The Lumpy Start: Why Rough Years Build the Best Leaders

When Eric Fidler sat down with us on Wisdom at the Wellhead, we asked him the question we ask every guest. How did you get into this industry? And his answer started with two words that stuck with me: "lumpy start."

Eric is a Georgia Tech graduate. But his first year there didn't go the way anyone planned. By the end of it, his mother and father decided he needed to contribute a bit more to his own education. His words, not mine. And the experience he'd built up to that point, working restaurants and amusement parks in New Orleans, wasn't going to get him where he needed to go.

So a friend helped him get a job as an electrician wiring gas turbines for Baker, CAC. That was 1979. When he said that, I just smiled. I'm in the same vintage. I know exactly what it felt like to be that age, in that era, figuring things out with your hands before you had any credentials to your name.

That lumpy start didn't hold Eric back. It launched him. It's where the curiosity started, the discipline took root, and the foundation was poured for a career that would eventually span over a hundred countries.

What Necessity Teaches That Comfort Can't

Here's what I've seen over the years. The people who had to earn their way into this industry tend to carry themselves differently than the ones who walked in through an open door. Not better. Not worse. But differently. There's a steadiness that comes from knowing what it's like when nobody's handing you anything.

Eric didn't just wire what was on the drawing. He was curious. He started asking how things worked. He took equipment apart to understand it. In those days the controls were a mix of pneumatics, hydraulics, and whatever early electronics existed. He didn't have to learn all of that. He chose to. And that choice, made while he was still paying his way through school, is what separated him from every other electrician on that job.

That's what necessity does. It makes you resourceful. It makes you pay attention. It teaches you that the opportunities worth having aren't the ones someone gives you. They're the ones you notice because you're already in the room doing the work nobody else wanted to do.

Curiosity as a Career Strategy

The thing about Eric's story that I keep coming back to isn't the hardship. It's the curiosity. A lot of people could have been in his position, wiring turbines to pay for school, and treated it like a temporary job. Punch in, do the work, punch out, go study. And nobody would have blamed them.

But Eric did something different. He started asking questions. He wanted to know how the turbine actually worked, not just where the wires went. He started taking things apart. That instinct, that refusal to just follow the drawing, is what got him noticed. It's what led to opportunities to tune processes that other people were struggling with. And it's what gave him a deep understanding of how production systems interact with one another.

That understanding carried him from a summer job in Atlanta to leading the design of a complete production facility in China. From wiring gas turbines to advising global operators on edge-to-enterprise automation. The starting point was humble. But the curiosity that started there never stopped compounding.

What This Means for the Next Generation

I think about this a lot when I meet young engineers coming into the industry. Some of them have polished resumes and strong degrees. Some of them worked their way through school the way Eric did. And honestly, the ones I pay the most attention to are the ones who ask questions about things that aren't their job to know yet.

That's the signal. Not the GPA. Not the school. The willingness to take something apart just to understand how it works. That's what tells you someone is going to grow into a leader rather than just fill a role.

Eric's career is proof of that. Nobody looked at a kid wiring gas turbines in 1979 and said, "That guy is going to lead projects in a hundred countries someday." But the foundation was already being poured. The curiosity was already there. The willingness to do hard work in exchange for real knowledge was already there. Everything that came after was built on top of what those lumpy years put in place.

What Eric Fidler's Start Can Teach Today's Leaders

Eric's career path from wiring turbines to directing digital solutions at Sensia wasn't planned. It was built, one question at a time. Here's what that trajectory teaches anyone leading a team or building a company today.

Don't overlook the person doing the unglamorous work. The kid pulling cable or entering data might be your next best engineer if someone takes the time to notice what they're curious about. Eric's career started because he didn't just wire what was on the page. Someone noticed.

Hire for curiosity, not just credentials. Degrees tell you someone finished. Curiosity tells you someone is just getting started. The people who ask "why does it work this way" are the ones who eventually figure out how to make it work better.

Let your people get their hands dirty. Eric's deep understanding of production processes came from being given the opportunity to tune things that weren't working. He learned by doing, not by watching. If you want to develop leaders, give them real problems early and let them work through the difficulty.

Share your own lumpy start. Every experienced leader in this industry has a version of this story. The years that were hard. The jobs that were humbling. The moments that built the foundation for everything that came after. Don't hide those chapters. They're the ones that matter most to the people coming up behind you.

Final Thought

There's something honest about a lumpy start. It doesn't look impressive on paper. It doesn't make for a clean timeline. But it builds something that no degree program and no fast-track management rotation can replicate. It builds the kind of person who knows what things cost because they've paid for them. Who respects the process because they came up through the hard end of it. Who leads with clarity because they earned their perspective the long way around.

Eric Fidler wired gas turbines to help pay for his engineering degree. That's where a career spanning a hundred countries and four decades of automation leadership started. Not in a boardroom. Not in a lab. On a shop floor, with a set of tools and a willingness to learn more than the job required.

If that's how your story started, don't apologize for it. Build on it. That foundation is stronger than anything you could have bought.

If this hit home, you'll want to hear the full conversation.

Join Eric Fidler on Wisdom at the Wellhead as he shares how a lumpy start, relentless curiosity, and decades of hands-on experience shaped one of the most well-traveled careers in oil and gas automation.