“I Hate Being An Engineer” – Here’s A Way Out

If you are thinking “I hate being an engineer” you might find my experiences and a suggestion for your career useful and interesting!

While I’ve written a lot about the challenges of different occupations like being a doctor, a dentist, a pharmacist, a lawyer or just being an employee none of them hit as close to home as the challenges of being an engineer.

That’s because I’ve been an engineer for almost a decade at this point, so I think I might have a pretty good grasp on the things that frustrate you about being an engineer. I’ll tell you straight away that I don’t actually hate being an engineer. Hate is a strong word.

I believe that your career has to have some meaning, you can’t work your whole life for a paycheck. Or you can, but you probably won’t feel very content. This is something you might be facing in your career.

While on a certain level I definitely understand working for a paycheck, it’s always better than being unemployed, but I truly believe you should strive for a meaningful career.

Or how do you like the idea of waking up one day, realizing that 30 years have passed in a career you don’t feel content in? Counting the days to retirement? There are no guarantees in life, it’s always a possibility you never reach your retirement age.

That’s why you need to find a way to enjoy your life to the fullest every day, if that requires an alternate career path, I recommend you take it.

As an engineer, you have a ton of skills you can use to your advantage to create success on your own terms. But did you know, that you can create a successful business without expensive re-education or risky investment? I’ll show you just how in a second.

Why I Became An Engineer

I thought that maybe sharing with you my reasons for becoming an engineer might help you to reflect on your own situation.

So why did I become an engineer? Well, it actually wasn’t a strong decision, I kind of drifted to become an engineer as I didn’t really know what I want to become as I grow up.

I don’t know about your experiences (would love to hear from them though) but I was surprised this is very common among engineers. Many engineers I know chose their careers because they didn’t have clear career paths.

But what personally got me interested in engineering is creative problem-solving. That’s what engineers essentially are, after all, problem solvers.

I know some engineers have more specific job descriptions but I’m an engineer in a field where my career options aren’t that specific.

That’s one of the reasons becoming an engineer seemed like a good option, the lack of specificity. Engineers are in all sorts of positions ranging from very exact designing of mechanical parts to leading organizations and from inspecting cars to working as government officials.

I was always interested in science and even though I wasn’t really enthusiastic about math I was always proficient in it. Science and math are naturally something you need to understand as an engineer.

What I didn’t know is that this ambiguity of the professions meant that the job descriptions are also usually really ambiguous.

I visioned a career solving problems and creating new innovations that would help save the world. I guess I was a bit idealistic and naive.

Challenges Of Being An Engineer

So let’s talk about the things that might cause you to regret becoming an engineer? Well, I’d like to start by saying that it’s likely not really the being an engineer part that you regret, it’s the way the whole working life operates these days, right?

Maybe you’ve found out that as an engineer, you are essentially a jack-of-all-trades of the workplace. You are often expected to create solutions to any problems people are facing in their work.

While this might feel flattering at times, most of the time it’s consuming. It makes you feel like you don’t have a clear job description and people sometimes expect you to do their work for them.

Let’s be honest here, most engineering jobs are pretty mundane. When you look at older engineers in your field, you rarely think that’s where you want to be in 15 to 20 years. There are exceptions of course.

Well, there is some good news, your pay has probably been decent, if not good, most of your career. Engineers generally make by with their salary. But on the other hand there isn’t much room for growth without going back to school in most positions.

You might feel like your engineer job is a dull, mundane job that no-one really is interested in. In my experience, most engineer positions are also at times hectic, stressful and fragmented.

You probably share my view that this is a very first-world problem to complain about. A nice clean job with a steady paycheck that’s big enough to support your lifestyle is all most people ask for.

So complaining about your career would make you feel like an ungrateful douche. That’s why you probably don’t complain about it publicly.

But what if there was a way to use your existing skills to carve out a completely different kind of career path. One where you call the shots.

Let’s look at the skills you automatically have as an engineer that you can use to your advantage.

Engineers Have Special Skills

As I said, engineers are natural problem solvers. I’ve found out this is actually a surprisingly rare skill.

Just think about it. When you face a problem, what most people do? They ask other people for solutions, maybe hire a professional, etc.

I don’t know about you, but when I face a problem, I research the heck out of it. I’m very proficient in looking for information independently and skimming through tons of data to form a solution to a problem.

Then I try to fix the problem myself. Only when I’m certain it’s out of my own resources, will I hire a professional to do it.

The fact that you are an engineer also means you have a better than average understanding of how the physical world works.

I’m constantly amazed at how little some people know about things like electricity, construction, chemistry, biology, physics, computers, etc.

Most people couldn’t explain to you how a Wi-Fi router works or what magic brings the electricity to their sockets. Or how the water stays out of their basements when it rains.

As an engineer, you tend to already know a ton of stuff and when you don’t know how something works, you find out.

