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.

 

[MartinLe]

There'S two reasons for not getting training, the first and foremost beeing money - apparently, there'S none to spend.
When I talk to my boss about training, he sees it as some sort of benefit for me and not as something that would help the company. I think he thinks that training on the job is generally enough.

 

[loki3000]

what is your line of work? find another job, esp. since you're from germany.

 

[Tunalover]

MartinLE-
What is you boss's reaction when you point out to him that the training benefits the company as well as you?

Tunalover

 

[IRstuff]

Clearly, your boss has no expectation of advancement for you, or if he does, it'll be a slow grind to the next level.

TTFN
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[Tunalover]

Go easy on him IRStuff. He might be somewhere where NOBODY gets trained, whether they're on the advancement vector or not.

Tunalover

 

[IRstuff]

I wasn't implying that he was singled out; just that his management doesn't give a hoot.

TTFN
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[ukbridge]

I take the train to work, where I have a lot of time to read. I think I have a lot of ambitions, so I always try and put away as much info as I can even if I don't see myself needing it, even in a year or two away! It's also worth looking for a new job on projects that will challenge you more, and you'll earn a great deal more than your current situation.

 

[loki3000]

put away as much info as I can even if I don't see myself needing it, even in a year or two away!
nah, in a couple of years you forget most of it, esp if you only read it and didn't exercise it for example.

 

[Sparweb]

...nah, in a couple of years you forget most of it, esp if you only read it and didn't exercise it for example.

I wholeheartedly disagree with that!

I keep everything I can. I keep it tidy, either on the shelf or on my computer. I have skimmed through most of it, whether it's about programming, specialized fasteners, heating ducts, or soil stability, or anything else engineering-related. It is so hard to find good sources of data, that when I do encounter them, I seize them immediately. If I ever need it later, I can access it with a really quick search of my computer. There is a lot of stuff that is hard to find with google, either because it's lost in the flood or it isn't really well indexed. Once I started cultivating that habit, it soon became clear that just the exercise of skimming and storing things made it easier to remember them on the spur of the moment. You don't have to remember it word-for-word - you just have to remember that you have it, then look it up. Just today, for three unrelated examples, I wanted to find typical flow velocities in air conditioning ducts, the relationship between bolt pre-load and the torque applied when tightening it, and a data-reduction method for performance measurements of a small wind turbine. I found each item in minutes, and what I had available was MUCH more profound than just the results of a stupid google search. I spent the rest of the time reading the data I looked up and figuring various things out. Without my archive I would have only been able to do one of those things effectively today, and still be working on the rest tomorrow.


STF

 

[MacGyverS2000]

Agreed with SparWeb... my collection folder continues to grow throughout the years.

Dan - Owner

http://www.Hi-TecDesigns.com

 

[ukbridge]

Yes, a good technical reference library really is key. I keep everything on my dropbox folder, which is starting to become rather full at the 10GB. What with having to consult main eurocodes, a national annex, published documents, NCCI etc in Europe its easy to miss something out so I keep everything arranged in a logical order for when I need it.

 

[Keith84]

To put it simply: take a relevant book home and read it. If your company has a library of useful books, see if you can check one out and take it off premises to read at home. If it doesn't, search online, ask for suggestions (such as on these forums), buy the book yourself and read it on your own time. Technical books may cost a couple hundred dollars, but even just one or two sentences in them could save your company tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars. At our company, we have a large, growing library and expect engineers to self-educate. I also have a personal technical library that's cost thousands of my own dollars that complements what we don't have at work. My boss is usually happy to buy any book if an employee suggests it may be useful, because the cost of the book or many books is usually dwarfed by the savings of what's learned in them. Sometimes, I'll buy the books myself if I don't feel like sharing all my hard-earned and paid-for knowledge with everyone else in the company before I've gotten legitimate recognition for going the extra mile. Of course, there's also a massive amount of information online, and I'd suggest getting a Dropbox or other similar service and dumping everything you can into topical folders in that. By doing that, I can bring up useful articles and other info on my computer, phone, and iPad wherever I want. The more information you can find, the more information you'll have to parse down to a coherent model of what you need to do.

