Undergrad looking for career guidance

P.S.

My advice to ALL UNDERGRADS: MAKE SURE YOU HAVE A MINOR if you are doing a bachelor's degree!!!

Something like Math or English or whatever.

It gives you a lot of flexibility in job opportunities later in life!
I disagree! An engineer can get a job doing just about anything with a bachelor's. You don't need another specialty - unless you want to get into management, then get an MBA (but let your employer fund that if possible, it can be done online if you travel).

Engineering teaches you how to solve problems and how to learn - you can learn anything really easily these days via the internet. Don't waste expensive and precious college time on English, History, etc.

My kids have engineering degrees and neither are doing engineering - technical sales and software development. Their friends moved from engineering to teaching, law, and other varied careers.
 
Thank you all for your valuable information and advice.

So far, here is what I'm getting as points to keep in mind:

  • I should first acquire experience working in-office and/or on-site with a company, maybe 2 to 3 years, and focus on learning everything I can get my hands on (SME's sound like the way to go for that), the A-Z of processes, not just the technical and programming parts, so as to require minimal help from others and actually be able to solve things on my own.
    Just how much you enjoy / can tolerate having not enough documentation, not enough support, and just barely enough knowledge to be able to MAYBE do what everyone expects you to be able to do -- well, that's when you grow from being a "kid" to a full-fledged adult.

    Not everyone ever becomes an "adult", by that definition. They still live long, meaningful lives, raise children and grandchildren, and die happy.

    It this line of work for you?
  • Do I want to die a happy kid or a full-fledged adult. Thanks for the food for thought, Aardwizz.

  • Automation places are usually not nice places. Even when they are, work can tire you out mentally enough to not be up for sightseeing after.
    My advice to ALL UNDERGRADS: MAKE SURE YOU HAVE A MINOR if you are doing a bachelor's degree!!!

    Something like Math or English or whatever.

    It gives you a lot of flexibility in job opportunities later in life!
  • I'm planning on getting master's degree after my bachelor's. A settled career in teaching and part-time consulting is something I'm interested in after I've had my fill with traveling.

All in all, I just want to dedicate a part (just a part) of my career to worldwide experiences, avoid year-round routine work when I'm not traveling (working varied jobs from home), after which I'd consider settling down for teaching & consulting. This is all just idealistic speculating of course, the future might land me on a completely aberrant career path for all I know.

Thanks everyone for your inputs!
 
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Thank you all for your valuable information and advice.

So far, here is what I'm getting as points to keep in mind:

  • I should first acquire experience working in-office and/or on-site with a company, maybe 2 to 3 years, and focus on learning everything I can get my hands on (SME's sound like the way to go for that), the A-Z of processes, not just the technical and programming parts, so as to require minimal help from others and actually be able to solve things on my own.
  • Do I want to die a happy kid or a full-fledged adult. Thanks for the food for thought, Aardwizz.

  • Automation places are usually not nice places. Even when they are, work can tire you out mentally enough to not be up for sightseeing after.
  • I'm planning on getting master's degree after my bachelor's. A settled career in teaching and part-time consulting is something I'm interested in after I've had my fill with traveling.

All in all, I just want to dedicate a part (just a part) of my career to worldwide experiences, avoid year-round routine work when I'm not traveling (working varied jobs from home), after which I'd consider settling down for teaching & consulting. This is all just idealistic speculating of course, the future might land me on a completely aberrant career path for all I know.

Thanks everyone for your inputs!


I'm not sure how things work in Canada for teaching, but my advice stands for a minor - ESPECIALLY if you want to go into teaching.

A minor in Math or Science will afford you a job opportunity in any town you live in down the road. Schools and universities hire multiple people to teach both subjects, and most people do not go into these subjects.

It just so happens both math and science are worthwhile backgrounds and contain many pre-req. for engineering degrees. You will (likely) find only a few more classes are required for the minor - a semester's worth at most. It will pay off later in life if you wish to teach or change careers/degrees.
 
