1 00:00:00,280 --> 00:00:02,400 Hi, and welcome to the Neil Ashton Podcast. 2 00:00:03,080 --> 00:00:05,920 In each episode, we explained some of the fascinating ways 3 00:00:05,920 --> 00:00:09,080 that science and engineering are changing the world around us. 4 00:00:09,800 --> 00:00:12,760 We talked to leading engineers from elite level sports like 5 00:00:12,840 --> 00:00:16,880 cycling and Formula One to some of the world's top academics to 6 00:00:16,880 --> 00:00:20,450 understand how fluid dynamics, machine learning and 7 00:00:20,450 --> 00:00:23,000 supercomputing are bringing in a new era of discovery. 8 00:00:23,960 --> 00:00:27,080 We also hear some of their life stories, their career advice, 9 00:00:27,640 --> 00:00:30,080 the lessons they've learned on the way that I hope will be 10 00:00:30,080 --> 00:00:33,800 helpful to you too. So sit back and enjoy this 11 00:00:33,800 --> 00:00:41,200 episode. Hi and welcome back to the Neil 12 00:00:41,200 --> 00:00:46,680 Ashton podcast. So I thought we'd do an episode 13 00:00:46,960 --> 00:00:53,720 sort of career advice in a way episode for people who didn't 14 00:00:53,720 --> 00:00:56,080 see it already. I did one in the first season, 15 00:00:56,080 --> 00:01:00,320 which was essentially more of an academia versus industry 16 00:01:00,320 --> 00:01:03,960 question. I'll, if you're, if you're on 17 00:01:03,960 --> 00:01:06,440 YouTube, I'll, I'll try and put a, a link to it here. 18 00:01:06,440 --> 00:01:08,400 But if you're listening, you can just search for it. 19 00:01:08,400 --> 00:01:11,040 I think it was in the first season. 20 00:01:11,040 --> 00:01:14,720 I can't remember which episode now and but you know, I had 21 00:01:14,720 --> 00:01:18,720 pretty positive response that people find it useful, you know, 22 00:01:18,720 --> 00:01:21,520 at different career levels just to give some of my personal 23 00:01:21,520 --> 00:01:24,680 opinion and things that I've observed and learnt along the 24 00:01:24,680 --> 00:01:27,120 way. But I thought in this episode 25 00:01:27,120 --> 00:01:31,960 maybe we would just focus purely on the industry as a non 26 00:01:31,960 --> 00:01:35,480 academic job, so not university or sort of classic research 27 00:01:35,480 --> 00:01:38,560 positions. Might do that one again, let me 28 00:01:38,560 --> 00:01:39,760 know if that would be interesting. 29 00:01:39,760 --> 00:01:44,560 But I thought just give some personal observations that and 30 00:01:44,560 --> 00:01:47,080 things that I've learnt along the way that maybe I wish I'd, 31 00:01:47,560 --> 00:01:50,880 you know, known in the past. So I'm going to try and cover 32 00:01:51,120 --> 00:01:55,960 maybe four or five things that I think would be useful to know 33 00:01:56,320 --> 00:02:03,360 for someone who is looking to get a job in engineering to 34 00:02:03,360 --> 00:02:08,160 understand about potentially different roles and options and 35 00:02:08,479 --> 00:02:12,760 the the different markets. So sort of companies, job roles, 36 00:02:12,760 --> 00:02:15,640 career progression. And then maybe a bit of a deep 37 00:02:15,640 --> 00:02:19,640 dive on actually the tech sector, something that obviously 38 00:02:19,640 --> 00:02:24,200 I work in and some people have asked me, you know, to, to 39 00:02:24,480 --> 00:02:27,880 understand a little bit more about what sort of roles are, 40 00:02:27,880 --> 00:02:30,160 are available and, and what it's what it's like. 41 00:02:31,520 --> 00:02:34,320 Again, caveat, this is just my opinion. 42 00:02:34,440 --> 00:02:37,840 I'm living in the UK. I'm going to have a sort of UK 43 00:02:37,960 --> 00:02:40,680 slash US bias to, to all of this. 44 00:02:40,680 --> 00:02:44,320 So if you're listening from a different country, apologies if 45 00:02:44,320 --> 00:02:47,880 some of this isn't as relevant to you, but I, I think most of 46 00:02:47,880 --> 00:02:49,960 what I'm talking about hopefully, hopefully is. 47 00:02:51,680 --> 00:02:56,920 So we'll, we'll, we'll assume that we're basically that you 48 00:02:56,920 --> 00:03:01,040 have some form of degree or you're about to, to, to, to 49 00:03:01,040 --> 00:03:03,480 finish a degree. I appreciate that there are 50 00:03:03,480 --> 00:03:07,600 routes without having a university degree, but maybe 51 00:03:07,600 --> 00:03:09,720 that's for for for another episode. 52 00:03:10,520 --> 00:03:13,280 So I'm going to assume that you have some sort of engineering 53 00:03:13,360 --> 00:03:15,280 degree. Well, it could be computer 54 00:03:15,280 --> 00:03:18,751 science, it could be a more pure engineering, it could be sort 55 00:03:18,751 --> 00:03:21,680 of more mathematical physics. But let's say you're sort of 56 00:03:21,680 --> 00:03:25,080 interested in something I would call related to engineering, 57 00:03:25,080 --> 00:03:27,132 Although to be honest, engineering is a very broad 58 00:03:27,132 --> 00:03:29,663 field though, and you could include software and 59 00:03:29,663 --> 00:03:33,000 mechanical and aerospace. But anyway, let's not get too 60 00:03:33,000 --> 00:03:34,480 much down a rabbit hole straight away. 61 00:03:35,440 --> 00:03:42,360 And so I'd say the first thing that you should consider is what 62 00:03:42,360 --> 00:03:45,720 sort of company do you want to work for? 63 00:03:46,360 --> 00:03:51,320 And the way I would tend to split this up is you have large 64 00:03:51,480 --> 00:03:58,360 enterprise companies like a Rolls-Royce, an Airbus, a 65 00:03:58,360 --> 00:04:05,056 Siemens, an Ansys, companies that have tens of thousands 66 00:04:05,056 --> 00:04:10,680 maybe of, of employees. And then you have start-ups, 67 00:04:10,720 --> 00:04:13,360 which probably are the complete other end where you may only 68 00:04:13,360 --> 00:04:20,040 have 10 people, but often in a very fast moving, innovative 69 00:04:20,120 --> 00:04:25,640 sort of exciting way. I would say there's then what 70 00:04:25,640 --> 00:04:28,840 some people would call mid- market sort of smaller 71 00:04:28,840 --> 00:04:32,440 enterprise where you may be joining a company that has, you 72 00:04:32,440 --> 00:04:37,520 know, a hundred 200 people. So quite a different sort of 73 00:04:38,600 --> 00:04:42,400 company like that. I'm trying to think of examples 74 00:04:44,120 --> 00:04:46,816 like, I guess even a Formula One team would be sort of 75 00:04:46,816 --> 00:04:49,480 considered like that. I mean, maximum 800 people. 76 00:04:49,480 --> 00:04:51,000 I wouldn't call that an enterprise. 77 00:04:51,160 --> 00:04:53,720 Could be, and I'll explain later why. 78 00:04:54,160 --> 00:04:58,073 And then you have what I would sort of call SMEs, sort of small 79 00:04:58,073 --> 00:05:01,200 and medium businesses. So these are sort of the catch. 80 00:05:01,840 --> 00:05:04,880 Anything in between I, I, I suppose where you're going to 81 00:05:04,880 --> 00:05:11,120 have something that is more than probably 10 people, but less 82 00:05:11,120 --> 00:05:16,760 than than sort of 500 people. And what I've observed is that 83 00:05:17,040 --> 00:05:19,360 they all have the sort of pros and cons. 84 00:05:20,360 --> 00:05:24,680 If you're going into a large enterprise company, let's say 85 00:05:24,680 --> 00:05:28,240 like one of those big sort of engineering giants in, in, in 86 00:05:28,240 --> 00:05:33,320 the UK or the US or Europe, they often have graduate schemes. 87 00:05:33,720 --> 00:05:38,480 They often have schemes that help you to progress within the 88 00:05:38,480 --> 00:05:41,120 company and it's very common for someone to join one of those 89 00:05:41,120 --> 00:05:45,240 sort of companies and be able to move around a lot just within 90 00:05:45,240 --> 00:05:49,640 that single company. So if you join, let's say, doing 91 00:05:51,160 --> 00:05:55,707 aerodynamics or, or, or, or CFD or like a fluids person, 92 00:05:55,707 --> 00:05:58,020 usually they have the ability that if you wanted to move 93 00:05:58,020 --> 00:06:01,106 more into, let's say project management or, or into some 94 00:06:01,106 --> 00:06:04,768 other area, there may be options to do it because ultimately 95 00:06:04,768 --> 00:06:06,529 they want typically to stay in that company. 96 00:06:06,537 --> 00:06:08,268 And so they're happy for you to move around. 97 00:06:08,276 --> 00:06:13,075 So in some ways the advantage of that is you have a lot of 98 00:06:13,083 --> 00:06:16,392 ability to move sideways and, and potentially upwards because 99 00:06:16,392 --> 00:06:22,100 it's such a large company and they typically have very mature 100 00:06:22,100 --> 00:06:25,035 schemes on training and development. 101 00:06:25,043 --> 00:06:28,234 So particularly if you're a sort of early career, you'll have a 102 00:06:28,242 --> 00:06:31,885 lot of help to, to progress a lot of continuous professional 103 00:06:31,893 --> 00:06:35,680 development and just, you know, lots of support because 104 00:06:35,688 --> 00:06:40,460 ultimately these companies want to keep you, they spent a lot of 105 00:06:40,460 --> 00:06:43,280 money, you know, employing you through the interview process 106 00:06:43,288 --> 00:06:46,190 and they're quite well set up for that. 107 00:06:46,198 --> 00:06:49,915 So that's the sort of advantage of that. 108 00:06:49,923 --> 00:06:54,872 They, but maybe the disadvantage is that they can often be such a 109 00:06:54,872 --> 00:07:00,327 large company that they can be a little bit more sort of 110 00:07:00,335 --> 00:07:03,466 bureaucracy. And what I mean by that is 111 00:07:03,474 --> 00:07:06,280 there's a lot of sort of processes and, and tickets to 112 00:07:06,288 --> 00:07:10,748 file because they've had to scale out, you know, maybe they 113 00:07:10,748 --> 00:07:15,048 have 100,000 employees. So that can sometimes mean that 114 00:07:15,048 --> 00:07:18,998 it's harder to know face to face people because you may just 115 00:07:18,998 --> 00:07:21,884 be speaking through a, a ticketing system to speak to 116 00:07:21,884 --> 00:07:26,052 somebody at, you know, within HR or, or if you want to do 117 00:07:26,052 --> 00:07:28,720 something IT, you can't just go to someone's desk, you may 118 00:07:28,720 --> 00:07:30,720 have to file something. So they, it's sort of a 119 00:07:30,720 --> 00:07:34,520 different vibe, I guess. But particularly at an early 120 00:07:34,520 --> 00:07:38,360 stage, they can be quite useful because, again, they're, they 121 00:07:38,360 --> 00:07:42,760 want to to help you. Now let's go to the complete 122 00:07:42,760 --> 00:07:44,680 other one, which is let's say a start up. 123 00:07:45,560 --> 00:07:47,800 And again, I'm probably thinking a little bit now, maybe we're 124 00:07:47,800 --> 00:07:51,120 starting off, if you're sort of more early career, the 125 00:07:51,120 --> 00:07:54,760 enterprise one, as it said, graduate schemes sort of safe. 126 00:07:54,800 --> 00:07:56,840 They, you know, will help to nurture you. 127 00:07:56,840 --> 00:07:59,480 They're looking more for your long term growth. 