What percentage of professional engineering hires at your company were "successful"?

[B4Xt3r]

Hi Guys,

I have a general question for the hiring managers and also those who are in the later portion of their careers. What percentage of professional engineering hires at your company would you count as "successful"? For the discussion, I mean successful in a pretty broad sense, perhaps simply they stayed on past the introductory period to become familiar with the business processes, and then further were welcome to stay long enough to actually do some business-impactful work. (The time this takes is certainly very situational.)

The reason I'm asking is help overcome my fear of the unknown (i.e. will I flop if I take a new job), and also to help judge whether the turnover rate at my current employer is normal.

-b4xt3r

[dukeblue219]

Close to 100% (electrical engineering). I can't think of anyone who outright bombed or just couldn't contribute.

[stan1]

I'd say about 90% were successful or better if a bell curve e.g. normal distribution is to be expected. Some engineers have bad communication and social skills. In some places those are tolerated, in other places they are not. Not every employee is a good fit in every organization. Some employees make a lot of mistakes, learn slowly, or need a lot of supervision. Some companies are patient with such employees, others are not.

But don't mix quality of skills with the business needs of the company. Companies lay people off because they lose work. They hire people because they have new work. Sometimes they reluctantly lay off very good performers. Other times they hire below average people because they need bodies to get work done.

[Johnny_Excitement]

I'm a late career aerospace engineer with 37 years in the career field. I'm planning on retiring in 3 years at age 62.

The typical "introductory period" is the first year of the engineer's career. I can only recall a very small number of engineers leaving prior to that first year and they all left because they realized they didn't like the work and wanted to do other things. I don't recall any of these people leaving due to performance issues. So maybe 95% success rate.

The turnover rate in my career field varies by the engineer's age. Young engineers seem to last for 2-3 years in their first job/position before moving to something else (new job within the company, jumping from one company to another in the same career field, or leaving the industry for something different). My observation is that the older the engineer gets, the more likely they are to stay in the same job and company.

One more thing, I don't see too many engineers in their 40s - 60s. My theory for this is that, possibly due to being in a well-paid career and naturally conservative in their spending habits, older engineers tend to be able to retire early. Where I work, most engineers retire in their 50s and working into their 60s is by choice and not because they have to.

The above is largely anecdotal but I believe it's typical for the aerospace engineering career field.

[kappy]

Agree with the above comments. Over 90% end up being useful members of the company but only 5 or 10% will end up being rockstars. I don’t know of any who bombed during their introductory period but you definitely get a feel for who will likely be in the upper/lower ends of the bell curve. Every once in a while, you see someone who started off a little rough end up making up that ground and overtaking their peers. Those are the moments that make me happy. Unfortunately, the reverse is also true…

The age factor depends on the company. I’ve worked at two Fortune 500 aerospace/defense firms. One had a plethora of 60+ year olds at the top of their pay scales. The other had a majority of employees with under 5 years of experience and only a few people over 60. Part of that is due to general conservatism in one population and not the other but also related to being grandfathered into the old pension system.

[papiper]

I was a manager of engineers for a long time (mostly Chemical and Mechanical). The first 3 years we had about a 20% attrition - 10% that didn't work out and 10% that quit to pursue another field (mostly to medicine).

Almost all new engineers had some level of fear that they didn't know what they were doing at first. Took a little while to figure out that all engineers don't know the answers at first - we just figure out what to do by the problem in front of us.

[Clamshell]

Ninety percent. I was a metallurgical engineer BS and worked on factory processes for thirty years then switched to ERP software field support in metallurgical companies for another twenty years. Starting engineers have a great chance to "earn back" their salaries in technical support of the business thus encouraging their employers to train and support them in their early careers. Remaining in a business as non-managerial or non-entrepreneurial engineers is not all that lucrative, however. My learning at an early age about investing from Bogle (helped by finance courses during an MBA, paid for by my employer!!) allowed my family to prosper quite well during my career as a first/second line engineer lacking managerial skills, to be honest. Took most of the pressure off of living on a somewhat mediocre salary and greatly helped me enjoy the work-work. Do it all again if I had to.
Good luck.

[mhc]

I never had an engineer leave, and I never had to layoff anyone. People would leave only through re-orgs. My philosophy was to hire people who would stay forever. I also tried to create an environment where they would want to stay forever.

Other managers hired to have a warm body. They had high turnover.

Turnover percentage depends on the manager.

Re-orgs and layoffs can be hard to control.

[MrNarwhal]

Turnover rates the past few years have been high across many industries. It is causing problems but I don't know if there is a solution.

[TravelforFun]

Turnover rates the past few years have been high across many industries. It is causing problems but I don't know if there is a solution.

Retired civil engineer here. Of the 50 years working and dealing with hundreds of engineers, I only know of a handful of them who got fired from the job.

TravelforFun

[Normchad]

Close to 100% (electrical engineering). I can't think of anyone who outright bombed or just couldn't contribute.

