Most/Least Interesting MechE Jobs... 6

[pavlik]

Just to get a sense of how Mechanical Engineers are doing these days.
What are the most and least interesting fields/jobs that you, Meche's, find themselves in? What do you find interesting/ uninteresting about your jobs?

I personally work in HVAC consulting. It would have been dull if not for the kind of buildings we work on.

Cheers.

 

[irishengineer]

In looking back at my career thus far I would have to say
that my most interesting position was with a rail
car manufacturer. The equipment was always custom designed
and the other engineers were easy to work with and very
willing to share their knowledge/experience with a younger
engineer (as I was then). They seemed to have a passion
for what they did and I looked forward to going to the office each day. The position did not last long
due to the economy but I would have liked to stay there.
The equipment always had a certain "elegance" to it and
the workers in the shop areas took pride in manufacturing
and assembling it.

The worst position probably is the one I have now. I like
the type of equipment the company produces. The aspects of
the position I do not like are that more and more of the
design/manufacturing functions are being outsourced to our
parent company overseas and we (the engineers) are basically
shuffling paper most of the time. Some of the managers in
the company are also difficult to work with and there are
too many little "kingdoms" in the office and none of
them work together. The US offices have also
"downsized" themselves to death and right now are forcing people to work longer and harder to make up for this. This
was done to lower costs and remain competitive. All this
has done is burn people out. I am seriously looking to
leave here as soon as possible. I understand that the
economy is not good right now and that companies are in
some cases fighting for their very lives, but I feel that
the way they are going about this is very self destructive.
I am not one who who gives up when the going gets tough but
I do not see this company surviving for much longer at
this rate. I actually feel sorry for them.

Irish engineer

 

[RichLeimbach]

This is an interesting topic. My own personal opinion(s):

There are very few jobs that are 100% engineering (if any) and there is a big difference between the type of engineering needed for a product and the actual job itself. For example, you may be really interested in aircraft design and love the engineering that goes into it, but if the reality of the job is that you can spend only 10% of your time on engineering and 90% on regulatory paperwork, it may not be very rewarding. A lot of engineers could say "I love what I work on, if only they'd let me work on it".

My own personal preference is to work on products that are small enough to be engineered by no more than a small team of people. It cuts down on the non-engineering problems due the to the complexity of the organization and when I see the product on TV or in the store, I can say "I did that" not "I helped on the testing of the 12th widget in the 3rd assembly of that". Feels more like I accomplished something somehow.

- Rich

 

[Stormxtc]

Hi all,

Some pretty good enjuneirs around these days...

I started my career in one of the biggest family owned companies in the world. I trained as a project engineer and was sent to turkey to supervise the construction of our new $US90 million processing plant.

Best experience ever, can't compare the joy of turning on the valve at the very end of the process and 15 km of stainless steel pipe and getting out what you are supposed to.

Now I'm back in Aussie, no plant's to be built here, they're all being built overseas in south-east asia. So what do I do now? I sit on my bottom designing HVAC systems for the building services industry, Im the guy that specifies the equipment that Clyde Mule designs. It just does not compare!

Totaly not where I want to be...totaly wrong career path. I would much rather be drilling for oil on an offshore oil platform out in the Timor sea. Now that's a good enjuneirin' job, simply heaven.

But at the en of the day, I too want to be home bouncing my 9 month old boy on my knee.

 

[PSE]

Any engineering job can be what you make of it. By all means though, if you find you don't enjoy it, try to evolve on to something else. Thankfully there are people who enjoy what others would consider mundane work. It still needs to get done. I had found early in my career that sitting in front of a CRT doing designs all day was not my forte. I always wanted to see what happened next so my career evolved into an industrial/mfg role. Now I am involved in the complete product cycle and truly enjoy my work.

Regards,

 

[jaiceatltd]

Hi all,

As a recently graduated engineer i got a job in a tyre industry through campus recruitment. Most of my assignments are in CAD/CAE like solid modeling, Finite element analysis, statistical analysis and some design and fabrication jobs. You can consider my job as most interesting.


