How to Figure Out Your Career Path | Career Advice from Engineering Manager
Are you considering pivoting your career but struggling to figure out exactly what you want to do?
I'm gonna show you how to stop going through the motions every day so that you can start taking action towards figuring out the perfect career path for you.
Stay tuned.
Hey guys, I'm Doug Howard and welcome to my channel. If you're new here, let me quickly introduce myself. I'm an engineering manager, mentor and coach, and as a manager, I took a five person team and grew it into a 40 person engineering department, which helped me discover my passion for helping engineers build foundational non-engineering skills that elevate your career and accelerate your career growth.
A lot of engineers aren't getting the mentorship they need in the workplace so I started this YouTube channel. Each week I post new episodes covering topics like interviewing, building relationships, recovering from burnout, communication, negotiating a raise, and much more. Hit that subscribe button so you don't miss out on any of these insights.
3 Reasons You're Struggling
In today's episode, I'm gonna show you how I figured out my career path. I'm also going to give you specific actions you can take to begin figuring out where you want your career to go. But first, let's start with why so many engineers struggle with finding the perfect career.
There's many different reasons for this, and everyone's situation is completely different, but I'm gonna focus on the underlying themes I've noticed throughout my career as an engineer and as an engineering manager.
The first reason is simple. Figuring out this stuff on your own isn't easy. Engineering can be a very exhausting and stressful job that leaves you feeling burnt out most days, and by the time you get home from work, you probably don't feel like you have the time, energy, or space to even consider thinking about things like where you want your career to go.
Quick sidebar, if you feel like you're struggling with burnout, check out my episode called How to Recover from Burnout.
The second main reason is because there's a good chance you haven't even been exposed to enough areas of engineering to actually figure out what you want to do.
Think of it like dating. If you're lucky enough to find the perfect job right out of college, great. That's awesome. Good for you. But most engineers don't find the perfect job right away. And because most engineers tend to be hardworking and loyal, you tend to work in the same job for a long time, even if it's not the right fit for you.
You get stuck performing the same roles, responsibilities, and tasks day in and day out. I like to call this Engineering Groundhogs Day. If you're in this boat, there's a good chance you haven't been exposed to enough things yet to figure out what you actually like and dislike which is why you need to treat your jobs and the companies you work for, like dating. I'll come back to this idea later in this video.
The third reason why engineers struggle to figure out their career path is because a lot of companies don't place much emphasis on helping you figure it out.
Back in the day, it was standard practice for younger engineers and new hires to get paired up with a designated mentor throughout their first year on the job. The mentor would typically be a high performing mid to senior level engineer. A role model for you to learn from, ask questions, show you the ropes, help you get comfortable, expose you to new things, and challenge you to grow. The main value from a mentor is that they help you uncover your blind spots, and offer powerful insights that impact your professional development.
However, most companies have gotten away from the mentor model over the last decade because it's hard for them to merit the return on investment.
From the company's perspective, pairing you up with a mentor is actually a big investment. It requires pulling an experienced senior engineer away from production to dedicate more time to mentoring. Companies used to be willing to make this investment in their team but statistically speaking, the average employee changes jobs every two to three years now, which makes mentoring a risky investment for the company. There's a good chance you're not gonna be there for the long term, in their eyes.
These are the three main reasons I've been able to pinpoint, but what are the reasons you feel like you're struggling to figure out your career path? Let me know in the comments, here's how I figured out my career path.
How I Figured Out My Path
I spent 15 years working at the same company, but the company changed so much in that timeframe that it was almost like I worked at three different companies.
When I started, it was a small family owned business that felt like a startup. It was also very niche business that was at the beginning stage of massive growth.
When I started working at the company, our engineering team was producing around 5 million dollars per year in designs, and by the time I left, we were producing around 150 million per year. I was originally hired as an entry level project engineer, and at that time there weren't any clear processes, procedures, or templates to work from.
Everything we did was based on tribal knowledge within the team, which made it really challenging to figure out things on your own. Eventually I was tired of wasting so much time digging for information and recreating everything from scratch. So I volunteered to create formal processes and standard templates on my own.
As we continued growing, we needed to hire more people, but we didn't have any training procedures in place. The first person we hired was completely lost, but I didn't wanna see them struggle so again, I took it upon myself to take them under my wing. In the process I ended up spearheading the effort to create a standard training program for our department.
