How to Decide to Take the Technical or Managerial Career

Path as an Engineer
Anthony Fasano posted on January 27, 2014 | Comment 32492 views
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The following is a summary of Session 11 of my podcast, The Engineering Career Coach
(TECC) Podcast with Anthony Fasano, PE. I will summarize the main points in this post here;
however, you can also listen to the show through the player below or by subscribing on iTunes. I
offer a career-changing tip at the end of each podcast session.

I have had many, many engineers contact me and ask me the question, “How do I decide if I
want to do technical work for my entire career or become an engineering manager?”

I believe that this session of my podcast

will help engineers answer this question.
It is an inevitable fork in the road that
most engineers arrive at about five years
into their careers. While many consulting
firms push engineers into management,
some larger firms have paths that allow
engineers to maintain a highly technical
role throughout their careers. What path
will you take?

My guest for Session 11 is Kevin, who is

a 23-year-old systems engineer. The key
points that I outline with Kevin are as
follows:

 If you are undecided as to whether

or not you want to go into
management as an engineer, spend
some time developing your
technical skills first. Then slowly start to develop your core skills, like communication in
networking.
 Become involved in professional associations, so you can talk to other engineers to find
out how they decided what career paths to take.
 Seek a mentor who can provide guidance to you in your career-path navigation.
 Asking yourself how a successful career would look to you in the future may help you
create your career path. My guest in this show gave me an answer that pretty much
answered all of his questions.
 Don’t discount getting advanced degrees in both technical and management subjects.
  Join professional associations that are very specific to what you do to find mentors that
really understand your needs.

If you are currently preparing for this inevitable choice between technical or managerial, I hope
this podcast session helps you to uncover the path that you truly want to follow.

Anthony Fasano, PE, author of Engineer Your Own Success, found success as an engineer at a
very early age and now writes and podcasts to help other engineers do the same. Visit Anthony’s
website atEngineeringCareerCoach.com and subscribe to the top 3 resources Anthony has used
to become a partner in a firm at the age of 27.