Speaker 2: Welcome in German to the next episode of EYC on the podcast today. We talked to a long time friend of Brandon. I John Johnson John received a Bachelors of Science in electrical engineering from Michigan Technological University with a concentration Electrical Power Systems in 2011. He immediately began employment at Wolverine power supply Cooperative has an electrical engineer quote on quote after getting up to speed with industry Norms through some entry-level Project work for a few years John at the opportunity to engage with the business time leading multiple high-level projects about earning his PE license in 2018. He was promoted to senior engineer surely after John answered Wolverines job posting for an engineering manager and was offered the position to lead his team has the station engineering manager. Welcome John D e y c

Speaker 3: Welcome everyone to engineer your career. I'm branded Tamarac. And as always I'm joined by Troy Bolton

Speaker 2: everybody. I do an excellent man another good. We got a work / school for me. So I don't know I'm doing my

Speaker 3: nice you do you have like real winter up north cuz we don't really have it here

Speaker 2: and then run another saying 12in or something Friday night. So definitely in looking forward to it. My tractor and it's really fun. It's really really fun. I know if it's an engineering thing, but it's like just being able to throw snow or 30 feet with a tractor think it's like a childhood dream of most Engineers.

Speaker 3: That's a good point. We bought a snow shovel this year that we haven't even had to use. So, you know, you don't always get what you want in winter.

Speaker 2: I think you're at your in Northwestern lower, Peninsula, Michigan. How much snow do you guys get in a snow belt area kind of southwest of Gaylord familiar that snowmobiling Maca we do like, oh my gosh know that sounds miserable, but I like to think about it like all the cool things I can do in so I can see I can do all these other things and it's also just really really pretty one of the things that was different for me living in Detroit when I did was winners just kind of like a wet dirty Brown. Of time, and I don't know. Everything's always really gorgeous and white so, I like it.

Speaker 3: You're so lucky. We're definitely still in that wet dirty Brown. Of time, and it's January mid-January when recording this so very unfortunate

Speaker 2: Regina really glad to hear man. I yeah, I think it's going to be really interesting discussion and I think the storm and maybe we should just kill you off with just talking about how you got to where you are today. I can do that and being on this program. I think it's a good positive source of information for for anyone in our field and it's something I wish I had available to me when searching and thinking about what my career would be

Speaker 3: I suppose it all starts off in

Speaker 2: college. Right attended Michigan Tech University and I appreciate an electrical engineering degree, which I ended up receiving a bachelor's in about 2 years into my degree is about when I started to get a grasp on trying to make a plan for how to build a career. And mine is still thought swear that I wanted to do something that would provide a service to society goal in mind. And one of the things I thought of was that tied directly with what I was interested in is is the electric utility. Is it something that that people are using their depending on its it's no longer a commodity. It's more than an institutionalized way of life and it's not going anywhere. So you have to have security there too. So in college, I got involved in the concentration program for Power Systems. We're pretty much involves taking specific courses in certain number of of course is weighted towards the power industry. So if I clean that obviously I wanted to get a job and a career fair and a career fair. I met Wolverine power cooperative. And at the time I didn't even know what a Cooperative was kind of a damn shame by it anyway and later. I understood that while I didn't grow up in an area that was served by co-ops. That's not something I really teach you about in school growing up or is talk about that often gets more of just us utility. You pay them.

Speaker 3: Actually really good point. I think where I grew up we had Co-op is electricity and then there's other places. There's like utility so it can you maybe in like A few sentences explain what a co-op is versus a normal utility

Speaker 2: electric utility was first being rolled out for people. It was concentrated around urban areas cities things at the same time. They didn't have the capacity to run electric lines out to the rest of the rule area of where a lot of a lot of people lives and wanted to use that that service so co-op store first formed by thing about it is is Farmers farmers and people living in rural areas and they perform these organizations the rural electrification Administration essentially was a government subsidized loans with low interest rates that were offered to help people start the businesses. So they built the businesses and they build their own transmission and Distribution Systems to serve rural areas and it just exploded from there and it hasn't slowed down five star very strong presence. They support a lot of the electric grid in America is a hole which was an eye-opening for me.