Jeyakumar
CEAT Tyres Limited

 

[haggis]

In my 42 years in the workforce, I can honestly say that I have enjoyed every bit of it and have no grandois ideas of how nice retirement might be. I am not a workaholic but do enjoy my work.

At present, I work in a large car assembly plant designing all sorts of conveyor systems, a little structural and some HVAC type work. I like the diversity and there is always lots of change and challenge in the auto industry. I think the diversity is a big plus after being in the auto industry for 24 years as I had worked at various consultants where I was the conveyor guy, then there was the HVAC guy and so on. I also do the field work, design and the CAD work.

Before the auto industry, my conveyor experience was in coal mining and the worst place I have ever been is at a coal seam with about a 6 foot headroom almost 5000 feet down.

My first and most interesting experience was serving a Mechanical Engineering Apprenticeship at John Brown shipyards in Clydebank, Scotland. I went through the various trades before getting the required academics to get into the drawing office. What made this most special is that my training took place on the building of the QE2. I swear there is a part of me still aboard that ship. I also had the pleasure of sailing in her in later years but wasn’t able to show my family some of the places I had been privy to during her construction. Ah! Memories.

Haggis

 

[GregLocock]

I've had a few lousy jobs in twenty years, but only for a year at a time. I am very glad I went into automotive, as it has lots of money to throw around (how many other consumer items have development costs of the order of 0.5-6 billion dollars?), which is fun.

Also we have reasonably short cycle times - I am working on my 3rd new suspension in 8 years, so even bad projects (and it is possible to have a lot of fun even on a bad project), don't blight your life for too long.

Also we are totally cost and marketing driven (despite the big budgets) - which means we are always searching for new techniques. If you want to see cutting edge computer simulation techniques, you'll probably find them in automotive, not aerospace, or marine, industries.

On the other hand - 2% return on capital indicates to me that we are always going to be in danger of going out of business - look how much of the shareholder's money the Daimler Chrysler merger has burned up.

If we spend half a billion on a new model and sales halve compared with projections, that's about half a year's pay for each employee in bank debt that the company will have to carry for 2-4 years.

Scary? You bet. But also exciting.


Cheers

Greg Locock

 

[friartuck]

I think you make the job as interesting as you want it to be..or as interesting as you can handle.

I started my own company from scratch 7 years ago. Our clients are now:
Hospitals (mortuaries, theatres, wards, maternity etc)
Banks
Building Societies
Schools
Computer Rooms
Museums etc

You can't get more veried than that. (and equally it can get frustrating)

Sometimes you fly by the seat of your pants and stay one step ahead (but only one)

The down side...regulations, particularly health and safety. I think we have gone way over the top. Not that I'm against H&S, but we have to be reasonable about it.


Friar Tuck of Sherwood

 

[whotmewory]

I have had seven positions between 1989 and 2005. My first five years after school I was laid off three times.

My toughest job was as a technical liaison at a Seattle shipbuilder, getting departments to more seamlessly interact. The average age of the long term employees there was - I trhink - about 110 years old - and no 20-something ex-Navy kid with a degree was gonna tell them anything about doing anything different. Great fun taking the boats out into the Pacific for two and three day sea trials, but working 6-7 days a week, 9-12 hours per day sucked big time.

My best job was with IR Seattle Winch and high Capacity Hoist and I say that proudly because the field work at customer refineries in Asia, Africa, and North America was an honor and a privilege, the bosses were damn good people to work for, and the whole staff was good family. My boss(es) - two of them over time - gave me design autonomy and trusted me to represent the company to our customers alone and without interference.

My worst job was presented to me as another Applications Engineering job and turned out to be just about the single most miserable paper shuffling cubical world hell that I could ever have gotten myself lied into. It turned out to be an "inside sales" customer [and whining salesman] secretarial job that downright threatened my engineering [technical] competence and was well worth leaving after 11 months.
and

 

[SomptingGuy]

I used to work with someone who did pretty advanced (for its day) simulation work to design intake and exhaust systems for all sorts of vehicles. Quite interesting stuff: simulate it, build it, measure it. But it was the way he sold it in conversation...

