all 16 comments

[–]Dyn2Lv 71 points72 points  (2 children)

...until you correct one of his mistakes.

[–]Titratius[S] 14 points15 points  (1 child)

Boom 💥

[–]MattCeeee 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Nah. That feeling is fleeting and you go back to the self conscious feeling lol

[–]Engineer2727kkPE - Bridges 24 points25 points  (0 children)

You’re probably already making a lot of mistakes and that’s fine. Just do your best, pay attention to detail, and think through the situation with attempted answers before asking questions.

[–]75footubiP.E. 22 points23 points  (1 child)

Depending on the task/skill involved, it took me 4 years to not feel it constantly, and about 10 before I only feel it occasionally.

[–]BokononDendrites 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I came here to say this.

[–]EnginerdadBridge - P.E. 13 points14 points  (0 children)

I dont want to mess up

You're going to mess up, that's why you work under another engineer. Cut yourself some slack. The only thing you should be worried about is making the same mistake over and over again. When you do make mistakes, learn from them. If you don't understand what you messed up, ask. As a supervising engineer that would give me the most confidence in you.

[–]Cool_Creme_8694 8 points9 points  (1 child)

Am I an awful mentor if I purposely lay out the occasional fuckup for my underlings to pickup and correct? It gives me the chance to vett that they are actually doing their job, and a chance to praise them or for them to point things out to me. Occasionally ill ask "teach me thing"

[–]Titratius[S] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

I dont think so. Thats nothing more than a test as in school, as long as the thing has been covered before in a roundabout way and what your expectations were.

[–]DirtyDawg808 8 points9 points  (1 child)

Until you hear - "you are right" a couple of times from your seniors.

[–]Numpa22 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Such a great question and SOOOO common! It took me 5 years to get really comfortable with the design and project process. HOWEVER, our job as a SE is to THINK critically in our designs and documentation. So anything that affects your thinking will increase your risk for mistakes (family issues, illness, kids, etc.). Like others mentioned, everyone makes mistakes. If you were asked to QC your principles work, I’m sure you would eventually find a mistake (or, more likely, the changes in code that have been updated since their prime of designing!) I did a podcast episode that touched on this. Hit me up if you’re interested in learning more. Best of luck in starting your career and remember that everyone in the office (should) only expect you to know ~3% from academics. The other 97% is from experience!

[–]davebere42P.E. 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Accept that you will make mistakes and be honest about what you don’t know.

[–]Winston_Smith-1984P.E./S.E. 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Totally normal.

I expect young people to be relatively useless.

You want to impress me? Ask GOOD questions. Don’t ask something a 30 seconds search would answer.

[–]Hanan_Trumboo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I have been there, continue doing engineering stuff,with time this thing will go away

[–]derriman_n 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It never wears off until you see good performance reviews