How to make sure I get training, improve my skills on the job, etc? 13

[MartinLe]

At my current job, actual formalized training is practically non-existent. While I try to take on tasks where I can learn a bit more, this is not always possible. I also talked to my line manager about this, but there's no time and less money for training.

I think I'm quite useful to my company in the role I am, with the skills I have. But of course I want to broaden and improve my skill base - as a way to future proof my career, but also because I like to learn new things.

In comparable situations, what have you done to improve your abilities on the job?

Things I'm doing out of my working time: reading trade press and similiar stuff in my free time, I'm also considering getting another degree.

 

[GregLocock]

"I am not too much in favour of self-learning"

Then you failed to learn the biggest lesson from uni.

Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

 

[rotw]

If you talk about the cognitive process of learning yes you learn by yourself. Looks obvious no? try to look further please.

And at the end, it is a matter of perspective, you build you career as you envision yourself in the future and you are responsible for your own development; and since basically you do not have the ultimate truth, none has, dont make bold statement.

I state that you need to be onboard of the right environment and organization. Learning solely relying on yourself is a problem to create an "organic knowledge" in a discipline. That is why I post so many resume each day because I keep looking and avoid staying in broken organisations when that happens (and unfortunately it may happen once or even more in your career and staying wont lead you very far, except in mediocrity).

"If you want to acquire a knowledge or skill, read a book and practice the skill".

 

[IRstuff]

You should consider "self-learning" as the price of entry to becoming an expert. No one is going to decide on a whim to make you an expert, and without the self-learning, there's not much reason to assign you to something that you haven't done before.

Now, my job is a bit different, because we're often tasked to do things we've never done before, and so we are doing the self-learning and the job at the same time. But, there's almost nothing that you can be assigned that hasn't been done by someone else already, and generally, they're civic-minded enough to write papers about what they did, or didn't. To not avail yourself of all these resources seems to me to be a purposeful way of crippling your career progress.

Case in point; I'm on my way to a customer meeting to discuss our new design, and brought a book to read on the plane about object linking and embedding (OLE), when it was still new (yes, I'm THAT OLD). Lo and behold, we're in the middle of the meeting and one of the customers asks how we're going to handle remote testing and system checkout. So, I rattled off a bunch of stuff about using OLE servers and such, and convinced the customer we knew what we were doing, just from having read about something for about a half hour. Natch, we then had to actually do it, but we then had the time do so.

I like to think of engineers as being somewhat like sharks, who have to keeping moving to keep water flowing over their gills so that they don't die from anoxia. Likewise engineers need to keep learning, or they will suffer from intellectual anoxia. About 75% of my heat transfer knowledge comes from answering, or attempting to answer, HT questions on this site. That, in turn, made me dangerous at work, since I'm now sufficiently knowledgeable about HT to discuss HT design on our products.

I don't see how self-learning can ever be a bad thing.

TTFN
faq731-376

Need help writing a question or understanding a reply? forum1529

Of course I can. I can do anything. I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

 

[jagad5]

ROTW:
I agree that everyone who will succeed professionally must work in the right environment (right is different for everyone) and that must include mentors, but having the right environment and mentor will NEVER make you an expert; only you can make yourself an expert (and not everyone succeeds in the attempt.) I have had many mentors but even the first, and most important, didn't have 5,000 hours to spend with me during the nine years I worked for him. He did help me identify where my strengths and interests overlapped with the goals and objectives of the organization so that I could focus my self-study on topics that would help me become recognized as an expert valuable to the company.

Doug

 

[rotw]

Lets turn it the other way,

So I sit on my desk all day long, sit and wait for a training session to come in so I can be educated on some topic. When ever I want to learn some new technical concept I just keep looking for a mentor to teach me the concept in the right manner. Whenever I need to tackle some engineering problems which I found interesting I certainly hold on because I need to wait for the right project to come in so I could jump onboard and only then I can start tackling the problem of interest...etc because for me that is the only way to become an expert.

So my point was to advocate the above, right?

Are you really trying to convince me that along all this I have to make lot of efforts to learn things by myself ? come on guys!

When I said I am not in favour of self learning, it means that self learning can only flourish when you are in the right set up (I guess like I described) and my take is that when the right set up is not there it does lead to struggle... you deal with Senior people who are not really knowledgeable...and this does not help execution, sorry. Expert means the guy has done the same thing 100 of times, screwed it up, learned and decided based on some tricks you dont really find in a technical book.

I learned a certain technology when I was on board of a reputable company long time ago, I learned from a really knowledgeable people perfectly skilled and very sharp. Later on I worked for a different company where I had to deal with people who somehow interacted with same technology but learned it from books, projects as well but without lot of foundational trainings relying solely upon themeselves. Fair enough. But you know...I found the same problem which would have been resolved in 10 min in the first organization would end up in an endless technical debate with people being not sure, having to think further etc. Not only this. They argue against you, they dont trust you. At the end, yes you finally reach a resolution, you move on also in this kind of set up - but frankly speaking it is exhausting to work in such a way and the learning curve is not steep. Companies need need to invest in third party training sessions; in quality training, they need to develop people - really.

