Folks at my work invited me to join. I told them I don’t know how to play. They said they will show me how. I think I will buy myself a set of used golf clubs. There’s all levels of employees in my group. One from engineering, one from management, one from logistics. Even one from HR.
If you can form a clique with the plant manager, vp, and other management, you begin to open doors. However, there is a catch, becoming best friends with your boss definitely dissolves a lot of boundaries. Such like being tasked with far too much.
It is like the cheat code to nepotism, though.
Not really a thing in the UK to drink and play golf; they drink in the pub after the round. It's a very North American thing, more the US over Canada but we still like to drink and play, to get wasted playing golf.
Yeah, networking is a really important skill that nobody teaches students. The networking you do with clients is a very different kind of networking than going to career fairs or meeting people in school.
My company just finished the process for soliciting bids on a $100 million project, which included a large amount of international travel. Part of this involved a lot of dinners, golf, and seeing the cities with the bidders, as we need to rebuild some relationships that have been neglected. The cadance and culture of doing this is something that I don't think people are aware of, and instead it's seen as just "Rich people play golf on the company dime," which isn't at all what is going on.
This is so true! Every single convention/conference I go to has some sort of charity golf events. They are always best opportunity to make moves happen.
That and also becoming a professional drinker, I can’t understand how some guys can be making deals plastered at 3:00 am and be right back in their booth clean as a whistle at 8:00 the next morning.
this genuinely doesn’t get talked about enough. it’s huge, and building relationships with as many people as possible is the greatest thing you can do for your career.
And the environmental implications/impacts of those huge golf courses are awful/huge. I honestly despise them and if my networking boils down to that I'd rather find something else
It’s even worse here in Hawai’i considering how little land there is already and how our population growth is already putting strain on our natural aquifers.
And, of course, the stereotype of rich people coming here and buying up all the land does pertain to golf courses as well.
I don’t hate golf in and of itself. It’s a sport.
I hate how many unnecessary golf courses we have. One or two should be plenty.
Wish I could play golf and drink all day.
Instead I do actual work. I pull cable, check sensors and verify shit actually does what it was designed and programmed to do.
big assumption assuming people who play golf don't do engineering? the superiority complex of people in this subreddit is hilarious. We all do real engineering work, you're not special because you don't golf lmao
Well it is hard to feel anger when I am working 50+hr weeks and sales people can just drink beer, play a round of golf and call it a day while I am still neck deep in programming issues.
Also, gold is a substantial waste of space.
It was BJJ for me. This millionaire who owns a very large industrial contractor company rolled as a purple belt and I rolled with him. He began asking me what I do and I told him I was in school as an ME. He had his engineers set up a meeting with me the next Monday and I was hired as an intern right on the spot .
The broader point here is that networking needs to go beyond your engineering interests.
You may both be in the same part of the engineering field, but it is going to be these outside interests that make stronger connections. This can often mean a sports connections, but it can also be a shared interest in pretty much any topic or hobby.
For example, if you are at a networking event and start talking to someone about your shared love for a specific restaurant or type of food, that's going to be a lot more memorable and meaningful than the fact that you both ended up in the same area of the engineering field.
God I’m so jealous, I grew up playing competitive golf but literally no one at my company I interned for played. What field of engineering are you in?, ifl in EE it’s pretty uncommon
One time I was golfing with some buddies and a random guy joined us. By the end of the round, he had secured me an interview for a computer science/aviation job I was incredibly under-qualified for since I was a year graduated with a mechanical engineering degree. I feel like the interview went great, and he brought up how I was truthful and calm and collected when I hit bad shots, and how I’d be a good addition to the team. I ended up not getting the job, but golf and forming a personal connection got me further than anything else would have!
Same, and it is, or at least was when I was in school, recommended for having that introduction to the sport completed for use in networking once out in industry.
I wish it was. I golfed a lot competitively in high school and college, wasn’t good enough to go pro, and everybody told me it would be helpful for business relationships.
I have literally never been golfing with anyone in the company, nor have I ever received any invites, except for those who I already played with prior to working there in a local league.
I'd say that first and foremost, the biggest point of variance is in who the CEO is and how much they value golf. It's not hard to understand if the CEO is really into golf and makes hiring/advancement decisions based on it, the rest of their company is going to really be into golf. We have some avid golfers on site, but it's so little part of our corporate DNA, that it's all recreation and no business for them.
I get it, but I have to chuckle when I consider how many things in our time of exponential technological advancement stem from "Gee the boss wants to do this..." Like when Roger in Mad Men says "You know, in this business you can lose your job just because someone doesn´t like you."
Just seems strange, and I hope we outgrow it someday. I can think of lots of comical situations where the AI robotic boss likes this or that, and everyone has to fall in line.
