Many young engineers feel that the minor chores of a technical project are beneath their dignity and unworthy of their college training. They expect to prove their true worth in some major, vital enterprise. Actually, the spirit and effectiveness with which you tackle your first humble tasks will very likely be carefully watched and may affect your entire career.
Occasionally you may worry unduly about where your job is going to get you — whether it is sufficiently strategic or significant. Of course these are pertinent considerations and you would do well to take some stock of them. But by and large, it is fundamentally true that if you take care of your present job well, the future will take care of itself. This is particularly so within large corporations, which constantly search for competent people to move into more responsible positions. Success depends so largely upon personality, native ability, and vigorous, intelligent prosecution of any job that it is no exaggeration to say that your ultimate chances are much better if you do a good job on some minor detail than if you do a mediocre job as a project leader. Furthermore, it is also true that if you do not first make a good showing on your present job you are not likely to be given the opportunity to try something else more to your liking.
This is a quality that may be achieved by various means under different circumstances. Specific aspects will be elaborated in some of the succeeding paragraphs. It can probably be reduced, however, to a combination of three basic characteristics:
This last quality is sometimes lacking in the make-up of brilliant engineers to such an extent that their effectiveness is greatly reduced. Such dilettantes are known as "good starters but poor finishers." Or else it will be said: "You can't take their type too seriously; they will be all steamed up over an idea today, but by tomorrow will have dropped it for some other wild notion." Bear in mind, therefore, that it may be worthwhile finishing a job, if it has any merit, just for the sake of finishing it.
This is one of the first things a new engineer must learn in entering a manufacturing organization. Many novices assume that it is sufficient to make a request or order, then sit back and wait until the goods or services are delivered. Most jobs progress in direct proportion to the amount of follow-up and expediting that is applied to them. Expediting means planning, investigating, promoting, and facilitating every step in the process. Cultivate the habit of looking immediately for some way around each obstacle encountered, some other recourse or expedient to keep the job rolling without losing momentum.
On the other hand, the matter is occasionally overdone by overzealous individuals who make themselves obnoxious and antagonize everyone with their incessant pestering. Be careful about demanding action from others. Too much insistence and agitation may result in more damage to one's personal interest than could ever result from the miscarriage of the item involved.
Do not assume that the job will be done or the bargain kept just because someone agreed to do it. Many people have poor memories, others are too busy, and almost everyone will take the matter a great deal more seriously if it is in writing. Of course there are exceptions, but at times it pays to copy a third person as a witness.
Any trip to the field, whether for having a design review, resolving a complaint, analyzing a production problem, investigating a failure, calling on a customer, visiting a supplier, or attending a trade show, deserves your special attention to return the maximum benefit for the time and expense. Although each business trip will be unique, and the extent to which you must do the following will be different for each, as a minimum, be sure to:
Throughout your career people will approach you with all manner of real-life problems they will have observed on devices or equipment for which you have responsibility. A wonderfully effective response, both technically and administratively, is to invite them to have a look with you — i.e., "Let's go see!" It is seldom adequate to remain at one's desk and speculate about causes and solutions, or to retreat to drawings, specifications, and reports and hope to sort it all out. Before ever being able to solve a problem, you will need abundant insight, insight that can only be developed by observing first-hand what might be at once too subtle and complex only to imagine (Ferguson, p. 56).
One of the gravest personal indictments is to have it said that an engineer's opinion at any time depends merely upon the last person with whom he or she has spoken. Refrain from stating an opinion or promoting an undertaking until you have had a reasonable opportunity to obtain and study the facts. Thereafter see it through if at all possible, unless fresh evidence makes it folly to persist. Obviously the extremes of obstinacy and dogmatism should be avoided, but remember that reversed decisions could be held against you.
Too many new employees seem to think that their job is simply to do what they are told. Of course there are times when it is wise and prudent to keep silent, but, as a rule, it pays to express your point of view whenever you can contribute something. The quiet, timorous individual who says nothing is usually credited with having nothing to say.
