat down, and started flipping through pages of schematics, I couldn't help but to be excited, feeling my face redden up the way it always does...but our collaboration didn't last long since he always had something else to do. I was usually left to do the sort of menial tasks I was doing at my technician job (understandable since I was new).I've mentioned this to our R&D manager a few times; he's spoken to this engineer, and so far this year he's changed somewhat. But part of me still felt disillusioned, so I ended up applying for a job with an RF company close by, so I had the interview, and they offer me the job, but I declined it since it wasn't what I thought it would be (long story). I've always thought that part of working for an engineering company when you don't have a lot of experience, is that you'll have something of a mentor guiding you, someone you can approach for questions? Wouldn't you want to have engineers that are properly trained up, and know how your products come together? I really want to set myself up for my future career, and whilst I know being an engineer is to solve problems on your own, I still think you need to have that mentorship and collaboration with others.Just curious about other people's opinions, their experiences, because I've only been in the industry for over a year and half since graduating, so partly don't know what to expect, and partly don't know whether my current expectations are too high. Have you worked for a company you really liked? What were the main reasons for this? Or if not, what were the reasons you didn't like it? Should I just keep quiet and do as I'm told, or look for opportunities elsewhere?

author: ataradov
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 17, 2018, 01:03:03 am
content: Assigned "mentor" is rare, IMO.The key here is to identify others, who are knowledgeable in different parts of the system. That one guy had to explain things to them already, and hopefully they know. This way you can offload the main guy, and at the same time, by the time you approach him, you know that nobody else has asked this before, or the question is not a common knowledge.Different people have different strengths, utilize them.I liked all my jobs, but I did not necessarily liked all the people I had to work with. This is not a big deal and will happen from time to time. I never had problems with managers and direct supervisors though.

author: ajb
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 17, 2018, 01:11:19 am
content: Sorry to hear about your job frustrations.Having been the guy who's tremendously overworked but still relied on to answer a bunch of questions every day, one thing that you may want to propose to your senior engineer is to have a scheduled time, once a week or whatever is appropriate, where you bring all of your questions to him at once. If he's constantly being interrupted (not necessarily just by you), even with important matters that truly need his attention, that can be a tremendous killer of productivity and a big frustration, and could be making it hard for him to give you the attention you want/need. I was in exactly that position a few months ago due to a big time-sensitive project, and establishing daily "office hours" where people could bring non-emergencies to me so that I could spend the rest of the day focusing was a HUGE help. Now that we're over the hump on that project, I have a sign that just says "Slack if not on fire" that I put on my door as needed. Consider that general life advice for doing deep work in an office environment.Of course it could just be that your senior engineer is a jerk and needs the manager to twist his arm some morePersonally, I've always worked in small environments where I have to do a lot of figuring things out for myself, and there are definitely times when wish I had more senior people to look to for guidance--but that's all water under the bridge, and I'm generally quite happy with where I've wound up. You should definitely learn as much as you can from the more senior people around you, but sometimes the environment or personalities or nature of the work impede that. Even if you can't learn engineering skills, sometimes you can learn soft skills, like how to best help your future junior engineers in a few years once *you* become the senior. And if all else fails, there's always independent study--perhaps talk to your manager about the company sending you to seminars, or paying for some dev boards, or that sort of thing, if you can make the case that it will make you a more valuable member of the team.

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 17, 2018, 01:19:15 am
content: Mentoring works best when the mentor and mentee don't see each other very often. That distance allows the the mentor see the wood for the trees, and to offer very different long-term observations and suggestions. It also allows the mentee to ignore any that are not relevant.That is all, of course, very different to what should happen on a day-to-day basis with project work. In this case specific guidance and on-the-job training are relevant.Keep the two concepts separate.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 17, 2018, 01:26:03 am
content: Never expect mentoring. If you can find someone to guide you along the way, they can be a great help. However, most of us only find people who help with small specific things, rather inconsistently. Few of us experience the luxury of long term mentoring. Even when working in a large organisation with many engineers. I'm not even sure how value it would be. Too much input from a single source might give you a rather narrow perspective. A sprinkling of scattered inputs might actually be the better option.

author: @rt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 17, 2018, 07:35:49 am
content: Great company, and a truck load of integrity there.Their biggest problem is that people were afraid to expose any problem to anyone more senior to themselves,out of fear it would make them look bad, when in reality this isn’t how problems get solved.

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 17, 2018, 09:03:08 am
content: Quote from: tggzzz on February 17, 2018, 01:19:15 amI forgot to add that your should join a professional organisation that has a local branch. For example the IET has mentoring schemes for just such purposes.https://www.theiet.org/membership/career/mentoring/

author: engineerguy
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: February 18, 2018, 09:06:42 pm
content: Thanks for the replies everyone. I may have not stated this, but I do enjoy the work overall (except for documentation :/), I like the job, and the other staff are great, just this one guy I'm struggling with. Mainly just wanted to hear of other experiences. And as for mentoring a future junior engineer myself, I actually quite like the idea, since I know I'll have someone to offload tasks to which will free up my time...I used to tutor the first year electrical subject whilst at university, and I know what it's like to have numerous people ask you the same question, but I'm a patient person so I didn't mind

author: Gregg
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 18, 2018, 09:59:29 pm
content: Part of the underlying problem may be that universities are more focused on numbers, basic functions and other parameters that are easily to place on exams and graded than they are on understanding how things work and relationships of basic components in very complex (real world) systems.The senior engineer may just be frustrated in the amount of time he may need to spend on something he thinks should have already been covered in a person’s education at least to the point where said person should be able to figure it out on their own. On the other hand he may be senior just because he has been there so long.I remember taking two hours trying to explain to a newly graduated EE why he was getting a shock due to a poor grounding connection and the capacitance of his body. I don’t think he understood and I gave up in frustration.Your best bet is to communicate with other engineers (and maybe some non-engineers that have been around) in your company and find alternate sources for answers. A different approach may be to not ask for simple solutions, but ask where to find your solutions. Communication tactics can open up worlds of information.The most important single thing I learned in life is that I don’t have to know the answers, I just have to know where and how to find and apply them.

author: abraxa
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 19, 2018, 10:26:00 pm
content: Quote from: engineerguy on February 18, 2018, 09:06:42 pmSounds to me like mismatched expectations. You may be used to having someone you can ask when you hit a roadblock, i.e. "why waste time and bust my head over this when I can just ask". He, on the other hand, may be expecting you to do all the leg work yourself and *only* come to him when you really can't figure something out for yourself.As a hypothetical scenario, let's assume you approached him with 3 questions so far and every time, he thinks to himself "he didn't tell me what he's tried or what he's suspecting is going on, so he just wants the answer without performing due diligence to not waste my time". I bet you he'll see you as a drag and do whatever he can to avoid you in the future.I'm not saying that this is what you did and I don't know your situation. Just food for thought, hoping that maybe you can gain some insight into the issue by seeing things from his point of view, too.You could, by the way, also flat out ask him whether you're meeting his expectations and if not, what you can do to meet them.