I had to attend 1st class long session class in the past but there most of my work was done during the week ends when reviewing my notes because I wanted to take full advantadge of the opportunity. The concepts I gained during such training events reinforced by practice through projects dealing with skilled people and working like hell are really the path to success in my view.

"If you want to acquire a knowledge or skill, read a book and practice the skill".

 

[jagad5]

We might be in violent agreement on certain aspects of this debate. An expert is someone who knows a great deal about a wide variety of problems encounter in a discipline, and I've never seen anyone reach the level of expert in anything in less than 10 years of devoted practice. It takes that long to screw it up 100 times and realize that the answer was wrong. But someone can learn how to solve a specific problem in many disciplines in a relatively short time. Engineers all learn how to solve linear ordinary differential equations. Those 15 weeks of class is hardly enough to qualify them to be an expert at anything.

Doug

 

[IRstuff]

"When ever I want to learn some new technical concept I just keep looking for a mentor to teach me the concept in the right manner."

That must be nice, to have all those mentors to pick and choose from. That's hardly the case in most companies I've been with. In many cases, we live the joke, "yesturday, I cudn't evan spel injinear, now I are wun." We recently decided to go into a particular marketplace, and only because I had learned some of the engineering tools on my own, I was immediately the expert, and there was no one else in the division who had any more experience.

I think that you have to consider what you'll do 20 years from now; will you still be running around looking for a mentor to learn something new from? Or, are you going to be that mentor? What happens when you wind up at a small company where you are the most senior engineer?

TTFN
faq731-376

Need help writing a question or understanding a reply? forum1529

Of course I can. I can do anything. I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

 

[rotw]

IRstuff,

I am not sure you understood my point. I was intentionally ironical if you read the next part.

Anyhow... regarding your remark:

"I think that you have to consider what you'll do 20 years from now; will you still be running around looking for a mentor to learn something new from? Or, are you going to be that mentor? What happens when you wind up at a small company where you are the most senior engineer?"

I think this one is a valid point. But you cannot put at the same level a guy with 30 years of experience and another one with say only 2 years. Let me explain.

Suppose you are a musician. except if you are Mozart, means a rare brain or a mind positionned at the very far extreme of the bell curve, you normally need to learn step by step. You need to go to school to learn the basics, train at home, do homeworks. Then you may pick up one particular instrument and possibly you later join some symphonic orchestra etc (beginner then professional category). There you follow the master and your peers, you learn within an environment. You learn how to perform and master your art and that takes years of hard work and perseverance. So if you have the chance to play in a national philarmonic orchestra of the highest standard then your learning curve is going to be even more fast and it will be very demanding as well on a personal level. At some point in time, you may become one of the Master of the orchestra. There you are alone in the arena, yes. You are this Senior engineer of 20 to 30 years experience in the small company you refered (by analogy). Still you continue to learn, definitely we agree. Learning is a continuous process which never ends. But your brain at that point is set and calibrated to learn "autonomously"; it can make some experiment, brake the rules, explore new horizons etc. I mean after all those years of hard work in a dedicated environment comes the time where you gain a real freedom upon a mastery an art. Again by analogy you are the Senior Engineer in the small company but the foundation or the pillars are so solid.

Anyhow this is how I see myself growing : within a certain framework where the values and culture are not corrupted.

PS: I dont play music by the way

"If you want to acquire a knowledge or skill, read a book and practice the skill".

 

[IRstuff]

I guess I just don't get what you are advocating:

"my take is that when the right set up is not there it does lead to struggle"

And if the "right setup" is rarely there, then you'll do nothing? Nothing gets handed to us; you have to work and struggle, because that's the nature of our world. While you wait for the "right setup," someone else is taking online classes and getting ready for ANY opportunity to show others that they're hungry and ready to tackle the tasks at hand. And that someone will move up while you are still waiting for the "right setup."

TTFN
faq731-376

Need help writing a question or understanding a reply? forum1529

Of course I can. I can do anything. I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

 

[rotw]

IRstuff,

I can understand what you say. You also made the assumption that I am "waiting" for the right set up. This is not completely true IRstuff. I struggle like you said also in broken or even toxic environment (when this happens) so that I cant still show achievment and skills in my resume despite the overall negative experience. I try to make something out of a disguting workplace which would exploit your skills (to make lot of money) and do not perpetuate the process of helping you develop, sometimes even not recognizing your work and added value/ scientific contribution. I stick around, self study - of course I self study.
But I am willing to do it temporarily only - maybe one year, maybe years but no longer if possible for the reasons I explained before.

I do prefer an organisation that pays me little money but where the knowledge is wide spread and the learning opportunities are great than I highly paid job where your skills are exploited with at the end company saying to you the word f... off.

There are companies where I created hundred of gigabytes of documentation data in my personal hard drive. There are others where there was no 1 giga byte of data I could find internally usefull. No one spreadsheet that provides with a tool to quantify some parameters etc. nothing.

ok I think I made my point; no offense, appreciated debating.

"If you want to acquire a knowledge or skill, read a book and practice the skill".

 

[rotw]

so that I cant can still show achievment and skills in my resume despite the overall negative experience

"If you want to acquire a knowledge or skill, read a book and practice the skill".