What is the most rewarding part of being an engineer?

Katelyn, my most rewarding experience hands down was when a US soldier told me that he absolutely loved his job using a piece of equipment I worked on 20+ years earlier ... he could not stop talking about it and wanted to learn as much as he could about how it was designed, why things were designed the way they were, challenges involved, everything. It made the 3 hour plane trip seem like minutes.

For me, it's always been solving a problem no one has solved before. I've been very fortunate in that my willingness to work on unfamiliar or weird stuff has gotten me a lot of opportunities to solve problems that other folks ignored as being "not in their wheelhouse". That's been primarily a result of other folks being generous with their confidence in me, I think. My advice to young engineers -- or problem solvers in any field at all -- is to actively look for opportunities to solve problems. IOW, some folks immediately react to a problem with a sigh of disappointment or a feeling of frustration. Your job should be to look at something that can be improved or, even better, look at something that is completely "FUBAR-ed", and think, "Oh, boy, this is going to be FUN!" Some folks have lots of inventions, and they often all fall into the same or a similar area. This is idea for refining products and services, and necessary. I've got inventions and claims in what I would call a weird assortment of areas. If I had not been given those opportunities by others, I would likely not have been given the luxury of spending time on them. So I say to others that if you're not lucky enough as I've been to be given those opportunities, make them. Look everywhere for problems to solve. As you succeed, you'll be given more opportunities. To come up with some idea that no one has come up with before is a thrill knowing that you've contributed something novel to the world. It may be something most folks aren't aware of and they may never know your name, but it's there, and it will likely benefit folks for decades that have no idea who you were, but they have a piece of something you love that may make them a tiny bit happier. And that is tres cool, I think.

Hi,

Mark's answer above is excellent. Problem solving is also what I find to be most rewarding about being an engineer. I have spent my career, not in the design end of the field but in the operation and maintenance end of the field. Some designs do not work as intended and "break" quite soon after gong into service. In those cases I like to find out why it broke and how it should be designed or manufactured to work better. In other cases, something my have worked properly for years and then failed. In those cases, one must first determine why it broke (poor maintenance, poor operation, or it just plain wore out). In those cases, after determining the cause of the failure, one might have to be quite creative in determining the "fix". It might be a design change, a modification to the operation or maintenance, or buy a new one. In all cases determining the cause of the problem is most rewarding to me.

Hope this helps,

Doug

The most rewarding part of participating in engineering or any career is the feeling of satisfaction and fulfillment that you get from participating in the career area, and the feeling of looking forward to going to work every day. This can be attained by getting to know yourself better to make sure that you are selecting a career area which is compatible with your personality traits and meeting and having face to face networking opportunities with people who are doing what you think that you might want to do, so that you might see what they do, how they got there, and what advice and suggestions that they might have.

Getting to know yourself and how your personality traits relate to people involved in various career opportunities is very important in your decision making process. During my many years in Human Resources and College Recruiting, I ran across too many students who had skipped this very important step and ended up in a job situation which for which they were not well suited. Selecting a career area is like buying a pair of shoes. First you have to be properly fitted for the correct size, and then you need to try on and walk in the various shoe options to determine which is fits the best and is most comfortable for you to wear. Following are some important steps which I developed during my career which have been helpful to many .