It frequently happens in any sort of undertaking that nobody is sure of just how a matter ought to be handled; it's a question of selecting some kind of program with a reasonable chance of success. This is commonly to be observed in design or project meetings. The first person to speak up with a definite and plausible proposal often has a better-than-even chance of carrying the floor, provided only that the scheme is definite and plausible. (The "best" scheme usually cannot be recognized as such in advance.) It also happens that the one who talks most knowingly and confidently about the project will often be assigned to carry it out. If you do not want the job, say nothing and you'll be overlooked, but you'll also be overlooked when it comes time to assign larger responsibilities.
If there is one most irksome encumbrance to promoting urgency in the workplace, it is the person who takes a half-hour of rambling discourse to say what could be said in one sentence of 20 words. There is a curious and widespread tendency among engineers to surround the answer to a simple question with so many preliminaries and commentaries that the answer itself can hardly be discerned. It is so difficult to get a direct answer out of some engineers that their usefulness is thereby greatly diminished. The tendency is to explain the answer before answering the question. To be sure, very few questions endure simple answers without qualifications, but the important thing is to state the essence of the matter as succinctly as possible first. On the other hand, there are times when it is important to add the pertinent background or other relevant facts to illuminate a simple statement. The trick is to convey the maximum of significant information in the minimum time, a valuable asset to anyone.
An excellent guide in this respect may be found in the literary construction called the "inverted pyramid." Start at the bottom — the beginning — with the single most important fact, the one the audience must know before learning more. Often this is the conclusion itself. Progressively broaden the pyramid by constructing each sentence to build upon its predecessor. In this way you will be able to clearly explain even complicated, abstract concepts to anyone. Even if by the end the explanation has become too complex for some, you can take smug comfort knowing that, because you began with your primary point, or the conclusion, or the simple answer, everyone understands you. You can hardly do better than to adopt this method in your communication, presenting your facts in the order of importance, as journalists often do, as if you might be cut off at any minute.
This seems almost trite, and yet many engineers lose the confidence of their superiors and associates by habitually guessing when they do not know the answer to a direct question. It is important to be able to answer questions concerning your responsibilities, but a wrong answer is worse than no answer. If you do not know, say so, but also say, "I'll find out right away." If you are not certain, indicate the exact degree of certainty or approximation upon which your answer is based. A reputation for dependability and reliability can be one of your most valuable assets.
This applies, of course, to written matter, calculations, etc., as well as to oral reports and discussions. It is bad business to submit a report for approval without first carefully checking it yourself, and yet formal reports are sometimes turned in, or worse, sent out, full of glaring errors and omissions.
This principle is so elementary and fundamental as to be axiomatic. It follows very obviously that a manager cannot possibly manage a department successfully without knowing what's going on in it. This applies as well to project managers with specific responsibilities but without direct subordinates as it does to department heads. No sensible person will deny the soundness of this principle and yet it is commonly violated or overlooked. It is cited here because several of the rules that follow are concerned with specific violations of this cardinal requirement.
This is a corollary of the preceding rule: "Every manager must know what goes on. . . ." The main question is: How much must a manager know — how many of the details? This is always a difficult matter for the new employee to get straight. Many novices hesitate to bother their superiors with everyday minutiae, and it is certainly true that it can be overdone in this direction, but in by far the majority of cases the manager's problem is to extract enough information to keep adequately posted. It is a much safer course to risk having your supervisor say, "Don't bother me with so many details," than to allow your supervisor to say, "Why doesn't someone tell me these things?" Bear in mind that your manager is constantly called upon to account for, defend, and explain your activities to others, as well as to coordinate these activities into a larger plan. Compel yourself to provide all the information that is needed for these purposes.
No matter how hard you try nor how good an engineer you become, technical difficulties — unexpected problems or failures — will occur that you will dread having to inform your supervisor about. The best you can hope to do is to develop solutions to such problems so that you can present these along with the problem, and so that they can be implemented with the greatest urgency. No manager will like being surprised by unanticipated problems (although you are obligated to report them without hesitation), but you will improve your predicament immeasurably if you also bring solid recommendations for solutions.
