TECC 008: The Engineering Career Coach Podcast – Escaping the Cubicle Lifestyle as an Engineer

In this session of The Engineering Career Coach Podcast, I am going to provide some coaching and guidance to an engineer who has a goal of escaping the cubicle lifestyle and building more freedom and flexibility into his career and lifestyle. It is a myth throughout the engineering industry that you must spend the first 10 years of your career, at least, sitting in a cubicle and performing technical calculations. In this show, my guest wants to expose that myth and take a different path, and I give him strategies to help him do just that. As always, I will also provide a career-changing tip at the end of the show. This week’s tip will provide you with a strategy that will help you think bigger and take more risks in your engineering career. “For all of the most important things, the timing always sucks. Waiting for a good time to quit your job? The stars will never align and the traffic lights of life will never all be green at the same time. The universe doesn’t conspire against you, but it doesn’t go out of its way to line up the pins either. Conditions are never perfect. ‘Someday’ is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you. Pro and con lists are just as bad. If it’s important to you and you want to do it ‘eventually,’ just do it and correct course along the way.” - Timothy Ferris In order to achieve your engineering career goals, you have to act on your ideas NOW, not later. Our guest for Session 8 is Dan, a 26-year-old electrical engineering professional in Washington, DC. Listen to this session and learn: How to build up your resume so that you can work independently as a freelancer. How to put yourself in a position to achieve your goals in your career. How building flexibility into your engineering career can make your career more enjoyable and also remove any limitation as to the salary you can earn. How to get to a point where you are working on what you WANT to work on instead of what you HAVE to work on, on a daily basis. How to determine when are you ready to leave the traditional workforce and try a more independent role. How to be recognized as an expert in your field for whatever your niche is. Ways to make the most out of any downtime that you have during your day. Resources and links mentioned in this session include: Institute for Engineering Career Development Free Gift for Engineers Transformational Weekend for Engineers The 4-Hour Work Week, by Timothy Ferris Click Here for Session #8 Transcription Please help out the show! Lastly, please, if you haven’t done so already, I would really appreciate if you took a minute to leave a quick rating and honest review of the podcast on iTunes by clicking on the link below. We have had eight sessions already, and while I have heard a lot of good things about the show, leaving those remarks on iTunes will help more engineers find the show and get inspired. Click here to leave an honest review of the podcast on iTunes. Thank you for listening, and I hope you enjoyed this session! Please let me know what you think in the comments section below. If you enjoyed this post, please consider downloading our free list of 33 Productivity Routines of Top Engineering Executives. Click the button below to download. Download the Productivity Routines To your success, Anthony Fasano, PE, LEED AP Engineering Management Institute Author of Engineer Your Own Success