Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I know it will vary depending on type of engineering/projects you're working with.
I'm trying to figure out a good career field for me. I want something that pays well ($50k/yr+), but that is also challenging on a day-to-day basis. A co-worker and I just had an elaborate discussion on jobs/careers. He described his neighbor, who is an engineer of some type, and apparently he does not use much (advanced) math in his day to day duties. In fact, he told my co-worker that his job is something he'd be able to train him to do with OTJ training.
It's pretty obvious that engineers take several upper-level math courses in college. So, how much of that do you use day-to-day (not just once in awhile on projects)? Can you provide specific examples? Do you find your job to be technically challenging the majority of the time, or are you doing more administrative/operational tasks such as partaking in meetings, tracking down materials, etc.?
Right now, I'm a low-level operations manager. My pay does not reflect my job title IMO. My tasks are related more to big-picture than to day-to-day supervisory tasks. My day-to-day mostly consists of resolving logistical/warehousing issues for a network of warehouses (misdeliveries, receiving errors, vendor errors, 3PL carrier errors). I was explaining to my co-worker that I don't really know how my position varies from upper level operations managers. So that's why I don't know if I want to continue on with this field. Is Supply Chain Management the type of career field where you just need to put in your time doing the same tasks over and over before you start making decent money? I'm really not sure, but it kind of seems that way the more I learn about the field.
Anyway, I guess the point of this thread is to figure out if an engineering career is the challenging career I'm interested in. I want to know if I will be doing more technical work on a day-to-day basis rather than mostly doing administrative/operational work (which doesn't seem all that challenging/stimulating to me).
I know it will vary depending on type of engineering/projects you're working with.
I'm trying to figure out a good career field for me. I want something that pays well ($50k/yr+), but that is also challenging on a day-to-day basis. A co-worker and I just had an elaborate discussion on jobs/careers. He described his neighbor, who is an engineer of some type, and apparently he does not use much (advanced) math in his day to day duties. In fact, he told my co-worker that his job is something he'd be able to train him to do with OTJ training.
It's pretty obvious that engineers take several upper-level math courses in college. So, how much of that do you use day-to-day (not just once in awhile on projects)? Can you provide specific examples? Do you find your job to be technically challenging the majority of the time, or are you doing more administrative/operational tasks such as partaking in meetings, tracking down materials, etc.?
Right now, I'm a low-level operations manager. My pay does not reflect my job title IMO. My tasks are related more to big-picture than to day-to-day supervisory tasks. My day-to-day mostly consists of resolving logistical/warehousing issues for a network of warehouses (misdeliveries, receiving errors, vendor errors, 3PL carrier errors). I was explaining to my co-worker that I don't really know how my position varies from upper level operations managers. So that's why I don't know if I want to continue on with this field. Is Supply Chain Management the type of career field where you just need to put in your time doing the same tasks over and over before you start making decent money? I'm really not sure, but it kind of seems that way the more I learn about the field.
Anyway, I guess the point of this thread is to figure out if an engineering career is the challenging career I'm interested in. I want to know if I will be doing more technical work on a day-to-day basis rather than mostly doing administrative/operational work (which doesn't seem all that challenging/stimulating to me).
Thanks for the responses.
This is a very good link on engineers and what the different disciplines are:
I know it will vary depending on type of engineering/projects you're working with.
I'm trying to figure out a good career field for me. I want something that pays well ($50k/yr+), but that is also challenging on a day-to-day basis. A co-worker and I just had an elaborate discussion on jobs/careers. He described his neighbor, who is an engineer of some type, and apparently he does not use much (advanced) math in his day to day duties. In fact, he told my co-worker that his job is something he'd be able to train him to do with OTJ training.
It's pretty obvious that engineers take several upper-level math courses in college. So, how much of that do you use day-to-day (not just once in awhile on projects)? Can you provide specific examples? Do you find your job to be technically challenging the majority of the time, or are you doing more administrative/operational tasks such as partaking in meetings, tracking down materials, etc.?
Right now, I'm a low-level operations manager. My pay does not reflect my job title IMO. My tasks are related more to big-picture than to day-to-day supervisory tasks. My day-to-day mostly consists of resolving logistical/warehousing issues for a network of warehouses (misdeliveries, receiving errors, vendor errors, 3PL carrier errors). I was explaining to my co-worker that I don't really know how my position varies from upper level operations managers. So that's why I don't know if I want to continue on with this field. Is Supply Chain Management the type of career field where you just need to put in your time doing the same tasks over and over before you start making decent money? I'm really not sure, but it kind of seems that way the more I learn about the field.
