How frequent is it for someone to leave the engineering profession 8

[MechanicsGUY]

Some main questions are:

When/if does an engineer choose to leave his/her profession?

Is it common to leave the profession?

Is engineering a profession in which one wishes to ultimately leave?

What experience do you have with colleagues (or yourself) leaving of the field? Do you know individuals who've left
Engineering?

Do you plan to leave the engineering profession one day (for better paying jobs in the financial/medical/legal fields)?


More details:

I work in aerospace and I was shocked when a close colleague of mine left his post to pursue medicine (at 34!). And I was more shocked to learn he was planning on leaving to profession many years ago (he took the required exams two years ago, and has been talking to one of the supervisors about this for ~5 years). He was excited and thrilled to finally leave the field. I suppose engineers have the background and talent to pursue greener pastures so I guess I cannot blame him. Also my brother left engineering to pursue law after about 3 years working in chemical engineering.

This changed my view of the field and I contacted a few old friends I went to college with. I found out they ALL left the engineering field. Mostly they moved into the finance and/or management roles of their current organization, but they were retired from engineering.

 

[tygerdawg]

One of the most useful explanations for this was given by my grad school friend. She said her father had gotten a BSME. Then he realized he didn't want to do that, and pursued a Ph.D. in Psychology and did this for his entire career. Discussing, we agreed that obtaining an Engineering degree uniquely prepares students to be trained problem solvers. My friend's father used that problem solving skill to solve a problem of career unhappiness, I suppose. But the lesson is: all fields need trained problem solvers, and surviving an Engineering curriculum does a pretty good job of providing those essential skills.

Then again, there's the routine of being that trained problem solver in the larger corporate structure. Many times (majority?) it becomes a rut with little hope of advancement or escape. I heard it described once: a good, effective Engineer is just too useful to allow to go into management or other fields within the company.

TygerDawg
Blue Technik LLC
Virtuoso Robotics Engineering

http://www.bluetechnik.com

 

[JohnRBaker]

It happens in all professions, not just engineering, but I suspect that that the percentage is pretty high. Many people don't realize that engineering can be a lot of hard work, maybe not always 'muscle' type work, but hard work in the sense of long hours, extended travel, lower pay, low recognition, etc. I know at least two engineers who ended-up going back to school to be medical doctors and several who went on to law school and became lawyers (in fact many Patent Attorneys start life as Engineers). One of my classmates now manages a 'Dollar General' store in Texas. Another manages commercial real-estate in Tennessee. Right now back at our church in my home town back in Michigan, after working nearly 20 years at GM and after losing his wife, this guy went to the seminary and was ordained a priest and is now the local pastor.

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without

 

[IRstuff]

There may be a number of different reasons; realization that one's current career isn't one's calling is probably the most common. Classical burn-out might be another.

In general, changing careers is probably quite rare; you invest a huge time investment to get good, but changing careers means you start over, mostly from scratch.

I once had an opthamologist who supposedly started as an engineer.

Your question about money is more about you than a profession. Jumping careers in the hope of making more money is generally absurd. You presumably make your best potential salary at the thing you do best. Jumping to a new career absurdly assumes that you will be better at it that those that are already there; you might be better, but it's unlikely.

Your colleague presumably was burned-out or realized that they weren't getting the satisfaction that they wanted from their career. You assumed that your friends from college were meant to be engineers simply because they switched careers. Children are often badgered into choosing majors that they really had no interest in to start with, but were too timid to stand their ground against their parents. That's a huge time waster, if that were the case. I knew I wanted to be an engineer since I was about 14, and stood my ground against my parents (mostly my dad) wanting me to be a doctor, or something else. While I'm not in the discipline I majored in, I'm still an engineer, and still loving it. If you can't say any of that. then perhaps engineering was never really going to be your thing. There's also a lot of pressure on students to major in STEM, but it's no good if you can't get a decent job or you're not suited to it.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg

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[controlnovice]

Every engineer leaves the profession...eventually.