128 00:08:00,160 --> 00:08:04,160 Let's contrast that with the startup where you're essentially 129 00:08:04,160 --> 00:08:10,040 joining a company that has to work as quickly as possible to 130 00:08:10,040 --> 00:08:13,640 deliver something because of the way that they're funded, often 131 00:08:13,640 --> 00:08:17,108 through venture capital money where they've got one to five 132 00:08:17,108 --> 00:08:21,040 years to to deliver something. And so that is the complete 133 00:08:21,160 --> 00:08:24,040 opposite side where the expectation is, you know, you're 134 00:08:24,040 --> 00:08:29,531 working night and day to deliver something, which actually can 135 00:08:29,531 --> 00:08:34,256 be quite exciting because you may only have 10 people 136 00:08:34,256 --> 00:08:36,442 working. You're all maybe in one, you 137 00:08:36,450 --> 00:08:38,565 know, location or getting on to it. 138 00:08:38,573 --> 00:08:42,207 There is no bureaucracy per se. If you need to go and get a 139 00:08:42,216 --> 00:08:44,200 laptop, you just buy one. If you need to do something, you 140 00:08:44,200 --> 00:08:46,434 just do it. It's complete opposite side. 141 00:08:46,442 --> 00:08:51,615 And often they do look for sort of hungry, excited graduates who 142 00:08:51,615 --> 00:08:56,325 have just come out. Let's say a PhD or maybe even 143 00:08:56,333 --> 00:09:00,640 just a normal bachelor's or master's degree, but you're not 144 00:09:00,640 --> 00:09:05,305 going to get that sort of, you know, continual professional 145 00:09:05,313 --> 00:09:10,775 development that that sense of, you know, slowly helping you to 146 00:09:10,775 --> 00:09:14,282 do it, courses, training, you know, you may have three months 147 00:09:14,282 --> 00:09:16,640 to ramp up. That's, that's, that's not the 148 00:09:16,648 --> 00:09:18,796 way it's going to be. So you're going to be on the 149 00:09:18,804 --> 00:09:21,859 other end. But the positive thing is if the 150 00:09:21,859 --> 00:09:25,332 startup does well, you may have been given shares, you 151 00:09:25,332 --> 00:09:28,624 could financially do quite well out of it and you have a 152 00:09:28,624 --> 00:09:30,680 buzz of having, you know, delivered something. 153 00:09:30,688 --> 00:09:38,320 And in for some ways it can be a way to very quickly gain 154 00:09:38,328 --> 00:09:45,008 knowledge and reputation and can help you to then move on to 155 00:09:45,016 --> 00:09:47,875 other career paths because you've had to, you know, so 156 00:09:47,883 --> 00:09:50,316 quickly do something and the startup is very exposed. 157 00:09:50,324 --> 00:09:53,703 So sometimes, particularly I see in the US going to join a 158 00:09:53,703 --> 00:09:56,776 startup can actually be quite a strong move for, for, for 159 00:09:56,776 --> 00:10:00,268 let's say an early career person because it gives them a, 160 00:10:00,268 --> 00:10:02,200 a sort of very rapid head start. 161 00:10:02,920 --> 00:10:06,600 And then I'd say, you know, the sort of mid-market, the 162 00:10:06,600 --> 00:10:09,040 companies that are sort of in the middle. 163 00:10:09,080 --> 00:10:12,000 I, I guess, you know, you're not joining such a massive 164 00:10:12,120 --> 00:10:14,920 enterprise company, but you're joining something that you know, 165 00:10:15,440 --> 00:10:20,920 will help you out, but maybe is the best of both worlds. 166 00:10:20,960 --> 00:10:23,508 You could sort of say that where it's small enough that you 167 00:10:23,508 --> 00:10:25,240 might have a strong community of people. 168 00:10:25,240 --> 00:10:28,360 You would, you would know, you might have a, you know, a small 169 00:10:28,360 --> 00:10:31,420 team, but there's enough people within the organization and 170 00:10:31,420 --> 00:10:33,600 they still want to sort of look after you. 171 00:10:33,640 --> 00:10:38,040 And there is, you know, career progression either way. 172 00:10:38,440 --> 00:10:41,520 And I suppose the SMB business. 173 00:10:41,520 --> 00:10:45,640 It it's sort of again, a little bit closer to a start up that 174 00:10:45,640 --> 00:10:49,270 often the, the funding model and the career means that, you 175 00:10:49,270 --> 00:10:53,360 know, they can't afford to be having lots and lots of staff. 176 00:10:54,360 --> 00:10:58,080 But one thing I didn't mention is in terms of responsibility, 177 00:10:58,760 --> 00:11:01,960 sometimes, and I think people who work in Formula One would 178 00:11:01,960 --> 00:11:06,892 find this, that there's always a difference between ownership 179 00:11:06,892 --> 00:11:10,120 and responsibility. And sometimes when you're a, 180 00:11:10,400 --> 00:11:13,160 let's say, you know, early graduate, you're quite happy to 181 00:11:13,160 --> 00:11:16,400 be given a very small piece of something to work on and that's 182 00:11:16,400 --> 00:11:18,320 yours. But the other time, sometimes 183 00:11:18,320 --> 00:11:19,920 you think I'd like to be working all of it. 184 00:11:19,920 --> 00:11:24,800 So as an example, you know, if you're working in some very 185 00:11:24,800 --> 00:11:28,080 large engineering company, you might be responsible just for a 186 00:11:28,080 --> 00:11:32,000 very, very small part of, let's say, that aircraft design or 187 00:11:32,000 --> 00:11:37,240 that car design, or that that that industrial a piece of 188 00:11:37,240 --> 00:11:39,000 equipment or whatever, whatever it is. 189 00:11:39,000 --> 00:11:42,280 Or in a software company, you could be a software development 190 00:11:42,280 --> 00:11:46,160 engineer just working on a very small part of an overall 191 00:11:46,160 --> 00:11:49,160 product. But if you're in a smaller 192 00:11:49,160 --> 00:11:54,080 company, you may actually be responsible for, let's say, 193 00:11:54,440 --> 00:11:59,560 designing the whole car, or you may be responsible for writing 194 00:11:59,840 --> 00:12:04,000 the entire application. Now, probably by definition, 195 00:12:04,080 --> 00:12:05,960 it's not going to be as complicated because if one 196 00:12:05,960 --> 00:12:08,680 person can do it versus needing 500 people, it's obviously a 197 00:12:08,680 --> 00:12:11,520 different product. But there's a difference between 198 00:12:11,520 --> 00:12:13,440 sort of the ownership side of it. 199 00:12:13,880 --> 00:12:16,880 And that can often be something and, and one reason that people 200 00:12:16,880 --> 00:12:20,480 switch between sort of large companies and small companies 201 00:12:20,480 --> 00:12:23,120 because they feel they want to have, you know, more ownership 202 00:12:23,120 --> 00:12:28,209 or more, more scope to take over a whole thing rather than just 203 00:12:28,209 --> 00:12:30,800 a narrow fix. So the classic example would be 204 00:12:30,800 --> 00:12:33,720 in Formula One, a lot of people that when they start, you know, 205 00:12:33,720 --> 00:12:38,000 they're working just on a front wing flap or maybe less so now 206 00:12:38,000 --> 00:12:40,560 with the new rules, but something very specific. 207 00:12:40,880 --> 00:12:43,960 Whereas if you join, let's say, a smaller engineering 208 00:12:43,960 --> 00:12:47,888 consultancy company that's been asked to develop an aero kit 209 00:12:47,888 --> 00:12:50,520 for a whole car, you may be asked, right, can you do the 210 00:12:50,520 --> 00:12:53,440 aerodynamics for the car? So it's a very different sort of 211 00:12:53,440 --> 00:12:56,560 job. Pros and cons on, on, on both 212 00:12:56,560 --> 00:13:00,080 sides. But then there's also an 213 00:13:00,080 --> 00:13:04,920 interesting one, and this is maybe where I see and probably 214 00:13:04,920 --> 00:13:08,680 not as well known, but this barrier between what some people 215 00:13:08,680 --> 00:13:11,800 would call sort of traditional engineering companies. 216 00:13:11,920 --> 00:13:14,240 And that's some of the names I've mentioned then like, you 217 00:13:14,240 --> 00:13:16,200 know, your Rolls-Royce and your Airbus and all the others. 218 00:13:17,920 --> 00:13:23,200 And then what I would sort of call the sort of more slightly 219 00:13:24,160 --> 00:13:28,960 newer in a way, but commercial or tech companies that actually 220 00:13:28,960 --> 00:13:33,520 are increasingly doing more of the engineering that the 221 00:13:33,520 --> 00:13:35,200 traditional engineering companies would do. 222 00:13:35,200 --> 00:13:39,760 And what do I mean by that Is there are consulting companies, 223 00:13:40,960 --> 00:13:46,200 you know, like your Capgemini, PwC, I'm probably going to 224 00:13:46,200 --> 00:13:48,840 forget the names of these companies, but all these sort of 225 00:13:48,840 --> 00:13:54,640 large consulting companies that actually do. 226 00:13:54,680 --> 00:13:57,640 And, and I guess you could call companies like Arup as well in 227 00:13:57,640 --> 00:14:04,080 that they have specialist teams and knowledge that help 228 00:14:04,080 --> 00:14:08,440 perhaps some of these big engineering companies to do some 229 00:14:08,440 --> 00:14:13,600 of this work and they either are essentially outsourced to that 230 00:14:13,600 --> 00:14:19,000 company or they provide expert sort of guidance into that 231 00:14:19,000 --> 00:14:21,600 company. And we could probably go into a 232 00:14:21,600 --> 00:14:24,600 bit of a deep dive into this and this whole idea that large 233 00:14:24,600 --> 00:14:29,240 companies are quite slow to innovate versus sort of smaller 234 00:14:29,240 --> 00:14:32,400 or, or companies that are focused on on that. 235 00:14:32,880 --> 00:14:38,120 So there's actually a lot of jobs for people to move into the 236 00:14:38,120 --> 00:14:41,200 more consulting space. And this is sometimes a little 237 00:14:41,200 --> 00:14:46,920 bit of a controversial topic, particularly the stereotype is 238 00:14:46,920 --> 00:14:50,480 that some people when they finish their engineering degree 239 00:14:50,480 --> 00:14:53,965 will will not go into quote-unquote, a traditional 240 00:14:53,965 --> 00:14:58,288 engineering company and will instead go to one of these 241 00:14:58,288 --> 00:15:00,800 consulting companies because there is a perception of, you 242 00:15:00,800 --> 00:15:04,820 know, greater money and a bit more of a sort of commercial 243 00:15:04,820 --> 00:15:07,760 sort of environment. And, and to some extent that is 244 00:15:07,760 --> 00:15:11,960 probably true. Certainly in the UK it is, maybe 245 00:15:11,960 --> 00:15:16,539 it's less so in other countries, but there is this sense of 246 00:15:16,539 --> 00:15:18,840 these consulting companies that quite often, let's say they're 247 00:15:18,840 --> 00:15:22,840 based in London, again, sorry, bit of UK-centric view here. 248 00:15:23,800 --> 00:15:25,880 And they can be a bit more exciting because you may be paid 249 00:15:25,880 --> 00:15:27,200 a bit more. You're living in the city, 250 00:15:27,200 --> 00:15:31,164 you're sort of working in a more commercial environment where 251 00:15:31,164 --> 00:15:33,828 the sort of stereotype of going into the engineering company 252 00:15:33,828 --> 00:15:36,920 might be, you know, you're in a factory in the middle of 253 00:15:36,920 --> 00:15:39,266 nowhere, which is sort of true. 254 00:15:39,274 --> 00:15:44,760 But there are, you know, lots of pros of, of working in those 255 00:15:44,768 --> 00:15:47,085 engineering companies, particularly if you really, 256 00:15:47,093 --> 00:15:52,220 really love sort of engineering. Now those companies are 257 00:15:52,228 --> 00:15:54,800 realizing that and they're obviously trying to change. 