Anyway, I guess the point of this thread is to figure out if an engineering career is the challenging career I'm interested in. I want to know if I will be doing more technical work on a day-to-day basis rather than mostly doing administrative/operational work (which doesn't seem all that challenging/stimulating to me).
Thanks for the responses.
I'm an engineer and I work on aerospace projects which have varied from Space Station Electric Power systems to infrared sensors to pulse doppler radar to $10B/year missile defense programs.
Day to day, let's start off by mentioning that engineering jobs in aerospace allow for a lot of flexibility. For example, I work 6-330 and take a 90 minute lunch to play basketball or go lap swimming. I've been doing this for 25 years. I beat traffic this way too.
Arrive at work at 6AM, check email, open up one of the last projects I was working on yesterday. Usually work in Word or Excel or Powerpoint, sometimes in DOORS or project.
Usually attend one or two meetings a day.
Usually some part of my work has me visiting or working in a lab or working with those that do.
Sometimes I travel but corporate travel is usually pretty generous about nice hotels and flexible flight schedules. The only thing I don't like is the company's insistence that I use it's credit card which means it is my responsibility if the company travel people don't pay my credit card bill.
Working for aerospace often means working on defense projects which means security clearances. Having a clearance is a good thing - doors are opened to you. Your job can't be off shored to some dude in India.
Head over to Hawthorne pool to swim on MWF and play full court basketball at our outdoor fitness facility here in El Segundo T and Th.
I think engineering is a great job. You work with really sharp people who think outside of life's BS. The engineering education benefits all parts of your life too from working around the house, to hobbies, to managing projects, to economizing, to process thinking to working systematically and making rational decisions.
Another thing that is nice is just about any company will pay for you to earn a master's degree. I earned my MS in Computer Engineering and MBA that way. Free.
I'm an engineer and I work on aerospace projects which have varied from Space Station Electric Power systems to infrared sensors to pulse doppler radar to $10B/year missile defense programs.
Day to day, let's start off by mentioning that engineering jobs in aerospace allow for a lot of flexibility. For example, I work 6-330 and take a 90 minute lunch to play basketball or go lap swimming. I've been doing this for 25 years. I beat traffic this way too.
Arrive at work at 6AM, check email, open up one of the last projects I was working on yesterday. Usually work in Word or Excel or Powerpoint, sometimes in DOORS or project.
Usually attend one or two meetings a day.
Usually some part of my work has me visiting or working in a lab or working with those that do.
Sometimes I travel but corporate travel is usually pretty generous about nice hotels and flexible flight schedules. The only thing I don't like is the company's insistence that I use it's credit card which means it is my responsibility if the company travel people don't pay my credit card bill.
Working for aerospace often means working on defense projects which means security clearances. Having a clearance is a good thing - doors are opened to you. Your job can't be off shored to some dude in India.
Head over to Hawthorne pool to swim on MWF and play full court basketball at our outdoor fitness facility here in El Segundo T and Th.
I think engineering is a great job. You work with really sharp people who think outside of life's BS. The engineering education benefits all parts of your life too from working around the house, to hobbies, to managing projects, to economizing, to process thinking to working systematically and making rational decisions.
Another thing that is nice is just about any company will pay for you to earn a master's degree. I earned my MS in Computer Engineering and MBA that way. Free.
Thanks for the insight on your day-to-day tasks, Charles.
Now, don't take this the wrong way, but what you just described doesn't seem to be unique just to the engineering field. I mean, everyone here at our office uses Outlook, Access, Excel, PowerPoint, and Word, too. I also travel for work on occasion. My schedule is very flexible (usually work between 7am to 4pm with paid OT). Some of us also exercise on lunch (do the stairs or walk around downtown). As far as being sharp, having an engineering education isn't required for that. I've known many a brilliant people in every profession, from teaching, to writing, to graphic design, and so on. I studied economics, so my thought processes are very much in line with rational solutions and economically efficient outcomes. I apply this knowledge/skillset very much to my financial livelihood. I am also good with a screwdriver.
What I'm more interested in are the technical aspects of an engineering career in terms of day-to-day duties. The reason I ask this is because I wonder if it's all that much different from my current day-to-day duties. I want to know if it's different from my day-to-day duties, because I want to know if it's worth making the transition into this field. In other words, would my tasks as an engineer consist of the similar administrative/operational tasks I complete as an operations manager? Or do you sit in an office performing challenging calculations using advanced Calculus tools?