______________________________________________________________________________
This is normally the space where people post something insightful.

 

[moltenmetal]

The most common time for engineers to leave the profession is immediately after graduation.

Have a look at this report:

https://www.ospe.on.ca/public/documents/advocacy/2015-crisis-in-engineering-labour-market.pdf

The chart on p. 6 indicates that per PEO surveys of 4th year engineering students, only about 8% know already in 4th year that they plan to leave the profession for something else.

See the table on p. 8: only about 31% of engineering grads per the last Canadian census, work as engineers. Engineering has the lowest match rate, by far, between education and working in that particular profession, of all the regulated professions. Also interesting on that page is the graph showing how that fraction has changed over time- it's been getting steadily lower over the past 25 years.

See the chart on p.12: a slightly higher fraction of engineering grads with 0-10 yrs of experience are employed as engineers than the average of all experience levels, but it's still only around 35%. So clearly, if 92% of 4th year engineers want to work as engineers, and only 35% are in the profession after 0-10 yrs, most are failing to gain entry to the profession after graduation. The trouble with taking that lateral step right after graduation is pretty simple: an engineering education is seen by employers to have a relatively short shelf life. Few will choose to employ an engineering grad who spent their first five years outside the profession.

Most troubling on that chart on p. 12 is the fraction of engineering grads working in jobs that don't require a university degree of any kind: that fraction is about the same as the fraction working as engineers...

As to people leaving mid-career: I've seen a few, but have no data to offer on that, only anecdotes. Some make lateral steps to pursue a new interest, or because they realized too far into their engineering degree that they wanted to do something else. Others do so in search of a higher reward to risk ratio than engineering offers, frequently entering into undifferentiated "business" or "management". Frankly, with the median teacher's salary in Ontario equal to the median level D (10+ yrs experience) engineer's salary, the motivation to take that lateral step isn't that hard to understand.

 

[truckandbus]

mid-career you pretty much have a good idea you are or are not going to be running the department (if that is what you thought your goal was)

A lot of my contemporaries make use of company funded MBAs to change career paths. A lot of them moved into banking from there.

Many at mid-career go into real estate after they start a family to have more control over their own time

One of my colleagues just came back into engineering as a product manager after exploring over a decade as an entrepreneur - they needed someone with people skills with a technical background

 

[HamburgerHelper]

I don't know anyone that left engineering after getting into it. I had boss that was looking into buying restaurant franchise to have on the side. He eventually started a building inspection company but still does engineering. All the non-engineering engineers I know never got an engineering job after graduating.


A friend of mine who is the most brilliant engineer I know was trying to start up a 3d printing company, which he gave up on after five years. He now works contract while trying to figure out what his next business will be. The odd part of this is that he is extremely technical but none of his past business ideas or ones he is currently mulling over are very technical at all. He enjoys the autonomy of having your own company more than the high tech stuff he might get involved with at a large company.

 

[weldstan]

Many thousands of Engineers are forced out of the profession due to their employers closing offices, going overseas for cheaper engineers, mergers, regional/national/international economic downturns, etc. Engineers should have backup plans just in case.

 

[moltenmetal]

I do personally know quite a few engineers who worked as engineers for a while and then left the profession for "greener pastures", long before retirement. But again I don't have any data on that, just anecdotes.

 

[zeusfaber]

I'm actually looking at a pair at the moment who are just coming back:

- one who left early in his career who left to pursue a childhood dream in military aviation, which turned out to need some skills he had in smaller measure than he thought ("the other left please")

- one who left mid career to become a contracts specialist, now returning because he sees engineering as offering more potential for getting to the top of the greasy pole

and I think both are likely to do quite well.

A.

 

[MikeHalloran]

Howie G was a respected senior mechanical engineer at the shipyard where I worked briefly when I was young and green. I found the MIC bureaucracy stifling and infuriating, and couldn't imagine staying as long as he had. The problem was resolved for me, but that's another story.

