Being an Engineer
Being an Engineer
S5E49 John Rogers & Sean Maciag | A Career Worth Engineering – From Graduation to Professional
Today on the Being An Engineer podcast, we’re thrilled to welcome John Rogers and Sean Maciag as they share insights from their careers to help recent engineering graduates make a strong start. They discuss the transition from student to professional, overcoming imposter syndrome, accelerating career growth, and providing practical advice for aspiring engineers.
Main Topics Covered:
- Deciding to become an engineer and early career inspiration
- Writing a book to share lessons learned in the transition to industry
- Effective resume writing and standing out as a job candidate
- Gaps between academic preparation and real-world engineering
- Dealing with imposter syndrome and proving readiness for advancement
- Strategies for continuous learning and career development
About the guests: John Rogers and Sean Maciag are the authors of the newly released book A Career Worth Engineering: Don’t Just Graduate—Navigate the Transition from Student to Professional. With extensive backgrounds in engineering project management and R&D, John and Sean bring a wealth of knowledge on what it takes to succeed in engineering right out of college. John, a project manager in engineering, has honed his expertise in new product development across the pro-audio, aerospace, and defense industries. His academic journey includes a Bachelor’s in Engineering Management and a Master’s in Industrial and Systems Engineering, with a current pursuit of an Aerospace Engineering Master’s as well. Sean is a design engineer deeply rooted in R&D, with significant experience in firearms, defense, and aerospace industries, built on a solid foundation from his Mechanical Engineering degree. Their book distills years of experience into actionable advice for recent graduates and early-career professionals navigating the often tricky leap from academia to industry.
Join us as we dive into their insights on shaping a meaningful and dynamic engineering career.
Links:
John Rogers - LinkedIn
Sean Maciag - LinkedIn
About Being An Engineer
The Being An Engineer podcast is a repository for industry knowledge and a tool through which engineers learn about and connect with relevant companies, technologies, people resources, and opportunities. We feature successful mechanical engineers and interview engineers who are passionate about their work and who made a great impact on the engineering community.
The Being An Engineer podcast is brought to you by Pipeline Design & Engineering. Pipeline partners with medical & other device engineering teams who need turnkey equipment such as cycle test machines, custom test fixtures, automation equipment, assembly jigs, inspection stations and more. You can find us on the web at www.teampipeline.us
Hi everyone. We've set up this being an engineer podcast as an industry knowledge repository, if you will. We hope it'll be a tool where engineers can learn about and connect with other companies, technologies, people, resources and opportunities. So make some connections and enjoy the show. I
Sean Maciag:think the biggest issue that a lot of people have writing their resumes is they don't contextualize and provide actual values and hard facts to their experience. You
Aaron Moncur:John, hello and welcome to another exciting episode of The being an engineer podcast today. We're joined by John Rogers and Sean basiag, authors of a career worth engineering, don't just graduate. Navigate the transition from student to professional. John, a project manager in new product development across Pro Audio, aerospace and defense and Sean, a design engineer in firearms, defense and aerospace, share insights from their careers to help recent graduates make a strong start. Their book is packed with practical guidance to empower young engineers to succeed and grow in the industry from day one. So Sean and John, welcome to the show.
Sean Maciag:Thank you very much.
John Rogers:Yeah, thank you for having us.
Aaron Moncur:Okay, talk to me a little bit about how each of you decided initially to become an engineer.
John Rogers:Sure, I'll start. So my dad's engineer. Actually, he was an electrical engineer for a power company. I grew up right outside of the Pensacola, Florida area, so I was surrounded by aviation at a very early age, and I just I saw things flying all the time, and I thought it was the coolest thing in the world. And I said, How do I get involved in that? And dad being an engineer was like, well, you can go become an engineer. And so there was nothing else I have never considered anything else my life. I have known this probably since I was seven or eight.
Aaron Moncur:Wow. What, what kinds of activities did you do when you were a kid that maybe prepared you, or at least were aligned with the eventual future of becoming an engineer.
John Rogers:So in Pensacola, there is a museum. It's the Naval Aviation Museum. I think it's the, officially the National Museum of naval aviation. Shameless plug for that. It's an amazing facility. It's one of the best museums I've ever been to. It's free. I dragged my mom there all the time as much as I could. I dragged my dad there as much as I could. I would go literally every two or three months, much to you know, my parents hated that because there was nothing's added two months ago. But I would do that all the time, and I would just look and stare and ask questions and think. And I loved it. I loved everything that you could love about airplanes.
Aaron Moncur:Okay? Wonderful. Sean, how about you?
