We all start in the engineering profession feeling indifferent and confused. There is no way that on the first day of our engineering job we feel confident, and that we feel like we already know our way around things. That doesn’t happen in real life.
If there’s one thing that I have learned in my first job that I only realized later, it’s this: do not forget to ask questions if you have no clue about the matter you are confronted with. I’m saying this to you because I do not want other newly hired engineers to experience the same.
For one, admit to yourself that you do not know everything. There will be many concepts about your job that were not introduced at engineering school, so don’t go around the site or office with the bragging right of knowing everything because you are an engineer.
The odds are that they, especially the workers, know more than you do with what’s going around. And that you are there to learn and enhance your knowledge.
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When you are given a task that is something entirely new to you, ask a senior or someone who knows about it right away. Right away, because it might be too uncomfortable when you ask later when you’ve been already in touch with it.
This may appear that you are an inefficient engineer. But from another perspective, this just means that you are willing to learn from others and you are not being a know-it-all.
Approach the work, especially if it’s your first, with the humility to discover things by asking questions. Maybe even to the point that you are already annoying.
But make sure that you should also feel about others if they are bothered by your curiosities. Do not depend all of your on them at all the time.
It’s a risky move – what’s annoying to one may not be the case to the other – but better be safe than sorry. It’s just in the start that you got to ask anyway, and you’ll be able to adapt eventually.
