What's your day job?

[Kyle A]

I have a couple day jobs, for the past 6 years I have worked at Custaloga Town Scout Reservation. It is a boy scout camp,and i pretty much do it all there, mow lawns, clean, life guard, teach, repair things, cook,sing, and more. My main position though is handicraft director, I teach arts and craft merit badges. And more recently I have started Teaching the robotics merit badge.

My other job while i'm not at camp is a shift manger at a local gas station. I know nothing exciting, but it gave me the time to help Mentor the team and go to events.

I just this week got hired at a local machine shop in town, Great Lakes Manufacturing. I was interviewed for a quality control job, and also a machine operator and programmer of an electronic bending machine. When i was interviewed the guy was really interested in FIRST and what I did, even though its been a few years since I've had hands on work on the robot. Needless to say I got the job working with the robot bending machine.
After I start and get trained more I will be able to say a bit more about what I do, but I know if it wasn't for FIRST I wouldn't be where I am at now.

[smclean1969]

I'm a Senior Project Engineer with the Aerospace Corporation and a Lieutenant Colonel in the Air Force Reserves. As a Lieutenant Colonel, I work at the Joint Space Operations Center which provides space situational awareness and command and control for our country. This Air Force commercial is actually filmed at the operations center and everyone in there is a member of the Air Force.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfAHw1kTpvY

A word of caution--it's not exactly like that. The commercial is as close to reality as R2D2 is to FIRST robotics competition--it would be cool to build an R2D2 for a competition though.

As an engineer for Aerospace Corporation, I'm working to modernize that operations center. Mostly it's a matter of designing and helping the government acquire the primary computer system that tracks the objects in space and provides that integrated command and control.

[linuxboy]

I am a student, however I feel that other students might find this post interesting / helpful.

I am a (paid) intern this summer (and have been for the past three summers) at an IT consulting firm. It is fairly small with < 10 full time employees. We do some programming, quite a bit of File Maker, and general tech support. It isn't exactly engineering, however it is solving problems, and it does have you work with all sorts of problems and issues. The experience has been quite valuable in terms of working with people, and solving problems (as I said), and has been somewhere that Gracious Professionalism certainly is necessary. Clients can be upset (I haven't run into too many of these), and as someone who does a lot of phone support for clients, and occasionally goes to client offices, maintaining a professional and personable attitude is quite important.

That's what I do at the moment.
- Oliver

[David Brinza]

I've worked at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory for 30 years.

Currently, I'm the Instrument Engineer, Investigation Scientist and Co-investigator for the Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD) on the Mars Science Laboratory. MSL is Dave Lavery's really big rover on it's way to Mars (thanks for the ride, Dave)!

In the past, I've worked other missions, including Deep Space One, with an ion engine, and the Magellan mission (radar mapping of Venus).

FIRST students get to experience a project life-cycle in a few months. Our projects can take years of development and operate in space even longer!

[Mark Sheridan]

I am a manufacturing engineering for Microvention. I focus on access products (microcatheters and etc.) used to help treat aneurysms.

I am in the process development group. So I get to help R&D with new products and figure out how to mass produce them. I also work with the FDA submission proving we can consistently build safe products.

[Captaindan]

I work on a charter boat here in Gulfport, Mississippi, I also weld as much as possible for extra cash. I plan on attending Bagley college of engineering in the fall at MS State.

[esquared]

As many others have stated in this thread, your career is what you make of it. Especially when you first start out as a young engineer, aggressively seek work that interests you, and stretch your capabilities. You'll often find in industry there are all levels of effort/interest by your teammates. Promoting yourself as motivated and capable of learning.adapting to a constantly evolving work situation will quickly set you apart from the field.

Fortunately FIRST has provided many opportunities for you to practice those skills, in front of your mentors as well as judges and VPs during competitions

Advice aside, my day job is an electrical engineer for a "major defense contractor". What does this mean? On any given day, I could be:

• Writing C/C++ on an IBM AIX platform to do multi-threaded signal processing (parallel FFTs, IQ data manipulation, filtering, Doppler processing, etc).
• Writing C++ and MATLAB analysis and/or test equipment automation scripts. The fewer times you have click a mouse or push a button on an instrument the better!
• Writing VHDL for a variety of FPGA platforms, including one very similar to the FPGA inside the cRIO
• Hardware design, which for me is typically high-speed mixed signal circuit board designs with FPGAs, A/D and D/A converters, and RF signal chains.
• Mentoring junior engineers or supporting other engineers in specific subject matters such as phase noise, fiber optic interfaces, and RF design.
• Sitting in meetings or filling out reams of paperwork - well, you can't have fun every day...

Surprisingly I still use about 75% of the math and physics I learned in high school and college. Trig and trig identities get used pretty frequently in signal processing, linear algebra on an almost daily basis. Differential equations to some extent, and calculus at least in terms of series approximations to forumulae.

[team4187mentor]

I work for Continental Tire in the Maintenance department. I started as an electrician for automated machinery and moved up to supervisor. I currently work as an administrative supervisor handling scheduling, payroll, and reports. My bosses have been wonderfully supportive of the team and allow me to adjust my schedule according to the teams needs. Continental is also a big sponsor of the team.

[s-neff]

Product Engineer at SunPower Systems. I'm responsible for ongoing support of our Oasis C1 Tracker utility-scale power plant product. That includes supporting plant/project design team, construction team, quality & commissioning team, and operation & maintenance teams whenever they have an issue with the mechanical panel mounting/tracking systems, electrical controls, or DC collection. I'm done when the DC coming off the panels gets to the inverter. It's a fun, wide-ranging role, covering over 1GW installed capacity these days. The green revolution is coming!

Mostly, that means that people ask me questions and expect me to know the answers. Sometimes I can answer them, sometimes I need to ask other engineers. Often, I need to figure it out on my own from codes & standards. (Reading! It's important!)
I need to write clear emails and instructions, in terms non-engineers can understand, because I'm almost never the one actually doing the work in the field (somewhat disappointing). Communication is key! It's even more important than math!

FIRST prepared me with a diverse set of skills, a strong work ethic, and my first forum for exhibiting technical leadership, and inspired me to continue assuming technical leadership in extracurricular projects during college.
It also provided the connection to my first summer internships directly after high school and freshman year of college. I swung those experiences into additional internships the following summers, and swung those internships into a Sweet Job In My Field starting two weeks after graduating from UCLA.
I am INCREDIBLY LUCKY to have had the FIRST experience to push me in this direction.

[gerthworm]

I write embedded controls software for big yellow machines.

Then I come to robots and help write embedded controls software for smaller red and white machines.

Embedded controls software is fun!

My thoughts from doing this for two years:

What exactly is a STEM field look like on a day-to-day basis? Lots of problem solving. Real-time problem solving. The skills you learn through First, or in school, or at work, or in your free time, these are tools to help you problem solve. The most important tool in your bag is your desire to learn new things - this is what lets you add new tools to your problem-solving bag at will.

You'll probably start out solving problems directly related to specific issues with products. Some people like that and stick with it for their whole careers. Some folks move on to solve higher-level problems, like planning larger-scale projects, or finances, or people management. All of these, through the lens of "STEM", can be thought of as simply a problem to solve. A problem which can be solved by drawing on your knowledge and experiences (the tools in your bag). A problem which may push your boundaries, and force you to develop new skills.