Blunt Advice for Young Engineers

Happy Friday,

Imagine the engineering industry is a giant flotilla of boats navigating a wide, slow-moving river. The current has varied, but for 100 years it’s always been manageable. You have a job on one of those boats. Suddenly, everyone on the river notices the roar of turbulence around the next corner. Rapids? Sounds like a waterfall! Could be harmless, even fun, but nobody knows for sure. It seems prudent to put on a life jacket.

Here’s the life jacket I’d put on to be prepared for whatever’s ahead:

1. Make AI a strength to minimize the threat. Set up your personal agent now to handle repetitive tasks, keep you better informed, and collaborate with you on life, health, and career goals. The objective is to get more comfortable and capable with AI than your peers.
2. Build tools. It takes longer to hold a meeting about AI tools than it does to make one. Just tell Claude Code or Cursor what you want. They write the code and make the tool. If you want to make a change, tell it what to change. If you have a question, ask it what to do. Small practical tools that you create give you disproportionate career leverage. As I said, you don’t have to outrun the bear…
3. Get field experience. A year in the field can be worth five in the office. Physical world experience is becoming more valuable. Things done with a mouse can be done by AI.
4. Become an effective project communicator. The universities failed you. Communication was always integral to your career. Now it's critically important. To make it a strength, focus on the 'why' even more than the 'what'. Put your work and projects into context, distill complexity, use analogies, quantify the value, and highlight the greater good. Be an effective storyteller.
5. Hang around experienced people. It's a high-leverage move. Experience is extremely valuable, and it rubs off. You need those often-unwritten insights to increase your knowledge as rapidly as possible.
6. Focus every day on building trust (not relationships). Trust generates opportunities and offers a hedge against turbulence. Relationships without trust are just acquaintances.

Punchline: Don't point to your diploma. AI is already a better engineer and communicator than you. You're in a race to out-human the AI and to out-AI your peers. So double down on judgment, creativity, leadership, communication, context, ethics, and trust. Create the most powerful, influential, and human version of yourself. It's a solid strategy for whatever’s around the corner, whatever your job, and no matter how many years of experience you have. Strap in.

Onward, at full speed with heart and fire! 😅

Dave

Feedback and blowback are always welcome: dave@goodnewsfriday.com

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