From my observation, generally girls don’t really know what they want in their career compared to guys. Most guys know what they want and when it comes to making money, they are more determined and they would work hard for it.
Girls on the other hand, work because they like the money or because parents/spouse need an extra income or like me, I have nothing better to do hahahaha….. If given the option, more girls would love to be a home maker (if you happen to be a feminist, you don't have to read this).
When I just came back from down under, I wanted to do something technical. In Malaysia, typically you will either end up in manufacturing or oil & gas industry, which will put you either in an industrial, remote/rural, offshore, desert, virgin jungle areas. My dad told me to speak to his old colleague, who told me that less than 10% of engineering graduates did not end up being engineers but opted for a more money making corporate jobs. I join the majority but keep my option open.
Work is not that difficult – everything is do-able. It’s just a matter of execution. For me, the challenge is not the work, but more of time constraint. Long working hours is a norm. The thing that I don’t like about the job is I was at the bottom of the food chain. At the beginning it was okay, but after nearly a year I was done! I don’t think I was given fair chance to glow. I left because I couldn’t feel any sense of achievement then.
Next I join the minority. Initially I work in the central office but I was already with Leodi at that point, my consideration was more of what will happen to our relationship. Since I know which site I shall be assigned to, it was much easier for us to team up and plan our future and our first assignment together was in Tg.
It is a social suicide for me but being in a good and compatible team we worked our ways successfully around the SEA region for more than two years now.
Engineering job is more challenging and require more thinking and you are not time constraint (but in some cases you do, but rarely working till the wee hours for 7 days a week in a month). The thing is the nature of the job itself is different. Engineering job involves a lot of calculation and technicalities. And since each project is high risk, there is A LOT of consideration and calculated moves carefully put into it before it can be executed. The thing that I like about it is I can see my final product. If a report is produced, I see my name there. In my previous job, you play your role, and your boss becomes the presenter and you don’t see your name on the final report. Competition is not as crazy as my previous job – previously I have 10 peers and most are fighting for promotion. Right now, I may have one or two, even then we don’t fight for promotion as we know, when we are ready we will get there. If technically we are not strong enough, we know not to fight for any promotion as the responsibility held in our head is waaaaay tooooo big.
My coming assignment will be the ME region. As expected, it will be a social suicide too. But work-wise, it will be good. I will learn a lot of interesting and challenging things. I will get to see variety of work for me. I get to lead, I get to be led, I get to meet not only Malaysian, and to be honest, I am going to enjoy it. Having said that though, I know its not easy working in this environment for a long time because sometimes I can’t stand leading technicians – it is not an easy task but I have my ways bending and sculpturing them.
The thing about engineering is as you go up the seniority ladder, the bigger the responsibilities you hold and I know that I will be the next big thing Malaysia could ever produce .
Wish me luck….
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