One fine day Howie announced that he was leaving the company, to help build a lobsterboat, and then to crew on the lobsterboat.

I didn't understand his decision then. I do now.



Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

 

[gendna2]

Based on my limited experience, there is completely leaving the engineering realm and then there is not being a "real engineer".

As someone said on here, only about 50% of engineers do technical work, i.e. design work. I'll venture to guess that also includes the engineers who actively supervise the designers.

The other 50% are managers or paper pushers of one sort or another. Whether they manage a manufacturing process, manage construction, manage government organizations that do research, construction, acquisition of technical items, etc... These are roles that require an engineering degree, and for good reason, but involve little "real engineering".

I have never met anyone who completely left engineering, i.e. went into a purely financial job, or decided to go into medicine, or went to the military in a non-engineer coded billet. Effectively speaking, I have met hordes of engineers who got the degree, did not like real engineering, and decided to leverage that degree as much as possible.

Especially when it comes to a really broad degree, like mechanical engineering, this seems to happen much more often.

At the end of the day, you need everyone on a team to make things happen. You need the hyperspecialized technical engineer, the upper manager of the requisitioning organization, and everyone else in between.

Ironically, or maybe not...unless you are a renown "hyper-specialist" or at the top echelon of your design firm...you will probably make the most money if you go down the management track and have great leadership abilities...which are intangible, but whose results are real and hard to duplicate. Just go to any name brand American university and you will see hundreds of number crunchers in the making, including a large amount of foreigners...but you wouldn't want to hire half these folks for more than just number crunching...and even there you may have some "personality" issues.

Of course, most of of this does not apply to computer science...one of the last remaining fields where the "number cruncher" at a top company can break 100K after a year of work. That whole field will eventually implode...but that's another matter and another opinion.

 

[HamburgerHelper]

100k is a lot or a little depending where you live. In engineering, you can break that pretty quickly if you are willing to travel.

 

[KENAT]

100% of Engineers leave the engineering profession eventually.

Posting guidelines faq731-376

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

(probably not aimed specifically at you)
What is Engineering anyway: faq1088-1484​

 

[IRstuff]

"one of the last remaining fields where the "number cruncher" at a top company can break 100K after a year of work."

;-) Actually, that's the starting salary at a lot of Silicon Valley companies, not counting the signing bonus... There are also other perks that add additional value -- 3 squares a day, on-site gym, on-site doctor, on-site child care, etc.

Previous surveys show that few engineering graduates are actually employed as engineers. Now, there are obvious arguments about "definitions," etc., but see:

http://www.theatlantic.com/educatio...-the-science-and-engineering-shortage/284359/

http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2015/article/stem-crisis-or-stem-surplus-yes-and-yes.htm

http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/education/the-stem-crisis-is-a-myth

As I mentioned earlier, there may be non-educational factors at work, but there are also actual educational factors that I've observed, which is that many schools or students are woefully bad, but manage to get the Cs that get the degrees. Certainly, companies are generally more interested in hiring the A and B students, so where do the C students go? Anecdotally, I've seen that at the high school level; some schools proudly boast of 60+% passing rates (3 or higher out of 5) on AP tests, but that kind of sucks compared to a school where 90% getting 5s is a bad year. The latter would be a college prep "factory" that cookie stamps everyone into highly competitive college applicants, but the same analogy holds, i.e., compare UC Berkeley School of Engineering vs. any other school not in the top 200 schools. I had an applicant who I asked to figure out the threshold of a TTL gate; they were unable, but I showed them how they should have done it. At the end of the day, 5 of us got together and it turned out that 3 of us asked the EXACT same question, AND provided them the same answer, so even though they got the answer twice, they still couldn't answer the question. The kicker is that this individual supposedly had a 4.0 GPA from a school who shall remain nameless to protect the guilty. That person was barely qualified to be a technician, and we rejected them, much to the consternation of our sister division that attempted to foist them on us.