Speaker 3: Yeah, definitely.

Speaker 2: So today I guess what do they specifically do? That's different than a main utility authorities were they have boards board of directors at may be led by different people with different interest investments into into utility coops member-owned. So I work for a transmission company and we serve distribution companies. So we're owned by the distribution companies which are then in turn this actually owned by the end members. We don't call them customers. We call them members cuz they're all members of The Coop. Interested, maybe Jeremy we got to step back a second here for some people can eat yummy chocolate transmission and distribution for those people were listening. You are not familiar with those terms. I guess. Maybe can you start with how this all works maybe from the even like from power plant to member? Like what were the some of the terms that you just use there? And how do they fit within that chain write three main terms are generation transmission and distribution generators in order to keep them physically reasonable size only generate at a lower voltage. So free high voltage, it's usually around fifteen thousand volts of 4-5. However, if once you generate you have to do usually move the power long distances, And in order to do that by reducing and minimizing losses and actually making a practical you have to increase the voltage to quite a high level. And once it is increased and transported we call that the transmission system. Think about that as the highway for for electric lines. Those are large the larger lines. You see the lattice structures, maybe 150 ft tall.

Speaker 3: Then once you once you

Speaker 2: get to the areas that you want to serve will install what we call a distribution substation that steps the voltage down to a more usable level and lines coming out of those stations are more localized for load things. What is the off ramp for the highway? And those are the two smaller bowls you see the long roads that feed your house. So that's the distribution then it's like that the distribution system sounds like you are so that means it focuses just essentially on the off-ramp in your analogy. So actually it's a little bit different than that. We're a generation and transmission Co-op one of them some of the industry lingo they called it GMT racing transmission generation facilities in Lyon transmission systems and in our specific scenario, we also own the distribution substations. Then that's another thing to note for utilities is something that would be really advantageous for anyone wanting to pursue. This is the study different businesses and makeups and and how they how they do that because they're all little bit different and who owns what equipment in and where they draw the line and what they want to

Speaker 3: specialize in. Okay working at Wolverine kind of almost touches a little bit of all that then is what it sounds like that correct. Right right. Awesome. So let's go back then you were at career fair back in college. You said Wolverine? What was the next step then

Speaker 2: houses for sale in the job and that led up to a pretty straightforward process for my scenario. We had a phone interview and then they brought me down to the corporate headquarters for follow-up interview with the team. After that, they offer me employment and I've been there for the last nine years.

Speaker 3: Was it like finishing up College a little bit cuz it was it's your senior year then there was this kind of even before before it started.

Speaker 2: Yeah. I know. I actually lucked out quite a bit because the spring career fair that the year I was graduating was when I was able to line up this position and insecure it so I had some level of risk involved but it worked out

Speaker 3: so they learn about a company and they fly and they get a job there. But then once they start they haven't worked in that industry before that fit a company things can be a lot different. What was it like for you starting out at Wolverine?

Speaker 2: It was a little slow and I think an important thing to realize on that is is you have to give yourself time to Do you have to speed and to learn the business that you're going to be working for and learn how they do things. So call it training and in our scenario where a smaller company so the engineers typically are also project managers. So if your assigned a project you'll be the lead project manager the handle of the management aspects of the project from working with accounting setting up contracts and then as well as leading the design for the facility and essentially producing a construction site drawings for whatever it is you're tasked to do. Yeah, it's a lot going on man. I mean just to kind of step into that because so much of what you just described is not a class you take in school, right? I mean you take different Power Systems glasses that give you information but I mean what percentage of that that you just described would you say you learned in school really only the technical aspect of it. One of the larger learning curves was project management and learning how to be affected at that. I actually remember that was one of the questions they asked me what are you going to do to check that? Keep it on track for budget for schedule to make sure it's it's delivered as requested samples of methods. I might use to track obviously, but I mean, I think that's I would hope the answer that they would want for him a graduating senior in college because there's no way they've never had that experience before it. So, I mean, it's a great honest answer of I have no idea and it's it's important to understand that I don't know. It's a good answer a lot of the times with what I found is companies are not looking for people who have the answers but they're looking at the skills people have in communicating and trying to figure out where they fit in and how they can be effective it getting to a solution because a lot of times in the Working World. You're not going to know all the answers. It's not going to be The formula approach or anything like that. It's going to be abstract creative thinking