Did that explanation of my question clarify what it is I am seeking? If not, let me know.
Math.... Sorry but most of my calculations were done by a computer. Of course I had to know how to tell the computer what to do but the days of figuring tolerances and degrees of variance with a slide rule(I did this) are long gone. We rely so much on the computer that I would bet few engineers could do all the math by hand anymore. Probably it would be more fair to say they couldn't do it effortlessly, by hand. It would take some time.
My day. I worked nights in the maintenance window. I would arrive at work, get coffee and take the report from the person I was replacing. Find out what was broken and who was out in the field to fix it. I 'worked' virtually, all over the world. I would log in to everything, sometimes as many as 30 different systems and see what was going on in the network and look for problems and alarms. I worked on LANS, WANS, ATM, Frame Relay, Ethernet, Packet, MPLS, VoIP, pretty much everything you could think of, data wise. All different platforms too...they were never smart enough to use just one.
Assuming all was OK, I would check my mail to see what else I was scheduled to do and if there were trouble tickets to work on. I would take calls as tier 3 support to our NOC as well. Some large customers(ISP's) had my direct number and would call me with major failures.
Some nights I would have cards to replace in switches or major projects to work on. I was always working on switch upgrades and usually wrote programs to do the work so I just had to watch the network for problems while implementing changes.
Bad weather was always an issue and power failures caused problems. Sometimes there would be fiber cuts that would involve rerouting traffic. I also looked at traffic for areas in the network that needed load balancing or equipment added to manage the traffic or fore-casted traffic.
Big events like a Presidential visit or the Olympics were a huge temporary headache.
Lots of nights were downright boring. I always said my job was 95% boring and 5% panic. In panic mode, you had to know how to stay cool and what to do. No matter where or what the problem. I had to be logical and have great troubleshooting skills. I had to be able to manage multiple problems in multiple locations and minimize the damage.
Math.... Sorry but most of my calculations were done by a computer. Of course I had to know how to tell the computer what to do but the days of figuring tolerances and degrees of variance with a slide rule(I did this) are long gone. We rely so much on the computer that I would bet few engineers could do all the math by hand anymore. Probably it would be more fair to say they couldn't do it effortlessly, by hand. It would take some time.
My day. I worked nights in the maintenance window. I would arrive at work, get coffee and take the report from the person I was replacing. Find out what was broken and who was out in the field to fix it. I 'worked' virtually, all over the world. I would log in to everything, sometimes as many as 30 different systems and see what was going on in the network and look for problems and alarms. I worked on LANS, WANS, ATM, Frame Relay, Ethernet, Packet, MPLS, VoIP, pretty much everything you could think of, data wise. All different platforms too...they were never smart enough to use just one.
Assuming all was OK, I would check my mail to see what else I was scheduled to do and if there were trouble tickets to work on. I would take calls as tier 3 support to our NOC as well. Some large customers(ISP's) had my direct number and would call me with major failures.
Some nights I would have cards to replace in switches or major projects to work on. I was always working on switch upgrades and usually wrote programs to do the work so I just had to watch the network for problems while implementing changes.
Bad weather was always an issue and power failures caused problems. Sometimes there would be fiber cuts that would involve rerouting traffic. I also looked at traffic for areas in the network that needed load balancing or equipment added to manage the traffic or fore-casted traffic.
Big events like a Presidential visit or the Olympics were a huge temporary headache.
Lots of nights were downright boring. I always said my job was 95% boring and 5% panic. In panic mode, you had to know how to stay cool and what to do. No matter where or what the problem. I had to be logical and have great troubleshooting skills. I had to be able to manage multiple problems in multiple locations and minimize the damage.
What kind of engineer were you? Sounds like telecom engineering by your description. Was it an engineering position that actually required an engineering degree from an accredited school? The reason I ask is that most telecom engineers I work with do not have an engineering degree and I don't think one is required, even today. Sometimes I wonder if they are just glorified field technicians with an "Engineering" title. Thanks for the response, btw.
Generally not much high level math on a day to day basis. I'm currently a software engineer but I've done plenty of real engineering (Test Engineer for very large Defense Contractor) work as well.
The real issue isn't plugging and chugging formulas (with regards to math), it's conceptual and learning how to learn abstract concepts. That's the mathematical/scientific piece that you gain from that type of education. It would really depend on what type of stuff you want to do as an engineer and what track you head down.