Q. Hey what do you do?

A. [in low, boring tone] I design exhausts [dramatic pause] for mopeds.

 

[ziggi]

I used to work with a guy who did infra-red imaging, for ladies' underwear makers. Basically he got to watch models walking around in underwear while he determined where the largest area of chafing was occuring.
Sounds very....tedious to me.

 

[EngJW]

My most interesting job was working in the machine shop at Moog Music while in college (Bob Moog, inventer of the synthesizer, who passed away recently). If you had a band you could borrow a synthesizer for the weekend. I took one home a couple of times to play with. Emerson, Lake, & Palmer visited one day and I got to make a part for their equipment.

Years later I worked for an aircraft company and they provided free flying lessons. It was an abusive company to work for but the flying made up for it.

Worst was a project engineer at an aerospace company. I was naive at the time and didn't realize the job was a revolving door. You were only there to take the blame for deadlines being missed. Mercifully it came to an end after a year.

 

[ziggi]

EngJW,
the project engineer job sounds like a bit of fun to me, I always enjoy a good argument and if I know that the other person is full of nonsense AND they're blaming me for something I did not do, I let them have it and I enjoy every minute. It would be the most relaxing job in the world, b/c I know that I would be in trouble no matter what so I would just take it easy and argue with people all the time .

 

[dave472005]

Interesting discussion -

I started as an enlisted Reactor Operator in the USN on a submarine - one of the best jobs I had, but not engineering.

After BSME - worked as a design engineer at a couple of nuclear power plants (not that much different than McCormick93) - but wanted to find a position with more flexibility and personal satisfication.

Worked at a DOE facility in KY for a couple of years, but it was as bad as the nuclear power plant as far as red tape and restrictions - but got my PE.

Spent 1 1/2 years working as an HVAC engineer on commerical buildings. Didn't mesh well with the company and people - turned out to be very frustrating and eventually was laided off.

Spent 2 1/2 years as a consulting engineer at the DOE facility working to reduce their utility cost - we made significnat progress and this was very satisfying. However, the company I worked for went out of business.

Spent the next 11 months as a technical assistant to a manager at a nuclear power plant - I did ~10% technical work and 90% administrative work - not why I became an engineer and was not upset when was laidoff as part of a larger corporate downsizing.

Now work as a plant engineer as part of a group that provides plant enigneering for 3 coal fired power plants. IN the 3 months I have worked here, I have done at least as much field work (completed) as in 3 years at a nuclear facility. Great job and hope that it last - still have 15 years to retirement.

Generally, I can honestly say that I have been in good and bad jobs - sometimes due to the work, but more frequently due to the people in the organization - supervisors, corporate leadership and peers. I don't think that I have quite figured out how to pick the right organization - which is probably why I agree with the advice - keep your resume on the street for at least 6 months after you start a new job.

 

[EngJW]

Ziggi- not much time to argue sometimes. Management makes a promise they can't keep, the contractor comes in and demands action, and the company president says the project engineer is at fault and some people will be replaced. You are out the gate before lunchtime. Project Engineer = no authority, all responsibility.

 

[ziggi]

I'm usually diplomatic in most cases, but when I know I'm not appreciated and that I will get dumped on, I don't bother. In hopeless situations like yours was, you might as well just let the fecal matter hit the fan, and not even bother dodging whatever comes back. In essence you're screwed anyway, you might as well make it fun.
Besides my ego is huge and I am impatient at best, so I always feel as though I need to take on any challenger who challenges me personally, hmmm that's probably why I lose at poker so much.

 

[icelad]

The job that I enjoyed the most was the construction of a power plant. This was fairly early in my career (early 30s), but was getting old enough to be listened to, at least occasionally. This was for a retrofit and adding of an Electrostatic Precipitator and changing the boiler from forced draft to induced draft. The shear size of the plant was unbelievable, two 1300 Megawatt boilers, over 8 million man-hours for the construction of the addition. We added six fans with 5000 hp electric motors, per unit, to change the draft system. If I remember right, they had 1320 volts at 440 amps. Installed several 120 in valves in the cooling system. The new ductwork was say 20 feet by 20 feet in cross section, made of ¾ inch thick ship plate. If any of you enjoy construction, to me, these mega structures are by far the best. If you get a chance to work at one, do it.