Sean Maciag:Yeah, my path wasn't as preordained as John's, but I actually took a aptitude test in high school to try and get an idea of maybe where I wanted to head, and the way I tested it said I should either be a engineer or a management professional for sports. And I figured one of those seemed a lot more realistic than the other. And on top of that, you know, when I was growing up, my dad and I always worked on stuff around the house, any kind of project he had, I was right behind him with my little tool belt and a tiny, you know, six ounce hammer, adorable. Yeah. And then once I got old enough to drive, every time I needed to change my oil, I did it myself, all the brakes and stuff. I just liked seeing how things worked. So I narrowed it down from electrical, civil to mechanical. Finally, just to really get a better idea of how the whole world functions,
Aaron Moncur:Wonderful. All right, so you both went to school. You graduated, you got jobs as engineers, and I guess there was some kind of hole in the transition between student and being working in the profession as an engineer, and you decided to write this book. Tell us a little bit about the book and where it came from.
John Rogers:So Sean and I were, we were co workers for a while, actually, for around a year. And one day we just started talking, and we said, hey, you know I've I'm fairly early in my career. He was fairly early in his career at that point, we just started talking. We just started talking about the lessons that we wish that we had learned or that someone had told us, and by extension, the things that we would go back and tell ourselves if we could, if we could go tell our younger selves, hey, do this. Don't do that. And it just kind of grew from there. We both had a kind of a passion for giving back and starting to mentor students and early career professionals and things like that. And. The book really just grew out of those conversations and saying, like, wow, that question comes up a lot. Or, you know, I bet other people would wonder that too. So I was kind of just an organic thing. We just talked about learning by falling out of trees and hitting all the branches on the way down,
Sean Maciag:yeah, for sure. And then on top of that, getting, you know, request from advice from friends that were graduating a little bit later than us. Him and I running things by each other, like, Hey, I got this guy asked me this question about how to, you know, structure his resume. Where do you like to go for that? And just really, kind of very organically, came up with this idea.
Aaron Moncur:I'm curious, how did you What were the division of responsibilities, like between the two of you writing the book? I mean, presumably you're, you're working full time jobs and before work, or after work, or, you know, nights and weekends. You're, you're writing this book that must have been a a lot of work. What was that process like?
John Rogers:We started by kind of just outlining what we felt a book would look like, and we wanted to go off and do it ourselves and share with each other our final finished outline to not influence each other, and we had basically the same book laid out. It was very there's some minor tweaks and things, but we just did that. And so we would start writing. I don't even know that we necessarily started with the beginning of the book. We just had our table of contents from the outline. We do what we want to talk through, and we were just hitting it as we were, you know, as things would come to us, or we'd have an idea, or like, Man, I really want to talk about that. So it was a lot of weekends. Was probably the better part of the year. I spent my Saturday mornings writing and some after work. But we just, we kind of landed on the same book topics organically, and then we pick and chose what we felt. So most of the book as a joint efforts. There's, there's really one chapter is like kind of mine entirely, and that's the chapter on fighting the imposter and dealing with that. But otherwise, they're shared chapters, and we denote in the book who's writing. You know, from what perspective we're writing
Aaron Moncur:Cool. Has this been more of a labor of love for the two of you, or is this something that you eventually might like to spin off into, I don't know, some kind of consulting or coaching, some kind of business.
John Rogers:So I think it both for me. I always wanted to write. I enjoyed doing it. Once we planned it out, I think we had a lot to say, and we realized we had a lot to say, and it could kind of go and turn into something but the goal was always to turn it into something continual, and something that, you know, we see a lot of opportunity for. Maybe it even becomes some kind of college curriculum type class at some point where we kind of lay things out, because a lot of schools offer, you know, Intro to engineering, or kind of the fundamentals of engineering, we would love to see it go that route, or we're down, you know, wherever it goes from there. Maybe that's specific sessions and things. So we would pick areas within the book and say, you know, something Sean's brought up a lot is resume help, right? Like we would say, this is a bad resume for these reasons. So what makes it a good resume? What actively turns it from a bad resume into a good resume? So for me, I think it was both.
Aaron Moncur:Let's hear a little bit about that. I bet a lot of listeners will be interested. Especially right now, it seems like the industry maybe is not doing so hot. I see a lot of open to work badges on LinkedIn these days, what, what are some what advice do you have for engineers who are updating their resume? What should they not be doing, and what should they be doing?
Sean Maciag:I think the biggest issue that a lot of people have writing their resumes is they don't contextualize and provide actual values and hard facts to their experience, where you can say, I did x, and that's it. Okay, sure, you designed a product, but how much did cost? How much did you save in lead time on manufacturing? What kind of revenue did you get? What kind of profitability Did it have for the company? Anything that's actually tangible to show your employers or future employers? Hey, I will provide this value to you, and I have proven it to another.