My job on a day to day basis consisted of designing tests and training techs to run them on their own, automating other tests, and doing tests on things that failed to understand why they failed (especially if it was failing above a certain threshold).
Now things are fairly different, so if you want me to go in depth on being a software engineer I can do that as well but I'd guess you're more interested in hard/actual engineering.
Generally not much high level math on a day to day basis. I'm currently a software engineer but I've done plenty of real engineering (Test Engineer for very large Defense Contractor) work as well.
The real issue isn't plugging and chugging formulas (with regards to math), it's conceptual and learning how to learn abstract concepts. That's the mathematical/scientific piece that you gain from that type of education. It would really depend on what type of stuff you want to do as an engineer and what track you head down.
My job on a day to day basis consisted of designing tests and training techs to run them on their own, automating other tests, and doing tests on things that failed to understand why they failed (especially if it was failing above a certain threshold).
Now things are fairly different, so if you want me to go in depth on being a software engineer I can do that as well but I'd guess you're more interested in hard/actual engineering.
Yeah, I'm thinking Mechanical, Electrical and (after researching) even Biomedical. Thanks for the insight in your field.
Yeah, I'm thinking Mechanical, Electrical and (after researching) even Biomedical. Thanks for the insight in your field.
Honestly, as far as degrees Mechanical and Electrical are great. Lots of diversity, bunch of specialties you can focus on and a fairly wide-berth of knowledge.
I'm not sure if stuff has changed since I graduated but Biomedical wasn't really great. The classes you take cover more general knowledge of Chemical/Mechanical/Electrical Engineering and don't go into serious depth in any of them. If you had a company doing work in Biomed I'd guess someone with more in-depth study of Electrical or Mechanical Engineering would have a better shot than a generalist that majored in Biomedical.
I know many friends that were MechE's that got jobs at medical firms after graduation.
I know it will vary depending on type of engineering/projects you're working with.
I'm trying to figure out a good career field for me. I want something that pays well ($50k/yr+), but that is also challenging on a day-to-day basis. A co-worker and I just had an elaborate discussion on jobs/careers. He described his neighbor, who is an engineer of some type, and apparently he does not use much (advanced) math in his day to day duties. In fact, he told my co-worker that his job is something he'd be able to train him to do with OTJ training.
It's pretty obvious that engineers take several upper-level math courses in college. So, how much of that do you use day-to-day (not just once in awhile on projects)? Can you provide specific examples? Do you find your job to be technically challenging the majority of the time, or are you doing more administrative/operational tasks such as partaking in meetings, tracking down materials, etc.?
Right now, I'm a low-level operations manager. My pay does not reflect my job title IMO. My tasks are related more to big-picture than to day-to-day supervisory tasks. My day-to-day mostly consists of resolving logistical/warehousing issues for a network of warehouses (misdeliveries, receiving errors, vendor errors, 3PL carrier errors). I was explaining to my co-worker that I don't really know how my position varies from upper level operations managers. So that's why I don't know if I want to continue on with this field. Is Supply Chain Management the type of career field where you just need to put in your time doing the same tasks over and over before you start making decent money? I'm really not sure, but it kind of seems that way the more I learn about the field.
Anyway, I guess the point of this thread is to figure out if an engineering career is the challenging career I'm interested in. I want to know if I will be doing more technical work on a day-to-day basis rather than mostly doing administrative/operational work (which doesn't seem all that challenging/stimulating to me).
Thanks for the responses.
Petroleum Engineering (reservoir)
Typically calculate the amount of reserves in the ground through various means. Do a lot of economics. Do all the major planning for development of reservoirs, drilling, and work-over operations. Don't use a lot of "heavy math." Knowing how to make computer programs is a huge plus. Have to analyze lots of technical well logs/plots. Have to come up with unique solutions to very difficult problems. Very challenging sometimes. Must try to keep up to date with new technology.
Hardest (and riskiest) part of job is decision making. You can gather all the data you want, but at the end of the day you have to make a decision... Sometimes you have to make multi-million dollar decisions on a very limited amount of data. Got to be able to work with what you have and come up with ways to figure out how to adapt to each unique situation.
Must communicate well with others-- very critical in this industry. Typically spend a lot of time coordinating projects with others. It is definitely a different kind of engineering... but it is also the highest paid. Even though you are dealing with big decisions-- it is very relaxed environment-- most in industry are very down to earth. Family oriented industry.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
