​Are you a trapped engineer, but you don’t know it?

Or: Be honest: Has your past professional experience been good for you?

Many engineers do not realise how much they have been limited, both skill-wise and success-wise, by their professional experience. They have just accepted it for what it is, along with its effects upon themselves, and not thought to correct for any limiting issues – they are thus trapped and don’t even know it.
Let’s talk about how you can tell if you are trapped and how to break free.
First off, I should note that my experience, especially in the early stages, was pretty good. So I should state that this is not a case of me living something out myself and then saying, “and you can too!” However, I still learned that my experience was not perfect, and I did need “escape” in a way.
So what are some signs you are trapped?

• You feel you do good work, but people still seem to have issues with what you do.
• You have a fixed notion of how administration should be run – maybe you think there should be none – regardless of the size of the company or the nature of the engineering work being done.
• You feel you need to always defend your work or remind people of what you have done.
• You are afraid to share any idea until you have it fully evolved.
• You work on your own tasks without engaging others working on peripheral or related roles.
• You follow a few guiding principles doggedly and don’t trust anyone suggesting deviation from them.
• When you are presented with an idea that is different, and seems odd, your emotional response overrides your engineering mind, and you dismiss or criticise instead of analysing.
• You expect there to be a prescribed process to solve each problem encountered.
• You like the idea of the engineering department being separate from all others so you can do as you wish.

It might be hard to see the common theme in the above idiosyncrasies, but the root cause is working in an organisation that did not encourage good engineering practice that is aligned with the company size and business model. In such situations, the following can happen:

• An influential mentor will instil in other engineers what has worked for them but is not universal. This one is one of the most common.
• The administration system is not designed or updated for the organisational needs. So it never supports the engineering team by helping to track or guide progress and documenting successes. And it is therefore always a burden for all engineers.
• There is no established culture of suitable exploration. And engineers are either criticised for thinking of something different or expected to implement set processes and solutions.
• There is no system, formal or informal, that encourages the engineering team members to engage each other or people from other teams.

An engineer working in this kind of environment will not develop the engineering attributes that allow them to grow into a professional engineer. Instead, they will simply survive the environment – and become reactive engineers just trying to get by from day to day. This becomes habit, and the engineer is then trapped in this mindset.
How to escape this trap.
The good news is that you do exactly the same thing as any other engineer who wants to improve. You need to focus on applying the attributes of the expert engineer regularly. I cover these attributes in detail in my book, but the key points are:

• You work on framing and reframing problems that are given to you.
• You think systemically when solving challenges.
• You apply first principles to assess ideas and inform your decisions.

As you continue to develop these attributes, you will break off the shackles of your prior work experience. You will then be free – and no longer trapped.
Once you are free, you will then be able to consider other aspects of your engineering ability. Things like your cultural, national and economic background. Then you are working toward being a global engineer.
And if the company you work for does not support this, then it’s time to leave. And you know what kind of company you do want to work for – so you won’t leave one trap just for another.