What is the job like?

LakeClouds
Sat, 25 May 2013 11:14:06 +0000

Work is totally different from school and it’s actually hard to predict whether you’ll like a job as an engineer based on whether you like/dislike engineering school.

One big split is whether you’re doing design work or more maintenance/support work. For design work you have projects that last months/years and are working with a team of diverse skills. Sometimes the engineering aspect is a small piece as you or the team leader are coordinating many involved departments like quality/ manufacturing/ marketing/ etc. For support engineering, it’s more of day-to-day troubleshooting and problem solving. Usually you’re not working with other engineers but production or other operations staff.

As phaser stated, soft skills are incredibility important and probably the area where engineer school does the poorest job. It is odd how misaligned engineering school and practice actually are, unless you’re planning to be an academic.