Lots of great comments already... here's what I'll throw in...
- Your manager(s) will play a huge role in both your development and satisfaction. Best guy I ever had was the owner of a small motor rebuild and consulting company in my hometown. His way of doing things was to throw a pile of parts at an older guy (who had never stepped foot in an engineering classroom) and I, say "This ought to get you started, let me know if something comes up," and then let the two of us have at it. Invariably something would turn out missing, and we'd go asking "Have you ever heard of a gadget that does x," and he'd be like "Yeah, you're looking for ...., here's a catalog." Alternatively the worst guy (at a much larger company) basically plopped me in a chair with a set of owner's manuals and login credentials, and had the one other local guy help me get familiar with it all.
- During interviews, ask questions about the actual role, not just the title. Ironically enough, both jobs I just mentioned had the title "Application Engineer," but hooo boy were the responsibilities different. The first, obviously, was building things to accomplish a task. Lots of fun, lots of learning, but as the economy continued dragging after dot-com, the work dried up. The second, although the interview contained engineering and design questions, turned out to be little more than answering email from sales reps going "Can I use product A to satisfy customer request B," or customer support questions like "My system has fault code K, what does it mean?" (when that code is clearly described in the user's manual, along with what to do about it). That second job killed my engineering spirit, and 15 years later it still has never truly recovered.
- Being only a year out of college, you probably don't have a spouse or children yet, so now's the time to take those travel-intensive roles if you're at all interested in that sort of thing. Once there are little ones involved, and especially after they reach junior high/high school (with the concomitant activities), your ability to hop on a plane and travel somewhere for three days with zero warning is pretty much gone.
- You've already been warned about job hopping, but by the same token, think about what sort of benefits you'll want in 10-15 years, and if your company offers those things to people with that degree of tenure. Using paid time off as an example, how generous is the accrual at that stage? Do they make it hard to use very large chunks (say, a three-week tour of Japan-Korea-China)? Will they buy back unused hours (could be a great holiday bonus), carry them over, or send them to /dev/null? If the non-monetary compensation doesn't line up with your goals, then jumping could be in your best interest after all.
