Should I Be A Doctor Or An Engineer?

Wanna hear the truth?

Sorry kid, You're Asking The Wrong Question.

If your life has brought you to a place where you are so constrained in your choices that they only two professions you are considering are engineering and medicine, then it might be time to pause for a few moments and ask yourself who is influencing you the most to make this decision? Is it your mother or father? Is it your whole family? 20 years down the road when you figure out your mistake, will they be there to support you? I first realized my mistake towards the end of my education and then for the second time I realized my mistake about mid-way through my life, and guess what? I was all alone. All those people that pushed me in a corner to make my career choice were nowhere to be found. They handed the responsibility for my happiness back into my hands - which is exactly where it belongs.

It is unfortunate that this world constrains bright young adults to such a degree that they have:
(a) completely suppressed their interests and passion
(b) have no choice but to please authority figures around them
(c) aren't given the honest truth about both these professions

Am I being too harsh? I don't think so.

What are your interests?

Engineering and Medicine couldn't be farther apart in what is achieved or performed on a day-to-day basis. As an engineer you build things. As a doctor you heal people. Do you remotely want to do either? What motivated you to ask the first question?

I had a friend who said her brother wants to be a doctor because he liked blood. I was taken aback at the sheer stupidity of that sentence. I knew their parents were pushing them to do medicine, so I realized they had to come up with some reason to justify taking pre-med courses. But liking blood? It was absolutely bizarre. Even hematologists don't just like blood... they get into hematology out of their interest to cure blood-related diseases.

I honestly never wanted to build anything. But I became an engineer because I was told it was a sure-shot thing. Sure-shot at job satisfaction, happiness, wealth, respect, growth, social standing. But did I really want to build anything? No. Was I remotely interested in electricity? No. Did I develop an interest towards it as my career progressed? Yes, but not enough to keep me in the field. I love to read stories of Tesla, I love to find out why we ground electrical systems (most electrical engineers will give you the wrong answer to this question), I think it's fabulous that we're living in what I call "Tesla's Age" where everything we do is inherently dependent on electricity (AC). But I am done satiating my curiosity. There is no drive inside me to follow this path any further. I will still gladly help people with the knowledge I've accumulated in the last 13 years. But there is nothing more for me here, and I think that's because I never was truly interested in electrical systems nor was I interested in building anything.

So let's answer your initial questions here.

Should I go into Medicine?

Ask yourself these questions:
Do I want to heal people? When I see someone suffering, does my heart fill with empathy? If medicine was an underpaying, under appreciated field, would I still go into it to help people? Would I travel to foreign places to help the underprivileged sick to get better? Would I live out of my pocket to develop a cure? Do I feel that my mind is so sharp that I can really help this planet and vast numbers of people by sharing my intellect and time in developing a cure?
Is there someone sick in your family that would benefit from someone like you in the medical profession?

If you answered yes to any of the questions above or any questions remotely similar, then you should go into medicine. If you don't care about people but want to enter the field for money and status, be prepared to hate your job every single day of your life.

Don't lie to yourself today. I know scores of people that concoct lies in their head to pass the interviews to get into med school. I can guarantee you those lies will end up costing you dearly in the end as you spend countless hours in the hospital doing something you hate, facing patients who do not appreciate you, potentially giving a wrong diagnosis and killing someone or battling colleagues that do not respect your work. Be Honest with yourself TODAY. Be Honest with yourself. You're going to be with one person for the entire journey of life. And every minute of every day you will be left with one person to answer to: YOU.

Should I go into Engineering?

If you've read my other posts you will know that there is no use for math in engineering. So the questions you need to ask yourself are these:

Do I like building things? Am I going to be happy collaborating with people from multiple engineering disciplines to coordinate and compromise to build something? Do I want to go to site and inspect what I built? Do I want to learn from my mistakes and build something better? Do I want to test my code to make sure it works properly during run time? Am I comfortable having my design scrutinized by multiple people who will give me feedback on my work? Am I comfortable having tough discussions with management that do not understand all the aspects of design? Am I willing to stand by  my cause to build something well? Do I feel like the world could use someone like me to build a better, more robust system?

If any of those questions lights a spark in your heart and brain, Engineering is for you.

But if you don't know what I'm talking about, then spend a few weeks participating in different activities to discover what it is you do like to do and what it is that you have skills for.

