Fresh Engineer Podcast

Today’s episode of the Fresh Engineer Podcast is gonna be different than usual since it’s the season finale! I'm going to give you a look behind the scenes, share some personal insights on what it’s been like to start this podcast, and talk about the lessons I learned from the first season and what I have planned next for this show.

In this episode of the Fresh Engineer Podcast I’m talking to Liz Rowe who is a mechanical engineer turned self-taught Data Science Manager working at Intel in Oregon in the United States. She also runs a YouTube channel reviewing software products with over 3.000 subscribers. In our conversation we talk about why you should give yourself MORE homework as an engineering student if you want to graduate top of your class, why you should focus on the manager and not the company when picking a job, how she jumped 5 career levels from estimation engineer to regional director by strategically switching companies, how she taught herself how to code and that led to her being offered a job as data science manager at Intel, and how having a YouTube channel has opened doors for her engineering career she never imagined.

In this episode of the Fresh Engineer Podcast I’m talking to Beatrice Ionascu who is an electrical engineer with a specialization in machine learning from Romania. She studied in Abu Dhabi, New York and then Sweden where she co-founded the startup imagi right out of university that she is now the CTO of. In our conversation we talk about why she switched her major from biology to electrical engineering, her master thesis at Spotify and why she ultimately decided not to stay there, her passion for getting more women into engineering and of course what it has been like to start grow imagi and her biggest challenges as a CTO.

In today’s episode of the Fresh Engineer Podcast I’m talking to Chiahua Li who is an energy engineer from Taiwan working as Energy Efficiency System Verifciation Engineer at the networking and telecommunications company Ericsson in Lund here in Sweden. We used to live in the same dorm while studying at KTH in Stockholm and we also later ended up being colleagues at Northvolt for a while. In our conversation we talk about how growing up in Taiwan inspired her to study energy engineering, how important it is to pick the right engineering major, a surprising aspect of working full-time as an engineer that’s difficult to experience as an intern, what her day-to-day work looks like at Ericsson, and one big misconception about the energy industry.

In this episode of the Fresh Engineer Podcast I’m talking to Naomi Bakker who is a mechanical engineer from the Netherlands. She took a new direction after her bachelor studies and is now working as a porfolio manager at the truck manufacturing company Scania in Södertälje here in Sweden. We met while studying the same master’s program Entrepreneurship & Innovation Management at KTH here in Stockholm and we recently realized that we’re almost neighbors. We had a chat about why mechanical engineering is a great study option if you have no idea what you want to do with your career, why she decided to follow a trainee program after her studies and her experience as a trainee at Scania, how to take advantage of being a generalist rather than a specialist in your career, and what she does as a porfolio manager and how her engineering background helps her even in the rather non-technical role she has now.

To kick off the second half of this season of the Fresh Engineer Podcast, we’re doing something a little bit different… Instead of bringing on a guest, I’m talking about my journey into engineering and my own answers to some of the questions I usually like to ask my guests.

In this episode of the Fresh Engineer Podcast, I'm talking to Abdulazeez Sheikh Rafiuddin who is a Mechanical Engineer with a background in Robotics. He grew up in Saudi-Arabia from where he moved to India, Dubai and then to Northern Sweden where he now works as Material Flow Automation Engineer for the battery producer Northvolt. In our conversation we talk about his experience studying mechanical engineering in India and then starting his first job in Saudi-Arabia, the problem with putting solar plants in the desert and how to solve it with engineering, the differences in working culture between Saudi-Arabia, Dubai and Sweden, and making smart career moves and using your network effectively as an engineer.

In this episode of the Fresh Engineer Podcast, I'm talking to Byron Tang who is a civil engineer specialized in traffic and transportation. He works as Senior Transportation Engineer at City of Hayward in California in the United States. He also runs an amazing YouTube channel with just over 2.000 subscribers all about traffic engineering. In our conversation we talk about why he switched his major from music to civil engineering, why you absolutely need to prioritize getting an internship if you’re studying civil engineering, what traffic engineers actually do which really surprised me, and his advice for engineers who want to become a manager like him & which books you can read to prepare.

In this episode of the Fresh Engineer Podcast, I'm talking to Yu-Hsuan Li who is an Energy Engineer and Nuclear Engineer from Taiwan working as renewable energy portfolio manager at the company Fortum in Stockholm, Sweden. In our conversation, we talk about what energy engineering and nuclear engineering is and why she decided to go into that field, what it was like for her to move from Taiwan to Europe, what the work of an energy trader looks like, and how to tell when it’s time to switch to a new job. You can find the show notes here: https://freshengineer.io/podcast/3

In this episode of the Fresh Engineer Podcast, I'm talking to Boris Nimcevic who is an Embedded Engineer and Hardware Engineer from Serbia. He has studied and worked in the United States before coming to Sweden where he now works as embedded engineer at the startup Quandify while also building his own maker business Lilordag. In our conversation, we talk about why he quit his business studies and started from scratch to study engineering, his experience designing electronic systems for children’s toys at a US-american toy company, how he found his first clients as a freelance engineering consultant and how you can get started working with electronics and teaching yourself the basics even without going to engineering school. You can find the show notes here: https://freshengineer.io/podcast/2