Articles
"Don’t believe what others tell you about the new job or project you have just come to on the assumption that they should know better from their past experience. Too often did I find out that, for lack of attention or observation skills, those ‘experts’ did not know enough and, inadvertently, initially led me up the wrong path. Always check details yourself – never assume that an ‘expert’ really knows what they are talking about."
Joachim Neff
"I wish I’d been more aware of the damage that CO2 was doing to the atmosphere so that I could have been more proactive in reducing its emissions. Ditto CFCs, SO2, NOx, PM10, and even single-use plastics."
Andy Brown
"When I was younger I thought that a good technical solution to a problem was all that was required. I have since learnt, of course, that you have to ‘sell’ this solution for it to become a reality. Good communication is vital."
Steve Pickering
"Not everyone that you work with is as clever or knowledgeable as they might seem. It is important to be able to gauge people and never to doubt your own abilities."
Steve
"You don’t need a lot of knowledge in a technical field to start working in it. If you work hard at getting up to speed you can still make progress."
Nick Weston
"Not to niche myself off in an industry with only a few global hubs. It has meant starting over at a much more junior level later in life when I moved country for personal reasons."
Keith
"How being an engineer eventually leads to involvement in every aspect of every project that I got involved with. It became apparent to me, eventually, that only the engineers are capable of seeing and managing the ‘big pictures’."
Matthew Waterhouse
"That a lot of vacancies are written in such a way that many requirements are not requirements at all. You should actually read what are the responsibilities of the job rather than what are the requirements, and decide whether you think your skillset allows you to fulfil these responsibilities (possibly with some quick extra learning). And then in your covering letter explain exactly why you think you can fulfil these responsibilities."
Vitaly Voloshin
"That spending money on five-figure log tables, then a slide rule, then a calculator, and then a programmable calculator, would all be poor long-term investments."
Geoff Buck
"The value of work experience (paid or unpaid) and how willing engineers are to talk about their own careers and help new starters join the industry. I could have made much better use of the network that I was already creating at the time."
Ken
"What a good starting salary for a recently qualified engineer should be. It took me a couple of years before I found out what everyone else was on and how far adrift I was from them!"
Ian Maynard
"Work is nothing like a textbook, and often day-to-day engineering decisions are based on experience and rule of thumb, not detailed calculations."
Tom
Member Chris Elliot asked readers of Professional Engineering magazine "What was the one thing you wished you'd known earlier in your career?"
Content published by Professional Engineering does not necessarily represent the views of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers.