Maybe I am fortunate, but the reason I have been asked this is because my boss wants to know how to groom me. When I stepped into my job, I was asked that and I

Maybe I am fortunate, but the reason I have been asked this is because my boss wants to know how to groom me. When I stepped into my job, I was asked that and I said I want to be pursuing my PhD within 5 years (I just got my MS). So they proceeded to make sure I got research experience so a) I knew what I was getting into (my boss has a PhD in a technical background), b) I was competetitve at getting a scholaship through my job (which i got), and so that I could be competitive at getting accepted (which I did). When I was younger, my previous answer was "I don't know", and I asked what they have typically seen too. It's also okay not to know what you want to do in five years, and ask for help and/or mentoring. When I just got out of college, the very last thing I wanted to do was go back to school. But I was also fortunate to have people help find what motivates me, and how to grow in my career. I say that to say, depending on where you are, your boss is asking you because they geniunely want to help you end up being where you want to be in five years. We also have people who are happy being bench level engineers, so we don't groom them to learn management, and we also have some that want to be technical managers, so we put them in roles so they can learn.