I encourage you to broaden your perspective. Scores of intelligent people are regretting their career decisions later in life because they've realized that they were lying to themselves and that journey has to come to an end. It's like judgement day: the only thing is that there's no God to judge you - just yourself. Be Truthful to yourself. No magical path or single career is easier than another. Making it in engineering is just as hard as making it in arts or finance. What will truly help you make it in your field is your interest in that field. When you follow your curiosity, you will naturally develop an acumen for it. Research your area of interest. If you enjoy writing and want to be a journalist, don't go into newspaper journalism; an industry that's coming to an end... be smart. Find out what's up and coming: Get into freelancing or television. Love the movie industry and would do anything to be a part of it? Again, do your fact finding. Be prepared to move to a city with an active movie industry. You can't fulfill your dreams of being a special effects artist if you're stuck in Dayton. Move to Hollywood.

If you fake your interest today, you're going to have to fake it tomorrow and the day after, and the day after that, for years and years. It's hard to stand up to your parents... it might even be impossible. But at the very least, be honest with yourself. If you're forced into engineering school, then keep your eyes open to other interests and opportunities and keep toying with the idea of transitioning into your fields of interest. You might not believe this now, but your parents are going to lose interest in you after a couple of years. So you may as well do something you love for the rest of your life.

Think about it.

The Only Way to Know What You Want To Do With Your Life...

...Is to make mistakes

Not the answer I wanted to give nor the answer you want to hear. But you know it to be true. It's the only answer that makes sense. It's the simplest lesson in life, probably.

Try out a few things in life, and find out which ones you like, which ones you can live with, and which ones you absolutely cannot stand.

The reasons for your choices really don't matter. All that matters is where you are right now. 

I don't mind hard work, probably because it keeps me engaged. But I do mind other people speaking for my time after I've made my preferences clear. While clearly being told that I wasn't expected to work more than 40 hours, the project budget was designed for me to work 80 hours a week while getting paid for 40.

I do mind sucking up to people with the expectation to climb the corporate ladder. I do mind acting foolish and subservient to people of questionable respectability. It's not something I enjoy doing and it's something I laugh at when I see others doing it. And therefore, I will never climb that corporate ladder. I saw the results of this first hand. Even though I was on first name basis with the VPs of the company and had frequent conversations about projects and the direction the company was taking, I didn't call them over for supper or compliment them on meaningless rewards they didn't deserve. So my coworker who did the latter got promoted. I was happy for him. Because whatever it is that got you promoted, is what you'll be expected to do more of. If you get promoted for licking stamps, you'll get to lick more stamps. If you get promoted to subservience, you'll be expected to be even more subservient.

I enjoy learning. I found that out when I was enjoying learning things that didn't particularly tickle my fancy. But my mind was growing and that felt good. 

I enjoy interacting with people. When I was doing site inspections in Fort McMurray, I enjoyed interacting with the electricians and journeymen. At the office, I enjoyed interacting with everyone. In my professional societies, I enjoy interacting with my fellow learned society members. I enjoy interacting with people I like and don't particularly like. The interaction is enjoyable. The constant verbal and intellectual gymnastics is thoroughly fun.

But I wouldn't have discovered any of these things if I had been surfing the net. I only found out because I went out there and tried out something. I tried out something extremely challenging. And it just turned out that I didn't like certain key aspects of it. But it still pushed me into a corner - a good corner - a corner of self-discovery.

And maybe that's the source of my anger...

This Self Discovery also Shattered my Self-Image. 

And that has made me feel rudderless. All this time I had clear direction on my path because I was pursuing the fulfillment of that imaginary person in my head that I thought was me. I have to face the fact that the imaginary person in my head is not the real me. And I have no more direction.

I had imagined myself to be someone who would enjoy being an engineer. I am not that person. I had imagined to be someone who would roll around in my money and derive a huge sense of identity from it. I didn't. I had imagined myself being someone who would enjoy telling a bunch of people what to do and how to do it. I don't. I had imagined myself being someone who would brag to others about my accomplishments. I didn't. I don't. I had imagined myself wanting a big house, a fancy car, and a collector of something expensive. I'm none of these things.

I hadn't imagined how much I needed to learn. I hadn't imagined how horrible I would feel for being manipulated. I hadn't imagined how much I would detest verbal abuse. I hadn't imagined how much I would dislike the pretentiousness of corporate culture. I hadn't imagined how I would feel working on something that I wasn't really interested in. I hadn't imagined what it's like to be working on something that is of little or no significance to me. I hadn't imagined how horrible it would feel to be judged by people in management positions that don't know what they are doing while I am a professional who does know what I'm doing. I didn't realize how small I would feel when I would be turned down for a vacation request during a slow period when I had no work. I did not know these things. BUT I wouldn't have known these things until I walked down that path.

