Cliff Johnson, PE CSE

When you were a student, did you do anything outside of school to build skills or get knowledge that has helped your career?

during my high school years I worked as a soda jerk and a auto mechanic. These jobs gave me some feel for how I should act and what I should do in later life. Neither had any thing to do with my selection of a job after graduation. While in the 12th grade I did join the United states Coast Guard as a reserve.

What is the one piece of career advice you wish someone gave you when you were younger?

my grandfather, who was a buyer for the Glidden Company, did tell me the most important thing to carry in to the future was "tell the truth", be honest and you will be in good stead.

In layperson terms, what do you actually do at work?

I have actually worked for some 22 firms in my life. I started life out of high school as a shipping clerk moved to correspondent, then to office manager and finally as a sales engineer covering the states of North and South Carolina. The firm I work for was a manufacture of instruments and for the rest of my working career I stayed with firms selling and finally as a professional engineer. Following retirement I became an instructor for a local community college as an instructor for instrumentation. As part of my instrumentation discipline I became a life member of the international society for automation formerly known as the instrument society of America.

What is the biggest challenge you had to overcome to get to where you are now professionally? How did you overcome it?

late in my career I was told by the chief engineer of Parsons Engineers that, unfortunately, I could no longer be called an engineer because I was not registered as such with the state of North Carolina. I told Phil that was not acceptable and I would get registered with the state. A few of my coworkers chuckled and said you're 59 and you didn't go to college. I said the requirements are to document 20 years experience and pass the test. I did take a refresher course, applied for the registration, took the eight hour test and passed. At the age of 61 I walked into the chief engineer's office and handed to my registration as a professional control systems engineer. I guess you could call that a challenge met and overcome.

How did you pick your career? Did you know all along?

I did not choose a career until I had been with the firm I chose to work for entering as a shipping clerk and moving to outside sales person. It was then that I determined that I like working with instruments and controls and would continue to pursue this path in the future. In truth, as a boy, I was really interested in becoming a train engineer like my father was.

How did you start building your network?

never thought of my career as the building a network.

When did you get your first Big Break? How did you get it? How did it go?

actually I was getting bored as a shipping clerk when they bolding in the front office became available. The position was correspondent that handled orders for the products and inventory that I was intimately aware of. I decided to approach the office manager and ask if I could try out for the position. He looked at me sort of funny, could be that I was standing in front of him in Levi's, engineer boots, ln a white T-shirt with cigarettes rolled up in the sleeve. so, I added the fact that he was on my bowling teams that I was Captain for and I would drop him from the teams if he didn't give me a chance. With a look of disdain he said okay you can try out because it will take a couple weeks before I could get anybody else anyhow. I showed up the next day in a suit and tie and ultimately got the job.

What is it like when your job gets tough?

until I became principal I & C (instrument and controls) engineer it was never a tough job, my experience overcame any particular problems. However as principal instrument engineer I had to estimate the hours it would take to do a particular design engineering job for companies like Merck pharmaceuticals, Duke Power Company, the Savannah River nuclear plant, etc. I did design a very intricate spreadsheet that I could enter all the hours to do the documents & drawings that would be required. My team consisted of as many as 12 designers and engineers working in unison to prepare all the many documents require. Engineering firms like the one I work for consisted of several different departments all of which must estimate the hours to do a job and it is not unusual for a department to use more than their estimate. The extra hours have to come out of another departments hours and, unfortunately, the instrument department is the last of the several to complete its work. Many times I had to do some intricate juggling of our manhours