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What was the path like to your current career, and what parts would you recommend for or against another person following? (lemmy.sdf.org)

submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by [email protected] to c/asklemmy

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Feel free to be economic with the truth by using aliases for organizations and products wherever it protects your privacy or your contracts. I'm mainly interested to hear about your unique experience.

Example follow-up questions: What was most rewarding, what was not? What was not a great use of your time but maybe still a learning experience? What were you interested when you were younger (for hobbies or otherwise) that may have helped guide you?

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[–] subtext 5 points 4 months ago

As an engineer who is well off with a wife and a dog and a house, it was pretty much:

Work hard in high school
Hard enough to get a full ride to my state’s major public university
Choose an engineering degree that seems interesting enough
Turned out to be a great choice, motivated me to work hard enough to get a 4.0 through college
Had a few internships throughout college at various {industry} companies
Eventually managed to get hired out of college at the most prestigious {industry} company, working with people with much fancier colleges’ degrees, PhDs, MBAs, the like
Now I’ve been working there for {n} years, have taken multiple roles, have had field assignments, and I’m still loving it and learning every day / week
My wife (who I met in my degree program) has also had a great and fulfilling career as we’ve moved together around the country

The best thing about engineering, as proved out by both my wife and myself, is that you can get just about any job even tangentially related to your degree so long as you have the right work ethic, strong enough people skills, and you can pick up whatever skills you need on the job.

If we ever got bored or didn’t like the company (which has happened to my wife twice now), you can just switch companies or in my case switch roles in the (multinational) company and be doing something entirely new until you find what really clicks, be that company or role or both.