Career Advice - Commercial/Residential 2

[Ashke15]

Hello fellow engineers. I'm here seeking some perspective and/or advice on career paths in the field of structural engineering. I'll try to make this as short as I can.

I feel that I am currently at a crossroads in my engineering career. For the first 8 years of my career I worked at a small firm in SoCal that only did engineering for residential structures (90% custom homes and 10% small multi-family). I quit three years ago to start my own firm doing the same type of residential work. I am extremely detail-oriented (I LOVE drawing construction details, probably too much) and I am a perfectionist, so with each year that goes by I feel less and less cut out for residential work. There are many things about residential work that gnaw at my perfectionism: the magical load paths we often use, the inability to mathematically prove that many of the standard residential construction methods actually work, contractors not even looking at my plans, being asked to approve wild deviations from the plans that can't be easily remedied, the list goes on. I have a notion that most if not all of these annoyances would disappear if I was involved in commercial/education/industrial work instead of residential. However, I haven't had any experience at all in those areas so maybe I'm way off....which brings me to my next point...

As I said, I've only done residential work up to this point of my career. IMO I am the best in my geographical area when it comes to that type of work due to my obsession with detail. BUT...I don't feel like a REAL engineer since I only do residential. SEAOC hosts conferences that I attend to maintain my license, but the vast majority of what they talk about there goes way over my head. They talk about huge and amazing projects that they worked on. They rarely talk about residential concerns because, well...that's a lesser kind of engineering, it's not REAL engineering. These conferences are always depressing for me because it makes me feel incompetent in my own field, a field I've been in for 11 years! If I was asked to engineer even just a simple, 5-story rectangular office building...yeah there's no way I could do that. I'm not experienced with that type of construction, I don't know what kind of software would be used for such a project, I wouldn't know how to use the software anyway, and I've got no one checking my work. All of that makes me sad.

So right now I am grappling with two trains of thought that I am sure are not 100& true, and maybe aren't even half true.
THOUGHT 1: Residential work is a joke. It's pseudoscience. It's FAKE engineering and it's LAME. My obsession with detail is a complete waste since the other guys aren't doing it, and no one will appreciate it except for me. I should be embarrassed to be a residential engineer.
THOUGHT 2: Commercial work is REAL engineering and it's EXCITING. It's mathematically provable. My attention to detail would be appreciated. I would feel pride in the projects that I work on.

Besides the actual work itself, everything about working for myself has been great: Being my own boss and working the hours that I want. Ideally I wish I could keep doing what I'm doing and learn REAL engineering on my own. But I don't think it's possible to learn how to do it on my own. I feel like I'd need to go work at a big firm to learn the construction, the software, and the process. That would mean giving up everything I've worked to build up for myself.

Do any of you who have worked in both commercial and residential engineering have any thoughts on this? Do any of you who run your own firm have any thoughts? Is my perfectionism and dissatisfaction with the pseudoscience of residential engineering better suited for commercial work? Is commercial work actually mind-numbingly boring as a couple of my friends have told me? Is it worth bailing on my own firm to work at a big firm that engineers fancy arenas and office buildings? When they have the grand opening of the new basketball arena that I helped work on will I feel pride in it, or will it be just another project I worked on? I know that you can't possibly answer all of these questions for me, but I would love to hear your thoughts and the wisdom of your experience. Thank you so much for your time.

 

[jerseyshore]

Personally I've never felt one subset of structural engineering more engineer-y than any other.

phamENG made a great point above. Just because house design has been engineered down to a science doesn't mean the underlying engineering isn't there. It just means we get to save a ton of time and use proven construction methods to get jobs finished quicker.

Sometimes it's hard to appreciate all of those details in residential construction when you're designing something new.

But I know for a fact since I do it a ton that you will absolutely appreciate it doing inspections of existing houses. Inspections, evaluations, repairs, it keeps residential interesting and not so tedious. Everyday is problem solving that highlights why those little fastening details actually do matter.

 

[Ashke15]

But I wouldn't hate my life if I just knew wood and could make money from that.

From what you and everyone else is saying it appears that I just need to make my peace with a few things in my career. It just bothers me that my structural engineering skills cover only a tiny portion of the field of structural engineering. I was recently watching a basketball game in a local high school gym (maybe 200' x 100' footprint, 25' tall ceiling, steel roof trusses, CMU block wall) and looking around I thought about how depressing it was that I don't have the slightest idea how I'd go about engineering a simple rectangular building like this.

 

[milkshakelake]

You seem to have a big case of FOMO (fear of missing out) and possibly a little bit of ego, like you're meant for far greater heights. The thing is, I've never seen ego do a single positive thing for anyone. I hope I don't offend you, just some tough love. The best way is to let go of that ego (if I'm right about that; I'm no psychologist) and advance your career anyway. You get the positive benefits and none of the negative drawbacks.

Making peace with your station in life isn't just a mental shift; you can actively do things to change your profession or life, because your mind is telling you that you're unfulfilled. I don't think working under someone doing cool structures is the right way to go about it for someone who has already made the jump to working solo. Others commenters have made some suggestions about projects you can pursue, and I suggest real estate development. Another idea is straight up business development. Market yourself, eventually hire employees, and you'll open new doors to a different learning process than just engineering. Entrepreneurship is a deep, endless rabbit hole unto itself and can bring lots of fulfillment in your professional life.

 

[Ashke15]

and possibly a little bit of ego, like you're meant for far greater heights

Have you been talking about me with my wife....? No offense taken, I appreciate this assessment and think it's valid. I have always wanted to know everything, understand everything completely, and be good at everything. So not knowing anything about a vast majority of my chosen career field is a big hit to the ego. People who know that I am an engineer seem to think that engineers know everything, so when they say things like "Ashke15 could figure it out, he's an engineer!" I'm crying on the inside while I say "yeah totally hehe....."

 

[RPGs]

You are doing youraelf a disfavor by counting yourself out of "being able to figure it out". You can figure it out. You do every day.

 

[BrentG]

Third fork: grow your operation (ensuring new members have necessary skills and experience) and become the larger shop that can do larger projects.

This has been my experience. My first job out of uni was to work for a one man shop. We did everything: it was glorious! Residential, Commercial, Institutional, Mobile Equipment, Industrial, etc. A lot of small & medium projects and some large ones. The benefit of being in a smaller center was that anyone needing engineering came to us.

We had a 40 year gap in age, and our strengths complemented each other well. We grew to about 10 staff and then were acquired by a larger firm.

focus on choosing clients much more rewarding than choosing types of projects.

This is the best advice in the thread. I've worked with good welders and good carpenters, that's more rewarding than the size of the project.

 

[Sam_G]

I have been a structural engineers for over 30 years and have worked in the areas of residential / commercial / marine structures / mining structures / Industrial structures. I would also call myself a bit of perfectionist too and enjoy drawing up complex details. I feel that Ashke15 should take a risk and try another branch within structural engineering to try it out. He is only a quarter of the way through his career and there is so much more that can be learnt in different areas within structural engineering. Admittedly this likely means working in a larger company under other parties but its a risk worth taking to progress his career. You will never know if you don't try. After 33 years I am still doing new things in engineering that I have never seen before and that kinda makes life interesting.