Aaron Moncur:I love that you brought up profitability, because in an ideal world, we would just get to design cool stuff all the time, right, as engineers. But the reality is, engineering is a business, and if you're not being profitable in that business, well, it's hard to employ engineers to make these cool things. And I think that's a point that though a lot of engineers, even some older. More experienced engineers don't fully appreciate, and,
Sean Maciag:You know, going back to this book, whether it was a labor of love or if we were looking to, you know, make kind of a little engineering your career Empire out of it, our goal was to sell one more book than our mothers bought. So we know a thing or two. That's my goal with the podcast, exactly. So we know a thing or two about, you know, just trying to get to the people we care about and trying to do the things that we care about. But like you said, they could sell two books. Yeah,
Aaron Moncur:Gotta start somewhere, right? Three.
Sean Maciag:My dad bought a copy.
John Rogers:The only thing I would add to that resume wise is, is to just kind of bound it and make it a takeaway sentence, right? I think that if you look at your resume, just as if you were to take your resume right now and look at it, you probably need more numbers, right? You need to quantify and qualify what you've done, and with those numbers, you have to answer the question. So what? Right? If I was going to say in two sentences, that's what it would be, you need more numbers and you need the answer. So what I did this, it was, you know, I sold 50 units. So what, what did that do for the business, my my organization, my group, my team, whatever. How did that help? So, what did we do with that? Or, you know, I shortened three weeks off of something, okay, well, if you shorten three weeks off of a project that was 17 years long. No one really cares. But if you cut three weeks out of a project that was six weeks long, that's substantial, right, you cut it in half. So just, just think of it that those terms, what are you doing and so what?
Aaron Moncur:How do you guys feel about multimedia in resumes, pictures and video?
Sean Maciag:I find them unnecessary personnel. I think if you are, like a graphic designer or something to that more artistic value, that's where it comes in. But I have always found success with the more boilerplate looking resumes, because we are engineers and we're trying to get data out. So adding a picture of yourself little unnecessary, adding pictures of your designs if they ask you for real world examples in the interview or in like a cover letter, then I see that as a opening to provide those
John Rogers:I think I'm generally opposed to at least pictures and things. I think that we're all human, and we all fall subject to some level of bias, even unconsciously. And so we can say, oh, this person doesn't meet whatever my criteria is I have in my head for this position, right? So in a perfect world, I would love to see some kind of recruiting system where, when you apply, all of your identifiers are removed until you get an actual interview, right? So as much as I hate the way this sounds, you become a number in the system, and it scrubs your name, and you know where you currently live, and all of that stuff. It's just your education experience, that sort of thing. And so in a perfect world, in my perfect little world, when you apply, they would be like, I want to interview candidates 17 and 13 and 27 and that's my first three I want to talk to. And then it goes through, and that's like, you've chosen to select, you know, these three people, and here's the rest of their information, just to make it completely, you know, you take as much of that potential for bias out as possible, right? Yeah. So
Aaron Moncur:it's a meritocracy, right? It's completely based on what you've done, what you're able to do, not where you went to school, how old you are, etc, etc, all right, well, I'm going to gently go out on a limb here. And based on very little data, except for my own experience. I actually really like seeing multimedia, maybe not in the resume itself. Maybe there are separate documents. There's a resume with mostly just text, right? This is what I've accomplished. I like what you both said a lot about quantifying things that's really important, and what was the result? Right? What impact did this have on the organization? But when candidates have come to me for interviews and they can show videos, maybe they have a little personal website where they have some videos hosted of designs they've done, or even just screenshots, you know, maybe some detailed drawings where I can see what their drawings look like. For me, that's huge. And so if I can get a traditional resume supplemented with multimedia, that's for me the best. Yeah, and
Sean Maciag:I can definitely see how that would help sway an interview, if you can provide those. And kind of what I mentioned before was the resume itself. I see is the fact finding, and then, if you like, you mentioned adding a personal website with your projects on it. I think that's a nice or avenue to take to kind of display that without maybe because you never know if it's in a online system, and now you just messed up their query. So. You got pushed to the bottom because you have point a hyperlink in there or something
Aaron Moncur:good point. Yeah, who knows? Okay, all right, reflecting on that transition from academia to working as an engineer, what? What are one or two of the biggest gaps that you see in in the academic preparation. Let me clarify that, not preparation for going to university, but the content, the curriculum that one consumes and learns and is trained on at university. What are some of the one or two of the biggest gaps you see there versus what you actually need to succeed as a practicing engineer.
