How Do EEs Freelance?

[kontiki99]

I'm a school trained EE that's been in aviation for most of my working life.

Unfortunately airlines aren't technical companies, they usually have technical divisions, but for the most part, its all about selling transportation.

Engineers are usually regarded as overhead. Most airlines are involved in a race to the bottom with regard to compensating engineers.

So, if I decided to transition into a small business, what's out there in the commercial field for an EE. I don't see myself writing free lance code.

 

[stanier]

I suggest that you need to take your skills and diversify. The industry that you are in sounds too confined. To run a business you will need a variety of opportunities. Take a look at where you want to be in five years and map out a plan.

You dont say how long you have been in the business. If you have been working a long time then you are probably financially secure and can leap to anything. If you are only a few years out then you can afford to fail and start again. The problem comes in those difficult years of having a wife, mortgage, car load, aspirations, school and university fees etc etc.

 

[Drazen]

stanier is right, aviation businees seems to be high-tech but narrow.

it won't hurt you, for sure, if you go out to work on several projects as a co-operator to some indenpendent engineer. no matter how much experience you have, that wil give you some broader view and exact feel where are you in terms of wide-range engineering.

if you see that you can handle stuff easily, you can switch to indenpendent business. if not, you will exactly know what do you need too fill "gaps" in experience. that is fool-proof system!