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How to Succeed at Work?
3

How to Succeed at Work?

How to Succeed at Work?

(OP)
I'm fresh out of college (Go Gators!) with a BSME and a minor in Sales Engineering.  I have accepted a job as a mechanical management trainee with a major transportation company.  I feel very fortunate to have a job right now and look forward to someday being a valued and respected engineer who can offer advice to fellow engineers like you'll hopefully do.  I would appreciate any advice you could offer to help me have a great start with my first career.  Advice on which organizations to be a part of (i.e. ASME and Toastmasters), exams or classes to take (i.e. FE exam), or anything else you think would be helpful for a new engineer, or new employee to do.
Thanks for your time,
Luke

RE: How to Succeed at Work?

See if there is a local ME club (professional association/society). Dale Carnegie training is pricey but effective, since you mentioned  sales. But I do not not know what your Sales education was all about - maybe Dale Carnegie will not be new info to you.

RE: How to Succeed at Work?

As you mentioned, join the ASME and participate in your local chapter. There are probably other professional organizations, oriented around transportaion, you may want to consider these too.

Take the FE exam soon; also find out from your state board if your mechanical management career field will qualify as "engineering experience" that meets the requirements for the PE exam. If that's going to be a problem, better to find out now, rather than later.

www.SlideRuleEra.net

RE: How to Succeed at Work?

I hope I do not fall in the Gator Classification

1) Know who is your boss
2) Know who is his boss
3) Know who call the shots (office politics) I have known secretaries where you needed a battle-tank to pass a door.
4) Know who is in charge of stores
5) Know who can find anything you need.
6) Be honest
7) Show interest in what others do
8) Network!!

The rest is technical stuff

RE: How to Succeed at Work?

Enjoy it! that's the crucial bit. If you don't enjoy your job, why bother to get involved in office politics to get a better job you won't enjoy either.

RE: How to Succeed at Work?

All above are good advise. But don't forget good communication should be one of top priorities. A lot of people don't communicate well these days. They rely on email and web to do it. It is not the same.

Chris
Sr. Mechanical Designer, CAD
SolidWorks 05 SP2.0 / PDMWorks 05
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RE: How to Succeed at Work?

As soon as you are able, write give papers at meetings of the technical societies of most interest to you. Even if you start with a dinner presentation at a ASME meeting. Proven ability in writing and public speaking is a huge plus on a resume.

RE: How to Succeed at Work?


Never piss off the janitors or secretaries.

RE: How to Succeed at Work?

The secretary is the usually the Office Manager in small companies. 'Nuf said.

RE: How to Succeed at Work?

Listen to customers.  They will tell you tons about your company, your competition, and the industry.

Do something.  If you can't say: "This week I accomplished..." you won't ever be viewed as promotable.

Take chances.  Review the facts, think, and then make a decision.  Leaders make decisions.

Learn to write.  Use a spell checker.  Don't ever write when you are angry.  E-mail is great but face time and phone time make better long term relations.

If you can, travel.  The European and Asian perspective is different.  Your future customers will be from around the world.

Avoid gossip.  It gains you nothing and wastes too much time.

Be upbeat.  Knowledge + positive attitudes = people will follow you.

A technical degree and a sales background offers lots of potential.  Best of luck.

RE: How to Succeed at Work?

Buy and read engineering books (and you thought you did not have to buy any more books after college) that specialize in your area and try to practice the techniques described in them.  Reading and taking exams are totally different from actually trying to practice engineering on a large scale.  

Do not design and make decisions in a vacuum, always involve your boss, coworkers, and customers.

I think in the construction field, a PE will go a long way, so take the EIT now and aim for the PE in four years.

Well that is what I can think of right now.

Congratulations and welcome to engineering, strap your ego down and get ready for an exciting ride on your leaning curve at work.


Go Mechanical Engineering
Tobalcane

RE: How to Succeed at Work?

I find it does help to lean going into a curve, especially at high speeds.

RE: How to Succeed at Work?

Tobalcane already said it, but read lots of books and technical papers. Engineering is a lifetime of self-education and you will always be exposed to new situations where you have no knowledge or experience. Screw the internet. Find a good library and use it.

RE: How to Succeed at Work?

Screw the internet?  Did you post that just to get a response?  If so, it worked.  

The internet is my first choice when looking for technical information.  I don't treat the information gleaned from the internet as the truth without confirmation from a known reliable source, depending on the nature of the situation and potential ramifications of erroneous information.

RE: How to Succeed at Work?

Screw the internet ?  Well, you get another response !!!

The internet is my first choice when looking for any kind of information, not only technical.  Of course, you can believe what you read on the internet depending on the source of information.

Going back to the original post - Talk to the some of the more experienced persons in the same field - they may or may not be as qualified as you are, but MOST of them would be quite knowledgeable.  SOME of them help out, some don't.  They key is to not feel shy about asking questions.

HVAC68

RE: How to Succeed at Work?

Sales Engineering.  Hmmmmmmm...

I believe that there is a major flaw in your salesman software.  Every one who tries to sell me something can't seem to tell the truth, and many don't seem to ave enough data on the product.

I can name a few sales teams who were at the NAB conferrence last month who ought to get new firmware as well.  The new digital Salesmen don't seem to be as usefull as the older analog models.

Come to think of it, the old useful ones used to be called Tech-Reps.  Try manufacturing some of those models.

:lol

I remain,
The Old Soldering Gunslinger

RE: How to Succeed at Work?

A third response...

