Engineering can be a lifelong profession, but the longer you spend trying to be a good engineer the more likely you are to work for someone who just Doesn't Get It. Once a company gets to be a certain size, especially if the people in charge aren't technically skilled, politics and perception trumps physical laws; an engineer who can't make the case for a solution on technical grounds (this is the cleanest way to solve the problem) or on business grounds (this is the cheapest way to solve the problem, and we save $200K a year by doing it this way over the way we originally thought of) but on political grounds (this is neither clean nor cheap, but it uses this buzzword-compliant tech and will increase your budget by $1.5M and require 2 people to support) is not likely to be a happy engineer.
Isn't plan B start another company? Are you sure you want to be an entrepreneur in the first place or just getting caught up in startups school hype. Ask yourself if this is what you want to do for the rest of your life and don't dabble in it if your heart says otherwise..
I'm reminded of the quote that goes something like "don't let your schooling get in the way of your education."<p>The reason I think this applies is because engineering isn't really like what is taught in schools. It's probably the best you can do with 1 professor for 200 students.<p>But to answer the question, I would definitely be interested in doing engineering as a profession. Really I want to always be doing what interests me. <p>I like how Woz described it in his interview from "Founders at Work". He says that he loved working at HP and he wanted to work there for life. I'd want to find something like that.
With all the startup school buzz, everyone seems to want to be an entrepreneur. The idea is: make a bunch of money, retire and become a VC.<p>What's the plan 'B' if a startup fails (or multiple ones do)? Does anyone here view engineering as a lifelong profession?