Speaker 3: can you give us an example to of a project you did work on where you got to learn more about these skills and put them into practice. Yeah, I sure

Speaker 2: can one project that I was able to lie down with three interesting. There's a a metal foundry in Michigan. That was previously they they essentially melted there there metal further processing casting using coal for heat to do the environmental regulations. They are required to go all electric. And we ended up being the utility that work with them. So we have to we have to install a substation dedicated for them that fed electric furnaces. That's kind of a whole different game and it's more of a unique unique insulation. So you have to learn what these machines do and in our case we have to learn how they affect the grid. Someone making decisions about what to put in from high-level. We're thinking about how do we minimize negative impacts on our grid? When installing it so it's just a minute sample of orate were installing Power Systems. We also have to learn all the characteristics about this company's process what their melt Cycles are how often they run how much power they pull and how quickly ramps of all all kinds of things like that. Y'all do this dive with the customer understand their requirements and then your next step is to sit down and cab and start dragging and dropping blocks in and I guess how does how does the next step? The Next Step comes with an electrical simplified equivalent of the facility we call it a one line. Really depends. It's one line representing three phase power and innocent ended me simple. And that's another another thing to touch on a lot of larger companies. It seems like might often start engineers and entry level positions working in AutoCAD and doing doing design in such a sad Wolverine actually has a cat Department in CAD design. So I really don't do any Hands-On CAD work. I work with the cad designer that's a sign to the project and essentially make hand markups and Nicole designs together in and we have kind of a volley back and forth of drawings of markups and changes and getting too but we call done you no quit the team effort as it continues to be a theme of this podcast this idea of the engineering task at hand is always so large that it's many people working together many people of different backgrounds working together. And so it sounds like another great example there where you no work with a team to essentially assemble the package that you want to propose or submit and then you do that and I guess is that the step you you you submit a package and it gets approved and then you start building and it sounds yes. Physically their structures and they're spaced apart and they have to be so high above ground for safety codes and things like that. So we have to know that and we also have to know how to write the facility to handle the amount of power going through that has components we have to design control systems for the different apparatus that that section lies that system. So the engineers still quite busy dealing with all that as well as specifying and ordering equipment that's going to meet the

Speaker 3: needs. So are the parts of your work that you're doing for this kind of a combination of doing like mathematical calculations in some way and then also expecting out Parts as part of the design.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, that's correct and following large libraries are standards of different stations with you and talk about and z or IEEE IEEE has a very heavy library and standards that we need to follow as well as a national electric Safety Code. So that's another It's another side. Another Branch. I'll call it a of of things to learn is getting up speed on codes. And what has to be what breed are reading massive amount of Standards is I doubt anyone's thing. They want to do on a Saturday, but your there's a lot of good information to be had in them. And so you got to kind of get yourself a adjust it with the important ones and kind of what information you need to watch out for it. Cuz ultimately correct me if I'm wrong, but it's when you're the p on the project you're responsible for the safety of the structure. I mean, are you sexually signing off at the structure safe? Yes, of course. We have some civil engineers on staff that Designer transmission lines and biking I can check a structure called someone not against them cuz that's the area that I'm not proficient in. But all electrical side of it is it is my way in and sign off her for being safe for the public cuz you think about these facilities their defense then but still transfer for some of the public walk up and touch the fence is electrified in certain scenario. So we're making sure everyone is out of any kind of Hazard away sounds like during this I'm going to call at the design phase. There's just a lot of things going on a lot of moving Parts lot of lot of parts that you're picking out of people that you're interacting with you also mentioned before that you handle the financials to is that another thing you're you're you're handling and being responsible for during this design process. Yeah Yeah Yeahs that falls under the project management side I'm as far as then you have a budget to work with and in and utilities a lot of these components are kind of big dollar items. So it's got to be careful to make sure you're on track and more importantly to know when you can project that you're going to be off track now that you're going to get in trouble, but they can communicate that and come to a resolution

Speaker 3: that is probably takes to learn there when he thinks if things change regards to budget or planning whatever communicating that to the customer. What is that like a little bit being being in charge of it? And then when you have to go and say to someone well things have changed what we originally planned and now we're having to to do X and set a y what does it look like from kind of project management perspective? It's not too bad.

