Career Path, A Winding Path

I remember a niece of mine asking me, when did I know that I wanted to be an engineer. To which I replied, I am not sure. Even now, I am not sure whether I want to be one, or what I would be in the next years. We spend so much time at our job, that it is hard not to be defined by it, but it is not always easy to decide what you want to be in the future.

Recently I discovered that the UK government has a framework for its staff, especially in the science and technology related sector, of how to progress their career. What surprised me was that this framework defines how one can progress in their career, while changing their profession. Previously while working in Malaysia, my understanding was that career progression, especially in engineering, is working to being a senior engineer, then management i.e. manager onwards until director position. There are deviations, but generally this was the way to progress in career and get salary increase. Hence my surprise the framework accepts, specifies AND encourages changing profession (to a certain degree). The framework can be found here – Government Science and Engineering Framework.

What is even more interesting, is that at the end of the framework, there are ‘case studies’ showing how government staff have progressed their career. There’s a neat little timeline at the bottom, showing their career path.

The timeline shows where the staff had work or studied and although it might seemed that in retrospect, the paths are clear and logical, I highly doubt they would have imagined they would be where they are today. My point is though, it is good to have a framework that allows and appreciate cross-discipline skilled person, because not everyone knows what they want to be (that’s me 🤣). I’ve also heard of 80,000 hours, a non-profit that try to match your expertise and interest to cross-discipline or even industry, though I find most of the jobs are analyst or software related.

Anyways, if I were to be asked today, what I would be doing in 5 years time, I would still have a hard time answering. I have a general idea and plan sketched in the sand, but who knows what tomorrow, or next year will bring. It does help though to know that career paths are not linear, and there exists frameworks that justify and guides the evaluation for this.

Thank you for reading.