Automation places are usually not nice places. Even when they are, work can tire you out mentally enough to not be up for sightseeing after.

It's a bit more than that. We are creatures of habit, whilst it is nice to eat out and not worry about cleaning or cooking, sometimes we want something familiar. We want to sit in a sofa and watch something we enjoy and not really go and sightseeing.
And if or when you find your better half, any enjoyment you would take out of sightseeing whenever you felt like it is then somewhat diminished because it's not shared with them.

I managed to work for nearly 10 years in and out of places mainly because 90% of the time was spent in three specific places where you could create some sort of routine or even have "friends" (if you count the lady that reserved the same table for you in the hotel restaurant and brought you your drinks as soon as you sat down for breakfast or the 7/11 shop owner where I would buy my beer). If not for that it would be hard.
 
Thanks for the heads-up cardosocea. All in all, is it an experience you'd rather you didn't go through? Or is it rewarding in some aspects once you transition into a more settled lifestyle?

No disrespect intended, but that's probably the worst advice offered in this thread!

I have to admit, I don't see the point of investing 4-5 years in an engineering degree if it's to land a job teaching english or math or history and such.

I agree with the "getting a minor" advice in the scope of "It's always good to learn/get certified in something new/different", especially when one is still relatively young, but at some point I figure there has to be limits defined by the invested time & money and what actually motivates us.

I also agree that an engineering degree is supposed to be proof that one has learned to learn, so the scope of opportunities is already large enough as is. Except for things actually requiring a piece of paper to work in, in which case then yes a certification/minor would be necessary.
 
Don't waste expensive and precious college time on English, History, etc.

I disagree!

More than a little of an actual engineering job requires an ability to communicate complex, technical information to other audiences. Proposals, Functional specifications, Reports, are just a few examples. Even a clear, concise email, that doesn't sound like you're (or your) texting.

All those "stupid" papers that one writes in pursuing an English, History or other Hum/Soc minor gives you those skills.

Not to mention an appreciation for the more-to-life than just the technical.
 
More than a little of an actual engineering job requires an ability to communicate complex, technical information to other audiences. Proposals, Functional specifications, Reports, are just a few examples. Even a clear, concise email, that doesn't sound like you're (or your) texting.

All those "stupid" papers that one writes in pursuing an English, History or other Hum/Soc minor gives you those skills.

We actually have a course for "Technical communication" in my program, involving training in everything you mentioned from writing proposals to reports.

Graded papers and projects apply heavy deductions based on the correctness of the writing (applicable to most courses), even more so at the master's level which I intend on pursuing.

Not to mention an appreciation for the more-to-life than just the technical.

I grew up with a taste for the literary (which is how I learned English and other languages) and I still enjoy reading, so I got that kind of appreciation covered 🍻
 
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Thanks for the heads-up cardosocea. All in all, is it an experience you'd rather you didn't go through? Or is it rewarding in some aspects once you transition into a more settled lifestyle?

I don't regret it. I learned massively, travelled extensively for myself (I had plenty of free time when doing those jobs), made serious money that put me in a comfortable position moving forward with my life, worked with a lot of different people and cultures and made quite a few friends and acquaintances.

Looking back today, I regret not moving within the same industry to make better use of my time there, but don't regret the time spent travelling. It also gave me a bit of soft skills such as knowing when to tell someone to F... off in plain English and to deal with pressure.

Engineering teaches you how to solve problems and how to learn - you can learn anything really easily these days via the internet. Don't waste expensive and precious college time on English, History, etc.

This is an incredibly shortsighted view on things. The main differentiator between engineers that move upwards and those that don't is more often than not related to their communication abilities than in their technical ones.

Additionally, having good control of a language improves your logical thinking and expression of said thoughts... isn't this exactly what one does when programming?
I forgot the guy's name (Jack Ganssle), but he was in charge of hiring programmers for embedded systems and over a few decades he realised that those with minors or more in English were far better programmers than CS students. The difference being that the code was clearly structured as if you do so in a language that you know well.
 
