What does a typical day look like

Hi Jaheim,

A typical day can be very different depending on the branch of engineering and company but it's usually a mix of meetings (with clients, colleagues, providers) and actual development. For some engineers development means sitting in front of a computer (designing circuits, making CADs, writing software) while for others it's more hands on laboratory work.

Regardless of your choice of engineering a part of you days will probably be spent figuring solutions for different problems, discussing those with others, optimizing procedures/services and learning new things.

Hi Jaheim

I work in Advanced Services as a Network Consulting engineer at Cisco. I mostly work from home, so I woke up, go the gym and start checking my emails. After that I normally attend my customers meetings and mainly work on checking my customers network and provide the best recommendations, so they network remains healthy and prevent issues, review designs, new features they will like to introduce, maintenance windows, etc.  

Every day is different, because every customer is different and have different needs, but my focus is do proactive work to prevent network issues. 

Networking field is always challenging and demands 100% efficiency. If one enjoy doing networking, this can be the best life a person can imagine. Day to day job will challenge you every moment. Which in turn can help in excelling own skillset. This is the field where learning never ends. There is always been new innovations and requirements which makes the knowledge we have at present stale at any moment. Which brings the demand to cope up with the new technology, learning them and master them.

I would say choose your field carefully. The first and most important requirement in this field is passion. If you have the passion for that technology, then life is really blissful. If not, then it can burden your every moment as you can expect very less relaxed attitude.

I'm a bit of an IT Infrastructure generalist, though most of my time is spent in network engineering. My typical day is a balance of working through tickets from our end-users, troubleshooting any active problems, and working on long-term projects. Finding the right balance between those can be tough.

My role requires that I'm on call, as well as being flexible to scheduling work outside normal business hours. Days can occasionally get very long, including sometimes working on the weekends. For any tech jobs that you're looking into, make sure you're aware of and comfortable with requirements like that.

Siliconrepublic has interviewed many people from different roles in different tech companies. I suggest you check it out!

https://www.siliconrepublic.com/people

Below is my typical day in New Relic as a Tech support engineer: https://www.siliconrepublic.com/people/technical-support-engineer-new-relic-lucy-lu?fbclid=IwAR2zSKG2AWTglzm-PDY71Eej5NEZce9hDeyko1dDpk6bOHHA2XuV_YifinY

Hi Jaheim,

I work as a biomedical engineer at a company that specializes in testing blood for infections diseases like HIV or HPV. This is my typical schedule:

8-9 Respond to emails (usually with other companies that we collaborate with).

9-10 Laboratory meeting to confirm goals for the day and what we are trying to accomplish.

10-12 Testing in the laboratory using prototypes or guiding other engineers.

1-3 Continuing laboratory testing or writing results in a testing report.

3-5 Meetings to establish strategy for testing and development of device.

Let me know if you have any questions or if you want more specifics!

I work in TAC(Techinal assistance center) as Network engineer at Cisco. I come early morning, login to my skill set profile. I get cases where something is wrong with customer's network. It is a challenging job.

We solve the customer's network issues and help them to have a network network.

Handling 2-3 cases per day is sometimes hectic.

If stuck on a case, i get help from my colleges, internet, books ,etc

I work as a software engineer. Typically I bike in to the office in the morning. Tech companies often take great pain to offer incentives to get people into the office such as free snacks, gym access, etc.

We use a process called agile where all of our work for the week is written down on cards (in a program called JIRA). I'll look for a card that hasn't been started and looks interesting.

Once a day we have a team meeting called a 'standup' where each person talks about what they'll be doing for the day and if they need help. Our work environment is highly collaborative so if you need help or want to work with someone on a project, there is always someone there to help.

We try to avoid meetings and focus on programming because that's what we love to do.

People work typical 8-9 hour days but those days can look like many different things. I usually get to work about 7am and leave about 4pm. But some people get in closer to 10am. It's a very flexible work environment where the focus is on what you got done, not where you were when you did it.

Great question @Jaheim! The thing I love about my current position as an IT consultant is that everyday is different. Some days/weeks I may be traveling to work with a customer. Other days/weeks I will find myself supporting customers from my home-office.

Traveling aside each day in itself is different as well. I could find myself coding all day, attending meetings, training customers, writing documentation, etc.

Within the technology field I feel you can keep you day-to-day activities as broad/general or as specific/niche as you desire. There is no right or wrong, but what feels right to you & motivates you. Know that the opportunities are out there & available for people such as yourself :) Go Gettem!