I have something amazing going on in my personal life but my work life is leaving a lot to be desired. As in, I don't think I want to do engineering after this next year. At best I'd be okay with more of a research or data oriented position. But in reality I think I'd much rather be working in something humanities and people based, such as community development, higher ed, those kind of multi-disciplinary environments. I sure as hell don't want to be in manufacturing this time next year, that much is for sure. The only problem is I might have gotten myself in too much student debt to make much of a change, but I might have found a way around that. I know a few of you have "nope-d" out of engineering. It just doesn't seem like my thing, I'm yet to be more than content with an engineering gig but at least this one pays well and has sweet benefits. I've started learning Python after work to help with any potential transitions, does anyone have recommendations on learning material? I'm almost done with Learn Python the Hard Way.
Question for you and kleinbl00, how transferable are those skills to something that isn't engineering? Being a CTO or something along those lines would be great, but it seems way too early in a career to be anywhere near that. I'm trying to think of near term exit strategies and ways to become marketable across industries, which is a big fear right now, that my staying in manufacturing would pigeon-hole me into that industry for life.
So what you'll realize is that the further you get from graduation, the more "a degree" matters and the less "this specific degree" matters. Honestly? Put in a couple years, get some business skillz, pay down your student loan debt, and keep a close eye on your managers all the way to the top. Consider them from a "if I were her, I would do X instead of Y" perspective and start thinking like a boss, rather than an employee. Then apply to high-end MBA programs, take 2 years off and get a much better job doing whatever appeals to you four years from now. Don't think of your current gig as a "career." Think of it as a cash-flow positive internship while you learn the ropes of, you know, working for a living.
We have engineers that have moved to roles like customer reps and project management. They're roles where the engineering background can be helpful, but the only math they do is adding up their golf scores. For being transferable, not all customer reps or project managers are engineers. They came from other industries or other backgrounds. I think the direction some of my colleagues have gone gives them a lot of flexibility to move to other industries entirely different from the engineering they did right out of school.
Best way to learn is to think of a problem you want to solve and try your hand at it. It doesn't have to be a complete program, or website, or service, just focus on one aspect of it and use your existing knowledge to model it the best you can. We had a subject study session last week where we had to simulate an average speed check, taking a license plate and the times recorded entering and leaving the monitored section of road; this was pretty trivial to get going but it was a nice challenge for someone who has rarely used Python and can be extended to make it more difficult.
That sounds like a good problem. I'm also planning on going through some of Project Euler and some Bioinformatics problem sets.We had a subject study session last week where we had to simulate an average speed check, taking a license plate and the times recorded entering and leaving the monitored section of road; this was pretty trivial to get going but it was a nice challenge for someone who has rarely used Python and can be extended to make it more difficult.
You could make a script that will take a file with a list of ISBN or UPC codes, decode what they are (lookup online perhaps?) and output a list of what they are, that'd be a neat little script. If you get a barcode app for your phone, you can then bulk scan all your books (or whatevers) and bam you have a list of all your books, no typing required.