Aside: It sounds funny, but this should probably be the goal for every engineer.  I got great advice from my first manager:  create a skill matrix.  It was essentially an organized goal table consisting of career goals, skills, techniques, subject matter to learn, etc. that I wanted to accomplish.  Being an expert in all of them is optimal, but time and job constraints often prove this difficult.

When it comes to the question at hand, many times engineers do not have much choice.  Management will often make that choice for the engineer when they prioritize staff time and resources.  But, let’s assume that there is a degree of freedom and the engineer can choose which-tech skills and/or design techniques on which he can focus.  What should be in the engineer’s best interest for career advancement and job security?  There are advantages and disadvantages to a broader skill set vs. a more focused one.

Jack of all Trades

The advantages to being good across many job functions are tied to versatility.  Frankly, the company can use you more ways, and this can be very advantageous during times of change at the workplace.  There are more subtle advantages, too.  With a more broad skill set, the engineer tends to communicate across multiple design groups.  The engineer also proves to be more resourceful, finding answers on his own without the help of others.  These skills translate VERY well to management.  In fact, one could claim that technical managers are the kings of being good at many things (and hopefully experts in a few).  Another advantage to working across groups are the personal connections.  Knowing more people in the industry, and working on design successes together, always bodes well for future job prospects.

Domain Expert

The advantages to being an expert at one job function are tied to indispensability.  Engineers in this mode often can not be replaced within the company.  This can also be a valuable position to be in during company changes.  If no one else has the technical expertise to handle a specific design, the expert skills are invaluable to job security.  Often, these engineers have an increased sense of ownership or pride over designs, as their contributions are clearly vital to the success of the company.  The increased focus and concentration that the engineer can apply to one section of the design is preferred by some as well.  By not switching topics, starting new design flows with other groups, or reviewing others’ work, the engineer can really hone his skills to an expert level.  Just as being versatile helps with connections, specific expertise can be an immediate job creator when other companies look for this targeted skill set.

Obviously, engineers would like to be experts across the board.  Throughout our careers, I do think we should strive for this.  But, with stringent time constraints placed by our corporate bosses to push-to-market and make profit, it often proves difficult to either a) branch out and learn something new, or b) focus as intently on possible on one function and become the expert.

In your experience, which is better:  Expert in one thing, or good at many things?  Why?

Day to day guide for engineers | Back – Next | What it takes to be an international engineering company: An introductory guide

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The “New Engineer’s Guide” articles are an ongoing series of articles for engineers new to the profession. These articles offer helpful tips, recommendations on issues that most engineers have had to deal with in their careers. These articles range from transitioning from college to the work environment to studying and passing the PE exam.

New Engineer Guides

1. New Engineer Guide | Studying and passing the FE exam
2. New Engineer Guide | Landing your first job as an engineer
3. New Engineer Guide | Search for your first engineering job
4. New Engineer Guide | An introduction to the 401k retirement plan
5. New Engineer Guide | Transition from college to work
6. New Engineer Guide | Debt Management and Smart Budgeting
7. New Engineer Guide | Finding the right mentor
8. New Engineer Guide | Owning or Renting?
9. New Engineer Guide | Buying your first home
10. New Engineer Guide | All about the PE exam and how to apply for your license
11. New Engineer Guide | Studying for the PE exam
12. Suggest a topic | -
13. Lost your job, now what? | A step by step job loss guide for engineers
14. Thinking about going back to school | Back to college guide for engineers
15. Get ahead at work | Timeless public speaking tips for engineers

Are you a New Engineer? | Start here

Link to this guide:

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Your Work Book

In our busy working lives today, we are bombarded with so many different distractions that it is sometimes difficult to keep track of everything that’s going on, particularly if you work in an open-plan office. Instead of recording on scraps of paper or sticky notes all the actionable thoughts that pass through your mind during these stressful periods, use an inexpensive spiral note book. Anything of importance that you write down can then be found again at a later date. Use it as an adjunct, or a companion, to your diary and as a great memory jogger.

The first step in becoming a good time manager is to observe the ways you currently spend your time. If you do it, write it down. Take notice of where your time goes, and where and with whom you spend it. Once you are aware of where your time goes, it’s much easier to make different choices. The second step is to make better choices. It takes a lot of character to try something new, but if you don’t change what you’re doing, then you’ll keep getting what you’re getting. 

Get Organized

Documentation is one thing. Documentation retrieval is another. Establish a place for everything, and then put everything in its place. You lose, on average, an hour a day looking for things. If you want more time, spend less of it looking for what you need. (Start by buying a label maker, file cabinet and computer. Create a retrieval system using these tools, and you will never regret the time and money you invest.)

Taming the Telephone

Murphy’s Law of Telephones and Deadlines means that when you are really pressed trying to complete a project on time, the telephone will ring constantly. In this case use the answering machine to your advantage. take off, with a mind of its own.

