Career Advice

Advice to Engineers In Their 30s or 40s Who Are Worried About Their Career

And if they want to continue working as an engineer

When people reach the age of mid-career to veteran employees, their positions within the organization and required roles often change or increase compared to when they were younger, and they feel dissatisfied with or anxious about their current work content or career. The number of people will increase.

Therefore, this time, I will explain career options for engineers in their 30s and 40s if they want to continue working as an engineer or in a related field.

Career options are to continue working as an engineer or in a related field.

1. Continue as an engineer

Suppose you want to continue working as an engineer. In that case, you can roughly divide it into a specialist specializing in specialized technology or a role that takes a comprehensive view of business and technology and thinks about how to proceed with business and organizational management.

Of course, the requirements differ depending on the company, and the job titles vary, such as R&D, senior engineer, CTO, VPoE, PdM, etc.. Depending on the organization's size, there are cases where one position can play multiple roles. Whether you change jobs or continue with your current job, what’s important here is more than the job title.

• What roles and duties are required for the position?
• Is this a job that I want to do and can grow (requires a bit of a challenge)?

It is important to coordinate this with the company side.

2. Change job to a startup company

Recently, it has become less and less rare for engineers from well-known companies to move to new startup companies. In particular, a certain number of people prefer companies in the start-up phase, 0→1 phase.

Building products and organizations with one’s hands brings indescribable fun and joy to engineers who love manufacturing and business.

However, it is quite difficult to plan, produce, and operate a new service that has never existed before and to get it off the ground as a business. Even though you worked hard to create it, it doesn’t make as much money as you expected, or a competitor releases a similar service.

It’s rare for a service to be discontinued because it didn’t get off the ground. There is no. It is probably unsuitable for people wanting to work for a stable company.

3. Start a business

Some people first become freelancers and then aim to start a business, but some people have a clear vision for the services they want to create or their future or want to start a large-scale business on their start their own businesses.

However, 37.7% of individual businesses go bankrupt or go out of business in the first year, and 20.4% of companies go bankrupt or go out of business in the first year. I think it would be difficult to suddenly start a business without doing much research and just saying, “This is something I want to do!” Raising funds is difficult.

Particularly when starting a business in IT services, it is essential to decide what industry to start the business in and what kind of business model to use, and once started, it is tough to change it. It is essential to research in advance and think about how you will raise funds.

4. Become a freelance engineer.

Some people become freelancers before starting a business, and recently, remote work has increased. Some people become freelancers because they think, “Isn’t this going to change even if I become a freelancer?” It is true that engineering work is now primarily remote and can be done from anywhere, so becoming a freelancer is one career option that offers more freedom.

The good thing about freelancing is that the contracted amount is all yours, and as long as you can deliver results on time, you have a lot of freedom in terms of time and work style.

However, even if a company offers you several jobs, it may still need to fully support you. Orders may suddenly disappear. It is even considering the current times.

In addition, if you are working as a freelancer, you will have to handle paperwork and negotiation of contract fees by yourself. A minimum knowledge of laws, etc., and communication skills for negotiation are also required.

5. Human resources position in charge of engineer recruitment

There have been more and more opportunities to hear the term, so-called HR nerd. Some people use their engineering and recruiting experience to make a career change and become a recruiter.

If a former engineer becomes an engineer, he or she will be able to understand how the engineers feel, understand the technology to a certain extent, and know the information the engineers want to know and the requirements they want to prioritize.

This will be useful for companies that want to expand their engineering organization. Also, for those who want to do work that connects people rather than dealing with systems and information and, if possible, would like to change their career in that direction, this is a convenient position where they can put their engineering experience to use.

However, since recruiting involves people, no matter how hard you try, you cannot be guaranteed a particular result, and the job content is entirely different from engineering, so you will also need to study human resources.

6. Information system department

The Information Systems Department is a department that builds and introduces core systems and infrastructure within the company, gives lectures to employees on how to use the systems, and troubleshoots problems.

Information systems also play a role similar to a help desk for troubleshooting. Hence, the scope of their work is vast, and many companies contact information systems for inquiries about IT and PCs.

Depending on the company, the IT system may also take on the role of infrastructure engineer, or the job may be an in-house version of a technical support engineer.

Many companies are trying to promote DX in industries other than IT, and there is a demand for it. However, it must be different and challenging to switch from the IT industry and work with people who were previously unfamiliar with IT.

The department has few people; you may be the only person in charge of information systems if things go wrong.

Summary

Engineering careers have become more diverse. Although the social situation continues to be difficult, many companies continue to feel that there is a need for more IT human resources, so this is no longer a difficult time to change jobs.

To increase your options for the future in a market where the future is uncertain, it would be a good idea to look back at your experience and career.

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