Mechanical Engineering Careers with Good Work/Life Balance 15

[familyman731]

Since I graduated college with my ME (about 3.5 years ago) I have been working in manufacturing as a production engineer. The deeper I get into it, the more it seems long, inconsistent hours are a core part of this field. Most projects can't really move past the planning/quoting/etc phase except outside of production hours, but simultaneously, you are required to be available to support production during the day (and possibly night if working at a 3 shift operation). On top of that, if a major piece of equipment goes down and maintenance can't figure out what is wrong, you are stuck troubleshooting it until it is back up and running, regardless of how late that ends up being.

My primary goal entering engineering was to enter a career where I could make enough money to support my family, but to also be able to be there for my family. As long as they are taken care of, I would rather have more time with them than fatten my paycheck a little more.

I know not all engineers face this problem, though it does not seem to be uncommon even outside of PE. Can anyone point me in the direction of a good career path I can start on as an ME that has little to no overtime requirements (preferably 5 hrs/week or less)? Obviously, I'd rather not have to start from square one, but at this point, I'd be willing to have to take a few steps back to get my career going in the right direction.

 

[RVAmeche]

In my opinion, work should not be the only thing in your life. He's asking for a job that doesn't involve a ton of OT like production typically does. Consulting or other areas generally fit that description. Every job has things that come up and need to get done on time; I doubt he's saying he can never deal with staying late to meet deadlines.

I know production engineers who've worked six 10-hr days for 3 weeks straight during an outage. It's not unreasonable to try to get out of that if you have higher priorities than work.

 

[D Scullion]

I started in design engineering and have experience in production and in quality control before returning to design engineering and consultancy. Taking all factors such as over-time, work life balance, money, enjoyment, freedom etc into consideration, production and quality were the worst.

I gave this quite a bit of thought when I was shifting my focus back to design engineering and determined that, for me anyway, the difference was frequency of deadlines: In production and quality control, product had to go out the door every day - daily, often hourly deadlines meant you had to act immediately to fix problems, whatever that took. "I was in late yesterday so I am going home early today" doesn't cut it if the product still isn't moving.

In design engineering my deadlines have been weeks, months, in one case even 2 years apart. Of course there are milestones and sub-deadlines and everything that goes along with keeping a project on track but there is generally more flexibility to say "I need to knock off early today but Ill make it up next week". In truth, the most overtime I ever worked on average was with the 2 year design project but the flexibility and I guess a certain amount of predictability made it much more acceptable.

So my advice is look for a role that works with longer projects timescales and fewer, farther apart deadlines. You won't get a fulfilling well paid job in engineering with low hours, especially not with your low experience, even 2 out of 3 can be hard to find so flexibility is key

Declan Scullion CEng

http://www.leandfm.com

 

[IRstuff]

There's always a level of risk in any action/inaction. Someone who consistently puts in no more than the minimum required effort may have trouble with both performance reviews and layoffs. Always putting in the extra effort may or may not buy you any additional job security, so you need to be flexible and determine how you will be graded. As with being chased by a bear, you don't need to be the fastest, just faster than the ones that'll get eaten.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
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[familyman731]

I am fully aware there will be a give and take with this transition.

@D Scullion, you hit the nail on the head. I don't necessarily have an issue with OT itself, mainly the unpredictable nature of OT in PE. Having worked on both sides of the fence, do you have any suggestions how I can smoothen this transition? I've only worked in a production environment since graduation. Are there things I can be doing now to prepare myself to work in design? How would you recommend I (for lack of a better term) "sell" my manufacturing experience when applying for design jobs?

 

[Maui]

If a more predictable work schedule with little overtime requirements is your goal, a position in R&D would probably meet these requirements.

 

[familyman731]

Thank you for the suggestion Maui! R&D is definitely a route I've been interested in. It seems like there are a lot of different directions you can go with it so I haven't been able to see a clear path to get there, especially with just a Bachelor's. I've thought about working on my Master's to improve my odds with this, but an unpredictable work schedule makes it pretty difficult to get to classes consistently. If you have any suggestions on breaking into this field, I'd be very interested to hear them!

 

[D Scullion]

Your manufacturing experience is a massive advantage but not all Design Engineering departments fully appreciate that yet. I work independently now, basically providing coaching for Engineers who are missing that experience and helping to bridge that skills and experience gap for the companies who do appreciate the value of manufacturing experience. IME when companies do realise the value of manufacturing experience in their Design Eng department, they never look back, it either becomes an essential criteria in recruitment or graduates recruited without manufacturing experience are given over-alls and put on the factory floor for a month.

So I wouldn't worry about trying too hard to sell your manufacturing experience, for the right company it will sell itself. You need to focus more on finding the right companies. Generally speaking I find that if a company has a dedicated Production Engineering department then they do not see the value in manufacturing experience in their Design Eng dept - they don't need it because the PE dept is a safety catch net for all the bad sub-optimal design they put out. So look for companies with no dedicated PE dept, just a Design or General Engineering dept and this tends to be smaller companies (10-200 employees)

You also need to show that you are a well rounded Engineer that can move into design or R&D. Focus in on any specific experiences you have that are relevant. For example any research you have carried out and solutions you have designed to address manufacturing problems and anything relevant to project management

Declan Scullion CEng

http://www.leandfm.com

 

[Stick.]

