Junior Rotating Equipment Engineer

[Venkat162]

I am working as a rotating equipment engineer with a reputed engineering company in India for 2 years. Would like to seek some industry expertise on below queries. 1) What is the ideal growth rate (career wise as well as money wise) ; 2) Minimum experience required to work abroad? 3) How easy to get a job in US / Europe in comparison with Middle East? 4) What is the expected knowledge level and equipment handled from a 2 year experience person? Kindly provide your views.

 

[jpankask]

I am in US, and have no experience working outside the US. 1) My ideal is; as large as possible. This question is really highly personal. A lot depends on where you want your career to grow to (i.e. engineering, management), as well as whether you want to use your career to expand to other areas (politics), etc. 2) There is no minimum experience requirement to work abroad, if you can find a company to hire you. You best chances of this is finding a company in your country that has offices abroad and work for them. It will be more difficult to get a job for a company in a different country (see #3). 3) I don't know about Europe, but it is not an easy thing to get a job in the US, if your citizenship is in another country. The company has to sponsor a visa for you, which includes proving why the company cannot fill the position with a US citizen. These visas are typically filled with people who are attending university in the US, thus are already in the US, which puts you at further disadvantage. 4) answers will be all over the board on this one, but you should have a good introductory working knowledge of your expertise at the 2 year point and know enough to know when you need to ask questions.

 

[someguy79]

I'm in the US and agree with jpankask for most of his points. Whether or not the added difficulties of working abroad are worthwhile, that's really subjective.

I have done a bit of work in Saudi Arabia. It's quite different than working in the US. Work cultutre, expectations, pay, and lot of other stuff is hard to compare.
I earned quite a bit more money there than I could at home, though the hours and social opportunities were not great. I also noticed that people of equal skill and knowledge from different areas were paid differently. I think I was making considerably more money than my Mexican, Indian, and Pakistani counterparts.

Watch out for companies that will force you to submit your passport to them while you're abroad. It's actually fairly common in some places, though I haven't seen it in the US. To me that's really unnerving. I don't like to feel forced into work arrangements.

Good luck in your search.