Is it normal to feel completely lost at your first engineering job?

I graduated EE and would be in the same shoes regarding the semiconductor field. We may have barely brushed the surface.

I think they’d be incredible impressed to the point of being skeptical if you knew what was going on at their business. Even if you spent a lot of time learning about the field, 80% of it will be a task you’ve never heard of, with lingo you’ve never dealt with.

A lot of the things management talks about has nothing to do with the technical side of things. There is so much lingo they know because they’ve been doing this for 10+ years and each company it can be different. It will take you time to understand.

My first day I heard some shit like “I need the .bak and a DXF for the work release addendum for Q350 to send over to their lead so they can stake and begin stringing The 69 ACSR and OPGW.... “ bruh what? I thought we were making power lines?

9 months later and that makes sense, but I still get new tasks that I understand very little about.

Just keep asking questions and asking for help, even on the smallest things. Ask them what the lingo is as well. I’ve been at my first job for closer to a year and still have to ask what seemingly simple things are. They seem to enjoy teaching me if they’re not super busy.

If you can understand the lingo you’ll be able to ask better questions too.

But hey I’m sure it’ll start making sense and that one day you will be the person spouting off nonsense to the new hires.

/r/AskEngineers Thread