📊 Engineering Trends of 2023 & Gearing up for 2024

🎅🏻 The new year is almost upon us - how will you make it a great one?

It’s the last week of the year! What are YOU doing to finish the year strong?

Right now is a great time to invest in relationships, take space to read or learn new things, and reflect on the year behind and what we want to create for the year ahead.

Here’s to all the lessons we learned in 2023, and to creating an amazing 2024!

In today’s newsletter:

• 📊 Engineering trends from 2023

• 🎁 Identifying your values for the new year

• 🎄 How to have your best year ever

• 🔥 Hot Job – GenAI Engineer

Read time: 7 min

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Top 5 Mechanical Engineering Trends from 2023

As we look back on the year, here are 5 trends as identified by the University of Texas 5 trends as identified by the University of Texas

1. 🚗 More Electric Vehicles. Between government regulations, consumer demand, and technology availability, electric vehicles seem to be the way of the future. Does this mean the end of internal combustion engines?If it does, then more engineers need to be able to contribute to solving some of the limitations of electric vehicles such as slow charging and limited driving range.

2. 🖨️ 3D Printing and Additive Manufacturing. This keeps getting more and more popular, and not just for prototyping. Additive manufacturing is being used for production processes for everything from small sensors to spaceships. And the market for 3D printing is expected to grow beyond $50 billion by 2028.

3.  🧑‍💻 Simulations and Digital Twins. A digital twin is a virtual model of a real-world object. You can use sensors to relay real-time data to monitor performance and achieve peak efficiency. Running simulations can help refine designs as well. This technology is widely used in automotive, construction, and healthcare industries, but it’s probably only going to increase as time goes on.

4.  🤖 Artificial Intelligence. AI has dominated headlines and enthralled people around the world with its possibilities. But the impact in engineering is much more than just Chat GPT. Automation, safety, efficiency, and more can be influenced by AI and free up engineers to apply their expertise to more pressing and complex challenges.

5. 🏭 Connected Manufacturing. More and more manufacturing machines and processes are getting connected to the internet. Doing so can help engineers better improve maintenance procedures, operational efficiency, and supply chain planning. We have better technology coming to collect, store, and process all of the data coming through. So called “Smart Factories” will become the norm rather than the exception.

Focus on your values as you head into the new year

The word "authenticity" gets used a lot these days. But what does it really mean?

One powerful way to live an authentic life is by living your values.

When you identify your core values - the beliefs and principles you want to live by - then they become a guide and a filter for all decisions in your life. Career, relationships, family, community - you have an opportunity to build these aspects of your life in alignment with the values you want to live by.

Whether you realize it or not, you make hundreds and maybe thousands of decisions every day. 

When to get up, what to wear, how you talk to your partner/spouse, how you interact with your children, what to eat, what to write in that email - decisions happen moment by moment.

But recognize - the decisions you make are a reflection of your values and beliefs.

It may be obvious, but in order to live a value-based life, you must first identify your values. If you don't, your values will get lost in all of our many distractions, self-talk, to-do lists, and the day-to-day tasks you need to get done. So write them down!

When you put pen to paper (or type them out), you are making them explicit, thus separating them from the thoughts in your head. You make them important in your life!

So if you have never done this, please take the time to make your values explicit.

Once you have your values identified, write short definitions for each of them. Definitions that are meaningful to you.

In this section you’ll find the latest jobs as featured on:

jobs.interestingengineering.com

• What is Career Clarity and Why is it Important?

• World’s largest electric cable close to power, could light 1.4 million homes

• This high-speed signal processor analyzes 400,000 images simultaneously

• This new ultra light textile with high insulation is inspired by polar bears

• World's first Generation IV nuclear reactor gets operational in China

📚 BOOK RECOMMENDATION

This is the perfect book to help you dial in your goals and aspirations heading into a new year!

In Your Best Year Ever, Hyatt shares a powerful, proven, research-driven system for setting and achieving your goals.

In Your Best Year Ever, Hyatt shares a powerful, proven, research-driven system for setting and achieving your goals.

• What's holding you back right now

• How to overcome your past set­backs

• The seven attributes of effective goals

• How to quit-proof your goals

• The role of habits in personal achievement

• What to do when you feel stuck

• And much more