We all need water. Aaron Burkhardt helps to make sure we get it and it’s good. He is Senior Engineer with the Greater Cincinnati Water Works. Aaron has had 7 or so jobs in a little under 20 years. He knows a bit about the twists and turns of a non-linear career path.
All of his roles have been in engineering. Yet, he’s had a vast array of experiences. He’s worked for private developers and governments. He’s pushed water uphill, a seemingly sisyphean task. He’s helped water flow downhill.
Aaron is a true Career Adventurer who embraces new experiences. Sometimes, it’s required leaping to a new company. Others, have not. He’s found joy in exploring a new space internally.
Listen to the full episode. Aaron has a lot to offer on testing career assumptions, seeking joy, and handling 100+ year old documents. You’re sure to pick up a nugget or three.
Don’t have time on your commute to work? Skim the top five themes below. Then listen to the full episode on your commute home.
5 Core Themes!
Aaron highlighted five major themes you should take note of in your own career adventures.
Building History
We could all only be so lucky. Aaron encounters history in his job everyday. He regularly picks it up to examine it. Not many people need to look decades or even a century into the past to do their job. Aaron does. Plus, decisions they make on how water needs to flow around the city will impact a future Aaron looking back to understand how to improve water-flow.
“All the old paper records that we have from 150 years of providing water to the citizens of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, I keep an eye on that stuff.
We've got a geographic information system that's all mapped. We have data moving all around, and I oversee that. Some of the more exciting things I get to do is leading our effort on a new master plan. We look at our entire system and say, ‘What are the big things we want to do in the next 10, 15, 20 years?’.
Getting Past Discomfort
Aaron embraces a growth mindset. It takes effort, though. He sought a project that required flexing muscles he didn’t typically use as an engineer. He had to get out into the organization to do stakeholder research. For an engineer who’s predisposed to enjoying the confines of his desk, it was energizing. Now, he had a better grasp of how water data moved and saw improvement opportunities. Way to go Aaron!
“I'm an engineer and I just want to be in my office and kind of be left alone. I got to go like, talk to people now. The initial doing that makes me so uncomfortable that it just takes me a few hours to ramp myself up to do it.
But then I had conversations with other departments and we were mapping out swim lanes of how data moves around and what people do. We have opportunities to make improvements. I got to do like this for like four days. Now at the end, I was like, “this is f$@king awesome, man! Get to see where all this stuff goes.”
More Responsibilities / More Challenges
Managing a big team isn’t for everyone. Aaron learned this during a temporary increase in his responsibilities. Very simply, he didn’t find joy in it. Managing a large team is really difficult. In many fields, our system of work rewards or forces people to manage larger teams to advance, to earn more. This isn’t always best for the employee or employer. Some engineers should keep engineering and not administering. Kudos to Aaron for using a great evaluation filter: Does this provide joy? We should all ask ourselves this question from time to time.
“I got the opportunity to temporarily move up a position and went from managing 5 people to managing 20. In my younger days, I was like, yeah, I'm going to manage a big team and do all these things. I determined that at this point in my career and the number of years I've had with Waterworks that did not bring me joy the way that I thought it would.”
Bloom Where You’re Planted
Sometimes our work finds us. We like to believe we guide the ship. We’re perpetually in control, right? Wrong. Life presents us with choices. Aaron found that no one in his work group wanted to focus on water. So, he took on the challenge. This was the start of a focused path. Aaron has remained in the same space, but bounced from challenge to challenge. This has provided adventure.
“Got out of school and, and started in Chicago-land area, did land development work. They needed somebody to do water stuff, sizing pipes. Nobody else wanted to do it. I was like, well, I'm here. I started doing that. Like, this is kind of fun. This is kind of cool.
And just doing that, growing on that and doing storm water, water that falls from the sky. Then, spent years with the sewer district doing poop water. Then, decided I'd move to the clean water side and try that out.”
Job Resilience
Over many decades, society has trained us that job security means staying put. People say, “The grass isn’t always greener.” Or, “Is the risk worth it?” But, is this true today? Aaron has developed job resilience by embracing new opportunities. He has been laid-off. He’s sought joy in new things. Most importantly, he has learned how to search for jobs. Here’s a tip: Be good at networking!
“I've been fortunate in my career. I’ve tried to know a good number of people throughout whatever I was doing and have been able to move jobs and do different things that bring me joy when I wanted. I haven't had to be unemployed for too long. I've been lucky in that space.
I tell people I've done this and I've done that. They're like, how many jobs have you had? I don't know, six or seven. How have you done this many freaking jobs?! Like, well, I just did this and then didn't want to do that anymore, and needed to move, or got laid off, or whatever. I hate to say that's maybe my best skill: Finding the job and maintaining a network of people.”
Listen to Aaron’s Full Story
Aaron is a joyful, water engineer. He gets to touch and build history everyday. He’s found his career swim lane, yet found adventure in the same vocational pond.
This was just a snippet of Aaron’s experience. Download the full episode to hear all his thoughts. You can listen to it during your commute.
Enjoy the episode! Thanks for you support!
Paul G. Fisher
I’d love to hear from you. Have any guest recommendations listeners should learn from? Shoot me a note!
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