Advice to Rocket Scientists: A Career Survival Guide for Scientists and Engineers (Library of Flight)

The wisdom of the author should reach much wide audience beyond rocket scientists. The best time to read this book is when you are entering a grad school in any field where your work requires some cooperation of or collaboration with other students, staff, or people from outside institutions, but I think it is never too late to read it. I came across this book because one of my former roommate had it when I had hard time with my boss. I borrowed it and read it through quickly, but later I decided to buy a copy myself.I had my years in a doctorate program in brain science. The labs are filled with politics, not of the scale discussed in this book, but lots of small politics related to shared equipment, facility, building maintenance people, etc., as well as resources like technician time. The worst of all, many professors are very poor leaders and they lack effective management skills. Also, if you read this book and look around in your institution, you'll get a very good sense of which professors are better bosses, because this book gives you strong suggestions of what kind of human qualities to look for, and you'll be surprised how few professors are good bosses. When you're starting a project, everyone looks like a nice person. It is when you have difficult challenges (for which your boss has no idea) that separates good bosses from bad ones.If you want to achieve something, you need pragmatic skills including the kind of politics described in this book, combined with common sense understanding of human nature.

"Short, Sweet, and To the Point" is the best way I could describe this book. I would recommend it to all aerospace or aeronautical engineers, whether a student or a seasoned vet in the field. In my opinion, its a great nightstand book because the chapters are very short. You can easily read 2 - 3 chapters in 5-10 minutes. Again, short and to the point. It contains an abundance of useful information for your early or upcoming career. If I were an advisor or professor, I would require that all my 4th year students read the book.

This is a very fun and informative read for anyone that is pursuing a degree and/or career path. It takes only a few hours to read and is written in such a way that the author seems to be having a conversation with you. I highly recommend this book!

Overall I give this book a "thumbs up", but there were several passages where the author came across as overbearing and pompous. It seemed the reader was being shouted at rather than advised. The good outweighed the bad, so I do recommend it to all you "new hires" out there.

Gave this book to my daughter, a recent college graduate, who has recently begun a job in aerospace. She found that the information contained in in was an accurate description of reality. She enjoyed the humor.

"Advice to Rocket Scientists" is an excellent guide to wading through your aerospace engineering career. It dwells on numerous tips for those in industry and for those in the academia.I'd recommend it to other engineering disciplines too.

Has useful information for some students, as it does not cover all cases that students are in. Useful advice are cleared laid out in the chapters

I recommend this book to all new engineers joining our group. Don't forget the Golden Rule guys.

I work in the field and I really do believe I have wasted my money. I find that the book is extremely light on content and that the tips are not particularly exclusive to the space/rocket engineering industry. Most chapters are 2 to 3 pages long. Chapter 3=10lines!If you are early-career, you probably have already learned most of the skills described in this book.If you are changing fields, I can tell you that 'career survival' skills are generic and you won't gain too much from this book.When I started out in engineering I was given the book 'How to be a Star at Work: 9 Breakthrough Strategies You Need to Succeed' by my employer and I think your money is better spent on a meaty book similar (not necessarily the same) to that one.