First Engineering Job
Have a lot of complaints in your first job as an engineer because of too much grunt work?
Well, grunt work isn’t such a bad thing.
There are engineers who are lucky enough to land in awesome high-paying jobs but unfortunately, some don’t. If you belong to the latter, you might say things like “He’s so lucky he got into that No. 1 firm, I bet he doesn’t have to do boring work like what I’m doing right now… blablabla.” But you shouldn’t think that way, actually all jobs have their non-glamorous and boring elements as well.
Grunt Work isn’t such a bad thing.
No matter how exciting of boring your job may be, you should always remember one thing: BE A SPONGE. Absorb everything you can, and get all the experience you need.
Learn all those new MS Excel shortcuts, read through all those process manuals, make mistakes, learn from them, ask a senior co-worker to show you his techniques in doing things, earn your stripes, get every training you can get, enjoy and experience all those firsts: Your first team presentation, your first business trip, giving out your first business card, and how you’re going to spend your first pay check.
Experiences
All these valuable firsts will be the experiences that will define how you are going to continue and grow as a professional engineer in your chosen field.
Absorb all you can and enjoy the ride.
Show up to work everyday
This is really important. Not only will it let you have a good reputation, but you will also absorb more learnings and experiences.
Having a good work attendance can also get the attention of your supervisors or managers, this will make them see that you are responsible enough to get more responsibilities, and you know what that means—say goodbye to grunt work.
If you keep your goals in mind and place your passion and enthusiasm in the right place, it won’t matter how boring or exciting your first job is.
As long as you do your best and put your best foot forward, you’ll be able to learn a lot and gain a lot of experiences—then you’ll be able to move forward faster than you think.