So, I think that there are a LARGE number of ill-prepared BS engineering graduates who probably shouldn't have been (ill-prepared or BS engineering). My school used to at least weed out wanna-be physicists in Physics 1, and my room mate, who was one of those, wound up in EngLit.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg

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[dcheck]

I have seen so many engineers change their life to a complete different field.There always have reasons to leave what they used to field.One,if it is the most,they could not find their passion towards the area any long!They are so familiar with the problem solved method.No challenge at all.Or they are so many challenges could not solve with themself effort.It is a system shortage.Second reason,maybe is the working time is so long!

 

[gendna2]

Good points. I'll go a little off topic here, but hey it's the internet...

In response to IR Stuff and the threshold of a TTL gate; here is some food for thought when hiring engineers and just engineering education in the US.

1. I have no idea what a TTL gate is, but I'm civil, haha.

2. Engineering education sucks. Period, end of story. It's awful...you could not get worse teachers if you tried. These so called "professors" are just hyper specialized, hyper intelligent, research bots spitting out papers that nobody reads, and nobody uses...except that they percolate into my building codes and make them more complicated. This country hit its peak of infrastructure development in the 30s-50s without any of their research, without SE licenses required for more and more structures, without all this computer software, without 200+ page buildings codes, without, without, without... They wore suits, didn't know how to program computers, knew how to communicate, were practical, and come to think of it, we had a real economy, but that's another tangent...

These "professors" are awful, God-awful at teaching. Oh, and the mathematics and pure science professors are worse. Oh, and the foreign professors who are becoming more prevalent, are even worse. The ones from Eastern Europe usually set new lows...Chinese professors are not good, but also don't care so much about punishing the "stupid" American students.

The "smart" morons in charge of engineering education constantly push more and more crap into the curriculum; meaning that Johny has been bombarded with so much knowledge that he can't do anything well. I know people who still cannot execute a perfect shear and bending moment diagram but are taking pie in the sky theoretical mechanics courses.

3. The only places where engineering education might not suck, are at small engineering schools, i.e. Rose Hulman type places, or maybe a place like West Point. The only difference between Berkeley and Southern Kentucky University (I made that up, don't get offended, Kentucky is a highly developed state with great schools and an economy more dynamic than California's) is that Berkeley students have a higher IQ due to higher entrance standards, and are punished with more work and stress. The education might be better in Kentucky, the difference in pedagogy is certainly minimal and not worth any real salary premium. It's just that the Berkeley product should take more stress and working hours before he/she mentally breaks down.

4. Bottom line; hire based on attitude, references, and appearance. If Johny can figure out the TTL gate threshold, but lives like a slob, is anti-social, can't communicate, acts like a gnome, or maybe just comes off as a know it all a-hole...I'd rather take the dumber kid. The dumber kid is still trainable and will probably not get bored with the work and remain loyal to the company. It doesn't mean there aren't those candidates who have it all, and maybe a TTL gate threshold is a really basic aerospace concept, but just remember, the common denominator for most engineers is a really, really, really poor education.

Finally, my high school teachers, paid half as much as these professors, and putting up with way more b.s., were head, shoulders, hills, and mountains above these so called "professors". I'd fire half of them tomorrow and just tell them to go build themselves a research institute where they can syphon money from the DoD and DoE and NSC in order to research their useless b.s. and then hire folks with real world experience, BS and MS degrees, and have them teach us the basics.

Angry, you bet I am. You would be too when paying 10K+ a semester for a garbage product, not to mention living expenses. That's life...right...

 

[appot]

gendna2, I kind of superficially agree with you.

