A Tech Career Path

I became an electrician, and later an engineer, almost completely by accident.

I originally signed up for an automotive vocational tech school, but the instructor quit (probably after he learned I was enrolled ), so I ended up transferring out of automotive and earned a certification in my secondary interest - electricity. This certification helped me start a career path in the electrical field by landing a job with an industrial electrical contracting group.

After 2-3 years working as an industrial electrician I started taking college classes at night to earn qualifications that would help me get a higher paying job in industrial maintenance. However, after earning an associates degree I found that jobs in this field were very difficult to get without actual "maintenance" experience, so I went on to a university to earn a bachelor's degree in engineering.

I followed my educational/career path with very little planning. Each step in my education was taken in reaction to circumstances at the time while supporting myself and paying my tuition paycheck to paycheck.

Agree without a College Bachelor is a 'No Win Situation' no matter is put it. Believe you Me! Congratulations in your achiving the goals and overcome the obstacles. I personally didn't had much luck with my goals but I did tried the best under the boundaries set-up by 'many' others circumstances, unfortunatetly! They lied hard work killed many people, no good!

As you know is a 'Murphy Law' scenario outhere all the time, can't win!

I'm Quit,

MC

I tried to follow an engineering career path set up via a BSEE from a large, well-known university. After graduating, I found that my BSEE program was outdated and I was not adequately prepared for the job market. Since then, circumstances have steered my career -- mostly based upon industry and company specific certification programs as I've been able to find and complete. Maybe it's the area where I live, but I find that 2-year degree holders have an advantage over 4-year degree holders, and higher degrees fare even worse. Companies like to hire 2-year degree holders and call them engineers. I've had jobs where I'm classified as a technician, cleaning up the messes caused by 2-year degreed "engineers". I've worked at two companies that trimmed overhead by laying off all degreed engineers and keeping technicians in their places; both companies went bankrupt (not purely because of the technicians, but more because of poor management planning including self-imposed inability to respond to customers due to sending so much experience and credentials out the door). Today I find plenty of engineering work that promises to pay some time in the future (maybe) but I have to live on unemployment until one of these start-ups actually jells. So, once again my career will be shaped by circumstances.