Where to find a good Mechanical Engineering Mentor?

[40taper]

First off I have been a contributing member over the years here but had to make a new screen name as I made the error of using my real name or part of it as my original handle.

None the less, I currently find myself in one heck of a career predicament. My whole life I wanted to be either a machinist or a mechanical engineer. I am a highly practical individual who is always working on interesting hands on mechanical projects in either my machine shop in the garage on my own free time. When it came time to choose a career I wound up choosing the engineering route as I thought it would give me the greatest amount of opportunities. Today a few years out of school I find my career is stuck.

Despite my best attempts over the last few years to get my current employer to provide me tasks that match with my skills and interests, it seems like every day it is just a carrot on a stick, I work so closely with other groups who do such cool things, yet no matter what I do they are not providing me with work that is in line with where I want my career to go, nor are they providing me with the right skills to get a job doing what I really want. (Most likely mechanical design possibly manufacturing engineering.)

Most recently it seems like my career is getting plowed into a corner that I don’t really want to be in. One of my strengths is I am a quick learner, and don’t mind taking on new tasks where I have little knowledge and or ability. I like being challenged and working outside of my comfort zone. Last year when we needed to come up with a data acquisition system I took on the challenge with some excitement of gaining a lot of extra skills in the electrical and software department. In appreciation of such flexibility I am now finding all they want to give me are more and more of such projects, and it is starting to feel like my career is getting swept up in a huge riptide that is pulling me so far out to sea.

At the same time the other lousy thing about it is that since I am busy on the projects I don’t want to be on the work I really wanted to get involved with has since been handed out to other people and is unavailable. I work in a huge company and there are the occasional internal postings, but I am uneasy about telling my boss I am looking (which he will find out as soon as I post elsewhere) while at the same time I am begging him to let me work on the programs I want to be on.

The end result is just a ton of frustration, and a situation a little too hard to discuss on a forum like this. I could probably go with the flow, and of course until I can get another job that is all I can do, but the most painful part of that is that is I did everything I could to pick a career that was truly in my heart. My group works so closely with the real neat mechanical applications but all I keep on getting is electrical, computer engineering work, with little to no mentor-ship, and it isn't what I want to do!

At this point in time nothing would be better for me than to find a good career mentor. Hopefully someone similar to me, a mechanical engineer who loves his job works in the practical applications of this field, preferably in the state of Connecticut. I really could use some advice from someone who has been there done this before and who can maybe point me in the right direction, give me feed back, or anything.

I tried going through the ASME mentor program but so far no real matches showed up. Any idea where to find a good mentor? Does anyone on this site fit the bill who would like a free dinner or beer on me? If so send me a PM.

 

[MikeHalloran]

Perhaps it escaped your attention, but nobody uses hand-scraped babbitt bearings or other steam-engine technologies anymore.

Nearly everything is now ... belay that; _everything_ has some kind of electronic component today, and in most cases it's made the product better.

You are riding the leading edge of that huge wave; what a wonderful position to be in.

Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

 

[40taper]

Perhaps it escaped your attention, but nobody uses hand-scraped babbitt bearings or other steam-engine technologies anymore.

Nearly everything is now ... belay that; _everything_ has some kind of electronic component today, and in most cases it's made the product better.

You are riding the leading edge of that huge wave; what a wonderful position to be in.

While I see your point here the issue I am having is that my career is being pushed into a becoming a half assed software/networking engineer. Sure the steam era may be gone but we sure do have a lot of cutting edge mechanical engineering work where I work that fits my skills, goals, talents and ambitions, yet I just can't figure out how to get involved in it! What started as a innocent data acquisition system last year has blossomed into this massive computer networking project, of which I have zero mentoring no background and all the same time it is causing me to miss out on the skills and opportunities I really want to be placed on! Half of me wants to tell my boss he has the wrong guy for this job, but yet I also realize if I do this there is a good chance that right now for the next few months he doesn't have any other work for me to do.

Like I said originally I was real happy to be rounding myself out, I knew I wasn't getting paired up with exactly what I wanted but I chalked it up to paying one's dues, and gaining a lot of new information in fields I was very weak in. 2.5yrs down the road and in a terrible economy I am wondering if the dues I have paid bought me what I wanted. All of this could turn on a dime if they start giving me the work that aligns with my goals, we have quite a bit in my department and tons in my company but a few years of working there and I feel as though we are only moving further and further in the wrong direction!

 

[KENAT]

Without necessarily being quite so blunt, have you made any effort to let your supervisor know where you interest lies?

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[MikeHalloran]

Unless you come from great wealth, you don't get to choose the exact nature of your work. You do what someone will pay you to do. ... and hence your career path will be shaped by the state of a market when you become available for a new assignment. You can influence that path, somewhat, by selecting which markets you participate in.

A designer who worked for me a long time ago had spent eight years of his life drawing brackets. ... for jet engine fuel lines only. ... for one side of the engine only. ... for one engine model only. He'd have killed for the opportunities you've been handed.

Feel sorry for the guys who can _only_ do mechanical stuff.




Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

 

[40taper]

Without necessarily being quite so blunt, have you made any effort to let your supervisor know where you interest lies?

I sure have on a few occasions, yet I must say that it is a difficult conversation to have. I don't want to be a whiner, yet at the same time I want to make sure my career goes where I want to take it. It is very aggravating in that having been flexible and gone off and learned a lot of other stuff outside what I really want to work on, in that time others have been assigned to great roles that I would be thrilled to be assigned to. Meanwhile I am getting pushed further and further down a path where I am expected to know more and more about things I know less and less of, all the time missing out on the work I truly want to do.

Hence the real reason for posting this thread. At this point in time having a good mentor, hopefully someone who has been in the position of my boss before to turn to for some guidance in how to navigate such waters would be a great help. Gaining an outside perspective from an accomplished mechanical engineer who I can look up to would be a huge help here to say the least, at this point in time I just don't even know where to find the advice that I really need.

 

[Jboggs]

40taper,
I feel your pain, and I might be able to help. Been in industry for 35 years, so I've seen and done a few things. When I have more time I can share more. Gotta go for now.

 

[PhilBW]

Like they say, it really stinks when your boss finds out you are good at something you don't like to do.

Like you, I am a quick learner, and I like the challenge of learning new stuff. I also got involved in some non-design projects that ended up being a permanent part of my job responsibilities. The answer for me was to get a masters degree, concentrating in the areas I was most interested in as far as design. I also do a lot of reading on my own and spend time on websites like this one to try to connect what I have learned in school with the real world. I look for opportunities to share information and ideas I have come up with as a result of my degree. I am always careful to not come across as a know-it-all, and try to take the approach of "I wonder what would happen if we ..." or "Do you think we could ...". My boss has gradually begun to realize I have some worthwhile knowledge in these technical areas, and I am getting more of the type of projects I like.

 

[GregLocock]

You wanted bacon, you've got eggs. Learn to cook a great omelette. The company needs someone to fill that spot. You are probably doing a halfway decent job. What courses, fieldtrips, training, etc do you need to really come to grips with it? Tell them. As it is there is no particular reason why they should move you from a job you can do to one you want to do. So an internal transfer will meet with friction, unless you can recruit a replacement.

My career included a fifteen year detour into an area in which I has little enthusiasm at first, but it gave me a very solid engineering grounding, and even now I would be somewhat happy to work in that field again.

Cheers

Greg Locock


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