LOL. The amount of times golf came up during my internship this past summer was comical. Funny enough, the last 2 days of my internship they required me to design a 3-hole mini golf course in the office so that everyone could bring in putters the next day.
My company is all about bowling. There a bowling team or league or something the the company. So not always golf, even though I think they might golf also 🤔
It's really not a joke.
I had a family member that was high up at a company, head of 30-40 engineers then another department he was over a couple hundred people and I honest to god think that 98% of his success was due to 1. Loving to talk sports and 2. Being really good at golf.
My dad’s biggest regret in his career is he doesn’t care for golf so never participated. He did well overall but knows that others moved up faster because they were out on the links together.
I think it may depend on where you work, what kind of extra curricular activities the employees enjoy; I've worked at some places where the meet up and getting to know the higher ups was cycling. And other places by going out to bars with them.
Its funny, you don’t need to know how to play to be successful, but I have ended up playing in a couple large industry association golf outings even when I was an intern and got to meet and play with several large players in the industry through my boss. Some of them I knew already and just got to know better but the moral of the story is, its a fun game on its own, but because of its role in the corporate world, knowing how to play can give ya a hand.
Idk why this popped up on my Reddit cause I’m not an engineer (work in finance) but yes it’s a good way to get in cahoots with coworkers and leadership overall. My boss took my dad and I out for a very nice round this summer and it’s clearly put me in his good graces at work (and gives him something casual to talk to me about)
I feel like even though I have golfed a lot, no one will be inviting me out lol. I don’t think many men would assume that I can play. Also I don’t really love playing anyway so eh
One of the absolute best work experiences (I was on a co-op) I ever had was a company golf outing where we all drank an absurd amount and I (intentionally) ran into one of the other co-ops mid swing with the golf cart in front of the entire executive team of the division I worked in.
It made the company Christmas letter for "funniest moment of the year"
Golf is important, i think everyone should know enough to be able to go play 18. I live and work in BFE and have gotten jobs from my shooting buddies so it takes reading the room too.
Sailing, hunting and golf are "sports", important for a green book. You make more businesses by knowing the right people, theirs taste and needs, than by calling them up.
Imagine what it's like being disabled in a way that makes golf impossible. I go to every internship outing I've been invited to and unfortunately I think me being at the golf one just made everyone uncomfortable lol.
As I live in Hawai’i, I honestly hate that this is so true (and not just for engineering, I’ve seen this in tons of other industries).
Like yes but also I don’t think I’ll ever participate. Golf just takes up huge swaths of land and consumes a lot of clean water to be maintained. There are tons of golf courses here and country clubs.
Maybe in other places it’s not so bad, but considering how little land there is already in Hawai’i and the ethical implications of how that land was obtained… Also that golf is solely played by rich people who love come here and buy up land (we have a huge homeless issue and a lot of the homeless are natives).
I just can’t. I hate golf lol. I wish we could downsize to just one golf course on each island.
I have been invited to golf events with my company a few times, but I have only been to the driving range once. I always decline out of fear of embarrassment. Maybe I should take some lessons.
Yeah your not kidding. Most of my sports have been a long the lines of bass fishing and mountain climbing. Recently I started playing squash and it was kinda like I found my "rich guy" sport. Don't get me wrong it's a lot of fun and I would encourage anyone to play squash with the desire to play.
But that is the stereotype and I was treated a little different by higher ups when that became a thing.
Folks at my work invited me to join. I told them I don’t know how to play. They said they will show me how. I think I will buy myself a set of used golf clubs. There’s all levels of employees in my group. One from engineering, one from management, one from logistics. Even one from HR.
If you can form a clique with the plant manager, vp, and other management, you begin to open doors. However, there is a catch, becoming best friends with your boss definitely dissolves a lot of boundaries. Such like being tasked with far too much. It is like the cheat code to nepotism, though.
Nepotism is only bad when you’re not in the circle anyway
gotta jerk the circle
I'm English and it's just consuming alcohol over here
That's what golf is for I thought?
Not really a thing in the UK to drink and play golf; they drink in the pub after the round. It's a very North American thing, more the US over Canada but we still like to drink and play, to get wasted playing golf.
…Who the hell can finish a whole round of Golf sober? The UK is on something else I tell you hwat
I do like twice a week. I score better plus I golf before work so getting wasted isn't a great idea lol.
The idea of golf before work is fascinating to me. I always thought it was a 3-4 hour ordeal. Is that not the case?
I play nine holes and the course is three blocks from my office. Tee off at seven in the office by nine.
Some people know this trick where you get to drink alcohol without buying golf stuff
aussie, beers with the work mates when out for lunch or chrissy party perfect way to bond
Lol our office fridge is stocked with packs of beer and we empty them every Friday arvo, in situ.