You really can't think your way out of situations. You have to experience it first hand.

Only after my grandfather took me to a cafe did I realize how much I loved coffee. Only when I went on my Europe tour did I realize how hooked I am on traveling. Only when I traveled through India and overheard an Israeli traveler describe personal surrender during travel, did I latch on to the concept and tried it out for myself.

We cannot expect great truths to unfold before us if we're going to be armchair philosophers. We have to interact with the world. For better or for worse.

Evolution, Change and Resistance

I have been resisting this urge to get out of engineering for the past 5 years. Pessimism disguised as realism has kept me locked in.

But my partner and I have been noticing some subtle changes in the economy and the way businesses are being run now. I only say subtle because most people are unwilling to talk about it or accept it. But there is nothing subtle about the rate at which the progression has taken place. What am I talking about?

Decentralization.

Of absolutely everything.

The average person knows of the decentralized IT solutions provided to most offices. But that cost savings and method of work is going to bleed into other areas. What won't morph into decentralized goods and services? Local grocery stores, hospitals and health services, furniture stores and the restaurant business. Most goods are from amazon and ebay. services are mostly arranged and can be primarily provided online, books are on kindle, travel through hipmunk, you name it...

I think I've hit upon the reason why I'm so frustrated with the engineering world. It is reluctantly going towards decentralization, and my work now is a remnant of the old system that is no longer sustainable due to it's high costs and the need for the world to cut costs.

Saw an insightful video today:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZRRjnqf48s

He's right. We need to learn and move on to the next thing. The more of a death grip we have on old, archaic systems, the more we will suffer in our current position.

Perhaps suffering is nature's way of initiating evolution. We suffer because we are beckoned to evolve. We suffer because we are resistant to change. We suffer because we want to hold on to what is familiar but the universe doesn't like that... the universe is constantly expanding and evolving. Limitlessly.

Can we be so selfish as to not participate in that change?

Acting from Fear or Enthusiasm?

I have been catching up to social media over the last 3-4 weeks and have caught up with many of my old friends. Catching up also means waking up to 222 unread WhatsApp messages. This morning I had a thought, "If I just keep checking my messages every 10 minutes, then I won't have to catch up with 700 messages when I miss a night!"

Wow. Really?

I've made my life choices by playing a chess game of, "That path looks less painful than that path." The trouble with it is, I'm busy walking down less painful paths while entirely joyous paths are passing me by. I think this sort of thinking is rooted in the belief that we live in an uncaring universe.

How many of us think in this way? I feel that there's something inherently incomplete in that singular method of making life decisions.

Is the Universe caring or uncaring? Or no wait... Do you Believe in a caring universe or an uncaring one? Good question Einstein. Here's a brilliant article on that:
http://geoffolson.com/page5/page11/page34/page34.html
The world needs more thinkers like you Geoff Olson.

After picking a career that appeared to be less painful than all the other careers out there, here I am. Working in a soul less job that pays well. Hmmm.... what other profession does that remind me of....?

One of the reasons I picked engineering was because the job prospects were supposedly good. I was avoiding homelessness. Is there a conspiracy out there? Why are so many people out there to paint the engineering profession something that it isn't? Job prospects were crap when I graduated. And they were crap for 10 of the 13 years I've been working as an engineer. All the engineering companies WISH they had more engineers to work on the projects... but it's not the shortage of engineers that stops them... it's the limited budget or poor management decisions.

The alternate path to living out of fear-based, doomsday-based questions is to try the other side. I've tried the uncaring universe theory, and it's really not making me happy. So how about the caring universe theory? I think it's time to give that a try.

What if I followed my heart? What if I picked a job that looked even slightly interesting or peaked my curiosity in the least? Would the universe conspire to make me successful? Would engaging myself in something interesting entice me to do a better job than just mindless drudgery?

I know there are enough naysayers on the internet to quash that. Maybe their lives are miserable and they just want to convince others that this is all there is to it. Or maybe they believe so deeply in the uncaring universe that nothing else can be fathomed in their minds.

I suppose it's that naysaying thinking that has made me a good engineer. The Doomsday mentality.

