Which industry is best and which is best for college grads? 8

[twinky64]

I'm new here and this is my first post.

I'm currently attending California State University of Fullerton majoring in Mechanical Engineering. I've been interning at a medical device industry and really enjoy the people that work there, the hours expected to work, the environment (kind of google-esque), and pay. Unfortunately, they are on a hiring freeze and I'm unable to land a job once I graduate. I never thought that medical devices would be fascinating while in college. My passion is cars.

Here is my question:

Should I go into the aftermarket suspension company that tunes automobiles? I would be test driving cars and engineering components that would improve handling. The company is small and domestic

or.

Try and find a job in the medical devices industry where the day to day is not so interesting compared to test driving and engineering components? The company would be larger and international.

Reason why I ask is because I don't want to work and get laid off shortly after and I don't want to work more than 45 hours per week.

Thanks

 

[NGLENGR]

Quote: However, I will not be doing what I see myself doing or doing what I sought out to do when I began my college career in ME.

I'm not doing what I saw myself doing even when I graduated with my ME. However, I've found my work to be fulfilling in a way that even driving cars could never be. It's not sexy, but it can be very exciting at times. It can also be quite boring. You can't have everything you want right out of school.

To the OEMs, engineers aren't test drivers. Test drivers are test drivers. You didn't get a degree to drive cars around!

You don't get the best assignments right off the bat. There's a reason you do process models and QA validation: EXPERIENCE. It's boring and sucks. Take the opportunity to learn from it! You see what goes wrong, and you learn how things work. Your degree means one thing: you can learn how to be an even better engineer.

If you jump in with a small company, it may be sexy and exciting. It will also be fraught with uncertainty and risk. You may reinvent the wheel and become the next Bill Gates; more power to you, and a tip of my hat.

Choose your lifestyle.

 

[Twoballcane]

If you have a goal in mind, all jobs before it are stepping stones. Don't worry where you start, but where you finish. I first started out as a glorified field engineer (field tech) after college. I only did that for 8 months before an engineering company hired me. After being hired I asked one of the guys who interviewed me, what was the reason for giving me the green light to hire. He said that I had the right blend of practical and theoretical knoledge than the others and my passion for engineering really shined thru during the interview.

It took me five years to figure out what I wanted to do and then it took another five years to achieve it.


Tobalcane
"If you avoid failure, you also avoid success."

 

[GregLocock]

"To the OEMs, engineers aren't test drivers. Test drivers are test drivers. You didn't get a degree to drive cars around!"

Your first two sentences are correct. I spend at least an hour a week 'driving cars around', and my main job is analysis. We certainly have degreed engineers who spend two hours or more in cars every day, tuning suspensions, measuring dynamics and generally wearing tires out in an enjoyable fashion.


Cheers

Greg Locock


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[NGLENGR]

Greg,

You'll definitely be the guy to shed some reality on the sexy world of automotive engineering!

My experience in the automotive world is limited to the "get hired as a doe-eyed college grad with dreams of working on race cars and suddenly realizing that there's much more to designing cars than what they told you in the interview" effect.

Somehow, it didn't seem to measure up to the glossy brochure!

 

[321GO]

As far as the 'sexy world of automotive engineering', yeah sure.

A chomed piece of rusted steel, looks great on the outside.

A lot of the current engineering jobs in the automotive industry seem to be the modern day equivalent to the(low payed/zero slack allowed/"Don't want it? The next guy is waiting to take it") factoryworker kind of job.

Great huh?

Since i'm highly pasionated for automotive engineering i realy hate the corporate culture for such highly trained and dedicated engineers. The 'need' for them seems to decline ever so steadily somehow.

NGLENGR, did you switch to the petrochemical industry?

 

[GregLocock]

"A lot of the current engineering jobs in the automotive industry seem to be the modern day equivalent to the(low payed/zero slack allowed/"Don't want it? The next guy is waiting to take it") factoryworker kind of job."

They are. Equally, those who use their brains and are keen get to do the interesting jobs.

If you apply for a job as a quality control engineer on left hand indicators, I doubt your job will be quite as much fun as a job in say vehicle dynamics. Is that not obvious?

Cheers

Greg Locock


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[NGLENGR]

321GO:

I switched to the midstream part of the pet-chem/energy biz.

