April 2014

CONCEPTS
How I Faced Down Engineering Burnout

BY KELLY BLAKE, P.E.

Last fall at my firm was the time for our annual career development and planning review—time to take a brief look into my past performance and a glance at my future goals. As I do every year, I dusted off my old reviews to see if I had met my goals. The older the review, the sillier my goals seemed.

The review process made me realize that I have honed my ability to problem-solve and multitask at work. But, as is the case with many midcareer engineers, the big, optimistic, and eager eyes I once had have started to squint and question everything as it comes into focus, including my career.

As I started to complete my new online review template I thought to myself, “I have an extra 11 minutes in my day to bang this out and move on to something productive—something billable.” I started feverishly typing. I was on a roll! And then the keystrokes started to slow down and suddenly came to a dead stop.

As I placed the cursor in the box titled “Career Plan—Long Term Goals,” something happened. When asked what my career goals are for the next five years, I am at a loss for words. What are my goals? Not “what are my goals so I can complete this form,” what are my goals really?

When confronted with a question that I can’t answer within 2.7 seconds, I do what any busy young engineer would do, I Google it. So I typed: “Career goals ford mid-career engineeer.” Yes, there were a few typos in the search bar, but Google knew what I meant.

Once I hit the enter key, my screen filled with links to websites with career advice. As I scanned the sites for something useful, I realized that all of the sites have one thing in common: They all mention the author’s need for a career change. I read frantically. I read only big and bold words. I searched for answers or any information that would help me complete my review, and before I knew it, I had fallen into the rabbit hole where questions are answers and the smiling faces of the authors are anything but reassuring. After frantic speed-reading of multiple sites and varying search queries, I found myself typing the following into the Google search bar: “Engineer Career Burnout.”

Now instead of answers, all I found were blogs and statements from engineers who burned out and could not take the stressful work environment anymore, did not see growth or opportunity, or were just fed up with corporate structure in general. So, now my annual 11-minute career planning session had turned into a full-blown, 26-minute what am I doing with my life anxiety session. Is a burnout inevitable? Do I need to consider alternative careers? As I began thinking, “I could always be a dog walker,” something rational from within me told me to take a deep breath, gain some composure, and develop a strategy to answer these questions. More importantly, I realized I needed to identify a way to proactively avoid the so-called white collar burnout that seems of epidemic proportions, according to Google.

After a good night’s sleep and a temporary switch to decaf, I did what any seasoned engineer would do. I asked senior industry professionals within my firm, Stantec, to shed some light on how to avoid burning out in engineering.

The responses I received were great. Here are the “CliffsNotes”:

• Choose your volunteer activities wisely; work with organizations for which you have a passion;

• One burnout risk is travel. If you must meet with remote teams, use technology to the extent possible;

• Learn new skills, volunteer for special assignments, get licensed in new jurisdictions or with new specialties;

• Change the type of work you do within your engineering discipline;

• Look for variety in your current role, seek opportunities to move to another team, office, or project;

• Take all the vacation that is offered and make sure at least one vacation per year is a week or more in duration;

• Work with people much younger than you. It helps you develop “street cred”; and

• Enjoy what you are doing and be challenged each and every day.

When I looked at all their responses together, four themes emerged: embrace change, seek change, have fun, take vacation.

I enjoyed each person’s view, and now I definitely feel that I am in the right place among the right people and glad that I am not alone in navigating my career. This is great news, because I don’t even like walking my own dog.

Kelly Blake, P.E., is an environmental engineer with Stantec in Sarasota, Florida. She was the Florida Engineering Society’s 2006 Young Engineer of the Year.