But I'm not going to turn into Nietzsche. I'm also not going to turn into those apathetic soulless engineers haunting those cubicles and corridors. I am at a point where I would rather try something I like and see where it takes me, rather than exist successfully and live miserably.

The Trouble With Realism

The trouble with realism is that it turns into a quasi-intelligent mask for pessimism. And I believe this is what keeps us engineers working for heartless, soul-draining corporations that do not have our interests in mind but spew out lies we want to hear to keep us working in appalling conditions.

I am glad I never asked for anyone's opinion when I applied for and started studying Electrical Engineering. It was what I had aimed at doing, and had I spoken to any of the deadbeats around me, they would have given me some "dose of reality". For "well-wishers" that can't say one positive thing, realism always means "waking up to a reality of how things will not work out". Except we don't need to wake up to that anymore because we're drowning in it.

When I moved to a new country on my own to start engineering school, my grandmother who hadn't spoken to me in a decade, because I was the last thing on her mind, called me to say that had she been my parent, she would never have allowed any of it. Thanks Grandma. This is also the grandmother who outright told my father I wouldn't finish grade 12. Thinking back, she didn't provide a reason. Maybe it was so obvious to her that it didn't need mentioning. Thank God that nugget of poop reasoning never entered my head. Realism? For her maybe. She grew up in some village with no clean water, no electricity, no education. Maybe closing doors as quickly as possible was her way to survive. But had I taken her input into consideration, it would have been a grave error on my part.

I'm always amused when arts school students get the barrage of realism stuffed down their throats. The day after you get into arts school, millions of people will tell you how you'll be jobless for the rest of your life. Except jobs aren't the only way to survive, is it? There are 50 bajillion ways to make a living. 

Think about it. If you are an engineer or are studying in engineering school, there are tremendous odds you had to overcome to get where you did. And you're there. So why do we believe the idea that we will not succeed in our own private practice? Or that we might do well in a different profession more suited for our needs and wants?

If your heart cringes every time you see another shitty project coming down the pipe, if your eyes roll to the back of your head when management spews out more corporate clap trap in the quarterly meetings and you can't wait to run out of the room, there's some truth stirring inside of you. The corporate lies are concocted in a private room by people who don't believe it as much as you don't believe it. Which makes the lies even harder to reject. I remember listening to the CEO of our company tell us how fantastic Q3 had been, while I knew the group manager for one of the key departments had to let one or two employees go because they were losing money on active projects and they had lost good projects to competitors that very quarter. Lies. Corporate lies.

Alberta has been in a downturn for over a year now. Before leaving my old company, I went to speak to my office general manager about the state of affairs. At that time it was still the 'B' grade employees being let go. I asked about the future of the company and my GM told me that everything was going to be fine but some departments would see the pinch, but I was safe and my job was secure. It was a simple sentence but it was sinister because meant that many more layoffs were coming. In that quarterly meeting, it was announced that some more of the old-timers in the company were being made VPs - which was a promotion to do no work all day and get fat bonuses at regular intervals. The business model was interesting: the people who had put in the blood and sweat in the past and made it to the top would get rewarded indefinitely. Yet the rewards were coming from the toils of the older people who had been unrewarded and the young people who were sweating and bleeding for the company. An image of the slaves of Egypt popped into my head.

I don't think I was over reacting. I had been with the company for 9 long years. I was "A COMPANY MAN". I used to work late and work weekends to finish projects and not charge to the job so that it wouldn't go over budget. At first I got a pat on the back. Then nothing. And then - like Neo - I looked around me at the ocean of engineers doing the same thing as me, counting on a promise that was not going to be kept.

I thought of writing this post because of the optimism I see in naive people that are far more successful than I am. My realism has kept me from opening my own business and pursuing my own interests. But these other people... these seemingly stupid people.... have gone out and opened their businesses and they are doing fine. They are paying their rent. They are putting food on the table. And they don't have horrendous managers breathing down their neck, bullying them. They aren't suffering from anxiety or insomnia.

So who's the truly stupid one? I think it's the realists.

Sometimes we need to be unrealistic to succeed. If I hadn't been completely unrealistic and naive, I would never have come to a completely new country, immersed myself in a completely alien culture, and would never have experience all the joys of this wonderful place I am in right now. The result: I found a country I love to call home, I love the people of this country who are genuinely caring and wonderful people, I found the love of my life and I find the pristine beauty of this country forever inspiring and replenishing.

Thank you naivete.

To Stay In Engineering School Or Not

I mentioned in my previous post that you should quit engineering school because you'll never use math or science in engineering. That was an over simplification.