This sounds simple enough, but some engineers never get it. By all means, you are working for society, the company, the department, your project team, your project leader, your family, and yourself — but primarily you should be working for and through your supervisor, the manager to whom you directly report.
You will no doubt encounter conflicts — you are assigned to a project team with a demanding leader, a corporate executive orders a task be done, and so forth. When this happens, retreat to the above law: discuss it with your supervisor. Resolving conflicts is part of every manager's job, your supervisor's included.
As a rule, you can serve all other ends to best advantage by assuming that your supervisor is approximately the right person for that job. It is not uncommon for young engineers, in their impatient zeal to get things done, to ignore, or attempt to go over or around their superiors. Sometimes they move a little faster that way, for a while, but sooner or later they find that such tactics cannot be tolerated in a large organization. Generally speaking, you cannot get by whoever evaluates your performance, for he or she rates you on your ability to cooperate, among other things. Besides, most of us get more satisfaction out of our jobs when we're able to display at least some personal loyalty to our superiors, with the feeling that we're helping them to get the main job done.
For most neophyte engineers, the influence of the senior engineers with whom they work, and even more so, the engineer to whom they report, is a major factor in molding their professional character. Long before the days of universities and textbooks, master craftsmen absorbed their skills by apprenticing to master craftsmen. Likewise, you will do well to use those with more experience, especially a well-selected supervisor, as your master, your mentor. A properly selected mentor will likely have been through gauntlets as severe as your present one, and will guide you through it much easier than you alone can.
But, of course, it is not always possible to choose a boss advisedly. What if yours turns out to be no more than half the supervisor you hoped for? There are only two proper alternatives open to you: (1) accept your boss as the representative of a higher authority and execute his or her policies and directives as effectively as possible, or (2) move to some other department, division, or company at the first opportunity. A great deal of mischief can be done to the interests of all concerned, including your company, if some other alternative is elected. Consider the damage to the efficiency of a military unit when the privates, disliking the leader, ignore or modify orders to suit their individual notions! To be sure, a business organization is not an army, but neither is it a mob.
You may think you have more important things to do first, but unless you obtain permission it is usually unwise to put any other project ahead of a specific assignment from your own supervisor. As a rule, your boss has good reasons for wanting a job done now, and it is apt to have a great deal more bearing upon your performance rating than less conspicuous projects that may appear more urgent.
Whenever your supervisor sends you off to perform a specific task, you have two possible responses: (1) you do it exactly as requested, or (2) you come back and talk it over some more. (Take special note of this law, for it applies not only as regards your supervisor, but also to anyone with whom you have agreed on a task to be done or a course of action to be taken.) It is simply unacceptable either not to do it, or to do something different instead. If you become concerned that the planned action isn't worth doing as originally assigned (in view of new data or events), you may discuss, indeed you are obligated to discuss, the entire matter again, stating your intentions and reasons so that your manager can properly reconsider it.
Despite the responsibility to do exactly as instructed or agreed, you will sometimes want to prove your initiative by doing not only that, but also something in addition thereto; perhaps the next logical action has become clear, or perhaps a promising alternative has come to light. These can, within reason, be done in addition to the original assignment, and your drive and inventiveness will be immediately apparent.
Any violation of this law puts your trustworthiness at risk. Nevertheless, as with many of these laws, you will be forced to break this one on occasion, too. Do this only when you are certain that circumstances demand it (expediency being one such circumstance), and that the others involved will agree with your decision.
This is the other side of the matter covered by the preceding two rules. An undue subservience or deference to any manager's wishes is fairly common among young engineers. Employees with this kind of philosophy may:
In general, a program laid down by the department, the project leader, or the design team is a proposal, rather than an edict. It is usually intended to serve only as a guideline, one that will have been formulated without benefit of the new information that will be discovered during its execution. The rule therefore is to keep others, your manager included, informed of what you have done, at reasonable intervals, and ask for approval of any well-considered and properly planned deviations that you may have conceived.