Speaker 2: often what I found theirs Sound reason for for the changes and then on top of that and being able to reference back to some fundamental concepts is key. The most important thing you can do in the engineering field is being able to talk to anyone on on the street and have them understand what you're saying and the same sense goes to when you're talking to people that aren't involved in utility in and do work on a project with then they have to be able to to convey like I said fundamental concept. So what changes happened or what did influence costs to change as well a little bit to understand? I think some of the difference is my understanding Yuri. We talked about the project manager position of project management position at managing the project but I think there's also a title of a position here of electrical engineer, or maybe you can help me with the exact. BattleBots, maybe another person on the team that's focusing more on picking components and doing design. It is electrical engineer the correct title for that person brain was electrical engineer and I mean in general if you're the lead engineer on an utility often, you're going to be an electrical engineer for that type of project interesting. So you would really just be in the job description that you would know that it's more power or doing these types of things the description listed for electrical engineers fairly generic. But Eddie utility there are a lot of different. Trades that Electric electrical engineer could could do one of them is physical design of the substation. Another is protection and control Engineers that design control systems in one not. Another would be a relay engineer. So really Engineers do protection studies for how the protective devices work. Think about it if you have a free phone online, how do you open up devices to dinner guys that line and only drop the minimal amount of load that you need to So there's no sense. You can be in life go engineer. You can find somewhere to utilities. If you're looking for positions. They may call out specifically asked that's what the title is free trade engineering some discipline a bad is the relay our safety type of thing. So, yeah, it's interesting to see how he can divide up. But even on these big projects, I imagine you can have multiple. How are electrical relay safety Engineers on the team doing different parts that are place to work with me. There's a relay engineer that does really settings and coordination studies. I know we have a physical design engineer that pretty much gets the package and builds it get to where it needs to be but they're also dealing with all the rating the facilities for the lights below that's going to be going through. But one one trade, I didn't mention it just came to mind is a maintenance engineer, which is pretty neat because think about it from her perspective of you have one. We all seen the company that's building facilities and commissioning them and getting them in service. He wants their in-service and anything goes wrong or if there's going to be some modifications that may be the role of the maintenance engineer to work with Shield trees and it was all the issues.

Speaker 3: It sounds like then you got in this wide array of of potential specific jobs that someone was like electioneering to Rica be coming into and obviously it's probably difficult repair for all those and unlike anyone coming into new job. It's always a lot of mentorship for learning from other people. What what is that like in this area given and a wide range of jobs? You can have working on the utility. What was it like for you or your people at Wolverine specifically for learning these different roles and positions in this specific technical details that go

Speaker 2: into him. you start to learn about the roles and positions based on different classes that universities typically offer and I think as as a student you Can lean towards different areas of study that you may prefer to be more familiar with. And those are things that you talked about in the interview and no be describing. What do be doing and I'll help you get a sense for okay, I dispose mainly from this subset of classes, and he I really like doing that. I think I think I would like what's this job, and I'm pursuing it, but the other thing to consider is Be able to get your foot in the door. There's a lot of value and just being exposed to it from the inside and giving it a try. A lot of company is always a sign that if you're really strong in the area that they don't have you focused ending me when it's just you and and use our resources. Optimize their staff. Yeah, I think that's definitely a double-edged sword of getting too technical something that we haven't really talked about this far in the podcast. But this idea of if you get too specialized sometimes you can you can kind of work yourself out of potential jobs. And I think that's it's always a risk. I mean something that you want to be at 10 full about and I think that's a good example of that. That's a risk, but it's also It's also a preference for some people. Some folks really know what they want to do and they want to focus on it and become technical experts on it, which there's nothing wrong with that at all. Either you're going to wear a lot of hats and can it be a jack-of-all-trades or you can try to an arrow into a specific area of study that you're interested. It's within your company Raven from what you can tell about the bigger utilities is that you can become you can stay on the track of what they are real a engineer. You can just keep becoming more of a technical expert in relay engineering as opposed to going maybe the product management route. depends on the size of utility more so with larger utilities they're going to have more positions available going to be able to have a larger staff and a such they're going to have more specialized positions. So not thinking about the project management aspect of it. Just from the engineering side alone at a smaller company. You're going to be expected to excel in multiple areas of study. Do you still like

