Engineer Your Way to Success, 2nd edition

by Shawn P. McCarthy

America’s top engineers from organizations like Eastman Kodak, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, IBM, AT&T, Boyle Engineering, Sverdrup Corporation, and the University of Texas tell you what skills you need for a successful engineering career and share their personal advice on what they look for in hiring and promoting. Engineer Your Way to Success answers important questions about your future in How should you evaluate job offers?
Should you specialize in a narrow field or get a wide range of experience?
Is the management route the only way to become successful in engineering?
Why is teamwork such a vital part of engineering success?
What are the components of "good judgment"? This book is like no other career book you’ll find—it’s engineer-specific. Whether you’re an engineering student or an experienced engineer, Engineer Your Way to Success is the best book you can get for yourself, your employees, or any engineer who wants to enhance his or her career.

101 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2002

Reviews

[Rodney Harvill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although this book is about success, it does not define success or even dictate how to achieve success. Ultimately, those answers are very personal and context specific. It does, however, offer suggestions and things to consider. For example, success is not measured in money. Respect within one’s industry and self-satisfaction are important, as well. The book goes on to identify ten key factors determining success and expands upon them by providing advice and suggestions from various prominent engineers who have risen to the top of their profession:

• Technical skills
• Judgment
• Communication skills
• Leadership qualities
• Management abilities
• Teamwork
• Social networking
• Integrity
• Service
• Ambition, hard work and commitment

I can see why these attributes are promoted in this book, having seen shortcomings in several of them lead to failures of various types. For example, the book describes how engineers sometimes provide way too much information without getting to the point. This was me early in my engineering career; in fact, a principle engineer in my work group referred to my verbal communication as War and Peace, hardly a compliment. I have since learned to be concise in my verbal and written communication, but I am well aware that weak communication skills affected my ability to advance early on. I still laugh at memories of an event during a nuclear plant refueling outage that belongs in the judgment hall of shame. No one was hurt, but the chain of events and resultant conflict was worthy of the Jerry Springer Show. My intent is not to describe it, but suffice it to say that very smart and competent people can make dumb decisions when under pressure and can turn those dumb decisions into dumb actions. On the other hand, another factor, ambition, is often viewed as a negative quality because of the conflict caused when evil people misuse and abuse it. However, when combined with noble attitudes and motivations, it can be channeled to achieve great good.

As stated above, the book offers suggestions and advice and is hardly comprehensive. It seems to me to be a good basis for a self-assessment, able to help engineers to identify personal weaknesses and vulnerabilities. However, other resources should be utilized in identifying and implementing appropriate corrective action.

For the record, I am a few months shy of twenty years of nuclear engineering experience and have six years of operations and maintenance experience in the nuclear navy. While this book has some value to someone at my level of experience, I have already learned by hard experience many of the lessons from the book and might have gotten a lot more out of it had I read it years ago. Older engineers can still benefit from this book in that there may be something in it that they have not considered. It is never too late to make changes. However, I think young engineers will get the most out of it.