John Rogers:Start that? Sean, yeah, I
Sean Maciag:can start that. What I saw in myself, as well as what I've seen in a lot of junior engineers, is there's a large gap as a design engineer between knowing how to make something physically capable of it, meaning the stresses are within range and all that, and being able to tolerance it and make it manufacturable. A lot of people like to make things look cool. They like to make them look slick. But you go to a machinist and they laugh at you, and I would pretty confidently say, I learned more about how to be a design engineer from my first boss who was not a university educated engineer. He actually grew from a machinist into an engineer, and he taught me more about designing for manufacturing and making things work in material choices than anybody has ever taught me before or since, and then beyond that, really just navigating the career place on a more soft skill level. You have a lot of people. John and I are pretty outgoing, conversational, and being a part of a team is easy for us, but you can see some people who are so knows the grindstone on engineering that they kind of brush aside, whether it's good advice or proper protocol when it comes to a team. So I'd say those two are probably the biggest gaps,
John Rogers:almost like we wrote a book together, because my answers are very similar. So I would say it's two major things that I see, and one, I would kind of just throw in a nutshell, it's an extension of what Sean said. I've seen that. I've experienced myself. You come out of school, and especially in your undergrad, a lot of things are given to you. So you're given the parameters of the question, right you know the environment the questions operating in, and you know that the kind of air quotes right answer is the only one right answer, because the only one that fits in the parameters you have, and then you go into industry, and those training wheels come off, and it's, what are my parameters even? Where do I start? You know, sure, that's the that's the right value down here at the final answer, but am I starting with the correct values to go into that and kind of knowing how to define things? I think the other thing that I've seen a lot of people struggle with is, is the transition, as you become a professional and you're no longer in school, your your A to B, path becomes a lot less linear, or at least it can right? So when you're in school, you say, I've got a little 120 830 credit hours between me and the degree. And here's the list of classes that I have to take, and I'm going to check these off one by one by one, and after some period of time, I'm going to get from A to B, and I'm an engineer. So now you've graduated, you landed yourself in the workplace, and you say, I want to be at this point in my career, this company, this job, this industry, this location, whatever. How do I get there? It's a lot less linear. So there's not just a checklist of steps. And I think that's a big transition for people to learn how to how to walk through.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, that's terrific. I agree with all of that, John, I think you had mentioned that this was your chapter in the book, the chapter about imposter syndrome, let's talk a little bit about what, what kind of imposter syndrome you have experienced. And Sean, if you have experience in this area as well, by all means, speak up as well, and what advice that you would give to, especially younger engineers who might be experiencing some of these same emotions.
John Rogers:So in that chapter, I kind of define what I call two different kinds of imposter syndrome. So there's classic imposter, and that's, man, I don't belong here. I'm in over my head. What's going on, and something that I call kind of the effort imposter. So I'll start my second job out of college, which is referenced in the book. I got a fairly substantial promotion and responsibility for my first job. So I went from my first job to my second job. I was in kind of over my head, and I didn't really realize it, and so I was flounding around, and I was not putting forth anywhere close to the amount of effort that I needed to be to be successful at my job. It was a big transition. I. Was my first job. It was one of those places you could very easily coast and not really be responsible for anything, and that's not great for your career development. So I carried that into my second job. I was kind of coasting. I was not going and I started feeling like I didn't belong there. And the reason that I broke it into two different classes of imposter syndrome is to start, or to get where you're going, you have to understand where you are. So do you feel like you don't belong there because you don't put in enough effort, and you know it, and you're you know things are slipping and things are falling and whatever. Or do you have you made it past that point. You've taken an honest look at yourself. You know that you're putting in the effort and the work, and you're, you know, you're working towards those things like you should be, but you still feel like you don't belong there. I think is really important to understand the difference between the two and address and because one of them, you need active steps to change if you're not putting forth effort, that ends poorly, whether that's, you know, it's just a bad time, or all the way up to, you know, maybe you get terminated or some kind of disciplinary action from work or whatever, that ends poorly. So you have to adjust that. But going through in the normal case, I think it's very normal for people to feel like they don't belong, like, Hey, I've struggled to get here, or I remember when I was, you know, bad at classes, or struggling in school or whatever, and now I'm here, like, wow, it's a big thing to wrap your head around. So I think the the most important thing is to understand where you're starting from and take the steps that are necessary to go through and realize that if you are in the the place where it's kind of the the more classic syndrome of you know, maybe I'm in over my head. If you were putting forth the effort, and you're putting forth the amount of work required, you've earned the right to be where you are, right? You weren't hired by a fluke. And it's, it's very natural to feel uncomfortable as you grow. And kind of just take some solace in the fact that those feelings don't last forever. They're completely, you know, typically a couple of months long, but I would say my overall recommendation is to start and make sure you really understand why you feel that way. Love
