Priority Interrupt by Steve Ciarcia Risk and Opportunity

I frequently get e-mails from readers asking my opinion on career moves or entrepreneurial ventures. The correspondents aren’t long-haul truck drivers in Alaska or machine operators working in Manhattan. Instead, the messages I get come from a project engineer at United Technologies or a software designer at Itty Bitty Controller Company, USA. The questions are typically something like should they go get an M.S.E.E. that would help them climb the corporate ladder, or should they mortgage their house and try to start a company selling the little embedded controller they designed in the basement.

Engineering, or more importantly an engineering mentality, can be a double-edged sword. A truck driver or a machine operator is trained to do a task, and accomplishing it satisfies their self-esteem. It seems to be the opposite for engineers. If my mail is any indication, I get the feeling that the more engineers accomplish on the job, the less happy they are about whether they should be doing it that way. The conflict arises because a corporate engineering career is primarily about creating solutions and designing inventions for the corporation. Our culture is all about rewarding people who are entrepreneurial and capitalize on invention for their own benefit. Can you see the dilemma?

I’m very willing to admit that there are lots of people smarter than me. Fortunately, having entrepreneurial success in an engineering career isn’t just about being smart. In my opinion, it’s mostly about risk and opportunity. I would never say to someone, “Quit your job. If Bill Gates can do it, so can you.” That’s insane. Before giving up the cushy day job that supports a wife and four kids, you might want to find a less risky way to assess whether the world is interested in your invention and talents. That’s where opportunity becomes important.

I didn’t wake up one morning and decide I was going to run a magazine or manufacture electronic products. I woke up one morning and said I’m interested in these new things called microcontrollers, even if the place where I work has no interest and considers them forbidden fruit. Before I published my first design project—an 8008-based vector graphics display generator—no one outside the bowels of Control Data Corporation had a clue who Steve Ciarcia was. It didn’t take too many more articles before I had to start a manufacturing company just to satisfy the production demand for these projects.

While I suppose the book deals and interviews that come from bugging out of a wedding and having the whole world searching for you for a week might appeal to a few, it’s a high-risk venture. A safer way to achieve your next engineering career move might simply be to publish something and put it in front of the world.

The testimonial evidence of Circuit Cellar as a career builder is overwhelming. I received this note just this week:

It seems that the face-to-face contact is still a highly ranked criterion in customers selecting their consulting partners. It certainly provided a lot of instant credibility during initial meetings to be able to pull out a copy of Circuit Cellar and show the articles I had written (especially when the subject of the article matched that of the product to be designed). I found through this process that a surprising number of people read Circuit Cellar. Following the article release, I also received many phone calls and e-mails from colleagues and friends I hadn't heard from in a while. I am also now asked regularly by some when my next article is coming out!

Eric Gagnon

Publishing doesn’t only mean print articles. Contest winners and Distinctive Excellence designees can consider themselves “published” when they see their projects posted on www.circuitcellar.com. And since contest sponsors often put everything on their own sites, many people can have the added distinction of being able to say they have one of their designs published on www.cypressmicro.com, www.atmel.com, etc. You can’t buy this advantage.

Through it all I’d like to think that I’ve stayed true to the brotherhood. When you participate in a Circuit Cellar contest or publish an article with us, our contractual fine print isn’t just about what you give away. It’s also about what you keep. Unlike many other contests and publications, I want designers and authors to know that when you do things with us, you retain the intellectual property ownership. If a company sees your posted project or reads your article and wants more, they have to deal with you. IP ownership along with a great publishing vehicle succeeded in creating a fine career for me. If you are willing to take some risk investigating new opportunities, perhaps it can also work for you too.