Here is an exerpt of some advice that I recently gave a young engineer just starting down his path. It feels weird to think of myself as "experienced", but after 15 years of working in engineering, 11 of those full-time, I guess I can't deny it anymore.  What is some of the advice that you wish an old fogey like me had given you in your early days? I'll capture it in a running blog series on the site so all can benefit.

Issue 1: Not all Engineering jobs are the same - personality counts

A good thing to think about early in your career is whether you fundamentally want to be on the practical design end of products, or on the research and theoretical design of product concepts. The basic difference is defined by the way modern R&D organisations operate in big companies. 

Many companies divide the labor so that there is a research team that might be investigating and prototyping many concept products in parallel, all depending on the strategy of the company. So you might be researching 5 different concepts with 5 different teams and 5 different project managers, with the hope that 1 out of 5 will turn into a viable product. Now to me, these are sweet gigs because you get much freedom to be creative and work on risky products. But the downside is that only 1 concept will fly, so you end up throwing lots of work away after working on it for months, sometimes years. Some people don't handle that well, and it depends on their personality. Your stereotypical hoarder engineer (the guy with the shed full of every broken tool he's ever used) will not do well here.

So, once that single viable concept has been fleshed out to the point where the company thinks it is marketable and profitable, it gets transferred to the traditional "engineering" group. These are the guys that actually have to figure out how to take this concept/prototype, and using the groundwork done by the R&D group, transfer the technology to something that is manufacturable, reliable, repeatable, has the right performance, and within the right budget. It also allows for creativity, but within a predefined goal of a particular product. 

Disclaimer: Note that the above description is mostly not applicable to small and startup companies, but they tend to be guided by fundamental research and then supplement with contract engineers and consultants until they get big enough to hire full time staff.

And then there are the private & public research organizations, which are a whole different animal and a much smaller but important part of the engineering job pool. For example, a University research lab environment is typically slower than industry, has a broad, somewhat unfocused strategy since they don't actually have to sell anything except IP, and do much more research than actual engineering. Keep in mind that most orgs like that are trying to create and license IP, not products. There is an ocean's difference between working at a Uni that doesn't commercialise their own products, and working for a private company that needs to sell stuff to keep the lights on. The former can be lots of fun if you're ok with a sandbox environment. Of course, sometimes a gov't or private contract comes along and the whole situation changes, but lets stick with our tidy generalizations. The attitude is very different, so it's worth thinking about what suits you best. But if you really want to make things and see them get out to people, private industry is the place for that generally.

So, young engineering jedi, choose wisely and remember that the sooner you find the right fit, the more likely you are to do kick-ass work.