This is a common offense, which causes no end of trouble. Exceptions will occur in respect to minor details, but the rule applies particularly to:
There is a significant commentary on this last principle that should also be observed: In general you will get no credit or thanks for doing the other person's job at the expense of your own. But it frequently happens that, if you can put your own house in order first, an understanding of and an active interest in the affairs of others will lead to promotion to a position of greater responsibility. More than a few employees have been moved up primarily because of a demonstrated capacity for helping to take care of other people's business as well as their own.
It is all too easy, especially in a large corporation, to overlook the interests of a department or individual who does not happen to be represented, or in mind, when a significant step is taken. Very often the result is that the step has to be retraced or else considerable damage is done. Even when it does no apparent harm, most people do not like to be left out when they have a stake in the matter, and the effect upon morale may be serious. Of course there will be crisis times when you cannot wait to stand on ceremony and you will have to steam full speed ahead with little regard for personal consequences. But you cannot do it with impunity too often.
Note particularly that in this and the preceding rule the chief offense lies in the invasion of someone else's territory without that person's knowledge and consent. You may find it expedient on occasion to do parts of other people's jobs in order to get your own work done, but you should first give them a fair chance to deliver on their own or else agree to have you take over. If you must offend in this respect, at least you should realize that you are being offensive.
Particularly as a beginning engineer, you cannot hope to know all you must about your field and your employer's business. Therefore, you must ask for help from others; routinely seek out those who are "in the know."
This is particularly useful advice during a confrontation of any sort. A good first question to ask is: "What do you recommend?" Your confronter will usually have thought about it more than you have, and this will allow you to proceed to a productive discussion, and to avoid a fight.
A warning about soliciting others' opinions deserves mention. Condescending attitudes toward others and their opinions are gratuitous and unwelcome. If you have no intention of listening to, properly considering, and perhaps using someone's information or opinion, don't ask for it. Your colleagues will not take long to recognize such patronizing and to disdain you for it.
Many engineers fail to realize this, or habitually try to dodge the responsibility for making commitments. You must make promises based upon your own estimates for the part of the job for which you are responsible, together with estimates obtained from contributing departments for their parts. No one should be allowed to avoid the issue by the old formula, "I can't give a promise because it depends upon so many uncertain factors." Consider the "uncertain factors" confronting a department head who must make up a budget for an entire engineering department for a year in advance! Even the most uncertain case can be narrowed down by first asking, "Will it be done in a matter of a few hours or a few months, a few days or a few weeks?" It usually turns out that it cannot be done in less than three weeks and surely will not require more than five, in which case you'd better say four weeks. This allows one week for contingencies and sets you a reasonable miss under the comfortable figure of five weeks. Both extremes are bad; good engineers will set schedules that they can meet by energetic effort at a pace commensurate with the significance of the job.
As a corollary of the foregoing, you have a right to insist upon having estimates from responsible representatives of other departments. But in accepting promises, or statements of facts, it is frequently important to make sure that you are dealing with a properly qualified representative. Also bear in mind that when you ignore or discount other engineers' promises you dismiss their responsibility and incur the extra liability yourself. Of course this is sometimes necessary, but be sure that you do it advisedly. Ideally, other engineers' promises should be reliable instruments in compiling estimates.
Complaints made to an individual's supervisors, over his or her head, engender strong resentment and should be resorted to only when direct appeal fails. In many cases such complaints are made without giving the individual a fair chance to correct the grievance, or even before he or she is aware of any dissatisfaction.
This applies particularly to individuals with whom you are accustomed to dealing directly or at close range, or in cases where you know the person to whom the function has been assigned. It is more formal and in some instances possibly more correct to file a complaint with the department head, and it will no doubt tend to secure prompt results. But there are more than a few individuals who would never forgive you for complaining to their supervisor without giving them a fair chance to take care of the matter.
Next to a direct complaint to the top, it is sometimes almost as serious an offense to send to a person's supervisor a copy of a document containing a complaint or an implied criticism. Of course the occasion may justify such criticism; just be sure you know what you are doing.
You may be only a few months out of college but most outsiders will regard you as a legal, financial, and technical agent of your company in all transactions, so be careful of your commitments.