The Issue
We graduate skilled engineers who compete immediately and successfully with their peers who have been working as engineers for years. Only, the next generation of graduates will enter the job market for less money with even more skills armed with the latest technology than those of the prior class. Moreover, business circumstances downstream may dictate a reduction in force – layoffs. Oftentimes, it is the higher paid generation that is impacted. Engineers – What you need to know & be prepared for is this reality.
The Options
So, how do the earlier engineering graduates prepare themselves for these eventualities and compete? Typically, Engineers – what you need to know & be prepared for is that, with a high probability, they tend to gravitate into engineering management, program management, or business development. For this strategy to be effective, Program & Engineering Management Learning for Engineers is essential. Consequently, sooner or later, Engineers must acquire the skills offered on this site and sooner is better than later.
An Important Mindset Change For Career Success
To help be prepared for this critical career fork-in-the-road that engineers will encounter, they must see themselves first and foremost as businesspersons and as a personal business augmented by their engineering skills. This is a change in mindset that is important to help their relationship with their employer make more sense and improve their opportunities for career options.
Even Staying Technical Requires Management Skills
Even the alternative which is to stay technical and work to keep current and become expert in having company product specific ‘tribal’ knowledge will require management skills. This is just a reality that is hard to escape. Being expert in a technology will most likely result in being in charge of a group of engineers or being directed to assume a lead role in technical management. Engineers – what you need to know & be prepared for is that a management role for a skilled engineer is inevitable. Moreover, it is important to accept that turning it down is seen as rejecting a promotion and that will ruin a career and any opportunity for advancement.
What is Needed to Succeed
Toward this end, Engineers must acquire expertise that is inclusive of a business perspective covering key program management expectations of cost and schedule constraints. They must learn the skills necessary to help manage their efforts and treat these constraints as equal in importance to technical performance. These skills must augment their technical abilities and must be applied at each stage in the lifecycle of a high tech development program.
In addition, Engineers should understand that in business there are internal politics of the organization and competing goals of their managers. Consequently, it is an imperative to learn important people skills to help navigate this truism.
What is Broken
The reality of all this circles back to a need for education in understanding business and program & engineering management learning for engineers coupled with learning the necessary people skills to survive and to some day lead. This part of the Engineering education is important and it is broken. My intent is to help fix it.
The Fix
The material on this site offers access to educational specific topics essential for expertise in Business Management, Program Management, Risk Management, Engineering Management, Business Development & Proposal Management, and Leadership. The guides have been structured to be sufficient for self-teaching and are made simple, concise, effective, and readily applicable to real world management efforts. Moreover, they are useful for those seeking to become Program Management Professionals as well as being an important adjunct to the education of Business and Engineering majors for success.