The manufacturer I worked for was real big into outsourcing the bulk of the engineering to India. Of course the justification was, "The engineering they do is the basic stuff! We do all the exciting parts!"

My boss was a great guy, but he seemed a little too excited about eliminating the work in the USA...which was strange because he seemed like a bleeds red-white-and-blue kind of guy.

I saw the writing on the wall; my job was going to quickly become redundant or I was going to need to learn Hindi.

I can't say that I sometimes wish I'd had a bit more luck with my first employer, but so far I don't regret the move at all.

 

[moon161]

"The engineering they do is the basic stuff! We do all the exciting parts!"

They probably forgot that the guys who do the exciting parts learned what they needed to from doing the basic stuff.

 

[twinky64]

How difficult is it to get into design if your first job doesn't reside in design?

Some engineers in the office were saying: If you want to go into design, do it soon because it's very difficult to switch into design since the hiring managers that are hiring for design engineers look for newbies or ones with design experience. They also suggest to work at a small company right out of college because you'd get the most experience...though you'd be a workhorse working overtime all the time.

Lastly, for those of you that work in the automotive industry, can you please explain to me what it is that you guys do on a day to day basis?

Thanks

 

[moon161]

Me: College > tech support (detour) > QA (caliper boy) > Medical device test & compliance > Piping Design > Recession > Drafter.

I had several projects (college projects, other stuff), that I pointed to as neat design stuff I had done when I had no engineering experience. Learn Solidworks, go make stuff. Read hackaday.com and instructables.com, or the aprovecho institute, rocky mtn institute . Think about how you would make somthing to: act as a heat pipe, use the hot air in your attic to dry clothing, ____ to ___ .

 

[GregLocock]

"Lastly, for those of you that work in the automotive industry, can you please explain to me what it is that you guys do on a day to day basis?"

Mostly I just throw rocks at people who ask silly open ended questions.

However, when they have all been carted off to hospital I get to do my proper job. This is a mixture of things. The most important is helping program teams decide on vehicle architecture for their next design. This relies on benchmarking, guessing, calculations and occasionally innovations. It involves a lot of negotiation, and use of systems engineering, and looking at CAD models. That's the best part of my job and I've been lucky enough to do it in various forms for 13 years.

More routinely I build and test computer simulations of cars and test rigs, and prove that they correlate with real world data, and then use them to help solve problems.

Another part of my job is developing analysis code (matlab o excel or whatever) for other people to use.

Finally I get to run my own projects developing real world solutions. So that would include problem identification, instrumentation, making the measurements, analysing them, getting the mechanics to modify the car, and then writing the reports.

Oh and training and meetings and stuff like that. That's maybe 20% of my time.

Cheers

Greg Locock


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[twinky64]

Thanks for your patience Greg. I'm about to graduate and having never worked in the automotive industry, I'm curious of how the culture exists in the automotive industry. I've been scared about working the in the automotive industry because of some people I've spoken to. The reason why I persistently research based on other's experience is because I WANT to love wanting to get in the automotive inudstry.

 

[GregLocock]

Different companies, and different divisions of large companies, have greatly different cultures. Some are incredibly bureaucratic and seem to resemble some dark parody of a government department, others are gung ho and fly by the seat of their pants.

Neither extreme is really satisfactory.

Cheers

Greg Locock


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[321GO]

Greg Locok,

sounds like a boatload of work responsibilities though.

Sure hope the pay is appropriate.

 

[dbooker630]

"Lastly, for those of you that work in the automotive industry, can you please explain to me what it is that you guys do on a day to day basis?"

I also have an ME degree but the first time I walked into an automotive components material lab I knew automotive metallurgy was the industry for me. That was over 30 years ago. Still true after several closings and transfers.

You have got to love the auto business or have a sick mind (maybe I am a bit of both!)

 

[GregLocock]

321GO, I must have overemphasised something, my job is largely working in or with teams, as such the personal responsibility (stress) is not very high compared with pointy-end jobs. My pay is about as good as it could be in our pay structure, but that is not competitive with the rest of the automotive industry, and generally the automotive industry doesn't pay very well in Australian terms.

There again I get to play with cars, not work in a mine. And I live by the sea, a short walk from sailing club, not in the middle of the desert, or Sydney.

Cheers

Greg Locock


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