Aaron Moncur:that Simon Sinek, start with why right, figure out the root cause. I have never felt like I was a great engineer, and I definitely had some imposter syndrome for a long time. And at a certain point, I realized that I might not be the classic engineer, classic All Star engineer who knows all the equations and is super good at all the math and the physics, but at a certain point, I realized I am really good at some other things, and, for example, mechanical design, I can hold my own all day long in mechanical design, but I know nothing about programming. I electronics just make no sense to me whatsoever. You might as well be speaking in Greek or something. But I'm great with communication, and I'm great with organization, very strong in those areas. And so what I realized was that I might not be I might not fit the classic definition of an engineer, but there are things that are useful. I really am good at, and I think it's important for all of us, not just engineers, but all of us, to to realize that even if we don't fit in the classic box of a particular role or description, it's very likely that we're really good at other things, and it's okay if we don't necessarily fit in that classic box shape, just focus on the things that you really are good at. And that's helped me a lot to overcome some of that imposter syndrome. Couldn't
Sean Maciag:agree more. I think that the it's kind of similar to when you apply to a job and you see the requirements that they have, they a lot of more people have started adding it. I've seen to the bottom where, if you do not fit the entire job description, still apply, please, because there is an ideal out there that all companies should be striving for. You know, they want the most productivity out of the least amount of dollars spent, and they want the best person possible. Well, that best person probably doesn't exist, and the best engineer in the world might exist, but I've never met them. There's always a fault to be found, and as long as you work on those and maximize what you got, you're you're set. That's
Aaron Moncur:fantastic. Could not have said that better myself. All right, let me take a very short break and share with the listeners that the being an engineer podcast is brought to you by pipeline design and engineering, where we don't design pipelines, but we do help companies develop advanced manufacturing processes, automated machines and custom fixtures, complemented with product design and R and D services, Learn more at Team pipeline.us The podcast is also sponsored by the wave, an online platform of free tools, education and community for engineers. Learn more at the wave. Dot engineer, and we are speaking with John Rogers and Sean Macia today. Guys, when, when you think about like hitting a career plateau, what are some practical ways that engineers can prove to employers that they're ready to take on more responsibility and kind of break through that, that glass ceiling, so to speak. Yeah. So
Sean Maciag:I think that that's a very real concern to have, because, as John stated earlier, there is a very real chance your career snakes its way through a path you didn't realize you were going to take. Some places, you know, if you want to be a test engineer, you can go through one through four, right? And as long as you do your job, and you just keep on taking on positions, you get more senior, they're going to promote you to the next level when you hit a certain experience level. But I think the hardest thing to do is make those changes, to say, become a manager, become a different kind of engineer, go for manufacturing, to design, something of that sort. And the best way I found to improve is one of two options. You can either one take on everything that your company has that they can give you, whether it's information from engineers that in the position you want to be in, or engineers that are doing things that you don't quite understand fully and you would need to get into the position you want to be. Generalized information of a whole company really helps you show that you're enthused about your employment, you're willing to learn, you're willing to move forward in where you're at right now, which would show that you're willing to move upwards as well. And I think the second thing that someone can do is change jobs, change positions. You will for certain places, like if you wanted to be a manager, I feel like staying with your employer through to a management promotion is probably the simplest route, as they're willing to trust you, because they have a basis of your work to rely on, while moving on up into a management position, say from a different company, as you were just a individual, individual contributor, is a little bit more difficult of a sell. But if you wanted to move on to, say, a program manager, from a design engineer, and you're able to prove with your experience and with your willingness to learn, then another company might be willing to take that chance on you. Yeah,
Aaron Moncur:I have. I've worked with a lot of engineers owning a business, and there was a young engineer who worked here for a time, and I remember he used to ask me, How do I accelerate my progress? How do I get there faster, you know? And I would tell him, I don't think there is a way to Accelerate Your Progress necessarily, other than spending more time practicing your craft. And he never really did that. He was always looking for a shortcut, you know, what's the magic pill I take to get better quicker. And then there was another young engineer who man, he would volunteer for everything, just like you were saying Sean. Opportunities came up, and he was the first one. He would raise his hand, he'd stay late, he'd work longer hours. And that guy moved very quickly up the ranks at pipeline. So I think that spending more time is just one of the great ways to demonstrate that you really are caring and are dedicated to your craft and that you're ready to move up.
Sean Maciag:Yeah, exactly.
