What to expect in the field.. 2

[wheaney]

Hello all,

I am currently rounding out my BS in mechanical engineering, planning to graduate in December (only 2 electives left). I would have graduated this past May, but many of our lab classes were delayed while class was remote due to the pandemic. This past (my senior) year, I completed the senior design project for our college, which was pure design engineering from the ground-up: problem definition, QFDs and Pugh matrices, prototyping, manufacturing reports... However, I am currently an intern for a relatively large consumer products company, working in the Advanced Testing group. We get thrown all of the specialty tests, including many types of sound and vibration, alongside ED shaker fatigue, ingress, HALT, HASS, corrosion, hi-pot, and more. This is a complete 180 from the work I have been trained to do in college - as soon as I got some hands-on experience with test engineering, I was hooked. Essentially, my questions are these:

What does an "average" day look like for someone in the test engineering field? I have a fair idea of the answer within my company, but I've been having problems finding wider resources on the field at large.
For anyone who has experience in the testing and measurement field, specifically sound/vibration: What drew you to the field? What is the most rewarding about this particular type of work as opposed to design?
Career-wise, I've heard conflicting answers as to whether graduate (non-MBA) studies or FE/PE are of much merit in testing compared to other fields. To what extent is this true?

Any advice is appreciated, and thanks for taking the time to read!

 

[lucky-guesser]

I may be wrong but this sounds like an R&D job to me.

To preface, this is entirely subject to the specific industry, and furthermore specific to every company. That said, when I used to do R&D, I don't acutally know what degree the boss had but I know he had some sort of technical background. Second in command didn't have any degree, he had worked his way into the position from elsewhere in the company. Then myself & the forth guy were in school for ENG but had we wanted to stay there long term, any sort of technical background would have been sufficient. Again, all very company specific.

Company specific not only applies to the education needed but also what day to day life looks like. I have a friend and a relative who had the same engineering job title at similar companies, just on different sides of town. One is very engaged, wading through water under bridges, doing calculations, and making important decisions that will effect the outcome of the project. The other, he watches people from a distance all day, takes an occasional measurement that even if it is out of spec they continue on as is half the time anyway, and he felt like he wasn't contributing anything with his time, hence why he is no longer there.

Sometimes you just have to take an opportunity and see what comes of it.

 

[wheaney]

Good points - to clarify, a large chunk of our testing is developmental in nature - doing the "boots-on-the-ground" work for root cause assessment. However, the remainder is either pass/fail re: design targets or benchmarking. This company is very young in terms of its employees, especially engineers. My team has a handful of technicians and a handful of engineers, the technicians have, for the most part, 10+ years of experience at the company, while all of the engineers, including my manager, are 3-4 years in. It should be noted that this is solely due to expansion - the company has grown exponentially over the past decade or so, with rapid investments in our department. However, with the way the market is now, our growth has stagnated significantly, with competitors in the red YTD.

Ultimately, my best guess is that, if "conversion hired", I'm just in time to be at the tail end of strong expansion, and the start of more stability. Management, at least within my corner of the company, is almost entirely from a technical background. In fact, one of the managers 2 rungs above me recently stepped back down to the role of a principal engineer after being forced into a management role due to a lack of internal, qualified candidates several years ago. This feels like a double-edged sword to me: promotion from within vs. overpromotion. To your final point though, I tend to agree in many contexts. I'm likely going to stick this out if I receive an offer, but I'm curious nonetheless.

 

[IRstuff]

I've not been a "test engineer" but have done environmental testing when our systems were shipped off-site to a test house. We were there mainly to run the system operationally, while the test house guys handled the fixturing and running the shaker table, thermal chamber, etc. It sounds like your internship is somewhere in-between and possibly spanning the above. Overall, there's not much in the way of "engineering" in the design sense, since it's the MEs on the engineering staff that design actual fixtures and not the test engineers, so you have to weigh whether the design and creative aspects of ME have any sway in your brain.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
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[GregLocock]

What does an "average" day look like for someone in the test engineering field? I have a fair idea of the answer within my company, but I've been having problems finding wider resources on the field at large.

Fairly random, designing rigs, overseeing their construction, setting the test up, checkig it occasionally, reporting the results, discussing the results

For anyone who has experience in the testing and measurement field, specifically sound/vibration: What drew you to the field?

The guy running the modal analysis lab left and they had no succession plan. I'd come to the end of my graduate rotation. So square peg, round hole. Then when I left they still had no succession plan.

What is the most rewarding about this particular type of work as opposed to design?

Less bullshit, not as many meetings, hands on.

Career-wise, I've heard conflicting answers as to whether graduate (non-MBA) studies or FE/PE are of much merit in testing compared to other fields. To what extent is this true?

Agree. A masters in acoustics and or vibration might be nice to have but you are dealing with linear systems mostly so the maths isn't hard and I certainly succeeded in teaching myself.

Cheers

Greg Locock


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[wheaney]

Thanks for the responses, all. Our testing group is mostly split between my team (which is all of the specialty testing) and the automation team, who is responsible for most of the fixturing and setting up performance testing to run on automated rigs with feedback controllers, etc.

I originally decided to pursue engineering as primarily a return on tuition investment and because I love hopping between a million different problems to solve - the taste I've had of design hasn't been what I imagined, but the internship experience has been.

 

[electricpete]

as soon as I got some hands-on experience with test engineering, I was hooked

I think this is a big factor. If you found a type of job which gives you challenges that you enjoy tackling, that's probably where you should go. At a minimum, it's more likely you'll be enjoying your work every day. I'd wager you'll probably also advance further in your career starting out in a job that excites you than starting out in one that doesn't.

 

[wheaney]

Good advice to be sure, Pete. The 'gut feeling' is often a valuable resource.