My experience in University was an overall positive one. I worked very, very hard but I felt very gratified in the end.

I believe that we all need structure in our lives. When I finished high school, I applied for electrical engineering (EE) and computer engineering. I got into the former and after finishing first year realized that I preferred my program to the other. The computer engineering program in my university was a chimera of low level computer hardware courses and some low level programming courses. It seemed like the worst of both worlds... you could neither get into pure hardware development nor were you learning decent theory and application of programming. So to be sure I didn't want to get into software engineering, I completed some programming courses on my own and did not enjoy programming. So I stuck with EE.

The intense math in third year was very satisfying for me. The appeal of this challenge is what got me into engineering in the first place. Everyone around me was struggling to keep their head above water but I enjoyed the complexity of DSP systems. Third year was tough and so was fourth year.

But in second year I did something very smart: I joined the Co-op program.

The co-op program was a 4-month job placement program that allowed students to try their hand in the field. I would alternate one work semester with one academic semester. By the time I got into third year engineering, I had already completed two job placements. In 1999 I got paid $12.50 an hour. I thought I was King Midas.

Now here's the dumb thing I did: When I realized I hated the work, I did not switch out of my program. I had something stupid to prove to an imaginary crowd... that I could finish what I started. That I wasn't chickening out. I pulled a Marty McFly. And the joke was on me.

I disliked my work. I noticed it was draining me. And again, my grim determination took over: I worked at my job and did well in it. After my first term, my employer asked me to come back for a second term. I sure fooled them! I built them a robust, practical and lightning fast non-graphical command line interface. I felt COOL using GNU Emacs. I programmed key recognition referencing classic VI key-strokes. My mentor was so excited to share his stories about his programming past. I loved the camaraderie with my co-workers. I thought maybe this is what I was meant to do.

My second term wasn't so cool. I had to re-build the interface using OO programming, accessing the enormous dynamic database. My mentor was a C++ genius. I'm not kidding. He was on every head hunter's list. He was a great guy.

But this is when and where I realized I didn't care about this stuff. I aced this term too but I started to realize that EE wasn't for me.

But did I listen to myself? No. I was afraid my parents would be disappointed. I was afraid the imaginary world around me would make fun of me. I was afraid of my own judgement - that I couldn't stick with one thing. So I stuck with it.

For my third term, in order to get a better range of work experience, I tried my hand at IC chip design/testing. Nortel gave me a job testing microchips. Gallium Arsenide Field Effect Transistors to be precise. While the lab was cool and the test procedures cooler, this was even less meaningful to me than the last work term. My heart was starting to sink. I secretly wanted to run.

Throughout all this, school was the only thing that felt like an anchor in my life. I enjoyed going to school and  enjoyed the concept of getting a degree. But the closer I got to graduation, the more I was convinced that if you're not enjoying what you're studying and what you're doing, you will feel no pride in your degree. I got decent marks and graduated. But I did not feel happy and I did not look forward to looking for work in my field.

Fast foward 13 years. Would I have done anything differently? I would have still stuck with finishing my engineering degree. But I should have looked further into the one other area of interest that I discovered in school while taking one of three compulsory elective courses (non-engineering courses for broadening your mind). You could pick any non-engineering subjects so I picked Philosophy, Accounting and Psychology.

That one private area of interest has now blossomed into a total and unrelenting passion for me. And when I think back to that elective course, I remember reading the entire text book in my spare time even though we were asked to only read the first 10 chapters. I remember not even trying and getting an A+. I just never connected the two dots that my extreme curiosity of that field could have translated into a career.

My closest ones and I have discovered the beauty of Stoicism. It only makes sense to accept the path we have walked on (the past is out of our control) and thank ourselves for it. It was a long and tumultuous journey, and we did the best we could. I have learnt my lesson and so what am I going to do with that?

We can control what is in our hands now, which is the present moment and the decisions we make today.

What are you going to do?

Don't Go Into Engineering!

 Consider This Before You Decide To Get Into Engineering

There is so much misinformation out there that it behooves me to lay these facts in front of you before you get into this field. This is written for those of you having second thoughts about engineering. If you're already in engineering school, then think a little harder before you muscle your way through to graduation. If you've already graduated and are struggling to find a job, consider skidaddling into another career.

I realize that reading one blog entry means nothing and you most likely will not change your mind because of it. But think about what I have to say. And if you hear more than one engineer or ex-engineer say the same thing, then there may be something to it.

