Some Thoughts on Mentoring
There have been some great posts on networking and impostor syndrome in the science blogosphere lately, which has prompted me to do some thinking about one of those pieces of advice that always crops up in such discussion: finding a mentor. It’s pretty generally accepted that mentorship matters at every career stage, but as someone early in my career, it seems that the first advice I’m given when I’m struggling is “find a mentor”. One mistake I think most of us make at least once is assuming that because we report to someone, they will serve as our mentor. Maybe it’s because finding a mentor is actually not a straightforward process. I can’t write a flow chart that will consistently find someone a mentor. Personally, I’ve generally found mentors simply by talking to professors outside of class, about something other than class, or talking to professors who I no longer take…
Looking over the fence
My husband, Mr.ME and I often compare notes on what it’s like being in industry versus graduate school as part of our “how was your day” discussions.He graduated the year before I did, so it’s interesting to see what it would be like if we’d taken the other route after graduation. Of course, not all graduate schools are the same, nor are all jobs the same, but we decided to offer some tag team insight into what our experiences have been like. Describe your job Miss MSE: I’m a graduate student in materials science at a major research university. My research is to study the structure of amorphous solids by molecular dynamics simulations. This is a major departure from what I did as an undergraduate, which was classical metallurgy. Mr. ME: I’m a mechanical engineer responsible for the design of a key subsystem for a consumer product produced by a major OEM. …
Real Life Examples of My $100K+ Education At Work
I’m convinced that in my job, I use 95% of the material covered in engineering school less than 5% of the time. Most of what I do boils down to on the job experience or falls in the category of project management. In many cases, not much would separate me from a talented hobbyist or tinkerer. Of course, this makes me question the value of my education. Why did I spend all that time learning all that stuff? I’ve considered it for a while, and I like to tell myself that the 5% of the time I really use my degree is what makes me valuable as an employee. In a tangential line of discussion, there’s also been a fair bit of talk in the news recently about the workforce, the number of engineers trained in the US, and why so many STEM students change majors. One line of reasoning…
Planning Beyond Graduation
This semester, I’m working with an undergraduate on research, and we’ve had some interesting discussions about preparing for the academic track instead of an industrial path. My graduate institution is a very research-oriented school, and encourages students to follow the academic path. Undergraduate courses are very theoretical, and their senior capstone experience is a small research project. Most students are expected to participate in a research project at some point besides the capstone project. My undergraduate instution was almost exactly the opposite, expecting the majority of students to find jobs in industry after graduation. Students are encouraged to take internships, and the senior capstone project is done as an industrial partnership. Materials science and engineering, courtesy of the “and”, tends to have a much larger research component than other engineering fields, so it’s not so absurd for a department to expect most of their students to go to grad school. However,…
WTF #4: Illusory Superiority
Illusory superiorty, a.k.a. full of ourselves. This is the only conclusion I can come up with to explain the surprise that all of us felt when FluxCorp decided to shutter our satellite design centre and to layoff my entire design team, save myself (who’s being transferred out-of-country). Last August, our team was re-org’d into a new division. We all thought it was a positive move. The new division’s goals were better aligned with the products we were working on and both our new manager and new director are old guards in this product line. Although we knew that our building lease was soon coming to an end and that an office move was likely in order to save money, we felt confident we would move along with everyone else to the new site. After all, why wouldn’t we? We are “wonderful” designers. We have a good reputation with the people…
WTF #3: Shanghaied
Last week, I touched on how I knew that my colleagues were to be laid off the night before it happened, all right before the Christmas break. Santa, who came to layoff the crew, granted me a layoff-eve information session, also known as a really-awkward-dinner-that-I-couldn’t-run-away-from. He articulated his hope that I would stay with the company by accepting FluxCorp’s offer to relocate elsewhere. That elsewhere is half way around the world. Literally. The place is Shanghai. Nope, ain’t Shanghai, Virgina I’m talking about. Not even Shanghai, West Virgnia (what’s up with those Virginians and Shanghai?!). Yes, Shanghai, China. It turns out many of the jobs being cut by FluxCorp, in the US and Canada, are being outsourced there. Real engineering jobs. High paying engineering jobs. Engineering jobs that require a graduate degree. In fact, a team of 11 in Shanghai has been manager-less for a while now, and Santa was…
WTF #2: Motivating the Unmotivable
What The Flux is a semi-regular weekend feature on EngineeringBlogs.org that follows the follies and jollies of an engineer in industry, yours truly.— Last week, I mentioned that Santa Claus came to town to shut down our satellite office. What I didn’t tell you was that Santa Claus had a private meeting with me the night before the official announcement. He wanted me to stay with FluxCorp and suggested that I accept an offer to relocate and transfer to another part of the company. He also made it clear that there was no Plan B should I reject the offer. Next morning, I went to work and watched my colleagues being their usual cheery selves, knowing that in another hour or two, those cheery smiles will be turned upside down once Santa Claus arrived at the office. Santa was pretty blunt in his delivery — straight forward, no BS, and…
WTF #1: Santa Claus is Coming to Town
What The Flux is a semi-regular weekend feature on EngineeringBlogs.org that follows the follies and jollies of an engineer in industry, yours truly.— Christmas. It’s over, but I’m still thinking about it. It’s a time for family. It’s a time for food. It’s a time for gifts. It’s a time for bright eyed children peeking under the Christmas tree. It truly is the most wonderful time of the year. Red, green, blue, white. The multi-coloured lights hanging off snow-covered pine trees create a beautiful spectacle when reflecting off newly fallen snow on the front lawns of suburbia. A winter wonderland indeed. And here at work, here at FluxCorp, the mood was no less festive. Two weeks before Christmas, one of our higher-ups was kind enough to fly from somewhere close to the armpit of America all the way to our igloo. We sure were excited. What yuletide greetings will he…
STEM Recruiting Games Exposed
There’s been a constant call in the media to recruit more people into science, technology, engineering and math. I’ve talked a lot about this issue on my own blog. Mainly that I believe the argument that we are graduating too few people into STEM disciplines is one propagated by industry to keep wages low on the one hand but also to feed their desire to expect more and more from entry level employees and cut back on training that was standard in the past. There’s been reports on both sides, arguing that impending mass retirement will create a shortage and others that we’re falling behind other countries and need to catch up. Other concerns are probably valid but mis-targeted. Analysis I have done on open jobs shows that the kinds of engineers we’re actually short of are software engineers and programmers and developers rather than the more core engineering disciplines. But…
Balance in an Engineering Career
This week I want to look at a blog that was written by someone else. Reason being that I think they have done a better job and are better positioned to talk about my topic area this week. That of Colonel John D. Sims. Despite being in the US Army and having little to do with engineering Colonel Sims is someone that has experienced a challenging career. I’m not talking about being on the front line or being a great solider. No, I’m talking about how in difficult situation he has learned to become himself and though understanding his role as a commander has better served not only his country and the army but more importantly the soldier under him and his family. While I’m not saying that our jobs as engineers are anything like being part of the armed forces, I think what Colonel Sims has to say strikes…