Speaker 3: education you had going into it was pretty adequate that the course of the class you take you and you mentioned that those are place where you started to learn about this but do you think that allow of what you learned in college, once you started kind of focusing in the power side was was pretty it's like a bowl to to this area

Speaker 2: up for all the basement lights. You need to you need to know to get started. The one thing I've noticed is I'm training that now after working with even a few years after working in an industry how much more effective it would be to go back in in a Nintendo's classes again with a different perspective to pick up so much more. Yeah continues to be a theme for me. I called the chicken-and-egg situation of college this which one has to come first and right now Society. We know if we're to the point where School comes first and then experience, but sometimes you wonder what would be different if you did experience and then school later because you'd be able to appreciate it for it. But does it have a tough call for sure, but if we talk about the design phase a lot but I assume there's also a huge face that comes out Tuesday after design when you're actually constructing the the substation. Can you maybe can a walk us into that once going to maybe once things are approved. What is your role then after the design phase right contractors? So we have set up a construction agreement. Can you start the job and I have to work with the contractor in sight and you get to know their organization a little bit from? You're the general Foreman are the foreman on site and you have to be there. You have to meet with them pretty much every week and they're going to have questions and they're going to throw a lot of questions at you, but it's true those questions that you can learn where they're coming from what they need to know how you can improve your designs to to redo some of those questions but alone from the contractor and then working through all that. There's also the aspect of those once it's filled and your your testing everything commissioning it involved with field Crews of utility technicians and whatnot. And I've learned a large amount from our field text because they're working in this everyday and I can't state. Enough how valuable experience their experiences the most important thing there is just being willing to learn and understand that or you're the engineer you have all the college experience and what not. But you know what you may not be the expert in all these areas. We have to humble yourself down a little bit and grasp all opportunities to learn. That's really the best way to excel

Speaker 3: that's a really good point. I think in a lot of ways we can think especially when dealing with people who is job title is technician there can always be that guy that feeling of a divide between engineer and technician and why different Industries, but just because someone who doesn't have the same education that doesn't mean they don't know a lot just by having the years the experience working on things in lots of different ways. So that's a really but I found that important match up to But Sir, John currently correct me. If I'm wrong. You're the station engineering manager. Is that correct

Speaker 2: your now?

Speaker 3: Okay. So what was that last a manager that I assume that you are you are a people leader in charge of of leading the team at this point.

Speaker 2: We're kind of heavy and construction right now and without wanting to bog down everyone I I take on a few projects with that

Speaker 3: as well. What is that been like for you then switching from more the engineering technical role? It's kind of a little more the managerial role.

