Just my two cents, but you asked for it. I give all young engineers the same basic advice "Follow your gut". If you are religious, pray about it. If not, med

Just my two cents, but you asked for it. I give all young engineers the same basic advice "Follow your gut". If you are religious, pray about it. If not, meditate about it. Either way, the answer will probably be screaming at you in the first minute. Now having said that, I have two more pieces of advice. First, is to see the value in every job along the way. I started out as a hardware engineer, but had this nagging voice telling me I wasn't in the right job. It took a while to realize that my heart was in software. At first I felt like I had wasted career time as a hardware engineer, but then I realized I was much better at certain software problems because of my hardware background than others. If I take inventory of all of my jobs, even from high school, I realize that I have skills to this day that can be traced back to them. Even the ones I absolutely hated. Second, while finding your niche is important, also find the right boss. Bosses have almost as much to do with liking your job than the work itself. I actually think it is harder to find a boss worth working for than finding work I want to do.