John

 

[RDK]

Lord Baden Powell the founder of scouting was at one time the youngest Brigadier General in the British Army. It was then discovered that he did not meet the minimum age requirements for the rank and reverted to a Colonel.

He credited his success by stating that he found every job he ever had as interesting and one that he would apply himself fully to.

I have almost 30 years construction management experience, sometimes the demands of the job require me to cast concrete test cylinders, hold a survey rod or other duties normally assigned to a new graduate or junior technician. I try to do these tasks to the best of my ability and still can find them interesting.

Sometimes the demands of the position require me to participate in high level contract discussions involving large sums of money, pricing large contracts, developing implementation strategies and other senior level work. I try to do these to the best of my ability and find them interesting as well.

Bottom line is that any job can be interesting and any job worth doing is worth doing to the best of your ability.





Rick Kitson MBA P.Eng

Construction Project Management
From conception to completion

http://www.kitsonengineering.com

 

[CarolinaPE]

Having worked in three different "areas" of ME (product design, HVAC/MEP, and forensic) I would say they all have their positives and negatives. Product design is enjoyable and I think what a lot of people dream of when deciding to become an engineer. Just the other day my nephew said he "wanted to be and engineer and design cars" for example. The dark side of product design is (at least my experience) that it was coming under pressure from outsourcing. Either that or engineers had to fly to China for a month while a product was being started up. That scenario was not acceptable to me during college football season. In addition this area seemed prone to layoffs or rumors of such all the time. That being said I am sure there are segments of product design where the experience would be different than mine but I swore it off after 5 years in the businees. Looking back, I think if you are VERY selective with who you go to work for and do a lot of research product design could work out for you.

For three years I worked as a forensic engineer which basically involves working for attys and insurance companies to reconstruct vehicle accidents or product failures. This was actually very interesting work although the calculations used are very simple (1st year college physics for the most part). Other positives are the pay SHOULD be good for this field as it can be lucrative. Expect to get your PE license. A positive to this field is the difficulty to outsource the position. Another positive is the work is pretty steady (people get in accidents regardless of what the economy is doing). THe downside of this business would be getting grilled by attys on occasion (depositions and trials) while testifying in court and really the lack of opportunities (i.e. if the company cuts you loose finding employment elsewhere). One thing I noticed about this field is that many engineers that were so called "experts" in product failures and product design never worked as a product design engineer!

That leads me to my current occupation as an HVAC/MEP type engineer. Primarily our work is renovations which acts as a positive thing by making outsourcing difficult. A positive to this field is it feels like "real engineering" compared to the forensics. In this business you are selling your knowledge and it is not one that can be picked up in first year physics. This business takes a good while to really become an expert as the variety of systems you can use requires that. Other positives are if you get your PE and some years of experience you can make a nice salary. Negatives I have noticed would be repeat, easy designs (office buildings with a bunch of heat pumps) which are more "plug and chug" than a challenge to design. Other negatives are that the work is there as long as building is going on. If for whatever reason building slows down you can get cut loose (but I would say it does not compare to product design in that regard). Living in the southeast, which seems to be growing all the time, does not hurt I am sure.

Hope all that helps!

 

[plasgears]

Ever since I bought my first home, I have been free lancing in landscape design. We don't grow up with a knowledge of horticulture and landscape design, so we muddle along making mistakes with our home exteriors. I took a correspondence course in landscape design, and proceeded to sell designs to owners of large and small properties.

Engineers are qualified for landscape design because it involves spacial visualization, construction, drainage, and other disciplines. The key to my work is making design elements work in many ways, not just beautification (screening, framing the view, creating a vista, shading, seasonal color change, winter landscape, etc).

In the Chicago suburbs I sold some nice designs to doctors and land developers. It snowballed into a nice seasonal sideline. Word of mouth really works wonders. It's important to sell the job before you make the walk around and give away ideas.

Currently I am providing quote packages, which help the owners make decisions on contractors for the various elements of the job. The owner probably gets my fee back in competitive savings.

Lfetime Career Schools was based in LA, and it was sold to a company in PA. Contact them on the internet if you are interested in their correspondence course.