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As if you are not reading enough for your classes, here I am telling you to read more. I know it feels like I might be asking for a lot, but trust me when I tell you that the following three books will be invaluable to you as a young engineer.
This article is dedicated to the students who have questioned their motivations, social abilities, and confidence. If this describes you, please consider reading these books and applying their teachings to your life.
There is More to Being an Engineer than Just Math
“Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body." --Richard Steele
I love this quote because this idea could not be said any better.
Unless you are at a university that offers it, it is unlikely you are taking a course or courses on how to talk to people. Or how to perform well at an interview. Or how to convince someone to buy something that you are selling.
When you land your first job out of school, there are many skills that you will need to develop to perform well that fall outside of designing and engineering. You will need to sell to people for example. Maybe you aren't selling products door to door, but you might be selling your ideas, such as convincing stakeholders to take a chance on your product idea. The list goes on, but these are skills you will need to develop to reach the level of success you are looking for.
What better time to learn the basics of these skills than in college.
Being an incredibly famous book, you have probably heard of this one before. But if you haven't, I would highly encourage you to pick this one up.
This book was published during the great depression with one of its goals being to help people pull themselves out of poverty by applying the skills learned in the book. The book covers a wide range of topics including but not limited to:
How to make a good first impression
How to become good at conversations
How to criticize other people (without them hating you)
These are all things you will need to get good at to reach the level of success you are looking for.
Let's take a look at the first point for an example:
If you walk into an interview, and immediately you put your foot in your mouth by saying something silly, what are your chances of success at that point? According to Forbes, you have about 7 seconds to make a good first impression. Within that window, the person you are meeting has asked a dozen questions to themselves about you. "Why did she say that statement with that tone? Why didn't he look me in the eye when I shook his hand? Why did she not introduce herself to my colleague?"
Once you have made this bad first impression, it is going to be difficult to climb back out of that hole. How to Win Friends and Influence People teaches you the skills to avoid these pitfalls, and many other pitfalls.
What motivates you? Does money alone motivate you? Or do you need challenging work? Do you need to feel that your work matters? Do you need to work on a team to get things done or do you prefer to work alone?
If you do not know what motivates you, than how can you know what you are looking for at a job? Understanding what motivates you will help you and everyone around you at your future job.
Drive goes into detail about what motivates us based on decades of scientific research on human motivation. Daniel dispels the belief that humans are only motivated by money, and instead shows that true motivation comes from three things: autonomy, mastery, and purpose.
This book is one of the best I have ever read on the subject of motivation. If you plan on becoming a manager one day, I would highly advise reading this. Even if you don't plan on becoming a manager, read this book so you understand your own motivations better.
If you are studying computer science or a similar field, you might have learned about Scrum or Agile in some of your classes. If you were lucky enough to learn Agile in school, than this book should be a very easy read.
I cannot describe in enough words how important Agile methodologies are for getting work done quickly and efficiently. Scrum is a framework under the Agile umbrella for developing complex products and I have used it for many years in a variety of projects with great success.
While Scrum and Agile principles in general are primarily implemented at software companies, many other companies have had great success adopting these frameworks and methodologies to quickly deliver products.
This book talks about how Scrum can be used to tackle even the most complex and complicated of projects. You might find yourself on a team one day that needs to be self-organizing to accomplish a task. Following the guidelines and principles in this book could help elevate you and your team to success you could only imagine.
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