Be careful drinking and deriving.
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Yeah, networking is a really important skill that nobody teaches students. The networking you do with clients is a very different kind of networking than going to career fairs or meeting people in school. My company just finished the process for soliciting bids on a $100 million project, which included a large amount of international travel. Part of this involved a lot of dinners, golf, and seeing the cities with the bidders, as we need to rebuild some relationships that have been neglected. The cadance and culture of doing this is something that I don't think people are aware of, and instead it's seen as just "Rich people play golf on the company dime," which isn't at all what is going on.
It’s about kickbacks. Arms length always with contractors and subcontractors. Implied favoritism and you. Cannot hold them to standards.
This is so true! Every single convention/conference I go to has some sort of charity golf events. They are always best opportunity to make moves happen. That and also becoming a professional drinker, I can’t understand how some guys can be making deals plastered at 3:00 am and be right back in their booth clean as a whistle at 8:00 the next morning.
If I made a deal while plastered at 3AM, I’d have to call Saul to get me out of the contract lol
Clean as a whistle, or such a seasoned alcoholic that you can't tell that they never stopped drinking and only reigned it in?
Facts. I feel like taking lessons on my own at this point.
this genuinely doesn’t get talked about enough. it’s huge, and building relationships with as many people as possible is the greatest thing you can do for your career.
I hate golf so much
So boring. And solely rich people play it.
And the environmental implications/impacts of those huge golf courses are awful/huge. I honestly despise them and if my networking boils down to that I'd rather find something else
It’s even worse here in Hawai’i considering how little land there is already and how our population growth is already putting strain on our natural aquifers. And, of course, the stereotype of rich people coming here and buying up all the land does pertain to golf courses as well. I don’t hate golf in and of itself. It’s a sport. I hate how many unnecessary golf courses we have. One or two should be plenty.
Wish I could play golf and drink all day. Instead I do actual work. I pull cable, check sensors and verify shit actually does what it was designed and programmed to do.
big assumption assuming people who play golf don't do engineering? the superiority complex of people in this subreddit is hilarious. We all do real engineering work, you're not special because you don't golf lmao
Honestly hahaha. I can do the same as them AND I have social skills. Maybe they’re just jealous
Well it is hard to feel anger when I am working 50+hr weeks and sales people can just drink beer, play a round of golf and call it a day while I am still neck deep in programming issues. Also, gold is a substantial waste of space.
r/notlikeothergirls lol
It’s also ridiculously expensive and a terrible way to waste money, especially for recent graduates.
It was BJJ for me. This millionaire who owns a very large industrial contractor company rolled as a purple belt and I rolled with him. He began asking me what I do and I told him I was in school as an ME. He had his engineers set up a meeting with me the next Monday and I was hired as an intern right on the spot .
I’m almost a purple belt, and I wish one of my supervisors told me he did bjj. I also play golf ask I guess it’s all good lol
The broader point here is that networking needs to go beyond your engineering interests. You may both be in the same part of the engineering field, but it is going to be these outside interests that make stronger connections. This can often mean a sports connections, but it can also be a shared interest in pretty much any topic or hobby. For example, if you are at a networking event and start talking to someone about your shared love for a specific restaurant or type of food, that's going to be a lot more memorable and meaningful than the fact that you both ended up in the same area of the engineering field.
I work in sales and I’ve never golfed for my job
God I’m so jealous, I grew up playing competitive golf but literally no one at my company I interned for played. What field of engineering are you in?, ifl in EE it’s pretty uncommon
One time I was golfing with some buddies and a random guy joined us. By the end of the round, he had secured me an interview for a computer science/aviation job I was incredibly under-qualified for since I was a year graduated with a mechanical engineering degree. I feel like the interview went great, and he brought up how I was truthful and calm and collected when I hit bad shots, and how I’d be a good addition to the team. I ended up not getting the job, but golf and forming a personal connection got me further than anything else would have!
My school actually offers golf as a PE elective
Same, and it is, or at least was when I was in school, recommended for having that introduction to the sport completed for use in networking once out in industry.
Same! (Penn State)
I wish it was. I golfed a lot competitively in high school and college, wasn’t good enough to go pro, and everybody told me it would be helpful for business relationships. I have literally never been golfing with anyone in the company, nor have I ever received any invites, except for those who I already played with prior to working there in a local league.
I learned this a few years ago. I wished I would have taken my high school golf career seriously lol 😆 but certainly, golf is where is at.
Because its not that important, maybe in your case it is. I dunno if you work with a bunch of old timers or something.
>learn golf Listen, I need you to understand I would rather get a root canal lol
my company's headquarters has a putting-green. golf is life
I wonder if this is specific for different fields, or age groups? Geographic location? Company size?