University is what you make of it:
For example, if a professor rapidly clicks through powerpoints every lecture, then you need to take the initiative to read your textbook on your own time, work out practice problems, and go to office hours. If you can learn the theory in your fundamental courses, then you should be able to apply those fundamental principles to real world engineering problems. In addition to this, internships are a great way to supplement your classroom theory with real engineering. (During my undergrad I had plenty of time to take 4 to 5 courses per semester, have an internship (15 to 20 hours per week), study, and drink.)

The whole "you need to attend a Top X School (let x=10 or 20 or 50) if you want to get anywhere in life" is extremely annoying to me, but it is prevalent in many (all?) fields: medicine, law, engineering, business, etc. If I went to a top 11 school and was interviewing against a candidate that went to a top 3 school, I want to believe that the schools would not even come into consideration. But if they did, I wouldn't want to work for a person that puts faith in school rating systems.

Now to try to segway at least a little bit back to the original topic...

There are a lot of topics that I learned in University that I have never directly used in my professional career:
[ul]
[li]Derivatives[/li]
[li]Integrals[/li]
[li]Eigen Values[/li]
[li]Principle of Virtual Work[/li]
[li]Rutherford–Bohr model[/li]
[li]Slope Deflection Method[/li]
[li]Simple Harmonic Motion[/li]
[li]Atomic Packing Factor[/li]
[li]Conjugate Beam Method[/li]
[li]Kinematics[/li]
[li]I have also never had to solve the notorious "beam with a hinge" (the beam that is statically determinant, but would be indeterminate if it weren't for the hinge)[/li]
[li]etc[/li]
[/ul]

(side note: I think it would be fun to have a thread to see how long we can make a list like this. Granted everybody's list will be different, but maybe we could find a few topics that are consistent across the board)

Even with all of these unused topics, I do not feel that school was a waste of time. In my opinion, I see many young engineers that are turned-off that the daily grind of an engineering office is not like academia. They want to use the theories and techniques that they spent the last 4 years learning. I don't blame them, I would love to have a job that more fully encompassed my engineering curriculum. I personally take joy every time I remember a simple theory or equation and am able to use it to solve a seemingly more complex problem.

 

[gendna2]

I agree with you completely appot, every single point. I even like theory just the way you described it, no kidding. I've been working for a while myself, have the license...to kill, haha... and have the BS degree so I have a decent idea of what's really out there. Ultimately, just like you, I still believe school is worth it, and engineering is cool.

My gripe is that nothing seems to improve over time and it is undoubtedly getting worse. The sustainability fad, soft science in the engineering curriculum coupled with extremely difficult courses, awful teachers, pointless research, and of course, astronomical tuition rates.

We can easily, easily, do better than this.

Instead of making engineers that are "brilliant at the basics" we are making engineers that can't do a thing exceptionally well. Not only that, but they come out with no ability to use the software in their particular fields either.

We have professional societies that hem and haw about STEM, and promoting STEM, and then you get to college and these courses are awful, the classes are overcrowded, we're educating more foreigners than American students...I mean, wtf!

It's such a weird society we live in too. On one side of the street you might have a neighborhood where the students will never even touch basic calculus and struggle with y=mx+b...and on the other, some professor is teaching things that 0.00001% of the population can fathom.

I'll leave the topic with this picture. The land grant colleges were set up to teach mechanical, agricultural, and military science. You look at those men who led these schools from the 1860s to the 1920-1930s...and my gut tells me they would be appalled at where their institutions are now.

P.S. I meant NSF, not NSC in my earlier post. Funny how American tax payer dollars, often via a military pipeline, are funding the PhDs of hundreds of Chinese students while our own DoD is head over heels into the antagonistic South China Sea rhetoric. Funny how these schools, with very liberal administrators, have no problem taking the military's money, while simultaneously lambasting a strong DoD. When will we collectively pull our heads out of our buts and get our business straight?

Ok, enough ranting. Feel free to flame me...delete my post, haha...if it's got too much complainin' and too much negativity. Let me also say that I have nothing against foreign students either, honestly. My Chinese comments are just there to show how our country's policies are illogical and incongruous.