People You Help

Have you noticed there are certain people you will go out of your way to help? While others don't get that same treatment?

What makes the difference between someone we'll help, someone we won't and how does this apply to engineers?

Firstly, as a young engineer you want to be someone that can be helped. If you end up being avoided you're going to have a frustrating career/life.

Here are two tips to make sure people want to help you:

1. Own the details you're trusted with. As a young engineer you are not thrown in the deep end. Engineering is an apprenticeship and you're built up to a level of competence over several years. But, for others to trust your ability, you must deliver on the small details you've been put in charge of first. If you treat minor assignments as things that don't matter and dismiss details like presentation, formatting or aesthetics you're giving the impression of nonchalance, which diminishes the trust others have in you.
2. Provide solutions, not complaints. My theory on complaining is this: Complaining is fun for people. It feels like progress and it feels good to just vent if you're particularly stressed. At least that's why I think people complain. But, ultimately complaining is inaction. So, if you're a young engineer and you complain at every assignment, change request or markup just know you are associating yourself with inaction. Inaction is not valuable and you should be thinking always of the value you are creating.

If you're not following these two tips it's likely your career is not going as planned. You may not even know it and no one is going to go out of their way to tell (help) you.