We actually have a course for "Technical communication" in my program

A course. As in 'one'? Repetition is where skills get honed.

But you may have a better, more well rounded program than some I've seen (or at least seen the outputs from those programs). Engineers who are ordinarily smart enough but who can't write their way out of a paper bag.

And like cardosocea indicated, their coding isn't as sharp. And they tend view annotating / documenting their code to be "too much of a burden" rather than the survival skill that it is.

Maybe its not the education, but the kind of person who eschews the kind of education that forces them to write that makes them bad writers. Chicken/egg; post hoc ergo proctor hoc. Dunno.

Like cardosocea's boss, I prefer to see a broad transcript over a narrow one.
 
Evirua
Hi, as far as travel and remote work, you may not want to have a lot of family life or a relationship for a while. I worked years in controls in the seafood industry in Alaska. Most "contracts" were 4-6 months, 12 hours a day, 7 days a week. The food wasn't bad, but it was the same menu all the time--you knew what day of the week it was by what was for lunch (Mexican Wednesday, Italian Thursday)
I developed less and less tolerance for roommates, and pretty much got out of the remote facilities and concentrated more on short in and out trips up there for PLC work only, had my own room. Didn't like sharing the bathrooms, either. If the company puts a sign up that reads "Do not blow your nose in the sink", then there's a reason for that. Use your imagination.
My point is, they will not hire you or fly you up there if there's even a slight doubt you can perform. I had years in plants and with integrators, went through lay-offs, everything to get experience. And I don't have an advanced degree. So when I finally was selected to go to Alaska, I could do the job and "fix it quick". No prints, or very scant prints, no safety, working in a 480 panel hot up to your knees in salt water (rubber boots of course). Pump controls, generator controls and voltage regulator systems, PLC's for the plant, laser guided crab butchering machines, fish fillet machines, relay logic only with a proprietary computer, the list is endless. Days go by fast, no time to sightsee, and since I don't drink, no use to go to a bar where there was one except for some different food. Seen guys die up there because the company couldn't get a plane in because of weather.

+1 for all on here who said get local experience first. You don't want to be set up to fail. I would like to get out of this full time (getting older) and teach somewhere, but I have no idea how to pursue that. Good luck and welcome to the forum!!
 
No disrespect intended, but that's probably the worst advice offered in this thread!

I had a 180 degree change of mind on this topic since my 20s. I used to think all those humanity class were waste of time but now I see brilliant technical people who honestly can't handle basic reasoning and critical-thinking skills. I can't help wondering if we are just building the tools of our own destruction with all of our technical know-how but not the wisdom needed to use them.

anyhow... that's quite a tangent..
 
I'm now self employed and work from home in the evenings outside of my day to day.

It is a lot of work and I worked bloody hard to get the experience needed. I built a customer base that appreciate me and deliver a face to face service that many cant. I am a nice, reasonable person that will try anything and listen to the customers ideas without just ****ing on their parade. Lot's of people in this industry arent like that.

However in the automation industry you will always have to go to site. This is a fact. If you dont you should reconsider how you do things. You will not gain valuable experience sat in your pants in the living room on a VPN. You dont feel the factory shake when you crash a thing into a thing because you zigged when you should have zagged.

The amount of software "high level software" engineers that refuse to leave the office and arent on site to take the beating managers give out makes me sick. I am the controls guy who is good at dealing with people so I have to stand there and explain to a customer that the server based java application has crashed and the software engineer is just getting another cup of tea in his dressing gown at home to log in and look what he did wrong. No matter how hard I hit the PLC, I cant do anything about that, sorry. Dont be that person. You learn nothing that way.

I've sent more half built cars to the scrap heap, wasted thousands of litres of paints, oils, fluids, crashed incredibly high value pallets of product off a 15m drop into oblivion and even set fire to a few robot controllers and drives than most people have had hot dinners. But I am a billion times better because of it and I am certainly better than every graduate I have seen come straight from uni into writing PLC code. Their code is great... but they havnet a clue how anything outside of that works or what to do when it goes wrong.
 

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