ADVICE on Major Change- Business or Engineering (Big Difference)?

juillet
Fri, 11 Aug 2017 05:16:25 +0000

People who have full-time job experience: Is the “picking the right field” just self-indulgent fluff (a job is just a job, something to be done and everywhere is the same), or are different job fields really better for some people than others to the point where it makes a major difference? I feel like I should change to engineering, but it feels impractical.

It’s somewhere in between. The kind of work that you do will have a large impact on your quality of life: if you are unhappy at work because your role or field isn’t a good fit for you, that will bleed into other areas of your life as well. And being happy and fulfilled at work should not be underestimated: it’s a wonderful feeling and has the effect of increasing your happiness and satisfaction overall. Different people have different levels of attachment to their careers: for example, some folks’ identities are very tied up in their careers and unhappiness at work will have a bigger effect on them. For other people, a job is just what you do to pay the bills so you can live the rest of your life, and as long as the job is not terrible they don’t care. But generally speaking, something you are a very poor match for will have the effect of making you pretty unhappy.

That said, it’s not really about “field” necessarily, so much as it is position and role. For example, a lot of people ask about working in the tech industry and assume they need to major in CS or engineering to do so. In reality, tech companies hire lots of different kinds of roles and many of them are not technical. On the flip side, if you work in marketing, your role will likely be pretty similar regardless of whether you work for a pharmaceutical company or a tech company - you’ll be designing marketing campaigns and understanding your consumers. They’ll just be different audiences or consumers.

Again, there’s some flex in that, too. For example, I’m a UX researcher, and I work in video games. If I were to move to a non-games tech company (like Google or Facebook), the majority of aspects and tasks in my role would likely stay the same - but there are some unique things about working in video games specifically that I love that I wouldn’t get in another role. But generally speaking, I’d probably enjoy UX research at other tech companies almost if not just as much. Or for another, being a lawyer at a BigLaw firm is different from being in-house counsel at a corporation, which is different from being a lawyer in the public sector or at nonprofit. But many of the role tasks will be similar.

I have never considered business in high school, and have always been more interested in science-related fields.

Well, not having considered before isn’t necessarily a good reason to reject it. High school students are exposed to a very limited number of subjects and careers, and many people fall in love with something that they didn’t know existed in high school (or college, for that matter). The question is, do you like it? Is it a career that you think you may want to pursue? On the flip side, why do you want to major in engineering? What is it that attracts you to the major and the career?

Also, UGA has fine engineering - you don’t have to go to The Best engineering school to get a job in the field later. If you want to major in engineering and you can’t transfer to Tech, staying at UGA is not a bad option. (As a side note, too bad Southern Polytechnic got absorbed by Kennesaw State!)