Same here. I personally hired well over 100 new college grads over the past 15 years. Computer engineering, computer science, and electrical engineering. Virtually all of them succeeded. Maybe 3 outright failed. Maybe 10-20 were mediocre, but not fire
-ably bad. (They contributed something, but given the chance to hire them again, we wouldn’t). And everybody else was completely fine. And some of course far surpassed all expectations.

That was new college grads.

For experienced hires, the failure rate was higher. I’m not completely sure why that is, but I suspect it’s because they know how to hide their short comings better in an interview. (They evade the BS detectors). Or maybe it’s that out of a sense of professional respect, we didn’t grill them as hard in an interview when they said they knew something. Still though, the success rate for experienced hires was over 80% I’d say.

[snackdog]

95% is normal if the workplace is typical and not super high pressure or difficult.

[snackdog]

...

For experienced hires, the failure rate was higher. I’m not completely sure why that is, but I suspect it’s because they know how to hide their short comings better in an interview. (They evade the BS detectors). Or maybe it’s that out of a sense of professional respect, we didn’t grill them as hard in an interview when they said they knew something. Still though, the success rate for experienced hires was over 80% I’d say.

Same here. Many, many experienced hires either moved on within five years or were outright fired for incompetence or culled in a periodic layoff. Many were less valuable contributors than existing staff and turned out to be marginally competent or difficult people who floated around changing employers every 3-5 years.

[dbr]

At Megacorp for decades I never saw any new hire in R&D or in manufacturing who failed. There were people who moved elsewhere for any variety of reasons, but if they had stayed they were fine.

[CuriousGeorgeTx]

Because of the rigor required of engineering students, very few are going to fail once they graduate. The only situations I saw where people were fired (other than layoffs) were for rare ethical lapses (padding expense accounts, lying, etc.

You can be in the wrong place at the wrong time and get laid off. If it is just that your company lost a contract, you’ll have no trouble finding another job. If it is an Industry wide slump, it can be difficult.

Engineering salaries tend to be high initially and flatten out over time. Many move to management or the business side to keep advancing.

Good luck.

[Houseofbricks]

My perspective, worked 40 years, now retired,, and saw 100s come and go in large company:

From new hire perspective, 90 % were successful if they stayed on. A few were forced out due to technical fit, and a few due to integrity or personal stuff.

From company perspective, I’d say 60-80% made it through the first few years of training etc and when they start hitting their stride. Most left on own terms: change career, job hopping, or needed to go back nearer home, back to school.

I’d say the most successful new hires were good at networking and growing influence: on our floor, within our organization, amongst other new hires, other parts of company and even outside our company.

[stan1]

OP, if you are still monitoring this thread you might want to give some more information (type of engineering, industry, role) to help make this more actionable. Working as a power engineer at a public utility, as a civil engineer at a small local firm, a R&D electrical engineer at NVDIA, or an aerospace engineer at Boeing is not at all the same thing. No generalizations can be made.

As someone with experience you also have to assess the relevance of your skills. Sometimes familiarity with older technologies is a selling point so long as those technologies are still being used. If the concern is "age discrimination" you can't change your age and you want a respectful salary. What you can do is make small changes that make you come across in an interview as being energetic and eager which will help negate some perceptions of age.

[LadyGeek]

This thread is now in the Personal Finance (Not Investing) forum (career guidance).

[evestor]

Close to 100% (electrical engineering). I can't think of anyone who outright bombed or just couldn't contribute.

Same here. I personally hired well over 100 new college grads over the past 15 years. Computer engineering, computer science, and electrical engineering. Virtually all of them succeeded. Maybe 3 outright failed. Maybe 10-20 were mediocre, but not fire
-ably bad. (They contributed something, but given the chance to hire them again, we wouldn’t). And everybody else was completely fine. And some of course far surpassed all expectations.

That was new college grads.

For experienced hires, the failure rate was higher. I’m not completely sure why that is, but I suspect it’s because they know how to hide their short comings better in an interview. (They evade the BS detectors). Or maybe it’s that out of a sense of professional respect, we didn’t grill them as hard in an interview when they said they knew something. Still though, the success rate for experienced hires was over 80% I’d say.

I'm in software engineering. I've long advocated the idea that the more senior someone is on their first day at work, the lower their probability of success. This adage is born of a mix of personal experience and data analysis at work.
When you accept this view it changes how you hire, how you think about retention & promotion of employees and changes how you start a new job yourself.

EDIT: Seniority above is meant in company level, not in age terms (thanks to reply that showed me I did not properly define the term in this context)

[Dottie57]

Close to 100% (electrical engineering). I can't think of anyone who outright bombed or just couldn't contribute.

Same here. I personally hired well over 100 new college grads over the past 15 years. Computer engineering, computer science, and electrical engineering. Virtually all of them succeeded. Maybe 3 outright failed. Maybe 10-20 were mediocre, but not fire
-ably bad. (They contributed something, but given the chance to hire them again, we wouldn’t). And everybody else was completely fine. And some of course far surpassed all expectations.

That was new college grads.

