Engineering is a lot of math, formulas, and coding right? Nope. More like paperwork, meetings, and oh ya more paperwork.
The reality is that only a small portion of a company does the heavy number crunching, the majority do paperwork and logistical tasks. Throughout your engineering education you might solve at least a thousand math heavy problems, however, once you’re out things change. In the corporate world you do a lot more ‘paperwork’, you deal with mildly-tempered bosses, and interact with colleagues who never seem to get anything to you on time.
So what is this ‘paperwork’? Why is there so much of it to fill out? Depending on your work and industry paperwork can involve permits, product data sheets, transmittals, memorandums, reports, inspections, and most importantly, bureaucratic paperwork from your own company. I’m not trying to bog you down or make you quit engineering. I simply want to reveal a large part of engineering to you that is never discussed in college. Only a few college engineering programs legitimately train their students in technical report writing and developing professional communication skills. I would recommend to go through your school’s engineering department’s curriculum to see what they have to offer.
Time To Use Your Soft Skills
Besides paperwork you’ll do a lot meetings, interactions, and coordinating with 3rd party organizations. This is where your soft skills come into play that never get honed or sharpened during your engineering degree program. I always recommend engineering majors to minor in business, psychology, or communications in order to deal with this exact issue. A large portion, I would even guess to say 75%, of your career will rely on your soft skills for advancement. If you make a mathematical error or an engineering blunder in the technical side of your work the result almost always turns out okay. Why? because engineering solutions are reviewed by multiple parties multiple times. Someone other than you is bound to catch the mistake aka “quality control”. However, no one but you will correct your social blunders.
Social skills are one of the most powerful tools an engineer can have, but it is the least trained. I highly recommend you work on these skills throughout your college career to prepare for the real world. If you are already in the real world with these issue, I suggest you pick up a book or two on EQ (Emotional Quotient) and get to reading.
Be A Bored Engineer
So you ask yourself, “Why am I studying engineering then if this is my fate?”. Trust me, you want it to be this way. When you are called to use your engineering education to solve a problem it usually means something has gone wrong. You want life as an engineer to be boring. Boring means the project is sailing smoothly, ahead of schedule, and under budget. When life starts getting exciting as an engineer that marks the moment a project starts lagging and losing money.
Trust me. You want boredom.
-E J
P.S. If you’re a new reader go ahead and read some of my other posts here!