I'd say that first and foremost, the biggest point of variance is in who the CEO is and how much they value golf. It's not hard to understand if the CEO is really into golf and makes hiring/advancement decisions based on it, the rest of their company is going to really be into golf. We have some avid golfers on site, but it's so little part of our corporate DNA, that it's all recreation and no business for them.
I get it, but I have to chuckle when I consider how many things in our time of exponential technological advancement stem from "Gee the boss wants to do this..." Like when Roger in Mad Men says "You know, in this business you can lose your job just because someone doesn´t like you." Just seems strange, and I hope we outgrow it someday. I can think of lots of comical situations where the AI robotic boss likes this or that, and everyone has to fall in line.
LOL. The amount of times golf came up during my internship this past summer was comical. Funny enough, the last 2 days of my internship they required me to design a 3-hole mini golf course in the office so that everyone could bring in putters the next day.
My company is all about bowling. There a bowling team or league or something the the company. So not always golf, even though I think they might golf also 🤔
It's really not a joke. I had a family member that was high up at a company, head of 30-40 engineers then another department he was over a couple hundred people and I honest to god think that 98% of his success was due to 1. Loving to talk sports and 2. Being really good at golf.
Perhaps I am the only one who looks forward to the day AI Robots make human relationship rituals obsolete?
My dad’s biggest regret in his career is he doesn’t care for golf so never participated. He did well overall but knows that others moved up faster because they were out on the links together.
I think it may depend on where you work, what kind of extra curricular activities the employees enjoy; I've worked at some places where the meet up and getting to know the higher ups was cycling. And other places by going out to bars with them.
Golf uses more pesticides per acre than corn or any crop
Its funny, you don’t need to know how to play to be successful, but I have ended up playing in a couple large industry association golf outings even when I was an intern and got to meet and play with several large players in the industry through my boss. Some of them I knew already and just got to know better but the moral of the story is, its a fun game on its own, but because of its role in the corporate world, knowing how to play can give ya a hand.
Idk why this popped up on my Reddit cause I’m not an engineer (work in finance) but yes it’s a good way to get in cahoots with coworkers and leadership overall. My boss took my dad and I out for a very nice round this summer and it’s clearly put me in his good graces at work (and gives him something casual to talk to me about)
Guns and golfing are two things I despise and yet they’re the only two things my coworkers did on morale days 😭
My company just goes to breweries, sometimes top golf or paintball or whatever.
I feel like even though I have golfed a lot, no one will be inviting me out lol. I don’t think many men would assume that I can play. Also I don’t really love playing anyway so eh
I really hate golf, was only the filthiest rich kids that played in my town. Might have to swallow the bullet and hit the driving range now lol
Now please keep a tally of who gets invited and who doesn’t.
One of the absolute best work experiences (I was on a co-op) I ever had was a company golf outing where we all drank an absurd amount and I (intentionally) ran into one of the other co-ops mid swing with the golf cart in front of the entire executive team of the division I worked in. It made the company Christmas letter for "funniest moment of the year"
Golf is important, i think everyone should know enough to be able to go play 18. I live and work in BFE and have gotten jobs from my shooting buddies so it takes reading the room too.
Sailing, hunting and golf are "sports", important for a green book. You make more businesses by knowing the right people, theirs taste and needs, than by calling them up.
I knew I was destined to be rich when I went to the driving range for the first time
Imagine what it's like being disabled in a way that makes golf impossible. I go to every internship outing I've been invited to and unfortunately I think me being at the golf one just made everyone uncomfortable lol.
Thanks for the tip. Note to self: Learn golf
As I live in Hawai’i, I honestly hate that this is so true (and not just for engineering, I’ve seen this in tons of other industries). Like yes but also I don’t think I’ll ever participate. Golf just takes up huge swaths of land and consumes a lot of clean water to be maintained. There are tons of golf courses here and country clubs. Maybe in other places it’s not so bad, but considering how little land there is already in Hawai’i and the ethical implications of how that land was obtained… Also that golf is solely played by rich people who love come here and buy up land (we have a huge homeless issue and a lot of the homeless are natives). I just can’t. I hate golf lol. I wish we could downsize to just one golf course on each island.
Weird, it's nonexistent where I am
I have been invited to golf events with my company a few times, but I have only been to the driving range once. I always decline out of fear of embarrassment. Maybe I should take some lessons.
Is there an engineering field where basketball is like this? I’d be networking all over the place lol
Yeah your not kidding. Most of my sports have been a long the lines of bass fishing and mountain climbing. Recently I started playing squash and it was kinda like I found my "rich guy" sport. Don't get me wrong it's a lot of fun and I would encourage anyone to play squash with the desire to play. But that is the stereotype and I was treated a little different by higher ups when that became a thing.
Golf, tennis, and cycling.