I also feel like I should work as an engineer for couple of years before moving up to a higher management position. I had always set a goal for myself to move up within a company to higher position, such as a manger. You obviously need the experience first before moving up to manager. As an engineer you will soon understand your role in the company and make good connections. When you become manager you want have relations with the people under you, so starting from the bottom you will have more of an understanding what the work is like.
I will choose to be a project manager. I would like to work as a manufacturing engineer for first to get experience in an industrial environment. I need some technical experience to know how it works in this kind of environment and the I would like to move forward with the managing part. Because after all you need to know how any work is done before you start to manage that work. Personally I have good problem solving skills and I like to manage and control the things I am working on. Therefore, I can easily work with the position of a project manager.
I would personally decide to stay as an engineer. Being a manager requires a lot of organizational, leadership, and people skills. I am not sure that I would enjoy having to deal with those things. I would much rather stay an engineer and not have to deal with the heavy consequences a manager deals with if a project goes awry.
The role of an engineer and a manager is very different in terms of the responsibilities each one has to handle, the engineer just has to do the task whatever has been assigned and when done just move on to the next one, while the project manager has to see the task has been completed in time as well as coordinate with the other group with where they are in terms of work they have completed, motivate everybody, manage everything, make sure everything is done on time and to oversee the path ahead, the project manager has a lot of things to look at a time and not everybody can do that certainly I can't at this point but in future when I'll have some experience working in an industry I would want to become a project manager.
The main difference between the Engineer and the manager. The Engineer makes the stuff and the manager examines and the manager manage the employees. The relationship between the manager and employees should be good even though it goes bad, it affects the selling of the product and losing of customers.
The manager has the much more and authority in the company as compare to engineer. The manager is the one who appoints the engineer in the particular project. In the project the engineer as well plays a crucial role without the engineer the project is undone. At my point of view, both of them have equal importance in the company and the relationship should be good between them
I really would like working for an engineering role because I would like being the one that preform test engineering, fabricating, etc. but as of right now I see myself first starting off as a management role because they would be the ones that direct the project path. Management roles will be working with other departments which would expand ones knowledge because every department has a different task and different think process. It may be hard, depending on the team but it will make one rise as the leader.
I would definitely pick an engineering role. This is because, engineering roles are a lot more interactive in terms of hands on projects and technical skills. An engineering role deals with the details and the analysis and everything that actually gets put into a project, while a manager only directs and sees the outcome. The best part about an engineer's job is that they get to see a project from start to end and feel accomplished when something they worked on is actually completed. In Lockheed Martin, a couple weeks back, our best engineer got promoted to a lead position. We asked him how it feels and he stated that he strongly dislikes it. He says, all he enjoys doing is engineering work, not making charts and schedules. I want to go into work everyday challenged with a new task, not make spreadsheets and write documents.
That is an interesting question to think about. For me, I would certainly work several years as an engineer, as I learned a lot in my engineering years during undergrad and grad school. I think it will be hard for me to start in a management role as I do not have enough knowledge to handle large projects or to manage heavy tasks. Working as an engineer under the supervision of different knowledgable managers would build my skills and abilities to be a future manager. This includes communication skills, leadership skills, etc. In addition to my technical skills, I would need to build my interpersonal skills as a manager as I don't feel that I learned that much about management throughout my years as a biomedical engineer. Courses focused mostly on purely technical aspects, and this is what I liked most in this course that I am learning about the real industry life.
I would choose a project management position but only after working as an engineer for a couple of years. I think having that technical background and actually knowing the process and work the engineers go throughout validate and create processes is very valuable and will make you a better project management. At work I've seen the engineers work with people from various departments and not just higher positions but technicians as well. You learn all the processes and the problems that the people who are actually executing the problems are doing. After obtaining this knowledge I would like to become a project manager. I like the idea of planning and organizing a project and getting to work with people from all departments. I do think that learning more effective communication methods would help me be a better project manager even more than all the technical knowledge. From the simulations in this class I have noticed the importance of getting your team to respond in a timely manner which is harder than it should be.