I look at self-study as waaaaay more effective and cost-efficient than higher education. Classes are much more expensive and less pinpointed than the books you might buy, so consider that when you balk at the price of a $200-300 book. Plus, books designed for practical work situations are way more informative than books designed for the classroom. In a few weeks or months of reading the right book, supplemented with your own research from the internet and other sources, you could know more practical, directly-useful information about a subject than an entire course of graduate study. Traditional engineering schools just aren't geared to be efficient and practical in what teach when it comes to using that knowledge directly in a real-world job. One exception to this rule, I think, is a decent or good community college. Their classes are affordable, frequently offered at night so they don't conflict with work, and often address very specific skillsets that are much more directly applicable to actual work. I've taken a welding class at night at a nearby one that was very helpful when it came time for me to manage our ASME U-Stamp renewal. I'm a chemical engineer, so this isn't in my supposed realm, but it was necessary, and the class helped quite a bit. I've seen plenty of other classes that range from instrumentation and PLC-programming classes to all varieties of HVAC classes to drafting with various programs and much more. That's the more nuts and bolts type of training that most engineers desperately need. Also, any organization that values the letters after your name more than the actual skills you have has major problems in how it thinks and is going to always under-utilize you.

Look at your self-training as an INVESTMENT in your future that will pay off dividends in the form of higher salary, higher position, bonuses, or the ability to take what you've learned and start your own business. Don't get stuck in this expectation that your company owes you everything for your own improvement. If they clearly expect you to do a certain task the way they want it, then they should obviously train you in their ways. But if you want to go beyond that, you can have total control over where you go if you want. And if you don't, I hope the rest of your colleagues are the same way, because the ones that take things a step farther of their own volition will end up being your boss.

 

[RossABQ]

I don't know how it is over there in Germany, but here the vendors are always dying to give reference material, host lunch seminars, etc. Good sources of info (if slanted somewhat to their technology/products). Trade magazines are also free and useful, sounds like you are already reading them.

 

[Nereth1]

My small company lost its engineering manager and doesn't seem to want to hire a new one, leaving me without, in my opinion, any engineer any more technically advanced than me. And thus, with the engineering manager gone, so too was my mentor. But some (amongst many) of his parting words to me were "stick around, you can try anything here and no-one will know enough to question it".

I've taken that to heart and chosen to, since I don't get any formal professional development, push myself to do a 10% better job at every subsequent job I do. You can keep pushing the limit like that for a deceptively long time, because each job has multiple things you can choose to do better on. One project I can choose to learn more about welding and design the welding procedures and specifications better. The next job I choose to go a step above the norm on structural analysis. The next it's the quality of the engineering drawings, and the next I might make more decisions on materials, corrosion protection, and heat treats instead of leaving it all to recommendations of suppliers etc. Right now I'm teaching myself GD&T.

It's been working exceptionally well and I find myself having knowledge in a bunch of fields other people where I work might not bother with. Every project takes longer than it could if I cut corners and just spat it out like other people might, but as the engineering manager predicted, there is no-one around to question me when I say "Yes but I have to do/check X and that takes time".

The pay off for my company is a) I don't lose my soul and b) I get to drive-by-solve other people's issues as I walk by because I've already googled that, purchased the book about it and got the business card and fancy pen from the local company that does it.

In conclusion, formal professional development is nice, but being left to your own devices, you can push yourself pretty far on your own with google and some books and industry contacts.

 

[MartinLe]

Thanks all for your input. The route I'm going is getting textbooks and educating myself. When time permits (not often) I try to follow Nereth1 suggestion, using my tasks to further educate myself.

I occasionally look for courses from relevant industry associations, but so far all I found has been irrelevant to me, to expensive, or both.

I would still say that it's also my employers responsibility and interest to keep me trained and up to date, but there'S no way to force them to see it this way so ...

Again, thanks for your help, all.

 

[enderlord]

What you could also do is to glue yourself to a senior engineer and try to learn from him as much as possible. You could also research some interesting topics which you are interested in and discuss them with your mentor.

 

[rotw]

I agree with what Sparweb wrote.

Now facing similar situation within my company (poor training opportunities, not enough competent/sharp people around to hope I can learn something really valuable, etc etc). At the end I found myself giving more to my company than I take from it in terms of learning.