For experienced hires, the failure rate was higher. I’m not completely sure why that is, but I suspect it’s because they know how to hide their short comings better in an interview. (They evade the BS detectors). Or maybe it’s that out of a sense of professional respect, we didn’t grill them as hard in an interview when they said they knew something. Still though, the success rate for experienced hires was over 80% I’d say.

I'm in software engineering. I've long advocated the idea that the more senior someone is on their first day at work, the lower their probability of success. This adage is born of a mix of personal experience and data analysis at work.
When you accept this view it changes how you hire, how you think about retention & promotion of employees and changes how you start a new job yourself.

Gee, that is really ageist. Guess I was lucky.

[evestor]

Close to 100% (electrical engineering). I can't think of anyone who outright bombed or just couldn't contribute.

Same here. I personally hired well over 100 new college grads over the past 15 years. Computer engineering, computer science, and electrical engineering. Virtually all of them succeeded. Maybe 3 outright failed. Maybe 10-20 were mediocre, but not fire
-ably bad. (They contributed something, but given the chance to hire them again, we wouldn’t). And everybody else was completely fine. And some of course far surpassed all expectations.

That was new college grads.

For experienced hires, the failure rate was higher. I’m not completely sure why that is, but I suspect it’s because they know how to hide their short comings better in an interview. (They evade the BS detectors). Or maybe it’s that out of a sense of professional respect, we didn’t grill them as hard in an interview when they said they knew something. Still though, the success rate for experienced hires was over 80% I’d say.

I'm in software engineering. I've long advocated the idea that the more senior someone is on their first day at work, the lower their probability of success. This adage is born of a mix of personal experience and data analysis at work.
When you accept this view it changes how you hire, how you think about retention & promotion of employees and changes how you start a new job yourself.

Gee, that is really ageist. Guess I was lucky.

Seniority here is meant in level in the company, not age.

[stan1]

Close to 100% (electrical engineering). I can't think of anyone who outright bombed or just couldn't contribute.

Same here. I personally hired well over 100 new college grads over the past 15 years. Computer engineering, computer science, and electrical engineering. Virtually all of them succeeded. Maybe 3 outright failed. Maybe 10-20 were mediocre, but not fire
-ably bad. (They contributed something, but given the chance to hire them again, we wouldn’t). And everybody else was completely fine. And some of course far surpassed all expectations.

That was new college grads.

For experienced hires, the failure rate was higher. I’m not completely sure why that is, but I suspect it’s because they know how to hide their short comings better in an interview. (They evade the BS detectors). Or maybe it’s that out of a sense of professional respect, we didn’t grill them as hard in an interview when they said they knew something. Still though, the success rate for experienced hires was over 80% I’d say.

I'm in software engineering. I've long advocated the idea that the more senior someone is on their first day at work, the lower their probability of success. This adage is born of a mix of personal experience and data analysis at work.
When you accept this view it changes how you hire, how you think about retention & promotion of employees and changes how you start a new job yourself.

Gee, that is really ageist. Guess I was lucky.

Seniority here is meant in level in the company, not age.

I understood what you meant. Expectations should be higher for people who earn more. Employers consider value propositions, and employees who ignore value propositions may end up with a surprise. Of course, that's assuming one works at a company where there are layoffs. Whole different situation at an employer where there aren't layoffs for whatever reason(s).

[Dottie57]

Close to 100% (electrical engineering). I can't think of anyone who outright bombed or just couldn't contribute.

Same here. I personally hired well over 100 new college grads over the past 15 years. Computer engineering, computer science, and electrical engineering. Virtually all of them succeeded. Maybe 3 outright failed. Maybe 10-20 were mediocre, but not fire
-ably bad. (They contributed something, but given the chance to hire them again, we wouldn’t). And everybody else was completely fine. And some of course far surpassed all expectations.

That was new college grads.

For experienced hires, the failure rate was higher. I’m not completely sure why that is, but I suspect it’s because they know how to hide their short comings better in an interview. (They evade the BS detectors). Or maybe it’s that out of a sense of professional respect, we didn’t grill them as hard in an interview when they said they knew something. Still though, the success rate for experienced hires was over 80% I’d say.

I'm in software engineering. I've long advocated the idea that the more senior someone is on their first day at work, the lower their probability of success. This adage is born of a mix of personal experience and data analysis at work.
When you accept this view it changes how you hire, how you think about retention & promotion of employees and changes how you start a new job yourself.

Gee, that is really ageist. Guess I was lucky.

Seniority here is meant in level in the company, not age.

Thanks.

[moneyflowin]

Close to 100% (electrical engineering). I can't think of anyone who outright bombed or just couldn't contribute.

Same here. I personally hired well over 100 new college grads over the past 15 years. Computer engineering, computer science, and electrical engineering. Virtually all of them succeeded. Maybe 3 outright failed. Maybe 10-20 were mediocre, but not fire
-ably bad. (They contributed something, but given the chance to hire them again, we wouldn’t). And everybody else was completely fine. And some of course far surpassed all expectations.

That was new college grads.

For experienced hires, the failure rate was higher. I’m not completely sure why that is, but I suspect it’s because they know how to hide their short comings better in an interview. (They evade the BS detectors). Or maybe it’s that out of a sense of professional respect, we didn’t grill them as hard in an interview when they said they knew something. Still though, the success rate for experienced hires was over 80% I’d say.

