I had a very interesting conversation about this with a former colleague of mine who is both seen as an industry expert in his field and is also a very well regarded university lecturer. We were swapping stories of meetings we'd both sat in where we'd been thinking "everyone else here knows what they're talking about, I wish I did". And as we agreed (having candidly talked to other people in those same meetings), that everyone else around those tables was thinking the same thing! 


Absolutely as Alasdair and Mike say - learn everything you can, and never be embarrassed to ask questions (unless of course you are asking the same question every day!) Specifically on the "what if I get something wrong" question, which is a really good question: yes, of course you have a responsibility to do your work as well as you can, but equally your employers have a clear moral and legal responsibility to ensure that you are not put in a position where your lack of experience or knowledge could put anyone else at risk. What you have to watch out for is that if you are asked, say, to sign a job off and you think "I'm not sure this job is safe" but you don't say anything then that is your problem. But saying "I'm not sure this job is safe, so on this occasion can someone talk me through it so I know how to decide next time"  is a win situation for everybody.


And if anyone ever says to you "you should know that" or "work it out for yourself" and just walks off then that is usually somebody who REALLY doesn't know, or care, what they're talking about. People get knowledge by being interested in everything around them, and people who are interested in everything around them like sharing and enthusing others in that knowledge. Hang around with that type of person and you'll be fine.


Re "Jack of all Trades" - I often describe my knowledge of my area of engineering as being like a comb, I've got a broad shallow knowledge across the top, and then very deep knowledge in very specific (and often pretty useless) areas *. Some engineers are like needles, they have very deep knowledge in just one very narrow area, many are like you describe broad across many areas. It's all fine, any project needs a collection of these different types, and between the team it all works together to cover everything. But you'll usually find that the senior managers are the "broad but shallow" knowledge types - it means they have the perspective to pull a whole project together. So don't knock the jack of all trades!


Good luck!


Andy



* If anyone wants someone to design analogue op-amp based audio frequency filters then I'm your person. Anyone??? ?

I had a very interesting conversation about this with a former colleague of mine who is both seen as an industry expert in his field and is also a very well regarded university lecturer. We were swapping stories of meetings we'd both sat in where we'd been thinking "everyone else here knows what they're talking about, I wish I did". And as we agreed (having candidly talked to other people in those same meetings), that everyone else around those tables was thinking the same thing! 


Absolutely as Alasdair and Mike say - learn everything you can, and never be embarrassed to ask questions (unless of course you are asking the same question every day!) Specifically on the "what if I get something wrong" question, which is a really good question: yes, of course you have a responsibility to do your work as well as you can, but equally your employers have a clear moral and legal responsibility to ensure that you are not put in a position where your lack of experience or knowledge could put anyone else at risk. What you have to watch out for is that if you are asked, say, to sign a job off and you think "I'm not sure this job is safe" but you don't say anything then that is your problem. But saying "I'm not sure this job is safe, so on this occasion can someone talk me through it so I know how to decide next time"  is a win situation for everybody.


And if anyone ever says to you "you should know that" or "work it out for yourself" and just walks off then that is usually somebody who REALLY doesn't know, or care, what they're talking about. People get knowledge by being interested in everything around them, and people who are interested in everything around them like sharing and enthusing others in that knowledge. Hang around with that type of person and you'll be fine.


Re "Jack of all Trades" - I often describe my knowledge of my area of engineering as being like a comb, I've got a broad shallow knowledge across the top, and then very deep knowledge in very specific (and often pretty useless) areas *. Some engineers are like needles, they have very deep knowledge in just one very narrow area, many are like you describe broad across many areas. It's all fine, any project needs a collection of these different types, and between the team it all works together to cover everything. But you'll usually find that the senior managers are the "broad but shallow" knowledge types - it means they have the perspective to pull a whole project together. So don't knock the jack of all trades!


Good luck!


Andy



* If anyone wants someone to design analogue op-amp based audio frequency filters then I'm your person. Anyone??? ?