Speaker 2: It's a little bit different. But it but it wasn't a flip of the switch. I think God kind of the way things were progressing for me and developing. I was sort of fitting into this more of a leadership role. Because you don't have to be a manager to be the leading in this kind of love the first step into it. but the one heart of it that you pick up as a manager is working with employees and their needs their life needs things like evaluation and that's something that isn't really educated formally for most people in most most and of course it is. But something really cool. Is that our renovation? Realize that and they developed an internal. leadership training At last and they've only had like two sessions of a session of it has a year think of that but they decided to invest in succession planning understanding that there's a lot of a lot of good folks in the organization and then they wanted to help build that culture and give people the opportunity to receive the tools. They need to do from the job right at work. That's great. That's it. That's awesome that they see that as as a need for one thing. That's always interesting to me. I think and sometimes and companies people rise to the level that they're the worst at meaning that if you're a really good lower-level employee and you'll movie up and then if you do really good at that job than the movie up and then you stopped moving once you stop performing well and I think what's interesting about what you're talking about. There's a side you have well, if we don't train the leaders, we're going to have all these people moving up where they're not going to be successful because they I have the tools. I think another thing that you bring about John. I think it's great is his idea of you got to be willing to learn and try new things and you did that when you got out of undergrad and sounds like you're doing that a ton now you're back in that I'm doing something new something different. I got to learn and you're trying to be a sponge and absorb whatever you can and so I think that's great when companies recognize that their talented people are rising and there are having a need to relearn new things and they want to be able to do that, but they need the tools to be able to do that effectively. It sounds like is your kind of current situation being a sponge. Yeah, that's exactly the situation but more of a continuing education to the career and that's one thing I've never understood to is in the engineering profession continue education throughout the career is essential to know what what what the Norms are what's happening globally with with what your field is so you can learn from other people's mistakes. You can find out about new technologies that are happening by new new ways to make things better. And you never stop doing that.

Speaker 3: What does the potential career path look like for you? What are your options as you moved up to to a manager now, where can you go from here if you

Speaker 2: want. Well, I could I could progressing in leadership field. I could I think if I were to quote from my position, it would be a vice president position. With the way our organization and set up getting some larger fields and then there's positions of different seniority that don't exist where I work and one of those is principal engineer from since they don't have that position currently at Wolverine, but but they do have a senior engineer position. So ultimately I could I can move up in the med serial world, but something important to understand is people always have the option to go back to being a wart. Technically driven position if you will if that's what you want to do in my case. I I think I'm going to progressed where I'm at right now and feel it out. I think I enjoy being able to have a leadership and Leadership voice for for the organization. and helping lead we where we go. What we build why we build how to make the overall system system stronger and reliable. Yeah, I guess going back to where you were. You started the conversation John's idea of you know you I think it was you said you were sick second year in undergrad and you were thinking how how can I make an impact sounds like you've moved into position where you're making an even bigger and back because you're not only making an individual project successful, but you're also able to set the vision for the future in some ways of how you know, the big organization will move which sounds like it has even more in fact, which is great. Exactly, right. So what challenges I guess are you just we talk about, you know, the different things with working with people and things like that, but it sounds like you're still very involved in the technical side as a manager. What what are the different are what are the challenges technically now for you as a manager are they equation based or they just different meaning like are you still solving equations that are challenging or is it really just something different that I can't even guess it's kind of a hard question to answer from high-level. I think one of the big advance for engineering that's been shaping the way everything happens is computers and computer software. No was one of the ways I like to look at it as we go to class in college and we often and crunching a lot of numbers and learning how to do everything on hand. In and price was he one of those specific example is the power flow solution. So you saw the power flow solution and you have this this transmission Network, which is just like a large net and then all the the strings and then that represent different lines and all the all the places where the lines intersect are stations and you saw this powerful equation and you find out what the voltages are in all the different nodes all the different intersections and things like that and more the power's flowing and in order to go by and it requires and it'll it'll rate of process. And fix up pages and pages. Running exhilarations and trying to solve it a solution that that converges every time you may end up with something that diverges start over from the beginning either way. What I'm getting at is a long time and there's a lot of room for error and you learn how to do that and then you get to the Working World and you find out you have a software and you set up a couple parameters in hit go and it does it all for you. Right but the important thing that you have to go and take away from your classes is even that computer crap program doesn't always converge and if it's not working you have to know how it works and how to get it to to solve correctly

Speaker 3: that caveat of when we're learning about software in a garbage in garbage out and You still have to be able to understand what the software is doing to understand if the results you get have any value? Otherwise, otherwise, it doesn't matter cuz you're going to even look at the pretty pictures of the numbers print out you're going to take it as long you're going to go with it. It's like it's really good points, but thinking about classes then and where you are does this grad school fit into the equation at all of a career path like the one year on or is it not really not really necessary?