I'll second D Scullion that manufacturing experience is a big advantage in a design role. When I switched from maintaining to designing manufacturing equipment, my spiel during job interviews essentially boiled down to "I've seen how manufacturing machinery is used and misused, how it breaks, and how it gets fixed. I also have an intimate knowledge of the pressure to keep product flowing out the door, so I understand how important reliability is to the customer." You just have to figure out how to spin your experience to match up with the job you're applying for. And if it's a totally different industry and someone questions whether your experience translates, I'll pass along some advice from a millwright I used to work with: "It's all just nuts, bolts and grease."

 

[moltenmetal]

I'm sorry, but anyone who thinks that work-life balance doesn't exist is just trying to justify workaholism as if it were a healthy lifestyle choice. It isn't. Being passionate about your work is great, but setting boundaries in life is NECESSARY and failure to do that has a name- it's called addiction.

Work addiction often arises from problems with self esteem. And work addiction is a self-fulfilling prophesy: work expands to fill all the time into which the rest of your life should fit, and the rest of your life shrinks away to nothingness as a result.

 

[IRstuff]

While knowing the workings of manufacturing can be a boon, if that's your only experience, that would seem to be a bit of a negative to me, i.e., everything looks like a nail to a hammer. As with most everything moderation and breadth is highly desirable and possibly required.

And while making things easier to manufacture is definitely a good thing, manufacturing improves because of challenges; to wit, 40 years ago, experienced IC manufacturing experts all predicted the demise of the UV photolithography for silicon ICs for sub-micron designs and all thought that directed energy approaches such as e-beam or x-ray lithography were required. Several startups even began to sell x-ray lithography systems. So, 40 years later, we're doing 7-nm processing still using UV LITHOGRAPHY, albeit extremely complicated UV processing. Nevertheless, this was in response to the direct challenge of extremely expensive x-ray litho processing, so people came up with workarounds.

As an engineer, you need to make the critical trades between design constraints and manufacturing constraints; that means that your toolbox has to contain more than a manufacturing hammer.

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[CWB1]

Interestingly contrary viewpoints. If I had to rank fewest to most hours I've worked in various depts I would start with production as the fewest, then product development, then research. Other than the occasional equipment failure production is typically ~40/wk as your schedule is mostly dictated by hourly wage-earners working 8/day shifts which includes lunch and breaks. So long as the line is running and product development is being supported then management's happy. Sure, it hits the fan occasionally but if you've got a good maintenance schedule, good staff, and good communication then summer and winter shutdowns should be about the only time you're real busy. The product development office OTOH usually mandates 8+/day minimum of work with an additional 30-60 for lunch, essentially 9+/day and you're constantly juggling projects with contradicting schedules. On the plus side, you get more autonomy to make decisions and dictate your schedule when projects don't - If you've got a slow week then enjoy the downtime bc the following week is probably going to include some OT as all three of your projects suddenly go from somebody else's back into your court. Research is another world entirely as its largely political, projects don't typically have a specific end goal beyond "evaluate performance of XYZ technology for future products" so its difficult for the business folks to see potential ROI. When a project gets a budget, you work your backside off trying to learn as much as possible (aka run out of money) before your budget is reallocated to something that earns profit. IME that's 10+/day (often 12+) with a ton of travel to interact with suppliers, attend conferences, etc. Also, whereas in the production world advanced degrees are somewhat rare vs product development where theyre fairly common, expect to be the token BS_E in any good research dept with attitudes often stereotypical of the degreed hierarchy.

As to defining limits and work/life balance, I would suggest some introspection and review of your personal habits if you're having issues. I often hear from others how you cant work longer hours and not miss important events. I say bs to that, usually the folks giving that advice waste a ton of time every day and would still miss most events if they retired tomorrow as their problem is laziness, not work. I average ~50/week, have spent the last year commuting another 10/wk (looking forward to that ending soon), and am one of those guys that when someone wants me, I'm there. I very rarely miss an evening event or even an afternoon doctor's appointment, working the hours gives me the flexibility to take an hour or three and flex as necessary to support family needs. I also spend 3-4 hours most nights working in my personal shop, 1-2 hours reading, an hour at the gym or running, and my wife insists on an old-fashioned formal breakfast and dinner at the table. Its amazing what you can get done when devices and television become nothing more than background noise to living.

 

[familyman731]

IRstuff, do you have any suggestions on the best way to build that toolbox? So far, I've picked up one of my old machine design textbooks to start building that up, and I've been taking my lunch breaks to practice with Solidworks.

 

[IRstuff]

There may be some online courses that allow you to go at whatever pace you desire. You probably need to define specific projects and carry them through to get the full benefit of your working on them.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
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[grunt58]

This is a great thread. I was exactly were the OP is a year ago. Mechanical Engineer at a tier one automotive supplier. Expected to work whatever hours were needed to get the job up and running/cell fixed. Upper management didn't care about you as a person just get the cells making product. My supervisor would never tell anyone to go home early Friday if we worked 3 12 hour days earlier in the week. It paid well and had good benefits but I didn't care for the work or expected hours. I want to be home at 5 with my family. I found a smaller employee-owned company doing manufacturing/design engineering. Pay is a little less and the benefits are ok but we get tiered monthly bonuses if the company as a whole meets deadlines. Not a glamorous gig and I'm stuck at a desk a lot but less stressful and I'm home every night to raise my sons. To me, that's what defines me.