Internet is just so convenient...  so quick to obtain technical and non-technical info.  Going to the library just seem to take so much time away...

Just like I don't believe everything I read in the papers, see in the news, I don't believe everything I find on the internet.

Welcome the technology and use it to your advantage.

RE: How to Succeed at Work?

Screw the internet #2-

The internet is just one of many engineering tools. In some cases it is very useful, and worthless in others.

In my field, mechanical engineering in general and engine design in particular, you will not find the best textbooks like Taylor, Heywood, and Ricardo, or any of the SAE papers on the internet unless you want to count all the hits for Amazon. You have to buy them or go to the library. On the other hand, all of the NACA papers are on the internet and much technical data can be found in them.

It is evident from some of the other forums that people are asking some very basic questions that could be answered just by opening a book.

RE: How to Succeed at Work?

By no means did I suggest internet should "replace" the more traditional forms of obtaining information.  I completely agree with jlwoodward that there are information in books that simply can't be found online (copyright issues among other things).

Some books are not meant to be checked out in the libraries.  By all means buy them.  If it is a technical reference book you will use again and again, make that investment.

Internet definitely compliments the other media to obtain any information.  One without internet will surely fall behind...

RE: How to Succeed at Work?

I have been burnt a few times getting information from the net.  It’s the little things that can come back and bite you.  I had to do a heat transfer analysis and needed some “k” values, so I went to the vendor’s web site and obtained it.  When I was doing my calcs, my answers were not coming out to what I have expected.  I spent a good morning just trying to figure out what went wrong.  My boss walks in and looks at my calcs and then looked at me like I stepped on his cat and said that the “k” value did not make any sense.  Sure enough that was the problem.  I called the vendor and indicated that the “k” value must be wrong.  Later they came back and thanked us for the find.  It seems that they just send the information to the who ever is making the web site and trust that person is putting the information in correctly.  They also found some more errors on the web site and this has been exposed to the public for years!  I guess my point is that there is a lot of garbage out on the net and telling the hire ups that you got this value, equation, idea, …ext off the net and not out of a reliable book is not a good idea.

The way I see it is that if the information is free (or some company trying to lead you into their web site) it will be on the net and it will be 90% correct.  If you have to pay for it most likely you will find it on the net but you have to buy the book.  So if you have to buy the book, you might as well go to the local engineering college library and read it.  Even better if your company (if it is big enough) has its own technical library, use it.  I have found that the local library down the block does not have any real engineering material that is useful.  



Lukemood, for your self you should build your own technical library of relevant engineering books.  As a mechanical that deals a lot with electronics, the books that are close to me are Roark’s Formual, Vibrations Spectrum Analsysis, Electronic Packaging and Interconnection Hand book, Steinburg’s Vibration Analysis and Cooling Techniques for Electronic Equipment.  And how can you be with out Mark’s Standard Handbook for Mechanical Engineers and Shigley’s Mechanical Engineering Design.

Well back to crunching numbers…

Go Mechanical Engineering
Tobalcane

RE: How to Succeed at Work?

How many errors do you find in textbooks? I've got one that came with 3 pages of errata, and I found a mistake in Shigley once.

Having said that, obviously there's a lot more integrity in a textbook than the web.

Cheers

Greg Locock

Please see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.

RE: How to Succeed at Work?

The Great Communicator said:

"Trust, but verify..."

TTFN

RE: How to Succeed at Work?

The internet is not a substitute for knowledge. Always use your knowledge aquired during years of calcullus, physics engineering etc., your primary source should be your text, reference books and experience you build up during your career. I always hated these so called conversion factors, because they are abused by people using a spreadsheet, and not knowing the underlying dimensional analysis.

Once I had a discussion with a financial guy about monthly inventory, chemical usage etc. We have boilers and use rock salt for water softening. We purchase the salt in 50 lbs bags.  Stores reports the usage, accounting double check, and reports usage of salt in...liters
Started explaining why this was b.s. and his logic: seawater is salted, water you measure in m3 or gallons, thus salt is also measured in liters.
I found out that it was liters, because if they used barrels (oil refinery) the numbers would be too small,  sigh...

People tend to believe everything that is coming from the net, prove: look how many persons send internet hoaxes, warning you about the disasters that are coming your way.

RE: How to Succeed at Work?

Best piece of advise an older, wiser engineer gave me...

"You cannot be really first-rate at your work if your work is all that you are."  Work enough to live, but don't live to work.

It's like I saw on a commercial last night, no little boy ever grows up wanting to be "moneyman".

Good luck!

RE: How to Succeed at Work?

GregLocock, I agree with you, but information in a book are written by engineers and used by engineers. The books are checked by committee and the errors are tracked by errata (as you said).  But, “free flowing” engineering information that is put on the net is most likely put together by sales and web master people and are publishing stuff that they have no comprehension.  Just so that they can put together a snappy web sit, they will start pulling stuff from who knows where.  And there is no way to track or tell past users of errors.  The more that I think about it now the more uneasy I feel (shiver).

I guess, when making a book, the publisher wants to make sure that the information is correct before they make hundreds or thousands of copies.  But to put information on the net, the idea of “oh we will fix it if a problem is found” attitude relaxes there guard and little mistakes will get by.

Just my thoughts…

Go Mechanical Engineering
Tobalcane

RE: How to Succeed at Work?

Respect the people who turn the wrenches.  Remember that everyone on the shop floor knows something about your product that you don’t, the trick is separating the wheat from the chaff.

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