Structural engineer career line 11

[Awab95]

Hi guys,I want to know what is the best time to do master degree in structure; before SE exam or after, also what is the best time to do MBA?

Edit: is the master degree worth it if I did SE exam,and is the MBA worth it?

 

[skeletron]

Bottom line is that as a structural engineer you gotta understand how to answer the question "how do I learn best?"

 

[r13]

I graduated from a school with quarter system, in which, we've never been able to complete a textbook, or even a lengthy subject. But the foundation was there - concept and enough knowledge to expand. The computer has changed the structural engineering in a significant way, but amazingly the old theories, methods are still holding true, without them, the computer just a cold machine, and the programs are junks.

 

[STrctPono]

Aesur,

Our experiences seem to be wildly different which is probably what is driving our differences in opinion on the matter of higher education. Your experiences with certain Master's and PhD level Engineers seems to have been disastrous throughout your career. You also seem to experience high turnover rates with a lot of your employees. None of these are experiences that I can say I have shared. Furthermore, our work type and profits also seem to be wildly different.

The office I work for is a small consulting design firm that does exclusively transportation/infrastructure design with our bread and butter work coming in the form of bridge design. The majority of our contracts come either directly from the State DOT or via Civil Engineering firms. We dabble in work with the DOT Harbors and DOT Airports a few times a year. Competition is quite low in my industry for several reasons. Partially due to the fact that most firms around the State primarily focus on building design. When they do pick up DOT work it's typically at a lesser level doing bridge inspection or low brow load rating work. The other reason that competition is low is because we are able to keep competition low due to our tenacious hold on a niche part of the industry. I realize that my experiences with lack of competition are different than yours but I can guarantee you that everyone in my office works tremendously hard to keep it that way and instead of stifling innovation our work culture drives us to provide more unique and advanced designs to stay ahead of the competition.

In terms of the type of work that we do that requires a higher level theoretical education.... A lot of FEA modeling, deep foundation modeling with P-Y curves, moment-curvature analysis, response spectrum analysis, multi staged-post tensioning analysis... a moderate amount of non-linear pushover analysis, advanced soil-structure interaction analysis, P-Delta analysis on tall slender bridge pier.... and occasional jobs that require a time history analysis, analysis of structure on friction pendulum bearings, or an analysis of segmentally constructed superstructures. I cannot realistically see someone with a high school education performing even the work in the first category, yet we do that type of stuff on every single bridge job.

I almost ended up working for Caruso Turley Scott in the Valley but changed paths in the end. Not sure if you are familiar with them.

 

[Aesur]

STrctPono,

You are correct, the place I formerly worked had a very high turnover rate. I wonder if my experiences with masters and PhD level engineers is because buildings for the most part rarely need the higher level education and most likely doesn't attract the right higher education engineers. I agree with you on the fees and profits, I have noticed a huge difference in bridge design versus building design, however I'm sure it also still depends on the type of bridge or building. In our local market I have seen bridges that had fees 3+ times higher than buildings but required about 1/5th the work (talking simple single span box girder bridges - nothing exciting). Wish I knew how to change this and I suspect it may be based on where the funding comes from, public funding versus private. I believe in my area there is only one major bridge design firm and maybe 1 or 2 small players.

I agree based on what you describe and the type of bridges that come to mind based on your descriptions that the higher level of education significantly helps. I think that kind of work would be exciting and may try to get into it someday myself. I'm sure you are familiar with what the structures of the SW are like, very few that are actually challenging enough to require a higher level of education unless you work for a select few design firms that specialize in those few and far between projects with "unlimited" budgets. Unfortunately for many building design firms it's a production type environment rater than an innovative type.

I am familiar with CTS, in fact one of our principals used to work with them; they are one of our competitors in the Phoenix market.

 

[kissymoose]

but have been thinking heavily about getting into engineering software development.

Oh no, why is everyone saying this? I thought I was going to be the only one to rake in the millions from engineers just waiting for software that finally "gets" them. Just gotta get all that tedious computer science education out of the way.

A little on-topic addition: when I first started here in the Midwest the larger players told me to not bother applying until I had a Masters.

 

[KootK]

Oh no, why is everyone saying this? I thought I was going to be the only one to rake in the millions from engineers just waiting for software that finally "gets" them.

That's funny. #MeToo: KootWare.

Since I made my interest in software development known, a veritable army of folks has come forth to tell me how they share the same dream. As best I can tell, there's a huge subset of us for whom the creation of software for solving structural engineering problems is a lot more fun than actually solving structural engineering problems.

Particularly scary for me has been:

1) The amount of interest coming from less developed parts of the world for developing US software and;

2) An insider at one of the big software companies tells me that they are also eyeing up some of the "in between" software space that I would be targeting. But, you know, with their existing infrastructure and a platoon of Vietnamese programmers.

I've concluded that I'll have to treat software as a passion project almost indefinitely and, if it gets somewhere real, great. Almost inconceivably -- to me at least -- the space that is structural software seems to have even more of a supply & demand problem than the space that is structural engineering itself.