I did this kind of selfishly. I did it so that I wouldn't have to be the only person that was stuck training new employees forever. Now, these experiences helped me discover that I had a knack for leadership and training, so I quickly gravitated towards supervising and manager roles. As we continued growing, our growth was eventually becoming limited by our technology. I can laugh about it now, but we were still using archaic software and outdated spreadsheets from the nineties to create erection drawings and design calculations. So I took it upon myself to begin researching the latest technology and getting it implemented into our operations. As we continued growing and hiring more people, I was getting stretched too thin as a manager, because I had too many direct reports.
So then I refocused on restructuring the department and creating more layers of supervising and manager roles throughout the team. Because our product was so niche, it was faster to fill these roles with people we already had on staff, because our engineers on staff were already experts in our field versus hiring someone from outside the organization and getting them up to speed. So I ended up spending a lot more of my time mentoring people and helping them grow into these leadership roles so that we could continue growing the department and increasing our capacity.
For a long time, I thought I loved this job. On the surface, I enjoyed what I was doing. I was passionate towards my work. I was getting paid very well. I got to explore many different areas of engineering. I was always learning something new. I worked very closely with engineers in other countries like Australia and Vietnam, and I even got to travel places like England on the company dime. But for some reason I was always unsettled about the job. I couldn't put my finger on it and I could never really put it into words. I wasn't able to figure out what was wrong or what I wanted out of my career until I challenged myself to apply this simple formula.
But before I explain it, I wanna know if you wanna see more videos related to helping you figure out your career path. Let me know by hitting that like button.
Step 1 - Your WHY
The first step in this formula is figure out your why.
If you're struggling to figure out what you want to do in your career, then there's a pretty good chance you're not clear on your why. As engineers, we tend to focus on what we're doing and we forget to consider why we're doing it. This is a problem because everything you do in life is driven by a why.
Why do you go to work? Because you need a paycheck.
Why do you need a paycheck? To pay the bills and so on.
These whys are pretty black and white. Figuring out the why for your career is a little more complex though. But figuring out your career path starts with why because your why is the motivation behind all your behavior and more importantly, your decisions. If you don't know your why, then it's impossible to figure out where you want to go or how to get there.
My why is simple. I don't believe any engineer should be limited or held back by non-engineering skills. Discovering my why helped me redirect my career path towards something that was more in line with what I truly wanted, which was helping engineers grow and empowering them to take control of building the career they want and deserve.
If you're not clear on your why, start by asking yourself questions like,
Why did I originally choose to become an engineer?
Why do I still want to be an engineer?
What does the perfect engineering job look like for me?
If I couldn't be an engineer anymore, what would I be?
If I were to quit engineering tomorrow, what would I miss the most?
Which engineers do I admire the most and why do I admire them?
Use journaling to explore these types of questions, but dig deeper than your initial thoughts and answers.
When you're journaling why you originally chose engineering as a career path, you might initially say something like because it pays well, or because I enjoy problem solving. Don't just accept that answer and move on. Stick with it and dig deeper and challenge yourself by asking why those things are important to you, why they mattered to you, and why they influenced your decision at the time.
For example, is having a job that pays well important to you because you place a high value on financial security? Or because you wanna feel like your value is being appreciated and rewarded?
These are two, two completely different things, and knowing things like this about yourself is super important when it comes to figuring out where you want your career to go.
Challenge every answer by continuing to ask yourself why until you can't anymore. This helps you get to the core of what you really want. Quick warning, asking yourself these questions isn't easy. In fact, it feels pretty awkward and uncomfortable at first. Embrace the discomfort and lean into it.
If you need a little help with this, check out my episode called 10 Ways to Get Comfortable With Going Outside Of Your Comfort Zone.
Like I said, embrace the discomfort and lean into it because that's where the biggest growth and self-discovery happens.
Doing this simple exercise is critical because it's your first step towards figuring out what you really want out of your engineering career.
Step 2 - Take Inventory on Experience
Step two is take inventory on your work experience.
After you gain a better understanding of your why, you can dig deeper by taking an inventory on your work experience to this point in your career. Think about your current job and any past jobs you've had and reflect on what you like the most and the least about each job.
For years, I thought I loved being an engineering manager, and in many ways I did. I loved working with a team of engineers. I loved helping them uncover their blind spots and accelerating their professional growth. I enjoyed it so much that it didn't even feel like work to me but there were a lot of things about the job that I really didn't like that much.