258 00:15:54,808 --> 00:15:57,255 So the engineering companies, the traditional engineering 259 00:15:57,263 --> 00:16:01,045 companies are trying to, you know, attract younger talent and 260 00:16:01,045 --> 00:16:04,110 they're trying to show that they're more innovative. 261 00:16:04,118 --> 00:16:07,155 And I think that is certainly becoming the, the, the case. 262 00:16:07,163 --> 00:16:10,118 But I say it because from a career point of view, if you're 263 00:16:10,118 --> 00:16:13,438 looking, let's say on a job site or, or or for places, if 264 00:16:13,438 --> 00:16:15,890 you're into, let's say mechanical engineering or 265 00:16:15,890 --> 00:16:20,365 automotive or aerospace, there are there are other options than 266 00:16:20,365 --> 00:16:23,429 just the big traditional engineering companies or even 267 00:16:23,429 --> 00:16:26,320 some of those. And now we can get into what I 268 00:16:26,320 --> 00:16:28,620 would call this hierarchy maybe. 269 00:16:28,628 --> 00:16:31,348 And hierarchy doesn't mean good to bad. 270 00:16:31,356 --> 00:16:36,124 It's just in terms of the way that they do it, the there are 271 00:16:36,132 --> 00:16:40,606 many, many opportunities and companies that supply to the big 272 00:16:40,606 --> 00:16:44,728 companies. So, you know, Airbus may or 273 00:16:44,728 --> 00:16:50,004 Boeing may sort of appear to be the aircraft manufacturer, but 274 00:16:50,004 --> 00:16:54,263 in fact there are hundreds or thousands of companies that 275 00:16:54,263 --> 00:16:56,405 develop sub components for them. 276 00:16:56,413 --> 00:16:59,880 And and actually the large companies outsource quite a lot 277 00:16:59,880 --> 00:17:03,120 to it. So it's very dependent on the 278 00:17:03,128 --> 00:17:05,689 company. But it's not the case that to 279 00:17:05,696 --> 00:17:09,972 work on aircraft design, you have to work maybe at a Boeing 280 00:17:09,980 --> 00:17:13,928 or Bombardier or or Embraer or or Airbus or whatever. 281 00:17:13,935 --> 00:17:18,398 But there are sort of Tier 2, Tier 3, et cetera, companies 282 00:17:18,398 --> 00:17:22,775 that will build the landing gear or the components or, or or 283 00:17:22,775 --> 00:17:25,480 again do consulting advice to those. 284 00:17:25,760 --> 00:17:29,080 So there's, there's far more of those companies and sometimes, 285 00:17:29,800 --> 00:17:32,480 and this depends on the sector, it can be a stepping stone a 286 00:17:32,480 --> 00:17:36,600 little bit if if you wanted to get into the big company, but 287 00:17:36,720 --> 00:17:40,211 for whatever reason there wasn't a job available, then there 288 00:17:40,211 --> 00:17:43,656 are options to obviously go to these sort of smaller 289 00:17:43,656 --> 00:17:46,896 companies, sometimes smaller to gain that experience that you 290 00:17:46,896 --> 00:17:49,440 may then want to have the experience to go up. 291 00:17:49,440 --> 00:17:53,120 And, and that's certainly true sort of from a motorsport 292 00:17:53,120 --> 00:17:55,600 perspective, the classic example being people want to work in 293 00:17:55,600 --> 00:17:57,760 Formula One. There's only a certain number of 294 00:17:57,760 --> 00:18:01,920 jobs in Formula One, so either you just keep applying, but what 295 00:18:01,920 --> 00:18:04,280 do you do in the meantime? Well, actually then there are 296 00:18:04,280 --> 00:18:09,360 lots of companies that are sort of side auxiliary to to Formula 297 00:18:09,360 --> 00:18:14,920 One, have a lower Formula One series or companies that provide 298 00:18:14,920 --> 00:18:17,002 things to the Formula One teams. 299 00:18:17,010 --> 00:18:21,680 And this is probably where the software side comes into it. 300 00:18:21,688 --> 00:18:26,192 So again, I suppose I'm, you know, maybe most people 301 00:18:26,200 --> 00:18:30,264 listening to this I assume are probably more engineering type 302 00:18:30,272 --> 00:18:35,550 people, but maybe some of you have also done a little bit of 303 00:18:35,558 --> 00:18:38,210 what I've done, which is appreciate that nowadays 304 00:18:38,218 --> 00:18:42,032 engineering is very much a software driven industry. 305 00:18:42,040 --> 00:18:45,400 It's very much a sort of digital industry. 306 00:18:45,408 --> 00:18:50,220 And that is of course why there are so many software companies, 307 00:18:50,220 --> 00:18:55,080 software companies doing a whole range of things that 308 00:18:55,088 --> 00:18:59,320 increasingly have much closer links to engineering. 309 00:18:59,328 --> 00:19:03,820 And so for example, they have the very large companies, which 310 00:19:03,820 --> 00:19:07,960 I would still call them now an enterprise like Siemens or Ansys 311 00:19:07,960 --> 00:19:12,789 or Cadence or Dassault or or the others which I'm probably 312 00:19:12,797 --> 00:19:16,280 forgetting to mention. These are extremely large 313 00:19:16,288 --> 00:19:21,398 companies developing a whole range of software that has, you 314 00:19:21,398 --> 00:19:26,112 know, is explicitly designed to some extent for engineering. 315 00:19:26,120 --> 00:19:31,040 And so engineers are very attractive both from a software 316 00:19:31,040 --> 00:19:34,864 engineering point of view, so developing the software, but 317 00:19:34,872 --> 00:19:38,684 also we'll we'll come into this in a minute in terms of job 318 00:19:38,692 --> 00:19:41,664 roles, they want people with an engineering background to be 319 00:19:41,672 --> 00:19:46,014 able to either sell the product, develop the product, research a 320 00:19:46,014 --> 00:19:49,720 product. So, and that is a very, I would 321 00:19:49,720 --> 00:19:52,880 say, growing industry to the point it's probably growing 322 00:19:52,888 --> 00:19:55,109 faster than the traditional engineering. 323 00:19:55,117 --> 00:20:02,620 And it's also true that many, you know, if you were to go back 324 00:20:02,620 --> 00:20:05,180 40 years ago, those engineering companies would have 325 00:20:05,180 --> 00:20:06,680 probably developed their own software. 326 00:20:07,520 --> 00:20:10,480 So if you go back and look at the, you know, old school 327 00:20:12,080 --> 00:20:18,080 Lockheed Martin or. Or, or Boeing or BAE Systems or 328 00:20:18,080 --> 00:20:21,400 whatever that was before it was BAE Systems or, or certainly in 329 00:20:21,400 --> 00:20:26,000 Germany and France and, and, and probably in Asia as well. 330 00:20:26,000 --> 00:20:29,800 And all around the world, 40 years ago, you basically had to 331 00:20:29,800 --> 00:20:33,440 write your own code because there wasn't first of all, you 332 00:20:33,440 --> 00:20:37,800 know, computing and software was far, far different and you had 333 00:20:37,800 --> 00:20:41,040 to do it really yourself. If you Fast forward to now, 334 00:20:41,840 --> 00:20:46,680 there's a whole multi billion or trillion dollar industry for 335 00:20:46,680 --> 00:20:51,000 software to the point that increasingly companies are 336 00:20:51,000 --> 00:20:54,455 making a decision not to develop their own software, but 337 00:20:54,455 --> 00:20:59,200 instead to buy the software. And increasingly also, and you 338 00:20:59,200 --> 00:21:01,400 know, people know that I, I used to work at a cloud computing 339 00:21:01,400 --> 00:21:04,520 company. It's, it's the same, it's the 340 00:21:04,520 --> 00:21:08,334 same for that, that increasingly now even in terms of buying 341 00:21:08,334 --> 00:21:10,760 your own hardware or data centres, you're looking to 342 00:21:10,760 --> 00:21:14,019 sort of outsource it to another company, which means some of 343 00:21:14,019 --> 00:21:17,280 those jobs are being shifted to those other companies. 344 00:21:17,280 --> 00:21:22,782 So I would say the biggest thing is the idea that engineering 345 00:21:22,782 --> 00:21:28,200 is transitioning from the traditional companies to sort of 346 00:21:28,480 --> 00:21:30,680 the more digital or software companies. 347 00:21:31,400 --> 00:21:35,600 Now, that's also why many of these traditional engineering 348 00:21:35,600 --> 00:21:38,445 companies are trying to redefine themselves as software 349 00:21:38,445 --> 00:21:41,714 companies because they realize that that really they need to 350 00:21:41,714 --> 00:21:45,560 become more of a, a sort of software company than just a 351 00:21:45,560 --> 00:21:48,616 hardware company, particularly because of the way the the the 352 00:21:48,616 --> 00:21:52,089 world is working. And I've made a note down here 353 00:21:52,097 --> 00:21:55,346 that I'm going to definitely talk about AI because that is a 354 00:21:55,346 --> 00:22:00,045 certainly a big one when it comes to the job market. 355 00:22:00,053 --> 00:22:05,815 But OK, so that's the companies and I'm I'm purposely not 356 00:22:05,823 --> 00:22:09,024 mentioning lots of specific names because it's just so 357 00:22:09,032 --> 00:22:13,000 country dependent and and industry dependent within, you 358 00:22:13,008 --> 00:22:15,984 know, the engineering sector. But hopefully that's given you 359 00:22:15,992 --> 00:22:20,980 at least what I would say is the sense of the different companies 360 00:22:20,980 --> 00:22:24,904 that that you could potentially join or work for. 361 00:22:24,912 --> 00:22:29,742 But what about job roles? And, and again, some of these 362 00:22:29,750 --> 00:22:34,015 people will know and be obvious. There's some stuff that I don't 363 00:22:34,015 --> 00:22:36,960 think I knew actually before. So I'm hoping maybe some of this 364 00:22:36,960 --> 00:22:40,696 might help. So you do obviously have your 365 00:22:40,704 --> 00:22:43,075 sort of traditional, quote- unquote, engineering roles. 366 00:22:43,083 --> 00:22:45,795 But what really is an engineering role? 367 00:22:45,803 --> 00:22:49,108 It's actually, it's quite, it's quite different. 