What I've learned... ~3 years after school

Roughly three years ago, I started my current job as an electrical engineer fresh out of school. I had accepted a position as a power electronics engineer. However, if you asked me in my junior or senior year of school what discipline I wanted to go into, power electronics would have been at the bottom of the list. This is a short story describing many of the things I've learned any my experiences on my journey from school to industry.

Starting out

My first week on the job, my manager approached me and assigned me the project I was to work on and gave me a schematic. I was assigned to do product verification on a power supply (which mind you I knew absolutely nothing about). The thing that I had the most difficulty with, was taking my mind out of school mode. I was looking at sections of the schematic and trying to figure out, "What does this do?" The problem was, I had no high level understanding of what the problem was and how this supply was solving it. At some point I decided I needed to take a step back and understand the basics.

After grabbing a handful of books on the subject and reading very diligently for many weeks, I was able to breaking down this multi-page schematic of a power supply and break it down into blocks. My vocabulary increased steadily and I was able to speak the lingo more and more with the other engineers and technicians.

Technicians are your friends

On the job I started to become good friends with the technicians who were also doing power supply verification. I've noticed this phenomenon at other companies, but for some reason technicians and engineers don't always get along. Typically the engineers are less hands on and have more theoretical knowledge, and the technicians are more focused on hands work. I was very impressed with some of the types of things our technicians were doing. Not only are these guys the masters of board reworks, but they also have really good theoretical knowledge. The technicians taught me quite a few things, namely, proper measurement techniques, using the right tool for the job, using your time wisely, and many other things.

I would highly recommend befriending technicians at your place of employment and really listen to their input. In my case, these technicians had 20+ years of experience and could explain / understand the supply in the most intuitive of ways (something engineers out of school don't particularly have).

Find a mentor(s)

Mentors are important people in a young engineer's life. One thing that's great about having a mentor, is you consistently spend time with them. Spending time with this person (or persons) helps you build some trust and makes asking questions easier. In my case, my mentor also worked for my manager and was giving me work assignments. This worked out quite well for me and gave me the ability to build up my confidence when given new assignments.

Your mentor is someone you can let your guard down to and 'ask stupid questions.' A good mentor won't judge these questions and will make you think.

Use all available resources

There are always opportunities to grow yourself and build your resume. Working for a large corporation, I realized that there was a large amount of resources that I had access to. These resources include a large number of software packages and training material. In my free time, (usually on the weekends and after work) I spent a lot of time learning skills that were desirable for an electrical engineer. For me, these things included tools such as: PCB layout techniques, schematic entry and layout tools, simulation tools, etc. 

When presented opportunities

One day during my normal workflow, my manager presented me with an opportunity. It was a design challenge that involved designing a piece of test equipment. This was a project that I would work on by myself and it required a lot of hands on work. Fortunately, when the opportunity presented itself, I had many of the necessary tools under my belt due to me taking advantage of my available resources. This project required me to conceive a solution, simulate the hardware, layout a circuit board, generate material lists, write device firmware, and verify against specifications.

This project required a breadth of knowledge and I was responsible for scheduling meetings to demonstrate my progress. My fellow engineers gave me some great advice throughout the entire project and I'm very thankful for their support. My point about bringing up this story in particular is that I had no idea an opportunity like this was going to present itself, but it was great to be prepared when it did. Whenever you're given an opportunity like this, take it. These types of opportunities are necessary experiences to grow yourself as a professional.

Keep moving forward

Hopefully my experiences are ones that others can relate to, and hopefully, somebody can learn from my experiences. The biggest takeaway I would hope for others is the following:

Engineering is an extremely technical field. Try to ingest as much knowledge as you can and be receptive to other's input. Whatever your position is, try and work towards becoming an expert in that field. You will make mistakes, but making the same mistake repeatedly isn't one you want to happen. When your manager or colleagues see that you can make a mistake and learn to not make it again, they'll see that you're working hard to constantly move forward and be a great contributor.

Please, feel free to tell me if this helped you, or the types of things you've experienced during your career as an engineer.

-Michael