Have I ruined my life?

Japher
Mon, 11 Jun 2012 14:56:24 +0000

I am a ChemE and my undergrad gpa was worse than yours, I had no internships or co-ops through college, and I am now an engineering manager at a biofuels R&D company with an MBA (from a real brick and mortar ranked school) and a nice salary. So, no, you haven’t ruined your life. In fact you have learned a very valuable lesson.

When I got out of school I got a job in operations at a large biotech company. I played that game for a while, moving up the ranks, always asking “how can I bring more value to myself by contributing to the value of the company”. I eventually moved out of operations into process engineering, an easy step to make if you have the engineering degree and a good track record and troubleshooting problems. A couple years there and I moved into design, an easy step to make if you learn how to facilitate change. A couple years doing design work and you should be prime for executive training for business or go on your own at night, and when you graduate; management.

Learn as much as you can when working. More importantly, know how to get along with people and how to instigate change. Your gpa is only good for that first job. Luckily for engineers, operations doesn’t really care about your gpa if you have an engineering degree… and spinning operations experience into an engineering role is easy and makes sense. I now manage engineers who want the process engineering roles that focus on operations so that they can become better designers.