Customer Reviews

Advice to Rocket Scientists: A Career Survival Guide for Scientists and Engineers (Library of Flight Series)

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3 star:		(1)
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I really enjoyed this book. It is brief, has short chapters, is easy to read and has plenty of humor. Trying to figure out what I should do, I have read a few carreer books myself but became exremely bored with them very fast, because they would just spend too much time with unnecessary information e.g. statistics/surveys to support their arguments and plenty of analysis. This book has non of that. If I had a chance to ask the authors of the other carreer books one question, it would be: So, what are you NOT telling me? This book is the answer to that. Having worked in the industry for several years, I am very confident to make this assesment. I can also say, that many of the tips in this book can be applied not only to the US but to Europe as well.

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The author, Jim Longuski, is a professor of aeronautics and astronautics at Purdue University. He also worked at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) for nine years, so he knows what he is talking about.

This book grew out of a lecture that he gives to graduating seniors called "What Your Professor Never Taught You." The subject might be described as "career advice", but it is quite different from other books of that sort. The writing style is friendly and conversational, with lots of anecdotes and humor. I found it hard to stop reading.

Broadly speaking, there are two parts to the book: "surviving and thriving in industry" and "thriving and surviving in academia." (Professor Longuski has done both.) Some of the chapter titles are:

It Doesn't Take a Rocket Scientist to Be a Rocket Scientist.
Does This Mean You Have to Kiss Butt?
What if My Boss is Incompetent?
Why You Need Two Resumes.
How to Survive Your First Two Weeks on the Job.
How to Give a Presentation to Rocket Scientists.
Why Working on Your Ph.D. is Fun.
How Not to Give an Academic Interview.
The Academic Seminar for Hire.
What it Takes to Get Tenure.

Professor Longuski wrote this book because he really cares about his students and wants them to be happy with their lives. I think that anyone in engineering or science could learn something from it --- and be entertained too!

- Troy McConaghy (one of Jim Longuski's graduate students)

I have no hesitation in recommending that Advice to Rocket Scientists be a part of any professional's reference library. The principles and recommendations within this book have proved invaluable during my graduate studies and subsequent transition to the workplace.

The book is a pleasure to read and full of helpful advice. I have found the section titled "How to Get the Right Job" particularly useful. The insight provided by Jim Longuski into the importance of the "Boss" has proven to be quite astute. Advice to Rocket Scientists is a unique source of sound instruction and useful suggestions presented in an entertaining and accessible format.

Two great gifts for college students are the books Hello Real World by Jengyee Liang and Advice to Rocket Scientists by Jim Longuski. Hello Real World is oriented towards a college student looking for an internship or summer job in a professional environment. Advice to Rocket Scientists is written for the soon to graduate college student in an engineering or other professional discipline. I have read both of these books and highly recommend them. They are both well written and a very easy read and most importantly the advice given in either book is invaluable for a neophyte professional that will last with them throughout their career.

I had the privilege of overlapping in my time at the Jet Propulsion Lab with Prof Longuski. This book confirms many of the hard lessons of career life that the rest of us took years to absorb. I would recommend it to college-bound high school students, as well as college students and especially career engineers throughout their work life. There are so many "Ah-ha!" moments of real insight here, such as the "early burnout" point 10 years into an aerospace career, the fascinating overview of graduate school (from both the student and professor perspectives), how to "interview your boss" for a prospective industry job, and how teamwork really operates in the workplace. Much of this is applicable to just about any professional career. Thanks to Prof. Longuski for making a genuine contribution to the field of career development (and help others understand what makes a rocket scientist tick!).

I have given a great many lectures on finding jobs, writing resumes, and getting ahead in the aerospace industry. Jim Longuski's book is by far the most important contribution to this subject that has been created to date.

The book is well researched, well-written, and easy to read. If you're a student thinking about a career in aerospace or a young professional getting started on your career, you need this book. It's practical advice packaged in a way that fun to read.

