How does an Engineer best serve his company? 3

[jcoots]

How does an Engineer best serve his company? I ask this in terms of possible career paths an engineer may take in one company. In this particular situation there is only one real engineer and several construction project managers, drafts people, and estimators. The engineer is young with only about 4 yrs exp. The company has been around over 30 yrs. and has had significant growth lately. Being the first engineer (ME) for the company the career path for this person is undefined. This engineer has recently aquired his PE lic. and his MBA. One of the questions that management and this person must consider at some point is how will this engineer best serve his company in the future? He is certainly qualified to take the path into management, but on the other hand he has the potential to stick around as an engineer for decades and hopefully become a guru in his field possibly mentoring a couple other engineers, but no real progress up the chain of command. Are these questions that other companies have? How is this evaluated by management and by the engineer. The engineer seems to be truely love his field while at the same time exhibits interest and talent for organization biz process.

Insight will be much appreciated!

 

[jcoots]

Wow, I appreciate all the input. And agree with most of it. And the answer to one of the obvious questions is 'No' this is not about me. This is about guy who I am a mentor to through a local eng. society. And to answer another question: the guy isn't being faced with this decision yet. It was actually asked of him by his superior in a non-formal discussion as something to think about in the future, which I thought was very odd/suspicious.

Our companies are similar but heavier in the engineering side. Our career paths are similar to what KENAT explained about a dual track where the higher up Engineers are sit beside some of the Mngrs on the org chart.

I really like what you said IAAWVUO5 about "truely loving his work" and "taking his indispensible skills somewhere else".

2dye4, Gymmeh - I understand your pain when you comment on being underutilized and steering people off the crazy idea path. Only in my situation the construction side of our company all up and down the organization seem to think that real complicated engineering only needs to be done if the client asks for it, otherwise taking it upon themselves to cut the hole as big as they want (so to speak). And no it doesn't happen all the time, we have installed preventative measures to mitigate this, its just a petpeeve.

Thanks, for all the input.

 

[BJC]

jcoots
Make yourself the best engineer you can be. Learn all you can and make yourself marketable. That is, be the person everyone in the industry wants to hire. If you are good your company will want and reward you, if not someone else will.
Don't find out in five years you have one years experience five times.