Or maybe because experienced engineers are more likely to push back against things they don't agree with, while new hires will just happily do it without question. In that way, new hires are more likely to assimilate to an existing culture because they don't know better, whereas experienced engineers will resist more.

[Jeepergeo]

Background: Semi-retired engineering executive (civil and environmental), probably responsible for hiring dozens of engineers.

I'd estimate that 95% of engineers that have passed their Engineer-in-Training exam as of the time of hire were successful in the company, many staying for many years. For those without an EIT, the number was perhaps 85%.

Most (99%) starting with the EIT went on to get their PE while with the company. Getting one's PE was a huge deal at my company.

I recall only laying off 1 engineer due to incompetence. That engineer had a foreign engineering degree and a US masters (from a supposedly prestigious university in LA). I passed, when she asked, on being her reference to take the engineering exam. She threw an entitled fit. So I completed the reference paperwork truthfully, and I heard she was not allowed to sit for the exam. Last I heard, ten years later, she still had not passed the exam.

Success at my company means the engineer brings something of value to the table. It might be critical thinking, problem solving, flexiblility, work ethic, great communication skills. If staff has a few of those attributes, we'll teach them the specifics to do the job and then watch them synergistically leverage what they bring with what we teach them.

Biggest weakness in engineers? Written communication skills.

Reading the OP, it appears written communication skills are in order at least for a successful start.

Given the tight market for engineers, high turnover at a firm means there is a firm/management issue.

[Normchad]

Close to 100% (electrical engineering). I can't think of anyone who outright bombed or just couldn't contribute.

Same here. I personally hired well over 100 new college grads over the past 15 years. Computer engineering, computer science, and electrical engineering. Virtually all of them succeeded. Maybe 3 outright failed. Maybe 10-20 were mediocre, but not fire
-ably bad. (They contributed something, but given the chance to hire them again, we wouldn’t). And everybody else was completely fine. And some of course far surpassed all expectations.

That was new college grads.

For experienced hires, the failure rate was higher. I’m not completely sure why that is, but I suspect it’s because they know how to hide their short comings better in an interview. (They evade the BS detectors). Or maybe it’s that out of a sense of professional respect, we didn’t grill them as hard in an interview when they said they knew something. Still though, the success rate for experienced hires was over 80% I’d say.

Or maybe because experienced engineers are more likely to push back against things they don't agree with, while new hires will just happily do it without question. In that way, new hires are more likely to assimilate to an existing culture because they don't know better, whereas experienced engineers will resist more.

I do,think this is part of it. Or another way, new grads don’t have any existing professional habits that they need to unlearn.

And I thought some more, new grads are just at a different place in life than experienced hires. They don’t have a bunch of family obligations yet. They don’t sick as often, etc. don’t get me wrong though, our experienced hires were still successful at a high rate. But for the ones that had “something bad going on outside of work” it showed in their performance. And of course, expectations were higher for them.

To be transparent, I was super successful every where I was an engineer. I was with the last employer for a long time though. So I’m set in my ways. I’m older. My ability to learn has declined significantly, etc. I don’t think I’d be successful at a new place if we were doing real engineering work.

[Beachey]

One more thing, I don't see too many engineers in their 40s - 60s. My theory for this is that, possibly due to being in a well-paid career and naturally conservative in their spending habits, older engineers tend to be able to retire early. Where I work, most engineers retire in their 50s and working into their 60s is by choice and not because they have to.

My observation is many engineers in their 40's and 50's who can't/don't want to be engineering people managers move into auxiliary roles such as technical marketing/sales, quality control, project management. Most of the companies I have worked at will tell you there are dual management/individual contributor(IC) tracks. Still, unless you have a specific technical competence it is hard to advance as an IC unless you have worked as a people manager. The big reason is as a senior engineer you are expected to influence the work of junior engineers even if they are not direct reports which ends up being a management-type skill. So the other path to higher paid positions if you are not a people manager is to be customer-facing (and in some cases vendor-facing). Large engineering groups only need so many senior staff-level engineers.

[B4Xt3r]

...
Biggest weakness in engineers? Written communication skills.
...

That shell hit quite close to the foxhole! Now that you mention it, I'd say this is accurate for a lot of the engineers I have come across in my life. There is a world of difference between "I've internalized the solution" and, "I've made my team understand it."

...
Given the tight market for engineers, high turnover at a firm means there is a firm/management issue.

That sure makes sense.

[B4Xt3r]

One more thing, I don't see too many engineers in their 40s - 60s. My theory for this is that, possibly due to being in a well-paid career and naturally conservative in their spending habits, older engineers tend to be able to retire early. Where I work, most engineers retire in their 50s and working into their 60s is by choice and not because they have to.