John Rogers:I think just to back on. You guys both said something, Sean a little more directly, and you kind of in an indirect way, Sean said because they trust you. And I think that there's an enormous amount of life that boils down to being a low risk option, and if you think about it, and in the sake of, why do you buy the food you buy, or the brands you buy. Why do you buy the clothes you buy? Why do you buy the car you buy? If you think of it in those terms, it's a low risk option for whatever your needs are. You've deemed that this tastes the way I want it to, or this looks the way I want it to, and I don't want to try other stuff. It's the same reason that people are scared to try new dishes when they go to a new restaurant, right? Because what if, what if I don't like it? What if I don't? What if I don't enjoy that? So I say that to say that one of the best ways that you can keep from plateauing is by becoming a low risk option and whatever you're headed towards being right. So if I want to be a design engineer, and I want to be a really good one, what are the foundations that I need to know, what makes my designs a less risky kind of thing, what makes my work less risky? So I think that, and you'll know too, right? You'll know if you're no longer being challenged, or if there's no longer room to grow. You may not know it right away, but you'll start wondering. And then you know as you're in your first job or your second job, or. Whatever you'll start kind of start wondering, is there more for me here? Is it time to start looking elsewhere? But I think it really boils down to becoming a low risk option.
Aaron Moncur:I think that's really insightful. I mean, people in general tend to shy away from risk, but engineers in particular really dislike risk. So if you can de risk yourself that that's probably half the battle right there.
John Rogers:I think so it's it's definitely worked well in my career,
Aaron Moncur:when young engineers are still in school, still going through university, what? What are some opportunities that they should look for to a, prepare themselves technically, but B, prepare themselves from like, kind of a marketing or promotional standpoint, you know, well, what are employers looking for that students should do now to set themselves up for success once they start trying to enter the industry. I'm
John Rogers:a big proponent of getting involved in things like student design teams and competitions and stuff. And I understand that not all universities have those, and that may be a particular challenge. I did too. I was on two I was on Formula SAE for two years, and I was on our satellite team in my undergrad for two years. And I think they're great opportunities to really take what you learn in the classroom and apply it to something, because people, even if they don't realize it, tend to do very well with experiential learning. And so doing something, making it not just words on paper, is a really good way to grow your knowledge base and to really apply things and say, Oh, that's what this means. That's what the math shows me, that's what the physics show me. So I love that. I know personally, I got my first two jobs, my first Co Op and my first actual full time employment out of college entirely because I was involved in student design teams, like they told me that hands on. So I think anything that you can do to really help take your knowledge out of the classroom and off the page is something very appreciated by potential employers.
Sean Maciag:Yeah, yeah,
Aaron Moncur:terrific,
Sean Maciag:I agree. And I would also even add the social aspect of engineering school. One, being social is a nice break from the monotony of doing physics and math. And two, it can really set you up, even if not immediately in your career. My first job I got four months out of college due to a connection I made in college. And then my third job, four and a half years after college I got because I was connected to somebody who was on my senior design team. So staying connected and intertwined with other engineers who are making moves of their own might provide openings for you to have, like John was saying earlier, a low risk option for an employer, because they have someone to vouch for you
Aaron Moncur:absolutely you know this. How do I say this? Sometimes I wish it weren't this way. I mean, John, we talked earlier about resumes and a meritocracy and just being judged and evaluated based on what you can do. But the reality is, getting ahead in life is often not solely based on your merit, but is also associated with who you know and if you know the right people. And I'm not suggesting that you should just go out and develop relationships with people, because that's the only way to get ahead, but I think it's an important factor that we shouldn't overlook Absolutely. I
John Rogers:have a classmate did kind of in line with both of these things. I have a former classmate who we've stayed in touch. He also wrote a book with a co author at the same time. His name's John Elam. His book is, you got the data job. I believe it's from his company called bit brothers, he says. And he said it for as long as I can remember, it's not who you know, it's who you know that knows what you know, right? So it's not enough. I don't, I don't think it's generally not enough. Just be like, Oh yeah, I went to one school with Bill. Bill knows what I can do. Does anyone know that? You know, has Bill told anybody? Does anybody know what you can do? Or were you just on teams together? So I think it's a really good opportunity to to do things. And there's tons of stuff. You know, there's there's tons of design teams, there's tons of clubs, there's tons of things. And if you're in one of those situations like I mentioned, where your school doesn't have that, there's generally no better way to to be involved than to lead, and there's no better way to lead than to create.