368 00:22:49,116 --> 00:22:57,400 I would, I would sort of split it that you have engineering 369 00:22:57,408 --> 00:23:00,805 roles, specialist engineering roles. 370 00:23:00,813 --> 00:23:03,048 And what do I mean by that? I mean domain-specific. 371 00:23:03,056 --> 00:23:07,584 So in quite a lot of companies you'll have a fluids group, a 372 00:23:07,592 --> 00:23:12,390 structures group, a sort of battery group, you know, sort of 373 00:23:12,390 --> 00:23:17,560 more maybe the, the chemistry side of it, sort of a noise 374 00:23:17,568 --> 00:23:21,540 group, maybe looking at water and, and, and soiling. 375 00:23:21,548 --> 00:23:25,328 They'll be a manufacturing group, they'll be composites 376 00:23:25,336 --> 00:23:29,495 group, there'll be a sort of physical testing group. 377 00:23:29,503 --> 00:23:34,140 They'll be and they would hire specialists in to them and 378 00:23:34,148 --> 00:23:38,928 that's where you would typically find doing a PhD would be useful 379 00:23:38,928 --> 00:23:43,464 because they might want a fluid specialist in in that 380 00:23:43,464 --> 00:23:47,280 group. Now that is obviously dependent 381 00:23:47,280 --> 00:23:50,280 on sort of the company and a very large enterprise company 382 00:23:50,280 --> 00:23:54,320 may have hundreds of people in a dedicated fluid sort of group. 383 00:23:54,400 --> 00:23:57,440 And you know, Oh well, like a Formula One team in aerodynamics 384 00:23:57,440 --> 00:24:00,120 division where you maybe have hundreds of people just in 385 00:24:00,120 --> 00:24:05,120 aerodynamics. And that this is sort of linking 386 00:24:05,120 --> 00:24:06,520 to my first point about companies. 387 00:24:07,640 --> 00:24:11,240 And if you are in let's say one of those, you have sort of 388 00:24:11,240 --> 00:24:13,560 career progression within that, you know, oh, I could be a 389 00:24:13,560 --> 00:24:16,560 junior aerodynamicist or senior aerodynamicist, principal 390 00:24:16,560 --> 00:24:21,400 aerodynamicist, et cetera. But if you then go into a, a 391 00:24:21,400 --> 00:24:25,640 smaller company, perhaps maybe there's only one aerodynamicist. 392 00:24:26,560 --> 00:24:30,360 So that aerodynamicist in some ways needs to be potentially 393 00:24:30,840 --> 00:24:36,160 more rounded and qualified and given much more responsibility 394 00:24:37,160 --> 00:24:38,160 because there's only one of them. 395 00:24:38,160 --> 00:24:41,680 So it there's a potential career move from, let's say one of 396 00:24:41,680 --> 00:24:44,120 these big companies where you were one of 100 to just being 397 00:24:44,120 --> 00:24:46,240 one because you may find that exciting because you're owning 398 00:24:46,240 --> 00:24:47,880 all of it. So this is where there's always 399 00:24:47,880 --> 00:24:50,000 a bit of movement between. So I think there's sort of 400 00:24:50,000 --> 00:24:55,120 specialist engineers and then some people find that, well, you 401 00:24:55,120 --> 00:24:58,040 need engineering managers because somebody needs to manage 402 00:24:58,040 --> 00:25:00,480 it. And that actually is in itself 403 00:25:00,480 --> 00:25:02,680 its own sort of job role and skill. 404 00:25:04,160 --> 00:25:09,920 Managing people, lots of people is a full time job and is not 405 00:25:09,920 --> 00:25:12,480 just a a sort of thing you do on the side, at least for good 406 00:25:12,480 --> 00:25:15,120 companies. There's also a lot of sort of 407 00:25:15,360 --> 00:25:18,720 project management jobs and this is where some people find that 408 00:25:19,000 --> 00:25:21,080 they actually really enjoy organizing things and doing 409 00:25:21,080 --> 00:25:24,320 things, but don't want to be deep diving in one particular 410 00:25:25,000 --> 00:25:27,240 sort of sub domain of fluids or structures. 411 00:25:27,240 --> 00:25:29,160 They just they feel like they're an engineer. 412 00:25:29,720 --> 00:25:32,640 And some people like either become therefore more than 413 00:25:32,640 --> 00:25:35,120 engineering manager. There are in some large 414 00:25:35,120 --> 00:25:37,880 companies that what they call some chief engineers or 415 00:25:37,880 --> 00:25:41,440 assistant engineers, but these are people and there's a 416 00:25:41,440 --> 00:25:43,880 borderline between I guess project management and 417 00:25:43,880 --> 00:25:47,080 engineering management. But certainly I see that in in 418 00:25:47,080 --> 00:25:51,190 some of the large sort of Rolls- Royce-type companies where 419 00:25:51,190 --> 00:25:54,648 these are the, these are the people who are supposed to 420 00:25:54,648 --> 00:25:58,520 look at the bigger picture. How do you deliver that product? 421 00:25:59,240 --> 00:26:05,080 How do you actually get that thing out and you need to manage 422 00:26:05,080 --> 00:26:08,935 or organize or direct, you know, some fluids analysis here, 423 00:26:08,935 --> 00:26:13,092 some structural analysis here, some some manufacturing 424 00:26:13,092 --> 00:26:16,696 analysis here, some maybe market analysis here and you're 425 00:26:16,696 --> 00:26:19,240 coordinating all of it. And that actually is its own 426 00:26:19,480 --> 00:26:25,200 typical job family. They often the big companies are 427 00:26:25,200 --> 00:26:27,640 sometimes the ones to get that because they will train you up 428 00:26:27,640 --> 00:26:31,160 in how to do it and sort of move you between projects. 429 00:26:31,160 --> 00:26:34,440 Certainly that's the case that some of these large like the 430 00:26:34,440 --> 00:26:36,440 Rolls-Royce, Airbus and Boeing, well, they'll sometimes 431 00:26:36,440 --> 00:26:39,320 almost have like schemes to identify people like that. 432 00:26:41,320 --> 00:26:45,720 Then I think it's important to note that some people actually 433 00:26:47,320 --> 00:26:51,320 like to go in to more of a sort of cross in the middle, which I 434 00:26:51,320 --> 00:26:57,480 would sort of call maybe technical marketing where you 435 00:26:58,040 --> 00:27:01,640 it's a marketing role, but it's you've come from a technical 436 00:27:01,640 --> 00:27:03,800 background to do that marketing role. 437 00:27:03,800 --> 00:27:07,440 And that's very common actually in software companies. 438 00:27:08,040 --> 00:27:11,640 So if you look in all the tech companies, there are hundreds or 439 00:27:11,640 --> 00:27:14,480 probably thousands of jobs or what they call like product 440 00:27:14,480 --> 00:27:17,680 marketing or technical marketing and they're looking to hire 441 00:27:17,680 --> 00:27:19,640 people with a technical background. 442 00:27:20,240 --> 00:27:22,855 It is not a pure marketing job. 443 00:27:22,863 --> 00:27:25,170 You need to understand the technical side. 444 00:27:25,178 --> 00:27:27,522 And often it's people even with PhDs or things. 445 00:27:27,530 --> 00:27:31,230 And that can actually be quite exciting for some people because 446 00:27:31,230 --> 00:27:35,440 they may like sort of a different side of, of, of work, 447 00:27:35,440 --> 00:27:38,616 not just pure engineering. And they may enjoy the sort of 448 00:27:38,624 --> 00:27:41,280 marketing and sales. And so that is actually 449 00:27:41,288 --> 00:27:43,287 something that is worth thinking about. 450 00:27:43,295 --> 00:27:47,260 You can still stay technical, but go into these more technical 451 00:27:47,260 --> 00:27:49,340 marketing roles. And like I said, in the software 452 00:27:49,340 --> 00:27:52,678 world, that is increasingly becoming quite a big one. 453 00:27:52,686 --> 00:27:57,448 The other one, and I'm saying this because I feel like some 454 00:27:57,456 --> 00:27:59,880 people leave engineering because they think, well, I'm either 455 00:27:59,888 --> 00:28:03,536 just an engineer that has oil on my hands or I need to get out 456 00:28:03,544 --> 00:28:06,382 and do something else. And sort of what I'm saying is 457 00:28:06,390 --> 00:28:09,288 you can be an engineer but do many other things. 458 00:28:09,296 --> 00:28:12,583 And so a good example of that is sales. 459 00:28:12,591 --> 00:28:17,469 So some people may like the idea, they may be driven more by 460 00:28:17,469 --> 00:28:20,243 a sort of commercial mindset. And some of those may be for, 461 00:28:20,251 --> 00:28:23,310 you know, I just need to leave engineering and go and work for 462 00:28:23,310 --> 00:28:26,565 a sort of financial institution or go and work just just outside 463 00:28:26,565 --> 00:28:30,980 or not even do engineering. But actually in many, many 464 00:28:30,988 --> 00:28:35,440 companies, and again, a lot software companies, certainly 465 00:28:35,448 --> 00:28:39,548 true, they need people to sell that software, but you need 466 00:28:39,556 --> 00:28:43,088 people who are technically minded to do it as well because 467 00:28:43,088 --> 00:28:44,832 often you're talking about complex stuff. 468 00:28:44,840 --> 00:28:48,912 If you're trying to sell a piece of software that can manage all 469 00:28:48,912 --> 00:28:52,010 the manufacturing components or some sort of, you know, fluid 470 00:28:52,018 --> 00:28:54,640 dynamic software, you, you sort of need to know the area. 471 00:28:54,648 --> 00:28:58,950 So there's a whole load of positions and jobs in sales. 472 00:28:58,958 --> 00:29:03,736 And some of that is what they call business development. 473 00:29:03,744 --> 00:29:07,248 So it's more the strategy of how you would do it. 474 00:29:07,256 --> 00:29:11,842 I think what they call go-to- market, or GTM phrase I'd never 475 00:29:11,842 --> 00:29:15,590 heard before, but it's it's very common once you're sort of 476 00:29:15,590 --> 00:29:17,812 in the in the software or tech market. 477 00:29:17,820 --> 00:29:21,400 And then you also have pure sales, which often they're sort 478 00:29:21,400 --> 00:29:24,236 of quota driven. So it's, you know, I need to 479 00:29:24,244 --> 00:29:27,260 sell this this much a month. And some people really love that 480 00:29:27,260 --> 00:29:29,272 because it's sort of exciting because you're, you know, 481 00:29:29,280 --> 00:29:33,050 you're, you're trying to get to target and there are things like 482 00:29:33,050 --> 00:29:36,376 account managers. And you have this again at 483 00:29:36,384 --> 00:29:39,280 consulting companies or software companies where you're sort of 484 00:29:39,288 --> 00:29:42,735 managing a customer or a set of customers. 485 00:29:42,743 --> 00:29:48,376 Now, one of the big job families obviously is software 486 00:29:48,384 --> 00:29:51,549 development engineers. And so they often call them 487 00:29:51,549 --> 00:29:54,764 SDEs. And that is something that has 488 00:29:54,772 --> 00:30:00,382 sort of blown up and something I definitely was not aware of when 489 00:30:00,382 --> 00:30:04,160 I did my sort of traditional engineering background. 