My observation is many engineers in their 40's and 50's who can't/don't want to be engineering people managers move into auxiliary roles such as technical marketing/sales, quality control, project management. Most of the companies I have worked at will tell you there are dual management/individual contributor(IC) tracks. Still, unless you have a specific technical competence it is hard to advance as an IC unless you have worked as a people manager. The big reason is as a senior engineer you are expected to influence the work of junior engineers even if they are not direct reports which ends up being a management-type skill. So the other path to higher paid positions if you are not a people manager is to be customer-facing (and in some cases vendor-facing). Large engineering groups only need so many senior staff-level engineers.

Thanks for the perspective, makes sense. The senior to staff level engineer with indirect influence is what I'm most interested in. Do you have any observations for what made them successful?

[sungold]

It's more of an Eiffel tower and less of a career ladder or pyramid.

My observation.
The Sr individual contributors are essentially company lifers (20+). That in itself is rare these days and there are less people with same (company) experience to fill those roles when current folks retire. Others have been bounced around a bit for one reason or another and will never accumulate the expertise (again within company/ product) or have the seat time to build network connections to get there. Also, some have decided where there Peter Principle level is and essentially park it and say good enough.

40-50 is danger zone for reduction in force. Overstepping your capability can add a lot of stress for minimal gain.

My definition of success is to stay employed during next economic cycle.

[Beachey]

One more thing, I don't see too many engineers in their 40s - 60s. My theory for this is that, possibly due to being in a well-paid career and naturally conservative in their spending habits, older engineers tend to be able to retire early. Where I work, most engineers retire in their 50s and working into their 60s is by choice and not because they have to.

My observation is many engineers in their 40's and 50's who can't/don't want to be engineering people managers move into auxiliary roles such as technical marketing/sales, quality control, project management. Most of the companies I have worked at will tell you there are dual management/individual contributor(IC) tracks. Still, unless you have a specific technical competence it is hard to advance as an IC unless you have worked as a people manager. The big reason is as a senior engineer you are expected to influence the work of junior engineers even if they are not direct reports which ends up being a management-type skill. So the other path to higher paid positions if you are not a people manager is to be customer-facing (and in some cases vendor-facing). Large engineering groups only need so many senior staff-level engineers.

Thanks for the perspective, makes sense. The senior to staff level engineer with indirect influence is what I'm most interested in. Do you have any observations for what made them successful?

The people who do this successfully often take a first-line supervisory role for a few years to tick the box and then can move back into a more staff-like role. And you need to make a conscious decision to mentor younger engineers in whiteboarding sessions, etc. The idea is you can guide them to a solution based upon your experience. You multiply your value to company in the form of their labor. As others have mentioned if you can develop a specific expertise in the company's products where you are seen as the expert on a specific product line or in a specific area. And this assumes you can survive the inevitable layoffs. Some people shy away from management because of the perceived (or real) added stress, added hours, etc. However, I remember a talk by a Corporate Fellow (Very Senior IC role) where he was blunt in saying that he put in just as many hours and had as much stress to get to his level as he would have to become a management VP. So many of us have chosen other roles that maybe offer a better work-life balance. And certainly when people hit mid-50's some people are able to retire from an engineering role but most are still doing something else. I have always joked I might just drive a school bus for my local school district in a few years. (As an aside, the advantage to that is they offer medical benefits even at 20 hours a week).

[Jack FFR1846]

When you say professional engineering, do you mean that the engineer has passed the PE test in your state?

I know at one time, Texas would only allow those with a PE to label themselves as "engineer". This went over real well (sarcasm) when a Texas company bought my company based in New Hampshire. The NH company had a roster of pioneers in the industry but up here in the northeast, if you're not opening an engineering consulting business, there is zero reason to get a PE for EEs.

My son's a civil engineer working as a structural engineer. He's talked about getting the PE but has found in his 4 years working that it can bring disadvantages. He's in a small structural company and the owner, who is a PE is super hesitant to ever put a stamp on anything. The stamp brings liability and there are customers who do require it. Not having the PE makes is an easy way to reject legal responsibility. Of course he's in Rhode Island where the RI DOT has decided that their solution to the Washington Bridge shutdown, demo and rebuild is to sue every engineering firm who ever had anything to do with the bridge. Nope.

If by "professional engineer", you simply mean an engineer who has worked many years in a specialty and is coming into your company to do that specialty, I'd say that unless the company has a huge toxic culture, you're going to see some great success every time. I've unfortunately worked for a couple companies with very toxic cultures and they saw engineers leave in a month.

Yet another topic here was that engineers are "known" for not having good writing and communication skills. This "can" be true and because of it, those with demonstrated skills can go in different directions. I'd put myself in that category. In college, during one of my graduation required projects where I taught computer programming in a high school, my advisor told me that I've done all the work required to complete the project so now, he'd be picking on my spelling and grammar. That helped me a ton. After 8 years of pure design engineering, I went to work at a chip company, first writing application notes and then going into the field, working directly with customer engineers. An IEEE paper I wrote on a patented invention of mine got the attention of the hiring company. I worked for them for 8 years and my salary, as they told me would stay the same but the bonuses would be at least another 25%. Staying in that job as "Field Applications Engineer" for a couple decades, I did find that companies had the hardest time finding qualified engineers who could write well and could communicate well with engineers. I would never say that having these skills makes me a better engineer. My son is an extremely introverted engineer but I've seen his college major project (over 200 pages) and his daily work and he is an engineer's engineer, more than I ever was.