I would choose engineering because I feel that it is a great fit for me since I am the type of person who likes to design and solve problems in the most efficient way. Engineers try to design solutions that make work easier and spend extensive amounts of time trying to come up with a better idea than the previous one. Scientists are more dedicated to research and this can be risky as your endeavors may not lead to something insightful or innovative. Scientists have to constantly experiment and practice designing setups and many times they do not lead to good results. Furthermore, engineers can may a great deal more money than scientists. Scientists typically spend a great deal of time in labs, which is something that I do not wish to do as it will hurt those people in the long run since they typically do not deal with people. Dealing with people is an essential skill to have and working as an engineer allows you to practice working with people, which is essential in many aspects of life.
I would choose to be an engineer to start with for a good amount of years. This will let me work as an engineer where I can apply all my skills and knowledge that I have gained from my undergrad and grad studies. Perform experiments, come up with solutions for problems and coming up with new ideas which may be better than the ones already present is what I will enjoy doing as an engineer. This eventually will build my skills to move into the management role, this will be helpful as I will already know what the roles of the manager are as all of the work done as an engineer was supervised by a manager. Apart from this having been an engineer who was supervised I will have the knowledge of what one expects from a manager in a project team. The qualities needed as a supervisor such as leadership skills, problem solving skills would eventually strengthen up working as an engineer to a management role.
Before taking this class, I had no desire to work as a manager, mainly because I didn't have a solid understanding of what exactly that position entails. I could see myself working as a manager after some years of experience in the industry, as I don't believe to have enough knowledge to handle large projects or to manage heavy tasks. After my master, I plan toI would initially choose to work as a scientist or an engineer in order to gain experience and learn more about the current technology and field. I am interested in engineering of kidney and would to work in a tissue engineering company focusing on that line of research. By doing so, I would have gained insight within the workforce and the different sections of the company which will allow me to better run the company if I get a management position in the future. Eventually, I want to move up to a management position and lead large projects.
This entire semester we went through a ton of topics and learned about different stages and phases of industry, projects, deadlines etc.
My question to you is if you were given a choice between a management role vs engineer/tech/scientist role which one would you choose? And why?
Share your experience.
I would personally work as an engineer for 3-5 years and eventually want to move to management because that is where I truly see myself 10 years from now. I find I have the skill set and with my project coordinator position I see things from both ends and have aquired the skill set to lead a team.
When I first started working, I had the same question - whether to stay on the technical path or go down the management path. However, after working for a few years, I am more confident that I want to stay on the technical path. I thoroughly enjoy learning the ins and outs of the products we have to offer, the design challenges associated with it, consulting with our customers on new design ideas, and much more. I also enjoy mentoring younger engineers, which is part of the role of moving up the technical path. On the flip side, I am not as much interested in developing others and having the fate of their careers in my hands. I would much rather have my success measured on what I can control, i.e. my own work. Although the management path has the potential to earn more money in the long run, the reason I became an engineer is because I'm interested in the technically challenging problems, so at this point in my career, I'm fairly confident I want to stay on the technical path.
After graduating from the college, I would choose working as an Engineer to showcase my theoretical knowledge in the practical world. It would be better to apply those skills that I had gained through my undergrad studies. Though my final goal is to become a Project manager, I would rather develop my skills and experience first, in order to maintain and manage the things in a company/organization and to develop good connections among all. As a manager, it is responsible for overseeing a department in an organization; conduct meetings and overlook the tasks are done or not, by the team members. Overall in order to go for it, I have to strengthen my skills and experience to handle difficult situations.
I think if I were given a choice between a management role and an engineering/tech role, I would want to choose the engineering/tech role. I would want to work for many years in the engineering/tech role and learn as much as possible from that position. I believe there’s so much to learn from this position and only with time and different situations does that happen. Maybe have a few different engineer/tech roles and then eventually I would want to gain a management role afterwards to help those who are still learning about the engineering role to gain the most that they can to the best of their abilities. For me, I would want to learn as much as possible in the role that I am so that when I am a manager, I can do it with all the experience that I have been taught.