For example, I was always getting pulled into last minute meetings with upper management, and I hated it because the meetings felt pointless and it was always pulling me away from being productive and growing my team.
But I never really paid much attention to how many things I didn't like about the job until I forced myself to take an inventory on my actual experiences.
What did I like?
What did I not like?
The easiest way for you to do this for yourself is asking yourself questions like,
What did I enjoy the most about that job?
What were the most rewarding experiences about that job?
What did I hate the most about that job?
What do I wish I was doing more of?
What do I actually want?
Journal on questions like these, challenge yourself to dig deeper by asking why to each of your answers.
For example, if the thing you enjoyed most about your last job was working on projects that felt challenging, ask yourself,
Why was that so important to you?
Why did it matter?
Was it because you want to feel like your skills are being utilized? Or was it because you wanna feel like you're growing?
Keep asking yourself why until you discover the core reason behind it. After you've journaled on all of these questions, take a step back to read through your journal prompts to look for patterns behind what you like and dislike as well as what you want more of.
If you have any questions about this, let me know in the comments.
Step 3 - Seek New Experiences
Step three is proactively seek new experiences.
If you're still struggling to figure out your career path after figuring out your why, and after taking an inventory on your past jobs, then there's a good chance you haven't even discovered what you like yet.
Which leads me to the best career advice I ever received.
One of my mentors told me this.
Spend the first 10 years of your career doing as many jobs as possible. Touch as many things as you can during that timeframe. Then reflect on the experience to figure out what you want to do for the rest of your career.
In other words, you don't know what you don't know, and the only way to figure out what you don't know is by gaining more exposure to new things.
So if you don't know what you wanna do for the rest of your career yet, that's okay, but the only way you're gonna figure it out is by focusing on soaking up as much new experiences as you can so that you can figure out what you actually like.
Shift your mindset and start viewing the company you work for as a tool. Use this tool to soak up as much experience as you can by exposing yourself to as many people, systems, technology, processes, perspectives, and ideas as you can. Use companies to develop a broad range of skills and build up your knowledge bank as well.
Follow your curiosity and take it upon yourself to pay attention to what things pique your interest. Then find ways to get involved in doing these types of things at your current job.
As you're doing this, start looking for patterns in the areas you find yourself naturally gravitating towards.
I was always gravitating towards leadership, process improvement, and training.
For a long time I believed engineering manager was the perfect career for me, but when I took a step back to look for patterns. I realized that I really wasn't interested in those specific things. I was driven by my desire to increase my impact and influence on people, and I did it by fixing problems and helping engineers grow into their careers.
But if your current job doesn't provide you with as many opportunities to explore new areas, then you'll wanna do this next step.
Step 4 - Find a Mentor
Find a mentor. It's simply not possible to figure out everything on your own.
Okay, maybe it's not impossible, but it definitely takes a lot longer, which is why it's important for you to find mentors. Someone who's been there before, someone who knows what it takes to get you where you want to be.
Whenever I hired a new engineer, I'd always pair them with a designated mentor during their first year with the company.
I always placed a high value in mentoring because I knew I would never would've figured out my career path if I didn't have access to mentors who helped me and influenced me along the way. But mentoring has become a lost art with most engineering companies. I actually had to take it upon myself to go out and seek mentorship from people I hardly knew.
I started paying attention to which people I admired inside and outside of work and why I admired them. I looked for people who had the type of career that I wanted to build for myself then I would find ways to reach out to them and build a mentoring relationship with them. With each initial reach out, I'd keep it simple by asking for advice on a specific topic. You'll find that most people are willing to spend a minute giving you advice because it boosts their ego.
After they would give me this advice, I'd follow up with them a few days later, letting them know how much I appreciated their advice. I'd share how I put their advice into action and tell 'em what results came from it.
From there, I would share a little bit more about myself and explain how I'm looking to grow but how I'm struggling to find direction as well. Then I'd ask them if they'd be willing to mentor me in specific areas. Most of the time, the person either said yes, or they connected me with another person who could mentor me.
My career never would've moved forward if I didn't gain more exposure to other engineers and mentors and seeing how they did things and gaining their perspectives and learning from their insights and uncovering my own blind spots. But I had to take it upon myself to proactively seek out mentors, which was a little intimidating the first few times I did it. It required knowing how to build relationships with people.
If you're interested in finding a mentor, you're gonna wanna check out my episode called How To Quickly Build A Relationship With Anyone.
Thanks for watching.