[RetireWhen]

Hi Guys,

I have a general question for the hiring managers and also those who are in the later portion of their careers. What percentage of professional engineering hires at your company would you count as "successful"? For the discussion, I mean successful in a pretty broad sense, perhaps simply they stayed on past the introductory period to become familiar with the business processes, and then further were welcome to stay long enough to actually do some business-impactful work. (The time this takes is certainly very situational.)

The reason I'm asking is help overcome my fear of the unknown (i.e. will I flop if I take a new job), and also to help judge whether the turnover rate at my current employer is normal.

-b4xt3r

To the OP. As others have pointed out "successful" can be defined in numerous ways and success to one person is different than success to another person.

So from my over 36 years as an engineer with a Mechanical Engineering degree, here are my takes of "successful" engineers. My point of view is from a large fortune 500 company with several different product line divisions.

If success is defined as not being fired or let go, then at my company most engineers are successful. I have only known of a handful of engineers that were fired for lack of performance. Yes less talented or motived engineers do not progress as high or as quickly as the talented and motivated engineers. So OP you do have some control over your career path to some extent.

If success is measured by promotions and titles, then I would say there are numerous engineers at my company that are successful. Every company has different position titles so it is hard to compare company to company by just titles. In a side note, anyone ever notice in the financial world you can be a VP with like 8 years experience? Talk about title inflation!! In my company there are 7 levels of engineering job titles. I'm at the 5th level with the next level up having about 20 engineers and the next level having just one engineer which is our Chief Engineer. This is a company that has somewhere around 2500 engineers. I could have probably made the next level if I wanted to, but my definition of success (more on it later - see #5) held me back from that. And the top level was not ever going to be achievable for me nor desired by me.

If success is large paychecks and huge bonuses, then I would say very few engineers at my company are successful. Just the two top levels. If success is good pay and decent benefits, then most are successful.

Now my definition of success has several attributes to measure:

1) Being recognized within the company as a subject matter expert that is consulted with on complex and critical issues on a routine basis.

2) Being a leading contact between the company and the customer, particularly involving complex and critical issues.

3) Setting company wide standards used within the company by other engineers along with other job disciplines.

4) Conceiving, pitching, developing, and implementing significant tasks that changed how business was done and will benefit the company and customer well after I leave. I can point to at least 5 such projects that when mentioned most people at the company know I lead those efforts.

5) Granted the freedom to pursue projects that you feel are needed for continuous improvement.

6) And probably the most important to me, was the freedom to be able to be there for my family. To be able go home at a reasonable hour, to be able to take time off when needed or desired. To be able to not have a phone always in my hand answering work questions at night and on the weekend. To simply have a well balanced work-family life balance. After 36 years and with only a few more to go, if I choose, this is the most important definition of success. Yes I achieved numbers 1 through 5 and those are important to me. There is no doubt about achieving those, but number 6 is the most important to me and the most rewarding. When your adult kids are happy and thriving in their pursuit of success and they tell you they are trying to balance work-life like I did, I know I was successful. I am happpppppppppyyyyyyyy!!!

As reach the end of my career, thanks to the Bolge approach, I find myself reflecting on my career choice and path. I think there would have been several other careers that I would have been happy with and successful at besides engineering. I think the traits that helped me as an engineer would have made me successful in those other fields.

OP don't be afraid to try. If it doesn't workout then move on to the next thing. Most likely you will be "successful" as you describe successful.

[Jeepergeo]

When you say professional engineering, do you mean that the engineer has passed the PE test in your state?

I know at one time, Texas would only allow those with a PE to label themselves as "engineer". This went over real well (sarcasm) when a Texas company bought my company based in New Hampshire. The NH company had a roster of pioneers in the industry but up here in the northeast, if you're not opening an engineering consulting business, there is zero reason to get a PE for EEs.

My son's a civil engineer working as a structural engineer. He's talked about getting the PE but has found in his 4 years working that it can bring disadvantages. He's in a small structural company and the owner, who is a PE is super hesitant to ever put a stamp on anything. The stamp brings liability and there are customers who do require it. Not having the PE makes is an easy way to reject legal responsibility. Of course he's in Rhode Island where the RI DOT has decided that their solution to the Washington Bridge shutdown, demo and rebuild is to sue every engineering firm who ever had anything to do with the bridge. Nope.

If by "professional engineer", you simply mean an engineer who has worked many years in a specialty and is coming into your company to do that specialty, I'd say that unless the company has a huge toxic culture, you're going to see some great success every time. I've unfortunately worked for a couple companies with very toxic cultures and they saw engineers leave in a month.