Speaker 2: There's a lot of debating that. I think it really depends on someone specific situation. Grad school for masters in engineering could be useful for a lot of people I think on the track that I am in Masters in Business Administration. Might be more useful for the tools that I need. I'm going to get any further to that one would probably be more valuable. That's just my personal opinion

Speaker 3: on it. Yeah, are there a lot of people within the organization that do have neither either mbas or Masters in engineering? I'm finding there's more

Speaker 2: folks with at least in my field of vision was NBA's I think it's interesting to see how different careers, you know different paths different, you know, sometimes a message isn't needed. It's not you know, if you want to be specific I can be helpful and maybe if you really want to dive into relays and you want to get more technical knowledge, you can use the Masters as the tool to that. I think I think I said one of the bigger themes is used the Masters intensely for what you're trying to do. If you want to gain more technical knowledge than a masters in engineering focusing in that allow it if you want to get more knowledge in human resources in business the NBA can give can be that tool and so it's it allows us to think about getting a masters as a tool that were using to accomplish something. And sometimes you don't need to use those tools and I think that's okay. And I think it's good for people to know that so that people don't go and get a masters when they don't need one agree with that other thing, you know, if you're uncertain on further. education routes companies But sometimes have funding and they made me help fund your desired continued education for different degrees if it helps support your position in their can pump in their company. So there's always an option of understanding that you don't always have to do that first you can first. Start to work in Indian understanding for what what would best fit your need? And then continue from there. Have an exhaust vents get closer towards the end of the podcast year. I'd like to wrap up the show with kind of bigger picture thought, you know thinking back to you as a second second year engineering student. And now you're you're managing your new Engineers as they come into the field. What advice would you give yourself back then or what? What it what would you want to say to yourself to help you be more successful? That's a good question. I think I've been really happy with where I am. So kind of is a keynote. I'm happy the way things went. I don't know if I really want to change anything. If I were to send a message back, it would definitely be to assure myself that that is smaller company is where I would want to be as I like that culture. I like being able to interact with different levels of management. I talk to the CEO of the company often and I have access to home and I think that is extremely valuable. It's awesome. It's an opportunity that you don't always get it where you get lots of layers and management one. It all really depends on what you're going for larger companies have great perks. They have a lot of benefits. There's no I'm not knocking on them at all. There's just do you want to go in and what do you want your day-to-day work lights to be like that? A lot of people don't think about also when they can go out what job they want to work at what company specifically want to work at is the size of it and in general when you try and smaller you're going to be doing more and you going to give me a lot less layers and it's going to be different in that way. And when you work for a bigger company, it's going to have different advantages and disadvantages and that's a decision that as a person looking for a job. You get to make based on which companies you you look at and I don't think people will think about that. I think they just maybe I don't go for whatever companies are closing jobs, but that can be a specific decision you make if you if you think you want to go towards one way or the other as opposed to just randomly walking up to company. well for anyone listening to this this podcast is fixing to take away is I didn't know that that Samantha learning exposed to and that's fine too. And that's where this this podcast is so valuable as you can hear it was okay then maybe. Investigating the companies with a different perspective of what the organization looks like what the size is what they're supposed to be.

Speaker 3: I think I got the really good fight. The small small doesn't mean bad or less successful. It's got onset of perks. So definitely agree with you.

Speaker 2: Call Great John. Thanks your time. And really appreciate you coming on the show has been awesome lying about what it's like to be a power engineer. Yeah, we wish you nothing, but the best moving forward man. I appreciate that and then the time being on here. I hope I was helpful for your your mission. And I'm just glad you guys for the sign. I think it's pretty cool. I hope you get a lot of stories in and try to Fumble through like I did and take out the best highlights of what may help someone who's either little confused or just wants to help me push in the right direction or get the right tools to do that. I'll bring that I really enjoyed my conversation it started off with a lot of different things that I wasn't familiar with in this whole Cooperative thing. I didn't have a co-op going up. And so interesting to hear how the electrical grid Works in these different. I don't know history event. I loved out to tell about John got into the history of think that's fantastic just made me smile, you know, there's people out there that they start to tell a really really like what they do and I thought that was wonderful