490 00:30:04,168 --> 00:30:09,946 And what do I mean by that is again, because of the software 491 00:30:09,954 --> 00:30:15,164 need and they do have them. They do of course have these in 492 00:30:15,164 --> 00:30:17,920 these engineering companies, but definitely, definitely in 493 00:30:17,920 --> 00:30:22,236 the big tech companies. There are thousands, tens of 494 00:30:22,244 --> 00:30:25,600 thousands of SDEs software development engineers who are 495 00:30:25,608 --> 00:30:30,200 there to develop code. Now, some come from a computer 496 00:30:30,208 --> 00:30:33,040 science background, but many also come from an engineering 497 00:30:33,048 --> 00:30:35,528 background because you need very strong programming skills. 498 00:30:35,536 --> 00:30:39,510 But also it's useful if you have some sort of mathematical or 499 00:30:39,518 --> 00:30:42,278 engineering background. And engineering tends to be a 500 00:30:42,286 --> 00:30:47,615 good thing for problem solving. And there is a huge market for 501 00:30:47,623 --> 00:30:51,880 this, whether you're talking in the the Googles, the Facebooks, 502 00:30:51,880 --> 00:30:56,835 the Amazons, the NVIDIAs, all those sort of tech companies and 503 00:30:56,835 --> 00:31:01,908 other ones like, you know, Netflix or, or or whoever else 504 00:31:01,916 --> 00:31:05,257 to write code. And there is—and I can talk 505 00:31:05,265 --> 00:31:08,770 about this maybe in the in the next section about the sort of 506 00:31:08,778 --> 00:31:11,445 tech sector. But this is really interesting 507 00:31:11,453 --> 00:31:15,246 for or career option for sort of engineering graduates. 508 00:31:15,254 --> 00:31:20,340 And even I know people who have in some ways retrained to go 509 00:31:20,340 --> 00:31:23,536 into this. So even if you have a job, you 510 00:31:23,536 --> 00:31:26,975 may find it quite interesting career path to go down that 511 00:31:26,975 --> 00:31:29,380 route. You may have to retrain in terms 512 00:31:29,380 --> 00:31:32,384 of, you know, developing your coding skills or software 513 00:31:32,392 --> 00:31:34,106 skills. But it's a very interesting 514 00:31:34,114 --> 00:31:38,443 market that I think with the rise of AI is becoming one of 515 00:31:38,451 --> 00:31:42,816 the sort of dominant job type of positions to have. 516 00:31:42,824 --> 00:31:48,108 OK, so now maybe let's turn to something I mentioned before, 517 00:31:48,116 --> 00:31:52,832 which is the the tech sector and how I think this is actually 518 00:31:52,840 --> 00:31:56,689 increasingly becoming an area very relevant to to engineers 519 00:31:56,697 --> 00:32:02,176 and is only going to grow for for two reasons really. 520 00:32:02,184 --> 00:32:07,708 One is that there is a move to digital engineering 521 00:32:07,716 --> 00:32:12,040 certification by analysis and that is true across the whole of 522 00:32:12,040 --> 00:32:15,064 the engineering sector. Whereas aerospace, automotive, 523 00:32:15,072 --> 00:32:18,690 defence, manufacturing, industrial, really any of those 524 00:32:18,690 --> 00:32:22,760 industries are increasingly using software to define, to 525 00:32:22,768 --> 00:32:25,783 develop, to test their their products. 526 00:32:25,791 --> 00:32:28,755 You've all heard of things like digital twins. 527 00:32:28,763 --> 00:32:32,848 And, of course, this is important: AI. 528 00:32:32,848 --> 00:32:40,765 Whether you are a big believer in AI or a bit of a sceptic, is 529 00:32:40,765 --> 00:32:43,903 becoming a huge thing for all engineering companies. 530 00:32:43,911 --> 00:32:48,818 And that is a great opportunity for for jobs. 531 00:32:48,826 --> 00:32:52,140 There are many opportunities, whether you're in the large 532 00:32:52,148 --> 00:32:55,715 enterprise, I spoke about the the small ones, the start-ups, 533 00:32:55,723 --> 00:32:59,108 some will develop in house, some will buy in. 534 00:32:59,116 --> 00:33:03,832 So regardless of what they do, there are many opportunities for 535 00:33:03,832 --> 00:33:07,984 software jobs, which is typically developed by tech 536 00:33:07,992 --> 00:33:10,680 companies. Of course, tech companies do 537 00:33:10,688 --> 00:33:13,672 more than just develop software. They also sometimes develop 538 00:33:13,680 --> 00:33:16,168 hardware. And so there is a blurred line 539 00:33:16,176 --> 00:33:19,972 sometimes between that. But, and again, some of you 540 00:33:19,980 --> 00:33:22,250 listening will, will know this very well. 541 00:33:22,258 --> 00:33:26,208 And so apologies maybe to some of you, but there may be some of 542 00:33:26,208 --> 00:33:27,670 you are not so familiar with this. 543 00:33:27,678 --> 00:33:31,547 And so I'll, I'll say it anyway and, and hopefully it's useful. 544 00:33:31,547 --> 00:33:34,400 So what do I mean by the sort of 545 00:33:34,440 --> 00:33:38,360 tech companies? Again, I was not aware of this. 546 00:33:38,360 --> 00:33:41,520 I will put my, my hand up. I was not fully aware of this 547 00:33:41,520 --> 00:33:46,320 probably, you know, 10 years ago or, or even 7 years ago, I 548 00:33:46,320 --> 00:33:49,480 wasn't fully aware of this whole sector actually. 549 00:33:51,240 --> 00:33:55,760 So, and, and that's probably because it's traditionally being 550 00:33:55,760 --> 00:34:01,760 a more US-centric industry. And you know, being in the UK 551 00:34:01,760 --> 00:34:07,720 myself, it maybe has only more recently become a bit more 552 00:34:07,720 --> 00:34:08,909 known. And still, though, I don't think 553 00:34:08,909 --> 00:34:10,639 it is that well known. And I think that's true for, 554 00:34:10,679 --> 00:34:13,199 for, for Europe and, and the rest of the world. 555 00:34:14,400 --> 00:34:20,760 So there are companies like Amazon, like Facebook or Meta, 556 00:34:21,560 --> 00:34:27,679 like NVIDIA, like Google, like Microsoft, Oracle, trying to 557 00:34:27,679 --> 00:34:30,400 think of other companies, you know, those are the sort of big 558 00:34:30,400 --> 00:34:33,800 ones, I guess now, of course, OpenAI, etcetera. 559 00:34:34,760 --> 00:34:40,719 But if we take the, the, the, the big companies, what do they 560 00:34:41,920 --> 00:34:43,400 do? And, and by the way, there is a, 561 00:34:43,760 --> 00:34:47,536 there is an acronym FAANG, which I, I should have researched 562 00:34:47,536 --> 00:34:53,440 this actually, maybe let's, let's do some live Googling. 563 00:34:53,920 --> 00:34:59,000 So it was Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Alphabet. 564 00:35:00,400 --> 00:35:05,480 That was the traditional one. Of course, now Meta, etcetera, 565 00:35:06,720 --> 00:35:09,160 but that's just sort of an acronym. 566 00:35:09,160 --> 00:35:13,840 And then I think they call it the is it Magnificent Seven? 567 00:35:17,520 --> 00:35:18,720 I think I've heard that phrase used. 568 00:35:18,720 --> 00:35:22,200 But anyway, the, the point is there are these sort of big tech 569 00:35:22,200 --> 00:35:24,760 companies, but there's many, many others and the sort of 570 00:35:24,760 --> 00:35:27,680 start-ups increasingly that sort of blur the line between it. 571 00:35:28,240 --> 00:35:34,000 But what do they do? Well, of course, if you look at 572 00:35:34,000 --> 00:35:38,960 something like Meta, you know, obviously they develop Facebook, 573 00:35:39,240 --> 00:35:43,760 Instagram, WhatsApp, but they have a lot of research teams and 574 00:35:43,760 --> 00:35:46,880 they have products that they they make as well. 575 00:35:47,440 --> 00:35:51,560 And so physical products sometimes that's certainly true 576 00:35:51,560 --> 00:35:57,080 with, with Amazon and and Google, who obviously have 577 00:35:57,080 --> 00:35:59,080 devices. So they have to, you know, make 578 00:35:59,080 --> 00:36:02,400 devices, but they develop software. 579 00:36:02,680 --> 00:36:06,520 And you know, I used to work at a cloud computing company, AWS, 580 00:36:06,560 --> 00:36:10,600 and of course they have a huge base of employees, you know, 581 00:36:10,600 --> 00:36:14,891 hundreds of thousands of people who develop software and you 582 00:36:14,891 --> 00:36:17,560 can use it through sort of a cloud interface. 583 00:36:17,560 --> 00:36:19,640 And that's the same with Google, the Microsoft and others. 584 00:36:20,280 --> 00:36:26,360 So the tech sector is massive. And let's focus why it's 585 00:36:26,720 --> 00:36:32,840 interesting for engineering. Well, a lot of and, and by the 586 00:36:32,840 --> 00:36:37,000 way, before I do that, I should say that is I would say that's 587 00:36:37,080 --> 00:36:43,520 that's called the tech sector. But I think it's probably worth 588 00:36:43,640 --> 00:36:47,520 also linking that particularly because we're talking about 589 00:36:47,520 --> 00:36:52,240 engineering now with the software market as well. 590 00:36:52,240 --> 00:36:57,120 Because I think there is a bit of a blurred line in the sense 591 00:36:57,120 --> 00:37:01,040 of the Siemens, I think I suppose you'd call it Siemens 592 00:37:01,040 --> 00:37:03,560 Digital Industries, because Siemens is obviously a very big 593 00:37:03,560 --> 00:37:06,760 company. Ansys, the Cadence, the 594 00:37:06,760 --> 00:37:13,240 Dassault, you know, Autodesk Synopsys, I'm probably 595 00:37:13,240 --> 00:37:17,640 forgetting some of the other companies now Hexagon that 596 00:37:17,640 --> 00:37:20,120 develop software. And these are very large 597 00:37:20,120 --> 00:37:22,840 organisations, you know, multibillion dollar companies 598 00:37:22,840 --> 00:37:24,640 that that sort of develop this software. 599 00:37:25,920 --> 00:37:29,480 And so I would sort of tie them in actually in the sense of, of 600 00:37:29,480 --> 00:37:32,280 what they're doing, particularly in terms of, of, of job roles. 601 00:37:33,360 --> 00:37:37,240 So if you look at, let's say, the tech sector, what sort of 602 00:37:37,240 --> 00:37:39,920 job roles are there and what could you be doing there? 603 00:37:40,480 --> 00:37:44,680 Well, as I said, there are a very large number of SDEs, 604 00:37:44,680 --> 00:37:47,120 software development engineers, people who are expected to, you 605 00:37:48,680 --> 00:37:52,160 know, write code for a whole range of different things. 606 00:37:52,160 --> 00:37:54,880 And in some ways they typically start off being generalists. 