Advice to Recent Grads

What do you want your career to look like? Are you a risk taker? Do you want to climb a corporate ladder or maybe start your own company? Are you motivated by compensation above all else?

Assessing what you want your career to look like is something you should do shortly after entering the workforce. It will have major implications as to how you should focus your efforts in those first years.

Having worked at 4 different small companies, 2 different large corps, and co-founded 3 startups I have had the luxury of comparison. I knew from first job that I eventually wanted to start companies. So, it occurred to me that I needed to learn everything that I possibly could about all things involved in developing a product and taking it to market.

This involved spending significant time with the purchasing department, marketing team, mechanical engineers, CNC shop, manufacturing floor, and production planners. It is also important to understand the company’s ERP system, which serves as the operational backbone of the business but is often overlooked by younger engineers.

People generally enjoy talking about their work, and it is surprising how much can be learned simply by showing genuine interest. It is equally important to understand the company’s sales channels, marketing strategies, and distributor agreements. Learning to read financial statements is another critical skill.

Developing a well-rounded understanding of these areas is essential for successfully starting or running a company. Too many engineers fail to understand where their paycheck ultimately comes from or recognize the business conditions that can lead to layoffs. Understanding how a business operates is important not only for entrepreneurship, but also for advancing within an organization.

Having said that, we live in a golden age now where much of this can be learned from researching the internet. But a young person still needs to know what questions even need to be asked first. Seeing how some of the business relationships work and the politics behind them remains important. Most things don’t work like your MBA textbook says they do.

This highlights another important contrast between small companies and large corporations. In most cases, it is difficult to gain the same breadth of experience at a large corporation that you can acquire at a small company. Large organizations often move more slowly, and project responsibilities are distributed across many specialized teams. As a result, individuals are less likely to develop the broad ownership and deep product knowledge that small companies often require.

At a small company, engineers are frequently expected to solve problems independently and operate under significant time and resource constraints. That environment creates a level of hands-on experience and accountability that is difficult to replicate elsewhere. In many cases, you are not only the design engineer, but also the manufacturing engineer, test engineer, and troubleshooting resource for the product.

Your career is a marathon, not a sprint. Well rounded knowledge can take you a long way whether it is used within a company or in starting one. You must take ownership of your career and plan out your moves accordingly.

Love to hear any feedback or questions you might have.

See "Back to School" Example Clip.

Love to hear feedback or questions