Yet another topic here was that engineers are "known" for not having good writing and communication skills. This "can" be true and because of it, those with demonstrated skills can go in different directions. I'd put myself in that category. In college, during one of my graduation required projects where I taught computer programming in a high school, my advisor told me that I've done all the work required to complete the project so now, he'd be picking on my spelling and grammar. That helped me a ton. After 8 years of pure design engineering, I went to work at a chip company, first writing application notes and then going into the field, working directly with customer engineers. An IEEE paper I wrote on a patented invention of mine got the attention of the hiring company. I worked for them for 8 years and my salary, as they told me would stay the same but the bonuses would be at least another 25%. Staying in that job as "Field Applications Engineer" for a couple decades, I did find that companies had the hardest time finding qualified engineers who could write well and could communicate well with engineers. I would never say that having these skills makes me a better engineer. My son is an extremely introverted engineer but I've seen his college major project (over 200 pages) and his daily work and he is an engineer's engineer, more than I ever was.

If the State or the Court finds that the work performed was in fact engineering covered by licensure regulations, it will mean even MORE trouble and possible liability for 1) a registered engineer that had responsible charge of the work yet failed to sign and seal the plans or 2) an unregistered engineer or technician that performed functions that should have been under the direction and supervision of an engineer in responsible charge. Check the firm's E&O insurance coverage limitations relative to engineering work performed by unlicensed individuals.

An individual with an engineering degree that is four years into a job at an engineering firm and that does not already have their PE or is not diligently pursuing the same sends up huge red flags. Yes, the PE exam is hard. Passing the PE exam is what separates engineers from technicians. This is not a slam on technicians. Techs are important support to the engineering profession, but their earning capacity is limited as is their ability to be in responsible charge of regulated engineering projects.

I'm specifically writing about engineering that fall under the definitions of Civil Engineering.

[dcabler]

Hi Guys,

I have a general question for the hiring managers and also those who are in the later portion of their careers. What percentage of professional engineering hires at your company would you count as "successful"? For the discussion, I mean successful in a pretty broad sense, perhaps simply they stayed on past the introductory period to become familiar with the business processes, and then further were welcome to stay long enough to actually do some business-impactful work. (The time this takes is certainly very situational.)

The reason I'm asking is help overcome my fear of the unknown (i.e. will I flop if I take a new job), and also to help judge whether the turnover rate at my current employer is normal.

-b4xt3r

I assume you don't mean "professional engineering" specifically as somebody who has a PE license. The state bodies who govern such things are kinda persnickety about that term and its usage.

Anyway, as both a former workerbee electrical engineer and a former hiring manager (relatively recently retired) I can think of 2 cases across my entire career where there was an early life failure for a new hire.
1. The first one was.... me. My first job out of college was not as advertised. The role was at a well known, worldwide technical company based in Texas and was supposed to be a position as a design engineer (it was as a test engineer) and I was to report to person A (I reported to person B). I had turned down roles elsewhere as a test engineer for more money to take this position. 4 months later I had an offer and changed companies and cities and was in the position I wanted. I was at that company twice over my career for a total of 22 years.
2. We had somebody who was experienced that we hired who left after 6 months. He turned out to be mediocre and we hadn't sent him any signals yet that he might want to start exploring career choices. His hiring included a sign-on bonus that he was obligated to pay back 100% due to his short length of stay - he tried to negotiate that, but that was never going to work. A few years later his resume' showed up again. Many remember what had happened previously, so you can guess how far that went.

Those two stories aside, I'd say that our success rates were pretty high overall in the companies where I worked, somewhere north of 95%. Unfortunately, employees still leave on their own for greener pastures and our industry had relatively frequent layoffs where we had to let go of otherwise good engineers simply because there were ones who were marginally higher performers..

Turnover due to involuntary attrition seems to come in bursts for any number of reasons. A star performer who is well respected may join another company and others may follow. I saw a situation like that once when a startup company in town opened where it seemed every Friday there was an email "today is my last day...." from somebody. Highest attrition rate I ever saw. Or it could happen because the company isn't doing so well and some folks want to jump ship before they're layed off or required to work even harder if they do survive a layoff. Could be the company isn't paying what the rest of the industry does. Many reasons.

Best of luck!
Cheers.

[random_walker_77]

When you say professional engineering, do you mean that the engineer has passed the PE test in your state?

I know at one time, Texas would only allow those with a PE to label themselves as "engineer". This went over real well (sarcasm) when a Texas company bought my company based in New Hampshire. The NH company had a roster of pioneers in the industry but up here in the northeast, if you're not opening an engineering consulting business, there is zero reason to get a PE for EEs.

If the State or the Court finds that the work performed was in fact engineering covered by licensure regulations, it will mean even MORE trouble and possible liability for 1) a registered engineer that had responsible charge of the work yet failed to sign and seal the plans or 2) an unregistered engineer or technician that performed functions that should have been under the direction and supervision of an engineer in responsible charge. Check the firm's E&O insurance coverage limitations relative to engineering work performed by unlicensed individuals.

An individual with an engineering degree that is four years into a job at an engineering firm and that does not already have their PE or is not diligently pursuing the same sends up huge red flags. Yes, the PE exam is hard. Passing the PE exam is what separates engineers from technicians. This is not a slam on technicians. Techs are important support to the engineering profession, but their earning capacity is limited as is their ability to be in responsible charge of regulated engineering projects.