(1) No use of MATH OR SCIENCE. You'll NEVER use any MATH or SCIENCE. If you're an Electrical Engineer, you're going to use V=IR and P=VI. So quit school after the first semester and save yourselves tens of thousands of dollars in tuition and years of useless education. Laplace Transforms? Triple Integrals? I think NOT. Try ADDITION and SUBTRACTION. I even went completely wild once and used DIVISION. I think I almost fractured the space-time continuum with that one overly-complex mathematical operation for a lowly electrical engineer.  Needless to say, picking engineering because of my interest and acumen for math was a BIG mistake.

Let me try to put this to you as gently as I can: your engineering job is about fitting as many square pegs in as many square holes as quickly as possible while management breathes down your neck. You will not be able to use your creativity or imagination with anything.

(2) Zero Complexity. Enjoy complexity? Well, sucks to be you. There will be NO COMPLEXITY in your engineering design. Whatever problem you figure out how to solve in the first year of your employment, you will continue to solve for the remaining 35 years. Sizing an MCC? Load flow calculation for your power distribution system? Sizing your power cables? Designing your switchgear? Everything you need to know you will learn in 1 year. After that your mind will waste away. So what did I do for the remaining 12 years? I went to site. I commissioned systems. I hung out with electricians. I tried to troubleshoot real problems. I participated in technical committees. I volunteered for learned societies. But this isn't why I went to school. It's great that I could do it. And I'm grateful that I traveled all over Alberta and British Columbia, but this isn't mentally stimulating and I don't want to do this till I'm 65.

(3) NO Industry Stability. When I graduated in 2002, the city I was in was the Hi-Tech capital of Canada. I and all my classmates had done all our coop jobs in hi-tech firms. The month we graduated, everything went up in flames. It took less than a month for the entire hi-tech world in eastern Canada to completely turn to ash. All of us stared in disbelief and foolishly believed things would go back to normal. It never did.  I moved to oil and gas country.
In 2008, North American monetary systems collapsed and a lot of people lost their homes and their jobs. I managed to hold on to my job because the industry I was in was funded by the Municipal government. But most of my industry contacts were either laid off or were afraid to get laid off.
It's now 2015, and oil and gas country is now in dire straits. Canada and USA are feeling the pains of low oil prices, and engineers are the first to get the boot. Over 15,000 people - mostly engineers - have lost their jobs in less than 1 year in my city alone.
When an industry suffers, the first people to get the chop are engineers.

(4) TOO MANY ENGINEERS! There are far too many engineering graduates each year and post graduation placement rates are dismal. The only years when graduates get jobs straight out of school are boom years. After that, new graduates struggle to get their foot in the door in any industry. Because of the way things turned out when I graduated, 90% of my classmates never even had a chance to pursue their trade. Some got another degree. Some went into their family business. Some just got non-degree jobs. All those articles you read about a huge gap between the availability of experienced engineers and industry needs are mythological and ideological concepts concocted by people with too much time on their hands.

(5) NO Job Stability. Let me repeat that. Your company will lay off whomever they damn well please when their bottom line sees the slightest quiver. It is far more important for the VPs to get their bonuses than it is to keep 3 engineers employed. And this only sucks if you cared about what you did (when you were employed) and made personal sacrifices in order to produce a good product. If you didn't give a rat's ass about the drawings you made or the client you were servicing, then you're okay. You can just lie on your resume and get another job when the economy returns. I personally know of several engineers who were critical team members, who spent over 35 years with the same company, were laid off in the last few months and security walked them out of the building. They were given no pension (despite their employment agreement and a robust pension plan they contributed to) and just a 4 week severance. They have since sued their companies. You owe your company nothing because your company sure as fuck doesn't think it owes you anything.

(6) Nepotism. Be prepared. Hard work, honesty and great communication skills will get you nowhere. However, kissing people's butt shamelessly will get you very, very far. If you're related to people in management, that's even better. Learn how to play golf and read the best selling book, "How to $||ck corporate ____!". Do I sound bitter? Well, you'll meet many soul-less ghostly apparitions floating around in engineering offices. These spirits were once hopeful engineers that have now given up any hope of recognition and appreciation.