Aaron Moncur:What are your thoughts about transitioning careers? And this could be taking, I think it probably for the context of this conversation, makes more sense to take this in, in school. So you're going through school, maybe you're you're two, three years in, and you realize, you know, mechanical engineering maybe not the right discipline of engineering for me. Maybe electrical is better for me. What are your thoughts about. Uh, changing your mind and transitioning to a different discipline within engineering. So
John Rogers:I see, like, I'm talking a lot, but Sean, I don't think you changed your major, and I did, so this may land in my lap. So I started out, as I mentioned the very beginning of this, that I was fascinated with the airplanes, that wanted everything I could do with airplanes. So I started as aerospace engineering, and it just it was not working out. It was not I was miserable. I was not doing well in that and that was a huge just blow to my, my entire identity since I was eight, was like, I'm gonna go do aerospace engineering. And then I got there, and it just didn't work for a bunch of reasons. So I had to take kind of a look. I transitioned during that into my undergrads, engineering management, and it was like night and day difference. I was able to get involved in the things that I was really good at, and there was a bunch of stuff that I'm really not good at, and I could focus on what I was really good at. And so in that regard, it was kind of, it was difficult at first. It's something I'd wanted to do for like, a decade. At that point, you know, I'm 1920 going on, and I thought that's what I wanted to do, and it just wasn't the right time I transitioned into something it was so much easier. Was a much better fit for me. It was easier because it was a better fit for me, right? And so I knew that I was interested in the elements of it. So part of the things that kind of drove me into, I don't think I declared this, but I'm doing a second master's. And part of the reason I'm doing a second master's is I always wanted to do aerospace, and I felt like I kind of gave up on myself. And it turned out to be more of a not yet type situation. So after talking with my wife, and, you know, growing a lot from the person I was when I was 20 or 19 or so, I said, I want to go do this again. And so now I'm, you know, almost halfway through a second master's in aerospace engineering, which was extremely difficult to even get into, because no one wanted to let me do graduate level work when I hadn't finished an undergrad, and so I had to, you know, sweet talk my way into some departments, but I'm doing very well in that if you know, it's much different. And I think it's important to keep in perspective that sometimes things are hard because they're just at the wrong time or the wrong environment. And that doesn't mean that you have to give up on it forever. But it may be worthwhile to consider a shift, and you can always, you know, reevaluate, take some time, take some steps back and say, was that something I thought I wanted? Is it something I really wanted? Why was it not going well, whatever, and you can kind of develop your course of action there. So I transitioned out. It was wonderful, because I got involved in things that I was much better at, and then, you know, just the maturing and the change of my environment and things over where I was in college has made doing this now at the graduate level, going back and doing it again so much easier.
Aaron Moncur:Again, very insightful. And timing, I agree, is so important. I remember when I took algebra for the first time, I just did not get it, you know, I was in whatever was ninth grade, I think, and it just didn't make sense to me. I stayed after school, I got extra help from the teacher, and I still ended up with a, c, I think, in the class. And and then the next year after 10th grade, the summer after 10th grade, I decided I really would like a better grade in algebra, so I'm going to take it as a summer school class. Realistically, it was probably my parents who said that, but regardless, I ended up in summer school for algebra a year later, right? So I finished ninth grade, went through 10th grade, then that summer, started doing algebra. Now I can tell you that I was not practicing algebra during that year, right? It's not like I was thinking to myself, Okay, I'm going to practice every day. I'm going to get better at this, and then I'm going to take the class and and get an A. No. I hadn't thought about algebra at all in the past year, but I took it the summer after my 10th grade year, and it just, it just made sense. And I thought, wow, this is so easy. Like, how did I ever struggle with this? It was so easy. And I think it just goes to show that your your brain sometimes is just not ready for something that you've tried. But if you give it some time, come back to it later, then all the pieces of the puzzle just fall into place. Timing is really important,
Sean Maciag:yeah, sometimes you just need a new perspective, right? Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
John Rogers:I'm laughing because I remember my first time in, count you, and the second time in, count you. If
Sean Maciag:there's war to take, no, I only want it's that one, yeah, um, yeah.
Aaron Moncur:Speaking of stories, do either of you have any stories that come to mind of experiences that you had early in your careers that maybe you learned a lot from and you would like to share with others who are about to start their. Careers, things that they might not learn on their own, but you have this great lesson that you've learned, and you can point to it and share with others.
John Rogers:Thought I kind of shared mine in my imposter story. Anything for you?
Sean Maciag:Yeah, you know, my first job out of college was at a small defense startup. So when you're in those kind of environments, the responsibilities are very vast and quite deep for someone fresh out of school. So that whole four years I was there was full of those kind of experiences where I fell out of my depths, and I was really kind of wishing I had known all these questions I had, like the answers to them, and I think the biggest one is finding my voice as an engineer, and not just taking everybody's input and trying to apply it to make it fit the situation. In my experience, in my case, I had my senior engineer who I took his or his information is basically gospel. And then I had the owner of the company, you know, the actual stakeholders in the process, giving me what they needed, which is another one that you should take basically as gospel. You have to make them the product they want. But then you had certain people that were loosely associated to the program who gave their own opinions. And as a young engineer, I asked everybody every question I had. I just wanted information, and I would filter it out as it went. And I think one of the big issues I found was trying to filter that correctly, and trying to trust my judgment on a lot of things. So I would make what now looks like dumb mistakes on whether it's a test plan for a prototype, because someone said, Oh, this is very important, but realistically it wasn't. Or someone said, No, don't worry about that. And I ended up putting a two month halt on my prototype, just because their perspective came from something completely different than an engineering field. So I think trusting yourself and learning to analyze and filter the information you get and put into perspective who it's coming from, trust but verify. Yep, Ronald Reagan.