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Feel free to share your tips with us, by posting a comment below or becoming a content contributor.

See Randy Pausch Lecture: Time Management – (Get some popcorn, it is 75 minutes long)

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Following our work-life balance article for engineers, several users suggested that we come up with some strategies and suggestions for the ever-elusive work-life balance. Our authors came up with the following recommendations and suggestions.

First and foremost, it will be appropriate to determine what are the basics that have to be addressed

Healthy diet

Enough sleep

Establish what you want from work and the rest of your life. What kind of a family life do you want?

•          What is most important to you?
•          What do you want to achieve in your family life?
•          What do you want to achieve at work?
•          How will the ideals of each of the above occur in perfect harmony at the same time?
•          How will they collide?
• Try to achieve flexibility and control over the dividing line between the work and non-work aspects of your life. Ideally this means having flexible working arrangements such as flextime and the ability to work from home when that suits you (such as when you have a special report to finalize or a child is ill).
• Since the pressure at work and at home is probably quite intense, you need to use the time at both effectively and efficiently.
• Make time for your family. Jobs come and go; your family is forever. Special events in your children’s lives – such as a birthday party or a school concert – will not come round again in that precise form and therefore should not be missed.
• Go on a work/life balance course. The advice on this site can only be general; if you go on a suitable course, the trainer can help you address the particularities of your own circumstances and give you more specific advice.
• Make time for your partner. It’s easy to take a partner or spouse – especially long-term one – for granted, but this person is more important to you than any job and hopefully will still be with you long after you’ve moved on from this particular job.
• Make time for yourself. Even if you love your work, you need a change. Perform tasks which make you happy.

Additional reading

Additional articles on work-life balance

Web MD’s 5 Strategies for life balance

Work/life balance calculator

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This pure humanness, this Christ is the real currency of life. An authentic life you can buy only with authentic currency! So if you want true happiness, the real pure pleasures of life you will have to have the currency to buy it with. There are only two realities in this world – Heaven and hell. All other realities are a mixture of the two. And The Christ (Pure knowledge himself) clearly said you cannot buy heaven with the currency of hell. It’s like trying to buy life in the US with a Zimbabwe currency. And this bottom line currency is the real you. Your pure self is the unlimited bank account with which you can buy eternal time, eternal pleasure and an authentic life. Because when you try to buy happiness with a polluted you then the pure happiness is polluted too and you wonder that in spite of all these accomplishment and wealth and accumulated trophies why you cannot be satisfied. Because authentic life satisfactions cannot be bought with a partly fake you.

Both heaven and hell are right here on earth. It is like two different countries, two different markets. Which one will be real for you depends on which currency you have with which to buy life. As the very process of the ‘I’ and the ‘Me’ in you is a creation, a projection of the brain. And the brain can be divided roughly into the following, which means the quality of your ‘youness’ is as follows:

1) Premature brain (-2). This level brain will project a -2 you. So the currency of life that you buy your life with will also be -2.

2) Immature brain (-1). This level brain will project a -1 you. So the currency of life that you buy your life with is also -1.

3) Mature brain (+1). This level brain will project a +1 you. So the currency of life that you buy your life with is also +1.

4) Super mature brain (+2). This level brain will project a +2 you. So the currency of life that you buy your life with is also +2.

So try to understand that all other things being equal it is the same market place of life for all. One comes to the market with a few dollars and those too not real dollars and tries to buy authentic life. Another comes with a weak foreign currency so again has little success buying real life. Still another comes with a lower currency so he has mixed results in the market place of life. Then the ones who come with the true currency get what they want for their real currency of life is the pure you. The real dollar of the heavenly market place of life.

Life has laws. She bends them for no one. So if you want to create and live your true life you will have to develop your brain power to the +2 super mature level.

So what is the secret of living an authentic life? Develop your humanness to its full potential. Become the real you by getting rid of the self image.Have the unlimited currency of heaven and spend it to make your life heaven on earth.

Don’t let your lower brain level self image cloud your power, your strength, your source, your force etc., etc. …Get rid of it!!

Now your life is a masterpiece. Every life is a masterpiece. The question is; are you the top authority on your life.

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Because in paintings when some one becomes a great artist then immediately fakes appear. Just like Rolex fakes.