607 00:37:55,280 --> 00:38:00,760 So a fungible sort of asset that is just great at coding and 608 00:38:00,760 --> 00:38:03,880 programming. And so those are quite often 609 00:38:03,880 --> 00:38:05,760 entry level positions that you come in. 610 00:38:05,760 --> 00:38:08,200 And at the beginning you may be literally just working on any 611 00:38:08,200 --> 00:38:12,880 piece of, you know, databases, web applications, high 612 00:38:12,880 --> 00:38:16,640 performance computing, machine learning, you know, just really 613 00:38:16,640 --> 00:38:18,720 anything. And you may be just given a 614 00:38:18,720 --> 00:38:22,640 small sort of task to do. But in terms of career 615 00:38:22,640 --> 00:38:27,586 progression, you know, you will find that you'd become then 616 00:38:27,586 --> 00:38:32,434 much more potentially specific to a certain area and you 617 00:38:32,434 --> 00:38:36,312 would take more responsibility where you may end up either 618 00:38:36,312 --> 00:38:38,642 managing a team of sort of software development 619 00:38:38,642 --> 00:38:42,828 engineers, which is often referred to as SDM (software 620 00:38:42,828 --> 00:38:48,245 development manager), or you may stay what actually is a sort 621 00:38:48,245 --> 00:38:51,012 of individual contributor. And I should, I should explain 622 00:38:51,020 --> 00:38:52,390 this. And I realise I'm probably 623 00:38:52,398 --> 00:38:55,468 rambling on a little bit in this podcast episode. 624 00:38:55,476 --> 00:38:59,502 So apologies about that. I suppose I'm trying to make it 625 00:38:59,502 --> 00:39:03,320 as if we were just having a conversation in a in a pub, just 626 00:39:03,320 --> 00:39:09,082 without the alcohol. Typically in the tech sector, I 627 00:39:09,082 --> 00:39:14,710 would argue one of the benefits is that there are typically 2 628 00:39:14,718 --> 00:39:19,247 paths, the management path and the IC path. 629 00:39:19,255 --> 00:39:22,940 Individual contributor and I actually quite like that because 630 00:39:22,940 --> 00:39:24,858 I think some people are different. 631 00:39:24,866 --> 00:39:28,745 I personally, I've never been a manager and I don't particularly 632 00:39:28,745 --> 00:39:31,534 have a great desire to be a manager. 633 00:39:31,542 --> 00:39:37,744 And sometimes in other companies that can actually be a bit of a 634 00:39:37,744 --> 00:39:40,555 ceiling to your career if you don't want to, you know, manage 635 00:39:40,555 --> 00:39:43,099 people, that might be it. You could never progress because 636 00:39:43,099 --> 00:39:46,676 the only way to progress is to be a manager and a director and 637 00:39:46,676 --> 00:39:49,440 a senior director. And you know, as you go up where 638 00:39:49,440 --> 00:39:53,050 actually in a lot of tech companies, what's great is they 639 00:39:53,050 --> 00:39:57,920 have a track pretty much all the way to the top for 640 00:39:57,920 --> 00:40:00,716 individual contributors. And to go back to the discussion 641 00:40:00,716 --> 00:40:03,692 I was just having about SDEs, that's where there are this 642 00:40:03,700 --> 00:40:06,476 notion of, you know, a principal engineer or distinguished 643 00:40:06,484 --> 00:40:09,560 engineer or senior principal engineer or a fellow or whatever 644 00:40:09,560 --> 00:40:12,094 the naming convention is in that particular company. 645 00:40:12,102 --> 00:40:14,749 And these are individual contributors. 646 00:40:14,757 --> 00:40:19,294 That can actually, I said be very senior, but have no 647 00:40:19,302 --> 00:40:22,135 management. And that is something actually, 648 00:40:22,135 --> 00:40:26,290 I think quite important to know because some people believe that 649 00:40:26,290 --> 00:40:29,452 the only way to progress is essentially to become a manager, 650 00:40:29,452 --> 00:40:33,034 which for some people they want to do and they're good at 651 00:40:33,034 --> 00:40:37,360 doing, but it's important to know that you don't have to to 652 00:40:37,360 --> 00:40:41,280 do that. So the, the SDE route is a very 653 00:40:41,280 --> 00:40:44,320 interesting route if you are particularly strong on the code 654 00:40:44,320 --> 00:40:47,960 in the programming side. Now I typically find that people 655 00:40:47,960 --> 00:40:50,760 are are one or the other. They're either very good at 656 00:40:50,760 --> 00:40:53,600 programming and enjoy it, but like, you know, foreign 657 00:40:53,600 --> 00:40:57,560 languages, I guess, or they really don't like it or they're 658 00:40:57,560 --> 00:41:00,520 not very good at it. And so the SDE route is 659 00:41:00,520 --> 00:41:02,920 definitely more you like programming, you're good at 660 00:41:02,920 --> 00:41:06,120 programming. But there is also an interesting 661 00:41:06,120 --> 00:41:09,520 side that then has a parallel to sort of project management in 662 00:41:09,840 --> 00:41:12,840 terms of engineering. That actually a key role is 663 00:41:12,840 --> 00:41:16,360 software development managers who have to, you know, organize 664 00:41:16,360 --> 00:41:21,720 sprints and put things in in dashboards to track progression 665 00:41:21,720 --> 00:41:24,720 of, you know, which bit of code has been developed here and how 666 00:41:24,720 --> 00:41:26,840 does it meet this target? And then it has to go through a 667 00:41:26,840 --> 00:41:31,120 security review and AppSec and a legal review, and then it has 668 00:41:31,120 --> 00:41:32,182 to be checked by somebody else. 669 00:41:32,190 --> 00:41:34,790 And this is whole sort of management that happens in these 670 00:41:34,790 --> 00:41:39,040 big tech companies. So you do find that actually 671 00:41:39,048 --> 00:41:43,087 people move over from sort of traditional engineering into 672 00:41:43,095 --> 00:41:46,707 this software sometimes as software development managers. 673 00:41:46,715 --> 00:41:50,005 So if you, let's say, are someone who works at a 674 00:41:50,013 --> 00:41:53,080 traditional engineering company and you've been leading a group 675 00:41:53,080 --> 00:41:55,830 of engineers to develop something, you may actually find 676 00:41:55,830 --> 00:41:59,920 there is a career option in a tech company leading a team of 677 00:41:59,928 --> 00:42:02,965 software development engineers, particularly if it's related to 678 00:42:02,965 --> 00:42:05,919 something in the engineering space, which we'll get on to a 679 00:42:05,927 --> 00:42:08,292 minute is, is quite often increasingly happening. 680 00:42:08,300 --> 00:42:12,448 And of course, vice versa. You know, if you're sort of an 681 00:42:12,448 --> 00:42:15,970 SDM in a tech company, you may find there could be interesting 682 00:42:15,970 --> 00:42:20,218 roles in an engineering company because of the of, of 683 00:42:20,218 --> 00:42:24,064 the overlap. So that's that's what I would 684 00:42:24,072 --> 00:42:27,196 call the engineering teams. And this is an important 685 00:42:27,204 --> 00:42:30,372 distinction actually that maybe it's not so well known, at least 686 00:42:30,372 --> 00:42:33,780 in my experience, all these tech companies and I think it's 687 00:42:33,780 --> 00:42:38,696 true also with the software companies typically have two or 688 00:42:38,696 --> 00:42:44,960 three broad vertical areas, which is the engineering or 689 00:42:44,960 --> 00:42:49,180 product side of the business. I mean, this is true for pretty 690 00:42:49,180 --> 00:42:53,236 much all the tech companies where your responsibility is to 691 00:42:53,236 --> 00:42:57,400 develop the products and engineer the code. 692 00:42:57,408 --> 00:43:04,060 So there's a lot of engineers or you are in quote-unquote, the 693 00:43:04,068 --> 00:43:08,965 sales bit of the organization where essentially your job is to 694 00:43:08,965 --> 00:43:11,610 sell the stuff that the engineers make. 695 00:43:11,618 --> 00:43:15,456 It's a very, you know, crude distinction because of course 696 00:43:15,464 --> 00:43:18,236 there is a lot of overlap and there's a lot of information 697 00:43:18,244 --> 00:43:22,880 exchange between the two. And then sometimes under sales 698 00:43:22,888 --> 00:43:26,527 is is marketing, but sometimes it's a separate sort of 699 00:43:26,535 --> 00:43:28,640 vertical. And then quite often these 700 00:43:28,648 --> 00:43:33,794 companies sometimes have a sort of third or fourth leg, which is 701 00:43:33,794 --> 00:43:37,368 their consulting or professional services, which is 702 00:43:37,368 --> 00:43:42,107 essentially when you have a product, you try and sell it, 703 00:43:42,107 --> 00:43:46,258 but the customer says I need you to help me to implement it 704 00:43:46,258 --> 00:43:49,962 or maybe even improve it. And those are very large tech 705 00:43:49,970 --> 00:43:55,122 companies quite often have a, a special arm that is you quite 706 00:43:55,130 --> 00:43:58,939 often would pay the company to have people come into your 707 00:43:58,947 --> 00:44:01,614 company to help you to do it. Sometimes hands-on-keyboard 708 00:44:01,622 --> 00:44:05,140 help. So that that is actually, and I 709 00:44:05,140 --> 00:44:07,640 think it's important to know this because sometimes when you 710 00:44:07,640 --> 00:44:10,104 look at job roles online, it's not immediately obvious what 711 00:44:10,112 --> 00:44:14,524 side of the business it's on. And that can have an influence 712 00:44:14,532 --> 00:44:19,224 in terms of what, what job you would, you know, be doing. 713 00:44:19,232 --> 00:44:24,760 So that's the engineering. Now another role is product 714 00:44:24,768 --> 00:44:30,482 management. That is something that is very 715 00:44:30,490 --> 00:44:33,975 common in the software and tech sectors. 716 00:44:33,983 --> 00:44:41,418 And your job is to manage the direction and the definition of 717 00:44:41,418 --> 00:44:45,696 the product. Now that product could be a 718 00:44:45,704 --> 00:44:50,632 piece of CFD software. If it's a very big piece of CFD 719 00:44:50,632 --> 00:44:53,686 software, it could be a subcomponent of that piece of 720 00:44:53,686 --> 00:44:56,342 CFD software. So you are the product manager 721 00:44:56,350 --> 00:45:00,862 for the meshing team or the meshing bit of the product or 722 00:45:00,870 --> 00:45:05,576 you are the product manager for a particular cloud computing 723 00:45:05,584 --> 00:45:08,215 service. So you're the product manager 724 00:45:08,223 --> 00:45:12,489 for Amazon S3 or for Google, you know, blah, blah, blah, whatever 725 00:45:12,489 --> 00:45:17,440 the name of the service is that you don't have to come from 726 00:45:17,440 --> 00:45:19,436 an engineering background. And quite often, actually, 727 00:45:19,444 --> 00:45:22,535 people come more from doing an MBA, let's say. 728 00:45:22,543 --> 00:45:26,400 But quite often, depending on the company, while they do value 729 00:45:26,400 --> 00:45:28,600 having a technical or engineering background. 