John Rogers:Only thing I would add to that is, I think that I would, I would have told my younger self to be less afraid of failing, not like in the sense of failing classes, but just in being wrong, right, like you're you learn by doing, right? So don't be afraid of waiting until you have this 99.9% answer. You can be 90% of the way and start providing information to the group and going about it that way. I think that failing fast is a really important skill to learn, and just waiting until you have a perfect answer is something that I wish that I had learned. Or excuse me not waiting, that waiting to have perfect answer is a bad plan. I wish that something that I had learned a little sooner.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, yeah, being able to move fast is so, so important, and I think that is a skill that a lot of younger engineers and frankly, older engineers could stand to learn a little bit better. How do you how do you fail fast, right? How do you figure out that something doesn't work, instead of spending days or weeks on something trying to make it work along those lines. I'd love to hear one answer from each of you, what is one thing that you have done or observed to accelerate the speed of engineering?
Sean Maciag:Yeah, mine might sound a little counterintuitive, but taking the time early to slow down and review, analyzing a problem with multiple experience sets of eyes, so that your production process and your prototype process and your testing process can accelerate. Because while you may take a lot of time at the beginning, it's not as long as it will take to do it twice, and that's kind of a an underappreciated aspect of, you know, rapid prototyping is that, yeah, you have deadlines, you have to make them understood, but you'll miss them by even more if you do it twice.
John Rogers:So for me, it's something that I did at the company that Sean Ray met at actually, was, you know, we started implementing things like concurrent engineering practices, looking at where we could pull things in and start paralleling things in the design. What could we qualify? Because, as Sean mentioned, you either find time to do it right, or you make time to do it twice. So we know we're going to go through qual. We know we're going to do these things, but in those What can I do by similarity? Where can I say that this component was used previously, or it's very established, or it's the same dimensions, or whatever? So you start getting creative, and you start thinking about areas, especially in the interim, that you can qualify by similarity or design or by association or whatever, and what things you. Can do a lot of places. Throw out the word agile, but they still operate in the very waterfall. You know, this task must completely start and finish before the next task can start and finish. So what are areas that we can pull these things in? And what can start simultaneously or even partway through? Where can we find those things? So in doing that, we were making products there, we ended up cutting off, you know, about 16 to 17 months off of a 32 months original product development cycle. Just by doing things like that, we weren't reinventing the wheel. We weren't revolutionizing thing. There's some risk in that your your employer, your business, has to be okay with this, because we, as we said, a bunch, we want to be a low risk option. There's risk in starting testing before everything's fully validated. So there's some level of engineering judgment and development. You work through what you can but I think even fairly simple changes can add to very large dividends in terms of how much time you can cut off of something. Yeah,
Aaron Moncur:terrific. Well, guys, I sure appreciate you being on the show, sharing some of your time and wisdom and insight. How can people get in touch with you and how can they learn more about the book? So the book itself
John Rogers:is available basically all major retailers. You can find it on Amazon. You can find it on Barnes and Noble anywhere you search it. It's a career worth engineering. It's very easy to find. For me personally, LinkedIn is probably best. But if you have a hankering, you can always send me an email at J dot Rogers, pmp@gmail.com,
Sean Maciag:and for me, you can find me on LinkedIn under Sean Macia. I'm pretty sure I'm the only one in the world with that name. So
John Rogers:you find him. You find me too.
Aaron Moncur:It's very easy. Terrific. Well, guys, anything else that we haven't talked about that you'd like to hit on before we sign off today,
John Rogers:I'm good. I again. I appreciate you taking the time to talk with us, and it's been a pleasure to get here and be able to sit and chat. Yeah. Definitely
Sean Maciag:appreciate you letting us talk about this labor of love, this book, I feel is a long time coming for the engineering world, and I hope some people get some, uh, good insight and path forward for themselves.
Aaron Moncur:Terrific, terrific guys, thank you so much again for being on the show.
Sean Maciag:Thank you very much. Thank you.
Aaron Moncur:I'm Aaron Moncur, founder of pipeline design and engineering. If you liked what you heard today, please share the episode to learn how your team can leverage our team's expertise developing advanced manufacturing processes, automated machines and custom fixtures, complemented with product design and R D services. Visit us at Team pipeline.us. To join a vibrant community of engineers online visit the wave dot engineer, thank you for listening. You.