These fakes even other experts can tell. Then there are great master painters who have a soft heart and when a student makes a painting and shows it to the master the master looks at it and to encourage the student the master says, ‘What a masterpiece’ and signs it himself even though it is…
Sometimes the painting can have the original master painter’s signature and even fingerprints of the master yet the painting is not original. So it is up to the authority appraiser to tell whether the painting has really been done by the master painter. It is called the hand of the artist. Only the authority on the master painter can tell whether it is the hand of the master painter that painted the painting.
Now your life is a masterpiece. Every life is a masterpiece. The question is; are you the top authority on your life. Do you really know that your painting of life is being painted by your own hand or is it being painted by your self image. Is your life run by your self image with a few finger prints of yours and you mostly signing your life off? Just as for every master artist there is an authority appraiser there has to be a life appraiser for every individual. And this life appraiser has to be the real person himself.
Not only must you know who you are; you must also know your bottom line. The power, the strength, the source, the force, the foundation, the secret, the truth, the wealth, the reality, the purity, the ecstasy, the beauty, the wonder, the lottery, the prize, the eternal happiness, the richness etc. of life is you! It all depends on the quality of the humanness in you.
How do you know, understand and become your true self, this humanness? The substance, the essence that is you is the end result of a process. This process is called education. This education of life takes place in roughly four stages. The first and second stages, the fetus and early childhood stage develop mostly emotional intelligence education. If this early period emotional intelligence education goes smoothly and is healthy then the humanness in you is well on its way to actualizing itself to its full potential. Chances are that your emotional intelligence education has been healthy except for one factor. Your parents have convinced you that you are the best. As as a result you think of your self as a trophy. So your self image hides your real humanness and controls your life’s agenda. The real you is cloaked in a phony self image.
And remember it is all about self image. And don’t forget what our scriptures say correctly that you are made in Gd’s image. And how does Gd describe himself? He says to Moses, ‘I am who I am.’ So become aware that the real you is made in the same mold, ‘You are who you are’. The real you is he who he is. So when you are what you are not supposed to be then you are not who you are. So when you are your self image then you are not what you are supposed to be.
When you live your life when you are not what you are supposed to be then your life is not what it is supposed to be. Your phony self image provides you with a life where the pleasures are also phony.

“HERE THERE IS NO GREEK OR JEW…BUT CHRIST IS ALL, AND IS IN ALL” – Colossians 3: 1-11

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Work life balance

Work-life balance has become some kind of a cliche, and the more it figures in our talks, the less we seem to have of it.

To begin with, the expression itself is a misnomer. Work is a part of life, how can we balance a part with the whole and is it not vain and futile to even try to do that? What is actually aimed at is a work life-personal life balance.

But even that becomes unnecessary when we have the right attitudes, rooted in right values, which create right perceptions. We do not need to get the happy balance in our lives, we merely have to remove the unhappy imbalance that is there in our minds. Stephen Covey knows it when he says, ‘the way we look at the problems, is the problem’.

Imagine senior managers being taken out to some natural resort and made to play some childish games, to develop team-spirit; or people writing slogans to develop the so-called work-life balance! We should realize that so long as people do not get along with themselves (which they won’t until they take time to know and like themselves), they can never get along well with others.

It is all about self-awareness. It is also a major clue to the problem of rising attrition. Nor is this balance about distributing hours. With long working hours topped by an insane commuting time, how many hours can be spent with family anyway? But love and care are matters of hearts, not just hours; two people can stay together for a life time and remain strangers. The key is, where quantity is lacking, quality can surely compensate.

Let us remember that it is not how long we work that stresses us, it is the reluctance with which we look at it and our inability to enjoy it with a happy role-playing detachment. Like the ocean in turmoil at the surface but calm and serene deep down, our outer activity has to be anchored in an inner tranquility. Our technology is giving us a crazy speed; the inner sense of direction has to keep pace with it.

Humor work life balance

Unless we learn to do that, even our personal life, which we are trying to side with, in the name of work-life balance, will be a stressor – like at workplace, we shall have conflicts in personal life as we already do. Then, where shall we go? Are we solutioning or escaping ? Unless we have balance in our values, balance in our mental attitudes, there can be no balance in our lives. We indeed become what we think. Unless we choose balance in our thoughts and aspirations, i.e. within us, how is there going to be one outside? We indeed live ‘inside out’.

Work, like love, is probably the most beautiful expression of life – rightly done, it can be liberating. That can happen only when we bring our heart to our work and enjoy what we do – no matter how modest it may be; that’s when the barriers between work and family will melt away; conflicts may occasionally surface but they will always be manageable for a mind that is anchored within.

Work life balance

We must stop working like slaves merely slogging for livelihood, which will inevitably happen when we work just for money. Money is not evil, but to work for money alone, certainly is. With that attitude there can neither be happiness at workplace, nor in personal life, nor can there be any way for a balance between these two negativities.

Work life and personal life are complementary to each other, not opposites. We do not need to balance them; we need to balance our minds. Cheers!

–

Hans is a chemical engineer  who  worked in sales/marketing for 28 years.  Thereafter, for the last 8 years, he has been a motivational speaker, yoga coach and corporate trainer. In his personal life, he has been practicing yoga-meditation for close to 25 years.

Additional reading, 
Mayo Clinic’s,  Ways to restore harmony and reduce stress

WebMD’s 5 Tips for Better Work-Life Balance

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