(7) Verbal Abuse. Are you kidding me?
Get ready to be screamed at & Be prepared to scream at people. You know, in the 4 years of engineering school, no one told me that all this education would guarantee that I would be treated with basic human dignity. Because that doesn't happen. There are plenty of people in management with serious personality disorders that use verbal abuse as a way to intimidate and coerce their co-workers into doing their bidding. It's a daily thing and it's common place in the consulting world. I've managed to fight off most of them - peer or manager. But I did have to leave one job because my boss - who was a workplace bully - kept climbing the corporate ladder until she became invincible and far too powerful. My ex-coworkers still get verbally abused and publicly humiliated regularly. I still cannot believe this happens in a professional environment in a first world country.

(8) Murdering the good things in your life. Whatever you love doing will be beaten out of you. Despite realizing that engineering wasn't my passion, there are parts of my job that I find enjoyable. I enjoy following client standards to produce a compliant design. I enjoy completing a good design. I enjoy working with the contractor to build a working system. I like troubleshooting systems. Well, all of the above have been beaten out of me. I have been made to work so much unpaid overtime that the zest of life has been drained from me. What does an 80 hour work week look like? From Monday-Friday I work 12 hours a day leaving me no time to exercise, enjoy a dinner or pursue a hobby. I reach work at 9:00, leave at 9:00, barely have enough time to eat, shower and sleep. Then I work another 8-12 hours on a Saturday and/or Sunday leaving me barely enough time to get groceries and catch up on my sleep. This would be fine if it occurred once or twice a year. But I've been doing this for 4 months straight. Some people are cool with this. I'm not. It's a choice. I honestly believe life doesn't have to be like this. I've also read research that has found we suffer neurological damage when we work these unhealthy hours. Also look up the word "Karoshi".

(9) Acute and Chronic Stress. You will stress out 99% of the time and your health will suffer. Chronic stress will lower your immunity and raise your chances of getting heart disease, stroke and cancer. One of my mentors died of a heart attack six months after he retired early. Another mentor died of cancer within 3 months of retiring. Another friend's coworker is now in a coma due to a stroke he suffered during a long weekend. He is 57 or 58. I've injured my back 5 times in 3 years now. My last straw was me being able to feel my heart beat for 30 minutes during a particularly stressful client meeting. And in the next client meeting, I felt repeated sharp stabbing pains in my chest for 2 minutes straight. Did I call for help? Nope. I didn't want to upset the client.

(10) Overwork and Exploitation. Some of you will work 80 hours a week for at least half the year. Some of you will be okay with this. I am not. I don't want my tombstone to read, "I only wish I'd worked a little harder."

(11) Anonymity. You will never be appreciated. Never. Never. Never.

(12) Bad Decision. If you're Indian or Chinese, seriously reconsider getting into this field ESPECIALLY if your parents are pushing you into this field. I speak from experience. My society essentially told me that if I wasn't a doctor or engineer, I should fall into a sinkhole and get obliterated. If you are going into engineering for societal approval and status, be warned that when you work those long hours alone and feel completely ungratified with the work you're doing, no society will be by your side. When I injured my back and was unable to move for 15 days due to pain, no one helped me. No one sent me a 'get well soon' note. No one gave a shit. When I am unable to sleep for more than 2 hours (for months now) due to stress and anxiety, society does not empathize with me or help me out in any way. Your parents may get momentary kudos for your toil, but it means jack shit because you're not there to get patted on the back - they are. Think hard about how you'll feel sitting in that cubicle doing something you absolutely don't give a shit about. And why? Because your parents wanted you to? Do you want to spend your life with someone you hate? (I hope you're saying 'No' to this one.) Then why would you spend your life working at something you hate?

(13) Being Thrown To The Wolves. You will not get any mentoring. My father became an engineer in 1967. He had kind and knowledgeable mentors that took the time to teach him things. I did not have a mentor and neither did my sibling. We were thrown to the wolves and if we made it ... great. I saw people that did not make it. I watched them get eaten alive. Whatever you can figure out on your own, using your own resources, reading IEEE books, text books, talking to vendors and manufacturers, befriending electricians.... that's what you will get. The onus is on YOU to get the knowledge. Be prepared. I actually found this part fun. But it shouldn't be this way.

(14) Misogyny. Ladies: Be prepared for sexism. I really did not think this would happen. But it does. I know my shit. I can dominate a meeting. I'm not leaning in - I'm taking over the room. And it doesn't fucking matter. It's a boys club. This is probably one of the reasons why I stuck around in this piece of shit industry for so long. Swimming upstream is my thing. But this isn't a good enough reason to keep doing something that doesn't bring you joy. Yeah, I'm one of the best Electrical Engineers I know. So what? Who gives a shit? All that matters is that when I'm with myself, I am not spending time doing something that bring me joy.