Speaker 3: happy that he started out here which I think is wants a rare but I think it's really awesome when you see someone who is who is found something if they really enjoy doing and then they want to like keep continuing. It's not looking to make a change or anyting

Speaker 2: starting out of I just want to help people from there and you just fix it and I think that's such a great story, you know start with your the theme or at least at the time that thing you think you want to do big You know, it's you who knows, you know, no one knows exactly what they want to do. But what's new on what's the general theme that you believe in and helping people? Okay. What can I do that helps people? I think that's a great way to even get into it, you know

Speaker 3: ya making a difference in come a lot of different ways and especially in engineering like he's doing it by making sure people get power in that the grid is taken care of in certain ways. And I think I mean a lot of people who talk to you so far on the show, I haven't making a difference in lots of different ways and impacting people's lives in ways. They might not realize

Speaker 2: in your way. And that's awesome. One of the main things though. I could highlights if I will from the show that I really really took the heart was this idea of small companies can be the best place for you to go to the point where you get there and you'll want to stay there like John and you wouldn't you wouldn't even change it if you could go to a big company because Small companies have their own benefits and I think it's important to think about that until fully when you're trying to decide where you want to work. Like it is a decision that you can make to work for a small company versus a big company and I can be advantageous to you depending on what you like and I think it's important to think about it specifically like that.

Speaker 3: Yeah. I definitely agree and I think we can see some of the damage is just in John's experience when he's talking about starting off at being an engineer. It's also can like a project manager having technical responsibility and financial responsibilities in and then people responsible in some ways of working with the subcontractors the clients and all those things. It sounds like he gets a lot of different ways which one you work in a big company there might be an individual person who does each one of those things. So you only get a small sliver of of entire project. Where is with him? He's just kind of a wide breadth of what's going on and it's not doing that

Speaker 2: and he didn't know that ahead of time. You know, I think that's great. And I think that's another great example of probably the biggest trait that I I found it. It sounds like made him sick. For this idea of keep learning and always be willing to learn and try new things and that's always going to do you well, and I think he's really live that and I think that's helped him out a lot and it sounds like his organization appreciate that

Speaker 3: totally agree. Once you stop learning is when you tend to stagnate in your career and your technical abilities a lot of things that I've been complacent in that way to learn Morse is never really a good place where you want to end up at especially early on in your career when you get comfortable with something. I don't have any desire to grow in it. That's the sunrise recipe for Success later on.

Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree. I think that it's hard to push yourself to do new things. But when you do new things you learn like when John going into this management role at sounds like it's very different than what he was comfortable and what he was used to but it sounds like he's learning a lot and really liking it in that keeps it exciting. So I got another good reason to keep trying to do the new things as he keeps work exciting. It also probably means you fail more often on an average day, which is hard. But if you I think I think he's at humble your humble yourself when talking with technicians has these are my but I think you got a humble yourself, even when you're trying to learn, you know, he humbled himself when he talked to the technicians when he was learning to be an electrical engineer, but I'm sure it's humbling himself. Now as you wanted to be a good manager and I mean it really is by acknowledging what he doesn't know in saying that yeah, I want to do these leadership training classes because I don't know things and I want to learn and I think that's absolutely fantastic in a great mentality

Speaker 3: is where I I might not want to grow or I might want to think that I've been doing something long enough where I know all there is nothing like no like yes keep learning how to keep growing If he if you want to keep doing more not in the same spot forever sound

Speaker 2: like wise man talk to you have a good weekend. Thank you to

Speaker 3: buy Play Bauman and Brennan Tamarack for more information about the show visit our website at byc podcast.com there you can find show notes for each episode and get in touch with Troy and I if you or someone, you know are an engineer with interesting or even not so interesting career journey, I would like to be on the show go on the website. Send us a short bio and we made it to invite you to come on and share your story. And finally if you want to show your support, please rate review like or subscribe to the show on your podcast player of choice.