 

[Aesur]

Oh no, why is everyone saying this? I thought I was going to be the only one to rake in the millions from engineers just waiting for software that finally "gets" them. Just gotta get all that tedious computer science education out of the way.

I doubt most engineers developing software would make millions; to me it's because of the frustrations of simple bugs in the programs that take years to fix, if they get fixed at all. In the meantime the bug isn't known to most engineers and they continue using the software daily. An example of this is one very popular piece of software was applying the redundancy factor for wood twice for well over a year and only got fixed about a year ago.

Additionally, I have been doing programming on and off for 10+ years, but mostly related to websites and gaming. To me programming is fun and in some cases more challenging to do than engineering itself.

 

[phamENG]

there's a huge subset of us for whom the creation of software for solving structural engineering problems is a lot more fun than actually solving structural engineering problems.

To me programming is fun and in some cases more challenging to do than engineering itself.

The gratification also comes much faster than in structural design. Having a beam on a screen turn from red to green just doesn't do it, and it takes a long time to go from that beam turning green to a ribbon cutting ceremony for a building opening.

I've been working on C# lately and working in the Unity engine for game programming. It's a lot of fun, and seeing the product of your labor instantly materialize on the screen and start dancing around is incredibly satisfying. It's not quite as satisfying as seeing a building I worked on for 6 months finally take shape, but haven't psychologists determined that lots of little victories are better than a handful of big ones for our happiness and well being?

 

[KootK]

...but haven't psychologists determined that lots of little victories are better than a handful of big ones for our happiness and well being?

Short term happiness for sure. Well being... we'll see.

The book below is an NPR recommendation and a fascinating read. Apparently big tech makes many of their employees read it so that they'll know how to make their websites, video games, social media, and apps hopelessly addictive. There's also a companion book called Indistractible that's about training yourself to resist when you need to focus on other, less fun things. It's on my kindle, partially read, as I take a little time out to screw around on Eng-Tips...

 

[phamENG]

Thanks for that. I'll have to read them both. Indistractible would certainly be helpful for me now, and Hooked may be in the future (if I can figure out how to stop being so distracted and get stuff done).

 

[KootK]

I thought I was going to be the only one to rake in the millions from engineers just waiting for software that finally "gets" them.

I can't resist: in what way do you feel that current software offerings do not get you? I seek production friendly element design with enough transparency to make me feel a warm and fuzzy.

 

[kissymoose]

The phrasing was more facetious than a complaint of available products. I'm not interested in FEM modeling software, RISA works as well as I've ever needed it to. I'm more wanting a combination of mathcad/smath and excel. Something that takes care of the coding-like provisions of design codes, does all the necessary checks and iterations, and is not a blackbox (WYSIWYG). Easy integration of relevant images and standardized way of presenting variables, equations, and code references. A combination of comprehensive component design with aesthetic ready-to-print layout.

 

[Tomfh]

Kissymoose,

That’d be sweet! Everything so far is still a bit of a kludge. No wonder engineers still rely so heavily on hand calcs.

 

[KootK]

I agree, that's pretty much what I'm looking for too. TEDDS, Enercalc, MathCAD, Vitruvius... given how many have attempted something similar, it's odd that I've been unable to find something that I really love. MathCAD's close, particularly on the image & excel integration. Unfortunately, the programmable version is still expensive and, more importantly, I live in fear that it's just going to die off due to lack of product development and bad business decisions.

 

[IRstuff]

Acceptance is often tied to cost; Mathcad runs about $600 or higher, but Excel, part of Office, can be gotten for under $200.

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

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

faq731-376 forum1529 Entire Forum list

http://www.eng-tips.com/forumlist.cfm

 

[Aesur]

@KootK have you looked at SMath? Not the easiest to learn and isn't everything you are looking for, but at least free.

 

[KootK]

@Aesur: it's on my todo list to give Smath a shot. For now, I'm doing alright with MathCAD express and my old, perpetual license MathCAD 15. I've got it in my head that I want to figure out a way to rapidly deliver web based component design tools as single page applications. I may never actually get around to sorting that out but, in the meantime, that's part of what's holding me back from sinking effort into other things. Even with SMath, I fear that I'd just wind up in the same place another ten years from now: heavily invested in package that is either expensive or non-existent. I'm not sure if the better answer is to make my own stuff or to just be more accepting of change.

 

[dik]

And for another opinion... I'm a practicing engineer, but have a strong bent for academics; I'm an info junkie. The universities are trying to position themselves as 'community colleges'... turning out engineers that can do a job... Universities should stick to academics and leave the training to industry. I think this works best in the long run.

Rather than think climate change and the corona virus as science, think of it as the wrath of God. Feel any better?

-Dik

 

[r13]

I agree.

 

[dik]

There's two of us... not a good sign.

Rather than think climate change and the corona virus as science, think of it as the wrath of God. Feel any better?

-Dik