I'm specifically writing about engineering that fall under the definitions of Civil Engineering.

I'd agree with you for Civil Engineering. Jack FFR1846 says he's an Electrical Engineer, and the huge subset of our field that works in semiconductors basically doesn't bother with getting a PE. If you look at all the EE's working on chips at Intel, AMD, Nvidia, Apple, Broadcom, etc, very few have a PE. I think I know of 2, one of whom got it to consult and to qualify as an expert witness.

At my company, I'd say that over 95% were successful hires who didn't need to be managed out. Previously, at a smaller company where the hiring standards were extremely strict, probably 2/3 of the mostly-young hires turned into superstars or technical leaders. No doubt, we turned away a lot of really good hires for fear of taking on a bad hire. That company also spent a fortune in engineering time to interview for a successful candidate, as we had many candidates go through the final full round without a job offer.

[hfj]

In my 25+ years in chip design, I can't think of a full-time employee I've been involved with hiring who weren't at least fairly successful. No one left too early, no one forced to leave early. Secondhand I know of a few who left after a short time for another offer they found more appealing, but I'm unaware of any quality-of-work issues.

Contractors, on the other hand, I can think of a few that were definitely more hassle than they were worth. We've learned to screen contractor candidates more thoroughly because of it.

[LotsaGray]

In a side note, anyone ever notice in the financial world you can be a VP with like 8 years experience? Talk about title inflation!!

On this issue, at one time, at least at banks, to sign certain documents (at least some kinds of loans for example) one needed to be a company officer. Thus every brick and mortar local branch had to have at least one, usually more, company officer onsite. Thus the plethora of VPs in a bank.

[exodusNH]

Hi Guys,

I have a general question for the hiring managers and also those who are in the later portion of their careers. What percentage of professional engineering hires at your company would you count as "successful"? For the discussion, I mean successful in a pretty broad sense, perhaps simply they stayed on past the introductory period to become familiar with the business processes, and then further were welcome to stay long enough to actually do some business-impactful work. (The time this takes is certainly very situational.)

The reason I'm asking is help overcome my fear of the unknown (i.e. will I flop if I take a new job), and also to help judge whether the turnover rate at my current employer is normal.

-b4xt3r

I'd say 90% made it past the introductory period, 80% stayed longer than a year, and 30% longer than 5 years.

We're a professional services organization, which just isn't a good fit for many people. It can be more hectic (and repetitive) than many software people want to endure.

Over 25 years, we've had only a handful of terrible hires.

The younger your people are, the higher turnover you'll see.

[wwhan]

In 32 years at last former company, of the 1000s of hirings, I remember two hiring mistakes that occurred. This was for IC design Electrical Engineering positions.

I remember one, where the guy was socially clueless. He reminded me exactly of the characters in SNL skit of a "couple of wild and crazy guys". He was also pretty lost in engineering design, I don't know how he ever received a degree. He got layed off pretty fast.

There was another person that was a legend in his own mind. He hired a nice looking very well dressed intern for a summer position, but he got intimately involved with her, which did not end well. He was a little scary & I was assigned to escort him inside the building after hours to collect his possessions, after he was abruptly layed off.

[unwitting_gulag]

One more thing, I don't see too many engineers in their 40s - 60s. My theory for this is that, possibly due to being in a well-paid career and naturally conservative in their spending habits, older engineers tend to be able to retire early. Where I work, most engineers retire in their 50s and working into their 60s is by choice and not because they have to.

The above is largely anecdotal but I believe it's typical for the aerospace engineering career field.

Another aeronautical (aerospace) engineer here. The above (quote snipped for brevity) fits my experience too. Of the youngest engineers, very few are fired, and of those who leave, the main reasons are desire to relocate, or family. By the latter I mean also female engineers who suspend their careers to have children. That's just a statement of fact... not a normative judgment.

By middle age, there is a multi-way bifurcation. Some people burn-out, biding time until early retirement. This - again, a statement of fact, and not a normative judgment - is one (of several) plausible prompts for "early retirement". Others become technical experts. Others become technical mentors, leading teams of younger folks who run the codes and do the experiments. Still others go into management.

Much of the un-success of aspiring engineers occurs already in college. So many frustrated engineering majors switch into "business", that engineering gets dubbed as "pre-business". This isn't to be confused with engineering graduates who 5-10 years into their careers, get an MBA and follow the business track.

There is an alternative criterion for "success", operative in middle age and beyond. Did the engineer make Fellow in his or her professional society? Publish a seminal paper (or even write a book)? Make lasting and profound contributions? Do we remember this engineer as another Brunel, Heaviside, Eiffel, Stephenson, Watt?

A personal confession: I'm far less successful than my old grad-school advisor, or than any of the members of my committee. They have Wikipedia pages. I do not. They're inductees into the National Academy. I am not (and never will be). If they go to conferences, they get absolutely mobbed by admirers, well-wishers, persons seeking advice... and I.. do not. Hard to dispel the envy! Success is relative... in engineering, as in investment.