Reason is that, on a daily basis, I keep on leveraging on the knowledge I gained and developed at my former company. So the balance is sort of negative. And since I value knowledge more than money/ salary - now I have a real problem because I start to loose motivation and I am even afraid to loose my soul if this lasts too long.

So how am I dealing with this ? well I am going to pay a 2000 US dollars training from my own pocket to learn a certain set of skills in the coming month. Of course I will do that on my vacation time, so it is a free time I will have to negociate; I will also not advertise my plans at my company. There will be another training that I target somewhere in the next three months, but that one will require preparation which means reading a training book, which by the way I bought my self from amazon, and which I have to study during WE's and evenings. It is a lot of expenditures with no guarantee of reward, but I dont loose faith. My company did not find usefull to have a library or even an archive center - maybe to expensive to maintain. I work around it by having personal subscriptions at universities and libraries around my area.

I beleive that poor training programs effect the health of companies. I saw really incompetent people messing up with things because they were poorly trained on procedures and work processes and because management relied solely upon self learning skills. Self learning skills are good but without some formal teaching of methodology and procedures the result can be awkward. At the end, if you have around you a high ratio of mediocrity/competence what will you do? well you can still, and I beleive you definitely should, push yourself ; the question is for how long? risk is that you tend to look for another company means company is then not retaining their talents and am afraid it becomes an internal vicious circle/path toward mediocrity because management did not realize that the real asset is people.

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

 

[jagad5]

According to one estimate, it takes 5000 hours of dedicated effort to become an expert at one thing. That's 2 hours per day, 5 days per week, 50 weeks per year for 10 years. Then you have to use it or lose it. Self-study is the only way to become an expert. No degree will do it. Even a PhD is just the start of becoming an expert. No week long training class will do it; you can't even read the ANSYS manual in 40 hours so how can you become an expert watching a PowerPoint presentation and then playing with the software?

Read textbooks. Go back and study the books you used in college (I'll bet the problems seem a lot easier now.) Subscribe to a relevant technical journal. Machine Design doesn't count. If you want to become an expert in structural failures, find a way to read International Journal of Fatigue, Engineering Fracture Mechanics, Engineering Failure Analysis, or Fatigue & Fracture of Engineering Materials & Structures.

Just my humble opinion

Doug

 

[rotw]

Jagad5,

I am not too much in favour of self-learning - just want to be honest. In fact I am not necessarily in disagreement with you but some few things appear to me different.

To me an expert needs to be genuinely capable of saying quickly : this can be done, this will not fly ; and this you need to be very carefull of what you are doing etc.

Less capable people might solve the problem but often you get into a debate with them and then sort of "hmmm...let me think" reaction, let me check, in principle etc - so at the end yourself and this kind of guys are getting it done somehow by learning together. No disrespect, but it has been a struggle for me.

So how to count among the first category ? in my view you need a certain business context/ conditions - you cant do this alone. some thoughts:

- First class or premium engineering environment with a healthy team spirit, no competition between peers, focused to win and do things together. Idealistic but still exists.
- Extensive hard working place with demanding target and good performance metrics that unfortunately may burn you out at some point by the way;
- Training on the job : no secret - extensive practice. Some workplace are too much arrogantly selective of the projects they take on board, I do prefer the broad range project prospective attitude with no disdain for the work, as there you really see all the nasty technical situations, if you also fail this is more tolerated as you learn from failure.
- Existense of internal tools, spreadsheet, rule of thumbs whatsoever shared in an open manner and on demand to get the job done.
- Then again existence of focal points in company who are there since 4 decades. High turnover rate is red flag for becoming an expert
- Finally yes training : company managed by people valuing know how, aware of the risk and the complexity of things so that budget are invested to get people properly trained. it can be on tools, on product, etc. It is a culture - you have it or you dont have it.

Some company have such a culture of scarcity, really. as example the only existing spreadsheet is jalously preserved and kept and shared with such great care. What a mediocre context.

I am not saying am right; it is simply my humble and personal opinion.

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

 

[Compositepro]

Being an expert in anything means that you've done "it", or something similar, many times before and therefore you instantly know the answer. That comes from experience, which is self-learning. If you do not realize this, I'm afraid that you will never become an expert. Experience is not just time spent getting paid at a job. It is the active engagement of your mind in learning new things while doing your job.