This is an extremely well-written book. It covers valuable facts about real professional life that are extremely useful to know. Prof. Longuski has very useful information that come from his experiences as an engineer at JPL ( Jet Propulsion Lab.) and as a professor at Purdue Univ. He covers many different aspects of life after college or graduate school that are hard to anticipate before graduation. And I wish that I read this book several times before I got into real life. That would have saved me a lot of time and headaches as well! As a more experienced engineer now, I find this book very insightful as well as very entertaining. It also helped me to make sense of some of my experiences at JPL in the last several years. So, it is even useful for a seasoned veteran. I hope that younger engineers and scientists read this book before graduation, it will help them not only in adjusting to real life after school but also in deciding what they want to do in their careers after graduation.

Jim: Thanks a lot for writing this book !

Behcet A.
JPL

The wisdom of the author should reach much wide audience beyond rocket scientists. The best time to read this book is when you are entering a grad school in any field where your work requires some cooperation of or collaboration with other students, staff, or people from outside institutions, but I think it is never too late to read it. I came across this book because one of my former roommate had it when I had hard time with my boss. I borrowed it and read it through quickly, but later I decided to buy a copy myself.

I had my years in a doctorate program in brain science. The labs are filled with politics, not of the scale discussed in this book, but lots of small politics related to shared equipment, facility, building maintenance people, etc., as well as resources like technician time. The worst of all, many professors are very poor leaders and they lack effective management skills. Also, if you read this book and look around in your institution, you'll get a very good sense of which professors are better bosses, because this book gives you strong suggestions of what kind of human qualities to look for, and you'll be surprised how few professors are good bosses. When you're starting a project, everyone looks like a nice person. It is when you have difficult challenges (for which your boss has no idea) that separates good bosses from bad ones.

If you want to achieve something, you need pragmatic skills including the kind of politics described in this book, combined with common sense understanding of human nature.

"Short, Sweet, and To the Point" is the best way I could describe this book. I would recommend it to all aerospace or aeronautical engineers, whether a student or a seasoned vet in the field. In my opinion, its a great nightstand book because the chapters are very short. You can easily read 2 - 3 chapters in 5-10 minutes. Again, short and to the point. It contains an abundance of useful information for your early or upcoming career. If I were an advisor or professor, I would require that all my 4th year students read the book.

I wish I had read this book a few months before I had, because I ended up learning all of this from those in my aerospace class that had decided to GTFO after getting they're BS degrees and I stuck around to get my MS.

One of the biggest disappointments about this book was its significant dedication to those who want to get a PhD and become a professor and do research and all that. Not for me. But I won't (can't) judge this book based on the fact that I didn't do my research about its content beforehand. And besides, about half the book is useful to me anyways.

If you haven't got any friends who have done the whole resume, interviewing, and negotiating process, this book will be very useful. I disagree on a number of things with it, but the one I'd like to mention is the need for a multi-page resume. One of my buddies has a multi-page resume but only because he's done so much damn work that he needs the space. I found a way to write an effective 1-page resume to sell myself to get the interviews, and I even asked all of the interviewers, "What do you think of multi-page resumes?" to which they all would respond, "Not needed. That's what the interview's for." This comes from interviews with Northrop Grumann, JPL, and EchoStar. But everybody has a different experience. So this book still holds its ground in that respect.

Another thing my experience didn't agree with was the "bring a copy of your senior design report for each of the people who will be interviewing you." It's a great idea for most senior design survivors, but then again -- and I hate to be pretentious here -- they don't have what CU Aerospace seniors have: A multi-hundred page report that costs upwards of $30 to print. I ain't gonna print off even one more for my interviewers. They're all smart enough now to know to *ASK* the prospective hire for where they can see the work, and I have websites and non-restricted servers for them to poke around in. Works like a charm, and they can do their research offline without wasting time.

One more thing I disagree with, again from my experience: Unless it's the hiring manager you're talking to, bugging the engineers with phone calls is not the way to go. Yes, be forward, stay in contact, be appreciative, be communicative. But no, do not incessantly call them. Engineers are people do and they don't like to be annoyed when it's not their job to do the hiring. There are plenty of people who would be willing to talk to you, and are plenty of people who would NOT be willing to talk to you. But again, that's just my experience. I have found a nice middle ground in the interviewing process that avoids being annoying and avoids looking lazy.

But I'm just nit-picking here. I thoroughly enjoyed the read, not least because I could get all of its content in one day. I like the attitude that is portrayed in it: You won't be handed a job. Even with a 3.75 GPA and 2 internships and a graduate degree. You have to work for it. Sell yourself. (But don't sell out.)