Which offer to accept? 1

[ShortCircuitman]

I have graduated with an electrical engineering degree last May, and have been on the job hunt since then. Right now I have three job offers, all of which expire on Monday, and I do not know which one is the best job for my career.

One of the jobs is as a software engineer, and although it sounds interesting, will require relocation. I'm also not sure how much I would enjoy a programming job, as I do not have much programming experience. One advantage to this position is they want me to take classes in programming at a local university, and will reimburse the tuition. I am pretty sure I would rather stay more on the hardware side of things though.

Another job offer is actually just a contract to hire position with Rockwell automation as a design engineer. I think that this position, although possibly only six months in duration, might be most in line with future plans to get a PE and get into a R&D position.

The third job is as a field service engineer for ABB. For this position I would travel the country and troubleshoot AC drives. I was pretty sure I would accept that position until the offer came in the mail, and the position title was given as field service technician. The ad for the job and the position title for the interview was for field service engineer, and when I asked about the title, I was told the I would be classified as a technician so that I can be payed overtime, whereas if I was classified as an engineer I would be on salary. The job does require a lot of overtime, and the pay would be good, but I really want to get engineering experience, and am not sure if this sort of work will count towards becoming a PE. Ive also heard it is a bad situation for a graduated engineer to take a technician role, as they will be climbing the wrong career ladder, and have trouble moving into engineering. On the other hand, I am allowed to have engineer on my business card since I did graduate from a 4 year school, and the technician designation will only be internal to the company.

Due to having good training, benefits, travel, and good pay I am most interested in the field service engineering position. I was wondering if anyone else has taken a similar job, and moved into design or R&D later. Would the experience count toward getting my PE, or not. Also is taking this position shooting my self in the foot when it comes to career advancement as an engineer? Thanks in advance for your thought on this situation.

 

[ARenko]

I'd choose the permanent position now rather than risk that Rockwell will offer one in 6 months. Maybe you can use the new offer to negotiate a permanent position w/ Rockwell if you hadn't already tried that.

 

[IRstuff]

Frankly, it seems to me that you're talking about bailing from a known engineering and design position to a technician position, regardless of what the title is.

The job is the same. regardless of the title. You're going to be a glorified mechanic and doing ZERO design work. If that's really what you want, then go for it. But, just bear in mind that even with the engineering title, you're not doing engineering, you're "troubleshooting," which was your description in your original posting. While that might lead to insights as to how to not design something, 90% of what you will be doing is going to be extremely repetitive.

A decent maintenance program will have a detailed procedure for replacing components based on the error codes presented by the system under repair. Even when there are ambiguous codes, the procedures are usually established. Only in rare situations will there be a case that's not covered in the maintenance manual.

While time&materials maintenance contracts are extra revenue for a company, they're not going to allow repairs to exceed more than 1 day or so, so they've got a vested interest in developing robust maintenance procedures that get you in and out ASAP, since a customer whose equipment is down is a customer that might be thinking about changing equipment.

TTFN

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