The Engineer's Career Guide - Essential Tips for Success in Engineering Jobs | Workplace & Professional Development

I read about a dozen career guide books, and this one by Hoschette is the best of its kind. I started reading this book as a student and intern. And now I hold a senior engineering position. In each step of my career development, I have found this book to be particularly useful.1) Relevance. The author had worked as an engineer / engineering manager for a few decades, so he know the topic well enough to make the majority of the contents highly relevant to the life of an engineer. The minor topics covers practically every aspect of the engineer's career, from early career preparation, job hunting, resume building to retirement. The book even provides basic financial guides to the engineers. Whenever I face with major changes in my life: advanced degree, change of direction, salary haggling, I turn to the book for advice.2) Depth. The author is profoundly knowledgeable about the topic and is very humble in style of writing. Usually a major problem with similar writings is that the author talk too much about themselves. The Hoschette book does not have the problem while giving just enough examples to clarify the difference between concepts. An example would be the chart showing the life-long salary difference between expectation and reality, which was very insightful and reveals the importance of good organization and career planning.3) Quality. Apparently the author spent a significant amount of time on the content. The flow of thoughts and words are organized in a highly readable manner. The pictures are very to the point and informative, and occasionally reveals a hidden sensor of humor.4) Practicality. The reader could find a few good ideas to implement to their next day's job after finish reading each chapter. For example, when the engineer finds the work load to be a light one for the next couple of weeks, the book suggest the reader to talk to managers about pet projects that the managers might have. I followed that advice and the project I worked turned out to be a very good patentable idea.A minor shortcoming is that there are too many chapters, about 30 of them. And the chapters are not well grouped together. On the bright side the contents are separated into manageable bites.Overall, there are plenty of "management experts" who claim they can help with the career development of professionals, but who also know very little about the complicated nature of technology industries. There are also a lot of highly talented engineers in those industries, but not many of them are able and willing to be so speculative as to write down those insights to almost all the different facets of engineering. In the past 4 years since I began to read the book, a rough estimation is that it made / saved me about $20,000 in total. So the earlier an engineer / STEM student read it, the more valuable the small investment would turn out to be.