Having said all of the above, there are some topsy-turvy things I'm very grateful for:

(1) Humans. I now value all human beings equally: I deeply respect just about anyone but stick-up-their-butts engineers who cannot spare a millisecond of their time to respect their fellow human beings.

(2) Life. Money means less to me now: I went into engineering for the job stability and the pay. All I can say is when the joy of life has been stripped of you, money means nothing. I can afford a lot, and I don't give a shit. What's the point of having a gorgeous apartment if you're never in it? What's the point of having enough money to afford a trip if you never get permission for vacation and you can't spare even a weekend?

(3) Health. I value my health: After suffering from multiple back injuries, severe anxiety and stress and physiological illnesses related to stress, I've looked around and realized how little anything means if you don't have your health and body. I have co-workers who have a stash of medication in their office cabinet. They look ill. They are ill. And they drag themselves to work at a job they hate. It's a choice. I know more than one person in engineering suffering from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.

(4) Family. I value my family: They have stuck with me through all these crappy times. They have been with me when I treated them with neglect. But my "family company" laid off critical team members on a whim with less than 30 minutes notice.

(5) Self. I value my intellect and my curiosity: I have discovered some interests that I did not know I had. I have found passions that this career crisis has uncovered. For this I am deeply grateful. When one door closes, another one opens.

(6) Time. I value my time: I don't know if there are multiple lives. But I can only relate to this life. So I've got to make the most of the remaining 35-45 years I've got left. I came alone. I'll be departing alone. I have to take responsibility for my life.

I hope that was depressing enough.

I'll finish off with a quote from my favourite person in modern history:

"Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual." - Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

Engineering Encourages Negative Thinking

I have been in the consulting field for 13 years. Every day, I get paid to think of the worst-case scenario and cover for it. The saying goes, "Hope for the best and plan for the worst."

If you're a good engineer, planning for the worst becomes second nature. You start planning for the scenarios where you've missed something or when the contractor will miss something or will ask for an extra. You start planning for equipment failing on commissioning day and prepare for unforeseen circumstances. Things still go wrong and that's fine because you think on your feet when you're on site. And when I used to head back to my hotel room after solving a problem, I felt like a lone ranger that made the world a better place. Like Clint Eastwood or one of those Ronin.

Except, that mentality starts bleeding into your everyday life. And then you start considering worst case scenarios for your planet, your country, your friends, your family, and finally yourself. It would be fine if it was a fleeting thing but it becomes the way you live your life.

And the only way to deal with that in engineering is apathy.

I decided to leave engineering because at  my 13 year mark, I saw a fork in the road: I could either be like my conscientious I&C mentor (who I deeply respected and) who died of a heart attack 6 months into his retirement. Or I could be my immediate senior engineer who became apathetic. And this is what I see consistently amongst senior engineers in consulting. They may as well have the words "I don't give a shit" tatooed on their forehead.

This senior engineer who I mention above had arranged for the commissioning of a critical life-saving system for a small town. At the end of the commissioning, the system did not work as it was designed. It worked using only a portion of it's full capability which was insufficient for the town's critical needs. The original fees was sufficient for completing the task as originally intended. When the town called him with serious concerns he replied, "We've run out of budget so pay us more." Let me be clear: people still stand a risk of incurring massive damage to their property if this system is not utilized as per it's advertised advantages. To say that I was deeply disappointed would be an understatement. This engineer didn't used to be this way. He was an empathetic engineer before. But his love for society and his conscientiousness was beaten out of him by management. Management never failed to give him feedback when his projects went over budget. But he  never got feedback when he saved lives or installed a great system. And he wanted to climb the corporate ladder, so slowly he went over to the dark side.

Bad management you say? I addressed my concerns with senior managers who I gauged as being more well-rounded than others.. a higher EQ, if you will. And they said to me, "We're in the business of making money. Create a perfect system that works within the time and budget allotted to you (by us). That's your job."

Great.

That started my downward spiral towards unpaid overtime. That was 5 years ago.

And now I'm done.

This year alone I've done over 240 hours of unpaid overtime. My salary is Not designed to compensate me for this level of overtime. This is simply greediness on management's part.

Not to have delusions of grandeur or anything, but I do feel like Asoka right now... you Clone Wars fans will know what I'm talking about.

Needless to say, I am a lot more wary of roller coasters now.