Teaching

“Companies don’t want to train anymore”, I often hear from jobseekers. I get the impression that this is due to a lack of seniors who possess the combination of technical skills, teaching skills, and willingness to level-up others.

My interest in teaching probably began during my school years when giving class presentations. This continued into university where I would regularly present my research as a PhD student to a room full of academics. It was often stressful because I wanted to do a good job, but I nevertheless enjoyed the thrill of it. Whilst a PhD student, I also worked as a teaching assistant for undergraduates in their problem-solving labs, and took part in the National Tutoring Programme during the pandemic. At one point I even considered becoming a teacher at a school. However, this idea was quickly scrapped when I realised from tutoring that being a teacher is not so much about teaching, but about behaviour management.

I was pleased to find that there are plenty of opportunities to teach fellow engineers while working in companies. Our new hire certainly has much to gain from this, and will have trouble saying that companies don’t want to train anymore.