730 00:45:28,608 --> 00:45:34,315 And then your job is to, as I said, come up with the product 731 00:45:34,323 --> 00:45:35,840 definition. And it's slightly different than 732 00:45:35,840 --> 00:45:39,020 the engineering and it does depend on the company, but 733 00:45:39,028 --> 00:45:43,505 normally the product manager is the one who will think about the 734 00:45:43,505 --> 00:45:47,518 needs of the end user. The customer will sort of work 735 00:45:47,526 --> 00:45:52,540 with the sales team to get that, you know, definition of what the 736 00:45:52,540 --> 00:45:57,420 product is or to help liaise, you know, with them to define 737 00:45:57,428 --> 00:46:01,540 what the product should be and then work with the engineering 738 00:46:01,548 --> 00:46:05,280 team to actually deliver it. And of course, this is a team 739 00:46:05,288 --> 00:46:07,280 effort. So typically that project 740 00:46:07,280 --> 00:46:10,232 manager will be, you know, very much managing and tracking 741 00:46:10,232 --> 00:46:12,360 progress. You know, this needs to happen, 742 00:46:12,360 --> 00:46:15,480 this needs to happen, this needs to happen at this timeline 743 00:46:15,480 --> 00:46:17,640 timeline. They need to be technical enough 744 00:46:17,640 --> 00:46:20,280 to push back and to understand, you know, if a customer says I 745 00:46:20,280 --> 00:46:23,000 need this feature X or, you know, to even understand what it 746 00:46:23,000 --> 00:46:27,360 is and to be able to understand the language of the engineering 747 00:46:27,360 --> 00:46:30,280 team, you know, to understand what what needs to be done and, 748 00:46:30,280 --> 00:46:32,320 and sort of understand timelines, etcetera. 749 00:46:32,720 --> 00:46:35,160 They're often they're responsible commercially for the 750 00:46:35,160 --> 00:46:37,240 revenue of it. So thinking, you know what, 751 00:46:37,360 --> 00:46:38,600 what, how much should we charge for it? 752 00:46:39,280 --> 00:46:41,040 How much money are we making on this thing? 753 00:46:41,120 --> 00:46:44,280 You know, clearly the software, there's either a license or or 754 00:46:44,280 --> 00:46:49,040 some sort of fee for it. And so that is a whole job 755 00:46:49,040 --> 00:46:52,400 family of its own. And you know, I would estimate 756 00:46:52,400 --> 00:46:54,760 there are tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of, you 757 00:46:54,760 --> 00:46:58,520 know, product management jobs and very transferable between 758 00:46:58,520 --> 00:46:59,920 companies. Many people move between 759 00:46:59,920 --> 00:47:04,280 companies because it is a skill to sort of manage a product and 760 00:47:04,280 --> 00:47:09,000 that again, very relevant for engineers to, to, to do because 761 00:47:09,000 --> 00:47:11,600 quite often they want a quite technical product manager. 762 00:47:11,600 --> 00:47:13,640 In fact, sometimes that's even part of the title, you know, 763 00:47:13,640 --> 00:47:15,240 it's sort of technical project management. 764 00:47:17,280 --> 00:47:20,160 So that's something if you look for as sort of job adverts, 765 00:47:20,160 --> 00:47:22,253 you'd see it as like PM-T or PM. 766 00:47:22,261 --> 00:47:25,500 And that's like I said, if you enjoy also managing and 767 00:47:25,508 --> 00:47:28,859 particularly like some people come from like an MBA background 768 00:47:28,859 --> 00:47:32,028 or want to do an MBA, that's quite often for them. 769 00:47:32,036 --> 00:47:35,282 And the career progression of that is often then, you know, 770 00:47:35,290 --> 00:47:38,785 you manage a team of product managers, you become a director, 771 00:47:38,785 --> 00:47:41,054 you become a VP or something like that. 772 00:47:41,062 --> 00:47:44,985 That's something that I don't think is as well known, but it's 773 00:47:44,985 --> 00:47:48,536 definitely a career route for, for for some people. 774 00:47:48,544 --> 00:47:54,898 As I said, those would be typically the main sort of 775 00:47:54,906 --> 00:48:01,697 engineering functions. You would then find, let's go 776 00:48:01,705 --> 00:48:06,212 more into the sales part of the business. 777 00:48:06,220 --> 00:48:12,215 You would find a job family that's quite commonly referred 778 00:48:12,223 --> 00:48:18,052 to as a solution architect, quite a sort of tech sector type 779 00:48:18,052 --> 00:48:22,960 job title, but you know, very, very common and something that I 780 00:48:22,960 --> 00:48:25,834 find not all engineers know about. 781 00:48:25,842 --> 00:48:29,900 And so a solution architect, depends which company you work 782 00:48:29,908 --> 00:48:35,120 for, of course, is typically somebody who works to architect. 783 00:48:35,120 --> 00:48:40,440 It's going to be silly to say 784 00:48:40,440 --> 00:48:42,295 this because I'm essentially just saying the job title in 785 00:48:42,295 --> 00:48:43,800 reverse, but architect the solution. 786 00:48:43,808 --> 00:48:48,368 What does that really mean is let's say you have customer A, 787 00:48:48,368 --> 00:48:50,800 who wants to use a software product? 788 00:48:50,800 --> 00:48:53,464 B. Well, first of all, maybe 789 00:48:53,472 --> 00:48:56,620 there's not just one software product, maybe there's many 790 00:48:56,628 --> 00:48:58,450 software products and the customer doesn't really know 791 00:48:58,458 --> 00:49:01,450 which one they should use. And then maybe they all need to 792 00:49:01,450 --> 00:49:03,580 connect together. And this is certainly true for 793 00:49:03,588 --> 00:49:07,045 sort of cloud services and, and the solution architect is 794 00:49:07,053 --> 00:49:10,436 someone who understands how to implement that solution, to 795 00:49:10,444 --> 00:49:13,536 guide them which solution they should pick, how to maybe link 796 00:49:13,544 --> 00:49:15,998 it into their environment. So I can certainly speak from 797 00:49:16,006 --> 00:49:18,229 let's say CFD or high performance computing background 798 00:49:18,229 --> 00:49:21,520 solution architect would be somebody who deeply understands 799 00:49:21,520 --> 00:49:26,630 HPC and CFD and would be able to say right, customer A, I 800 00:49:26,630 --> 00:49:30,512 think that first of all, let me explain what this product is. 801 00:49:30,512 --> 00:49:31,760 So you have to be quite 802 00:49:31,760 --> 00:49:34,600 technical and I think you should do it in this way. 803 00:49:34,600 --> 00:49:36,800 You know, you should use this service and I think if you 804 00:49:36,800 --> 00:49:39,320 connect it with this service, you'll be able to then do this. 805 00:49:39,320 --> 00:49:43,360 And you know, this is how we could do your existing systems 806 00:49:43,680 --> 00:49:46,524 and, and we'll work with you to sort of architect a diagram, 807 00:49:46,524 --> 00:49:48,920 you know, of how you would link all this stuff together. 808 00:49:49,520 --> 00:49:52,240 Maybe then there would be somebody who would help to maybe 809 00:49:52,240 --> 00:49:54,440 benchmark it, particularly from a software point of view, be 810 00:49:54,440 --> 00:49:59,200 like, OK, this is how it would perform and they would work to, 811 00:49:59,280 --> 00:50:02,840 you know, get that customer to to then buy it. 812 00:50:02,840 --> 00:50:05,800 And that's why sometimes it's called pre-sales, although 813 00:50:06,160 --> 00:50:08,320 sometimes that can be a bit of a stigma and some people don't 814 00:50:08,320 --> 00:50:10,830 like to be called it pre-sales. 815 00:50:10,838 --> 00:50:14,792 But traditionally it's sort of is that way that it's, it's 816 00:50:14,800 --> 00:50:18,648 quite often engagement before they buy that piece of software. 817 00:50:18,648 --> 00:50:19,960 And some companies explicitly 818 00:50:19,960 --> 00:50:23,360 call it pre-sales and they even call it a pre-sales engineer. 819 00:50:24,000 --> 00:50:28,640 I think that's a bit more true in the software market, let's 820 00:50:28,640 --> 00:50:31,882 say Ansys, Siemens, etcetera. But in the tech sector, quite 821 00:50:31,890 --> 00:50:34,058 often it's called a sort of solution architect. 822 00:50:34,066 --> 00:50:37,575 And there are different types. And this is where we could go 823 00:50:37,583 --> 00:50:39,984 into so many rabbit holes of specialist solution architect, 824 00:50:39,992 --> 00:50:41,627 the more generalist solution architect. 825 00:50:41,635 --> 00:50:44,685 But it's important because you will sometimes see these jobs 826 00:50:44,685 --> 00:50:47,160 advertised, and increasingly they are looking for engineers 827 00:50:47,400 --> 00:50:49,360 and a lot of engineers just don't know what the job is. 828 00:50:49,480 --> 00:50:55,440 So that's why I mention it. Usually the solution architect 829 00:50:55,480 --> 00:50:58,560 is working also with some sort of business development person 830 00:50:59,120 --> 00:51:02,560 who is there again, in a sales function to hopefully try and 831 00:51:02,560 --> 00:51:05,480 sell that product. But more than just sell, be an 832 00:51:05,480 --> 00:51:10,200 advisor to, to the customer to say, look, I, you know, working 833 00:51:10,200 --> 00:51:12,360 closely with that solution architect who is perhaps a 834 00:51:12,360 --> 00:51:15,280 little bit more technical, but the business development is 835 00:51:15,280 --> 00:51:17,400 often still a technical role. And many of the people I know 836 00:51:17,400 --> 00:51:20,400 who do business development have come from very technical 837 00:51:20,400 --> 00:51:22,000 background. They have a degree, even a PhD, 838 00:51:22,000 --> 00:51:25,390 they've worked as an engineer, but they just enjoy the more 839 00:51:25,390 --> 00:51:28,000 commercial side, sort of quasi sales. 840 00:51:28,800 --> 00:51:32,800 So typically they work together and again, many opportunities, 841 00:51:34,480 --> 00:51:37,680 often a more pure sales role is something like an account 842 00:51:37,680 --> 00:51:39,760 manager. And that is where there's a lot 843 00:51:39,760 --> 00:51:43,040 of crossover to completely non engineering roles. 844 00:51:43,200 --> 00:51:46,940 You know, working at any sort of company where you're managing 845 00:51:46,940 --> 00:51:49,320 an account you're selling. I mean that is just such a broad 846 00:51:50,400 --> 00:51:52,400 role. So those are sort of what I 847 00:51:52,400 --> 00:51:55,880 would call the sales type of positions. 848 00:51:57,960 --> 00:52:01,000 Now I did mention that quite a lot of companies have these more 849 00:52:01,000 --> 00:52:03,920 consulting or professional services side of the business 850 00:52:04,400 --> 00:52:09,680 and these are usually very technical people because their 851 00:52:09,680 --> 00:52:13,240 job is to go in and practically help a customer. 852 00:52:13,240 --> 00:52:15,280 “Hands on keyboard” is usually the phrase. 853 00:52:15,680 --> 00:52:18,808 So whilst the solution architect may give the advice, they're 854 00:52:18,808 --> 00:52:23,040 not usually allowed to actually touch a customer's account or, 855 00:52:23,040 --> 00:52:26,520 or, or work on the thing for legal reasons and, and 856 00:52:26,520 --> 00:52:28,920 financially sort of wouldn't really work out. 857 00:52:29,320 --> 00:52:33,800 So often there is a, a branch where they need technical people 858 00:52:33,800 --> 00:52:37,360 go in and actually help a customer to use that piece of 859 00:52:37,360 --> 00:52:40,851 software, whether it's a sort of web-based thing, let's say 860 00:52:40,851 --> 00:52:43,120 cloud or whether it's a engineering piece of software 861 00:52:43,120 --> 00:52:45,960 like CFD or fluids. And they will go in and help 862 00:52:46,440 --> 00:52:48,320 that customer to use and implement. 