Or at least it’s like that for me, I have to understand how stuff works. From basic biology to home electronics to quantum physics.

If I don’t know how something works, I read up on it and I’m very proficient in learning how things work on a conceptual level.

Not to toot my own horn too much, but let’s face it. You can’t be a complete moron to be an engineer. You need a certain level of intelligence to get your degree and to work as an engineer.

These days engineers also have to be proficient in not just science but in human relations as well. Most engineers are involved in customer service in one way or another and work in projects and teams.

You also need to understand a lot of legislation in most engineering positions.

These were just a few things from the top of my head. There are tons of skills most engineers need just to complete their job.

But these skills are exactly the kind of skills you need to start working for yourself on your own terms.

Learn To Work On Your Own Terms

You are probably fairly discontent with your career since you are reading this.

You might have thought about quitting your job and going back to school but that isn’t really an option financially, right?

Maybe you’ve also talked to people in different fields and I realized the grass really isn’t greener on the other side. Work is work after all.

Of course, there are people who are content with their careers, but it might seem they are few and far between and even with them it’s more about their mindset. You can’t enjoy anything unless you have the correct mindset.

While there is nothing wrong with accepting your situation and being content with what you have, I have a feeling you are looking for something more.

When I was feeling like you, almost a decade ago, I put my engineer superpowers at work and researched my options.

That’s when I found about online business. More specifically about online affiliate marketing.

It seemed like the perfect career, at least on paper:

• Research for solutions to peoples problems
• Work anywhere in the world with an Internet connection
• Cumulative income model with passive income
• Unlimited growth potential
• Freedom to work whenever you want. No one telling you what to do.
• No need for huge investments like regular businesses, a web hosting service, and some tools is all that’s needed.

Essentially I could work by helping people out by finding a solution to their problems. I would have complete creative freedom. I was sold on the whole concept instantly. I knew people were doing this, I just didn’t know-how.

I tried online marketing for maybe a year back in the day without any results because I didn’t know what I was doing.

I used my research skills to the best of my ability but they weren’t enough. There was simply too much information and tons of wrong information on how to create a successful online business.

A couple of years ago that changed when I stumbled upon Wealthy Affiliate. It was recommended for creating a successful online business by a blogger I was following.

I’ve always enjoyed writing and the most efficient way to do online affiliate marketing is by creating your own website. This is what they teach at Wealthy Affiliate.

I checked them out and realized pretty much instantly that they were doing exactly what I missed on my first try in online marketing. They were teaching in simple step-by-step fashion how to create a successful affiliate marketing website.

So I decided to join them. It took a while to get the ball rolling but  I applied what I learned and bit over a year later I had an income-producing website in the strength training niche.

After that, I decided I want to spread the word about this business opportunity to help out as many people as I can to help them start working for themselves.

I also want to help out anyone struggling to make ends meet, the unemployed or anyone really who wants to create success in their lives on their own terms.

I think there’s no point in working your whole life just for a paycheck. Your career has to offer some fulfillment. It needs to make you feel like you are creating something and leaving a positive impression on the world.

I wanted you to know about this opportunity because it’s been a real lifesaver for me. It has transformed my complete outlook on my future. It has offered the creative outlet my dayjob doesn’t offer and a nice side income.

Online affiliate marketing is definitely not a short time thing. It takes quite a bit of work in the form of creating content to actually start seeing success.

That’s why I recommend you start working on your business along your actual career. That way you can pay the bills while you keep scaling your business.

Conclusion

If you wound up here because you hate being an engineer, I’m sorry you feel that way. If you want to share your thoughts or experiences I would love to hear from you in the comments section below!

My main goal for this post is to give you hope. As an engineer, you have a ton of useful skills and you are smart, you can use that to your advantage. There’s no need to despair!

I definitely think creating your own online business is a good option for most engineers. It allows you to use your creative problems solving skills, something that most engineers enjoy a lot. You also get to help people out by looking for solutions to their problems.

While most engineers aren’t afraid of the technical side of online business, i.e. setting up your website, ads, links and all that, some might feel like they are not good enough to become webmasters without an official education.

All I can say is that don’t worry about that stuff. It’s super simple these days. I knew nothing about modern online technology but Worpdress is super easy to use, you don’t need any programming skills, not even HTML or CSS to create a website.

If you are an IT Engineer, great, you can use that to your advantage to do some advanced stuff most marketers can only dream about. But I want you to know that this stuff is pretty simple for most engineers to understand.

Finally, I want to tell you that this online business thing absolutely works. But you need to treat it like a business. You need to invest time and effort into it.

But if you can do that consistently, it’s only a matter of time when you succeed. That’s why I recommend you start right away and aim to work on your business every single day. The faster you start, the faster you will reach your goal.

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Thanks for reading!