AVOIDING A HARD LANDING

Completing any engineering degree course is tough: at most universities, students consider it one of the most difficult areas of study to pursue. However, it provides an essential foundation for an engineering career, even though two of the most valuable attributes you develop are not in the formal curriculum specifications: the ability to work very hard on short notice and the ability to prioritise. One of the reasons why engineering courses are so challenging is that it is usually impossible to do everything required before the deadlines for submitting assignments and projects. As a student, you had to learn to choose the most important parts, which were usually those that made the best contributions to your grades.¹

As many engineers soon find out, an engineering degree course provides a great foundation and starting point, but it may not lead to a great engineering career. Many engineers find themselves in dead-end careers with little chance of being promoted;

they may even see non-engineers being promoted faster. Often, they see few ways to apply their technical skills in the work they end up performing, which makes them begin to question what all the hard work they put in to become an engineer was actually for.²

As a student, you may have found it hard to see the relevance of your courses.

Although you studied under the guidance of dedicated teachers, people who have devoted most of their lives to help you and hundreds of other students succeed as engineers, most teachers have had limited opportunities to experience the world of engineering work that you will spend most of your career performing. How could they?

Engineering is inherently dynamic, changing year-by-year, decade-by-decade, and your career lies in the future. Your instructors’ experience of engineering may have occurred two or three decades ago. As academics and researchers, their careers were most likely in technical specialist roles, meaning that they had very little experience with ordinary, everyday engineering.

While they have done their best to get you off to a flying start, they have no easy way to be sure that they’ve sent you in the right direction.

For some graduates, landing their first engineering job can be much more difficult than it seems for others. They quickly find out that employers are not exactly lining up to employ them. They send off countless applications, but receive only one or two replies (and no interviews). In some countries, it can take a long time to find an engineering job, which can be understandably discouraging.

Figure 3.1 Off to a flying start? The steep inclined ramp on the left side represents your undergraduate engineering education. Getting an engineering degree is just one obstacle that lies between you and the wonderful career that lies ahead. It is a steep climb, but it gets you over the wall and into the ring; however, many engineers experience a hard landing like the fellow in the picture.

This chapter explains why many engineers experience this sort of frustrating, hard, and painful landing in the real world, as well as what can be done about it.³

The question is, why does this happen so easily? Why do so many young engineers with so much potential end up leaving engineering jobs in frustration?

The main reason is the lack of written knowledge about real world engineering practice, a problem that this book has set out to correct. The research for this book has identified more than 80 concepts that are fundamental to engineering practice that are rarely, if ever, mentioned in engineering texts and courses. The same research iden-tified 17 significant misconceptions about engineering practice that develop due to the absence of written engineering practice knowledge.⁴Therefore, engineering education can actually prevent you from learning the capabilities that you will need to become an expert engineer. These misconceptions work just like the water-repellent layer that forms on the surface of soils containing oily vegetable matter when they are baked in strong sunlight. You can spray on water, but it remains in droplets or pools on the surface and does not soak in, sometimes for many hours. Misconceptions can create a

‘learning-repellent mindset’, one that resists learning opportunities. These misconcep-tions are also like blinkers, also known as blinders, fitted on the sides of horses’ eyes to prevent them from seeing sideways or to the rear. Certain myths about engineering, reinforced by endless unquestioning repetition, effectively impede learning: they help the mind resist new knowledge that can ultimately be very helpful.

The structure of undergraduate university courses, the teaching methods, the class-room environments, and widespread community misconceptions about engineering

all contribute to the development of these mistaken ideas about actual engineering practice, no matter which discipline you choose to pursue.⁵

If these misconceptions are not corrected, then it might be much harder for you to become an expert engineer. As explained in Chapter 1 page 8, they can even prevent you from recognising your activity as ‘engineering work’, even when you have an engineering job.

An engineering degree is not the only pathway to an engineering career, but it is quicker than other routes. You have built an intellectual foundation that helps you learn much of what you will need in the future. You will need that foundation as you work through this book. However, an engineering degree course at university only strengthens certain intellectual capabilities; unless you work hard to develop other abilities your formal education can lead to further misconceptions.

An awareness of these misconceptions has only recently emerged from our research. In a generation or two, engineering schools around the world may very well have new curricula that include the other skills you need to become an expert engineer. For the time being, however, working with this book is the one of the few ways to help you become a truly expert engineer.

To reach one of the many career pathways that take you out of the ring, over the wall, extend your potential into the distant future, and enable you to become an expert engineer, you will need to learn how to fly over that proverbial wall, as well as how to strengthen all the other intellectual capabilities that you will need. You also need to be aware of the misconceptions that we all started with, to a greater or lesser extent.

Are you ready to learn to fly?

You will need to develop some new skills of perception: listening and seeing, to find out which way to fly.

You will also need stamina and fitness. Your engineering degree studies developed both of these; you have withstood the rigours from years of undergraduate study, assignments, deadlines, and exams.

Determination is essential. Sometimes it will take several attempts to find the path that suits you best; remember, there is no single unique career path that suits everyone.

You need to be prepared for setbacks, followed by picking yourself up, turning around, and trying once again. You will eventually succeed, but it takes determination and resilience.

You will need two intellectual wings, which can be difficult to grow during your university studies without a deep understanding of engineering practice.

The first is the realisation that you can only become an expert engineer with the help of many other people. You need to learn how to perform technical work with the help of others in order to gain their support, as well as their willing and conscientious collaboration.

The second ‘wing’ is the ability to value, acquire, develop, and use tacit ingenuity, which is compiled in a vast library in your mind composed of ‘how-to’ fragments of unwritten technical and other knowledge. Your progress as a student depended on knowledge that you could write down in examinations, tests, quizzes, etc. In engi-neering, your progress depends much more on knowledge that is mostly unwritten,

the kind that is carried in your mind and the minds of other people. To acquire this knowledge, you may need to strengthen your ability to listen, read, and see accurately.

You can’t fly in the right direction without a tail. For this, you need to understand what engineering is, how it works, and why it is valuable. Value is a multidimensional concept: economic value, namely making money for yourself and others, is just one dimension. Others include caring for other people, social justice, sustainability, safety, social change, protecting the environment, security, and defence, as we learnt about in Chapter 1.

Finally, you won’t be able to find your way without knowing the point from which you are taking off. You will need the ability to understand yourself and where you are today. Otherwise, you won’t be able to work out which way to fly.

Your test scores from Chapter 1 will give you some measure of your starting point.

With the understanding of yourself that comes from this chapter, you can confidently start to develop your wings and then learn to fly by working through the remaining chapters of this book.

Here’s the good news.

You don’t have to wait until you have understood everything. It may take years for you to fully appreciate all the concepts in this book, but that doesn’t need to delay your take-off. As once said, ‘We are constantly leaping off cliffs and building our wings on the way down.’

As long as you accept the reality that there is still a great deal to learn, and you’re prepared to work hard to grow your wings, then you can soon be off to a flying start.

This book is all about growing your wings, your tail, and your sense of direction, while also understanding where you are. As your career develops, you will continue to learn how to fly higher and faster.