863 00:52:48,320 --> 00:52:50,480 And sometimes they don't charge for it. 864 00:52:50,840 --> 00:52:55,360 Quite often it is a business model to charge for it and there 865 00:52:55,360 --> 00:52:59,280 are lots of jobs needing very technical engineering people to 866 00:52:59,280 --> 00:53:02,640 do that. And that's again another job 867 00:53:02,640 --> 00:53:04,720 option. And this is that link to I 868 00:53:04,720 --> 00:53:08,680 mentioned all those consulting companies and sometimes they're 869 00:53:08,680 --> 00:53:10,352 also called system integrators. 870 00:53:10,360 --> 00:53:15,184 And those are companies that will go in and actually help a 871 00:53:15,192 --> 00:53:18,270 very large organization typically to implement some big 872 00:53:18,270 --> 00:53:22,615 change or big use of software. And so sometimes rather than 873 00:53:22,623 --> 00:53:25,480 using, let's say, a tech company's consulting engineers, 874 00:53:25,480 --> 00:53:31,940 they will go and use one of these big sort of consulting 875 00:53:31,948 --> 00:53:36,702 companies, whether it's, you know, Accenture or it could be 876 00:53:36,710 --> 00:53:39,880 Arup or it could be Boston Consulting, I guess technically 877 00:53:39,880 --> 00:53:43,525 and all these sort of companies that operate in that sphere to 878 00:53:43,533 --> 00:53:45,670 go and practically implement and go in. 879 00:53:45,678 --> 00:53:49,312 Often they also do sort of strategy work, but quite often 880 00:53:49,320 --> 00:53:52,567 it is hands-on-keyboard help. And again, that is another 881 00:53:52,575 --> 00:53:54,060 route. They often have dedicated 882 00:53:54,068 --> 00:53:57,328 engineering divisions like an aerospace division, defence 883 00:53:57,336 --> 00:54:02,423 division, etcetera. Now the final piece is maybe 884 00:54:02,431 --> 00:54:05,910 support. So in software companies there 885 00:54:05,918 --> 00:54:10,056 is often not just a pre-sales but essentially a post-sales, 886 00:54:10,064 --> 00:54:13,335 which is also referred to as typically a support. 887 00:54:13,343 --> 00:54:16,896 And those are also typically very engineering focused and 888 00:54:16,904 --> 00:54:20,400 they need to help customers who have bought the software and 889 00:54:20,408 --> 00:54:24,000 need help. Some people transition between 890 00:54:24,008 --> 00:54:26,864 pre-sales, post-sales and sort of development role within the 891 00:54:26,872 --> 00:54:28,012 engineering side of the business. 892 00:54:28,020 --> 00:54:32,110 And again, there are many jobs, let's say Siemens or an Ansys or 893 00:54:32,110 --> 00:54:35,516 Cadence, you know, hundreds of jobs for people with engineering 894 00:54:35,516 --> 00:54:38,628 degrees and backgrounds to support customers. 895 00:54:38,636 --> 00:54:43,482 And it's sometimes called Technical Support to go and help 896 00:54:43,482 --> 00:54:46,587 them to use and, and, and develop the software. 897 00:54:46,595 --> 00:54:51,245 And what's the further layer to this is that there's often teams 898 00:54:51,245 --> 00:54:55,174 specifically to cover, let's say EMEA to cover America to be 899 00:54:55,174 --> 00:55:00,880 a worldwide role. So there are just so many 900 00:55:00,888 --> 00:55:04,708 opportunities and increasingly they're criss-crossing with the 901 00:55:04,708 --> 00:55:06,120 traditional engineering companies. 902 00:55:06,128 --> 00:55:08,640 Sometimes the traditional engineering companies are sort 903 00:55:08,648 --> 00:55:12,014 of losing staff to go to those or it could be that the 904 00:55:12,022 --> 00:55:14,190 traditional engineers are creating their own little teams 905 00:55:14,190 --> 00:55:17,126 to sort of mirror a little bit what happens. 906 00:55:17,134 --> 00:55:20,852 But I think particularly the tech sector ones is stuff that a 907 00:55:20,852 --> 00:55:23,740 lot of people don't know about and I think increasingly that's 908 00:55:23,740 --> 00:55:27,560 going to be the case. OK, final thing, I know I've 909 00:55:27,568 --> 00:55:29,500 definitely been rambling on a lot. 910 00:55:29,508 --> 00:55:32,315 So if you have specific questions, maybe put it in the 911 00:55:32,323 --> 00:55:35,375 comments if you're watching on YouTube is the AI side of the 912 00:55:35,383 --> 00:55:38,365 piece. There are, and in some ways this 913 00:55:38,365 --> 00:55:41,590 is a bit of an overlap with what I'm talking about, but it's 914 00:55:41,590 --> 00:55:47,060 it's really to re confirm the point because AI is becoming so 915 00:55:47,060 --> 00:55:51,388 important for for the end engineering companies, but also 916 00:55:51,388 --> 00:55:55,754 for the software companies to develop AI enhanced or focused 917 00:55:55,762 --> 00:55:59,428 products. There's a whole new set of jobs 918 00:55:59,428 --> 00:56:03,280 specifically looking at AI. And for me personally, I think 919 00:56:03,288 --> 00:56:05,920 one of the biggest interesting areas is either that just means 920 00:56:05,920 --> 00:56:08,107 there's just more need for the software development engineers 921 00:56:08,115 --> 00:56:11,898 to program that sort of stuff. But I would point out, and it is 922 00:56:11,898 --> 00:56:14,586 a little bit more in this industry at the moment, but it's 923 00:56:14,586 --> 00:56:18,712 going to grow, is there's a lot of need for people with 924 00:56:18,720 --> 00:56:22,420 engineering, physics, maths for AI and that's sometimes called 925 00:56:22,428 --> 00:56:24,598 AI for science. And if you've listened to this 926 00:56:24,606 --> 00:56:27,090 podcast before, you'll see I've had quite a few guests talk 927 00:56:27,098 --> 00:56:31,002 about this AI for science. But there are more than 10 928 00:56:31,010 --> 00:56:35,450 startups and ISVs now who are focused on using AI for 929 00:56:35,458 --> 00:56:39,862 engineering and sciences. And so they are looking for 930 00:56:39,870 --> 00:56:44,692 graduates and early and mid and late stage career people with 931 00:56:44,700 --> 00:56:47,525 that background. I would highly advise people 932 00:56:47,533 --> 00:56:50,526 that that is a great area to look to. 933 00:56:50,534 --> 00:56:55,740 First of all, it is, oh, you know, just an emerging area that 934 00:56:55,740 --> 00:56:59,410 is very exciting and it is something that not many people 935 00:56:59,418 --> 00:57:02,560 have the skills on. So it's quite a valuable 936 00:57:02,568 --> 00:57:04,559 resource. And so if you're, if you have 937 00:57:04,567 --> 00:57:07,156 those skills, you know, that's good for your career. 938 00:57:07,164 --> 00:57:11,000 But it's really bringing again this, I guess, arc that I'm 939 00:57:11,000 --> 00:57:13,656 talking about of software and traditional engineering 940 00:57:13,656 --> 00:57:15,990 together. Engineering companies are 941 00:57:15,998 --> 00:57:18,349 developing their own AI teams, software companies are 942 00:57:18,357 --> 00:57:19,898 developing their own AI products. 943 00:57:19,906 --> 00:57:25,057 So it's a great area to be in and really confirms this sort of 944 00:57:25,057 --> 00:57:28,892 arc of there is more than just traditional engineering, but 945 00:57:28,900 --> 00:57:31,760 more so in terms of roles and and jobs. 946 00:57:31,768 --> 00:57:36,625 And I think you'll find that hopefully understanding this 947 00:57:36,633 --> 00:57:42,375 ecosystem of jobs and companies will help you to make a more 948 00:57:42,383 --> 00:57:45,019 rounded decision of not only where you want to go, but just 949 00:57:45,027 --> 00:57:46,736 in general what's happening in the world. 950 00:57:46,744 --> 00:57:50,538 Now, as I said, this is just a personal opinion. 951 00:57:50,546 --> 00:57:54,935 I'm probably missing out whole sweeps of companies and, and 952 00:57:54,943 --> 00:57:58,802 jobs and sectors and, and, and probably I, you know, I'll try 953 00:57:58,810 --> 00:58:01,772 and maybe do a few more. I didn't really touch much more 954 00:58:01,772 --> 00:58:04,380 on sort of career progression. I didn't really talk about 955 00:58:04,388 --> 00:58:07,360 salaries on purpose because it's such a difficult topic to get 956 00:58:07,368 --> 00:58:12,839 into with different countries. And yeah, but I, I wanted to 957 00:58:12,847 --> 00:58:16,088 just put this out because sometimes I've had these sort of 958 00:58:16,088 --> 00:58:18,790 conversations with people who ask a little bit for career 959 00:58:18,798 --> 00:58:21,880 advice and, and again, just thinking what, what, what would 960 00:58:21,880 --> 00:58:27,139 I wish that I'd known before? So I'm happy to deep dive in 961 00:58:27,147 --> 00:58:31,155 particular topic areas like a particular tech sector, type of 962 00:58:31,155 --> 00:58:33,720 job or, or, or type of position. 963 00:58:34,560 --> 00:58:38,120 But yeah, maybe let me know if this is on, if you're watching 964 00:58:38,120 --> 00:58:40,240 on YouTube, maybe you could put some comments if you found this 965 00:58:40,240 --> 00:58:43,920 useful or if there's other stuff that you would like. 966 00:58:45,320 --> 00:58:49,320 But yeah, hope you enjoyed this and we have a few more 967 00:58:49,320 --> 00:58:52,739 interesting episodes coming this this season on some what I 968 00:58:52,739 --> 00:58:54,824 think are quite exciting topics. 969 00:58:54,832 --> 00:59:01,515 But in the meantime, hope you enjoy this episode and don't 970 00:59:01,523 --> 00:59:07,660 forget to like and subscribe on YouTube or follow this if you're 971 00:59:07,660 --> 00:59:11,362 on Spotify, Apple, and if you can give a rating that helps. 972 00:59:11,370 --> 00:59:14,976 On the topic of tech companies, there's a lot of algorithms that 973 00:59:14,976 --> 00:59:17,992 work and unfortunately nobody gets to see stuff unless there 974 00:59:18,000 --> 00:59:20,728 is some user interaction. So if you just listen to this 975 00:59:20,736 --> 00:59:23,620 alone, that's great. But unfortunately it makes it 976 00:59:23,628 --> 00:59:27,122 difficult for other people to find it where if you literally 977 00:59:27,130 --> 00:59:30,280 just press the like button, it sort of obviously changes its 978 00:59:30,288 --> 00:59:34,535 position in the rankings and and helps obviously me, but it helps 979 00:59:34,535 --> 00:59:38,563 to get greater exposure, which of course you don't have to do 980 00:59:38,571 --> 00:59:41,126 it, but if you did, I'd much appreciate it. 981 00:59:41,134 --> 00:59:43,720 OK, I'll stop rambling now. Thanks very much.