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Old 05-23-2013, 07:08 PM
 
Location: Wicker Park, Chicago
4,789 posts, read 14,720,237 times
Reputation: 1966

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For my employment since Feb 2009, I had been mostly looking for Chicago jobs. 4+ years in Chicago and no job yet, I have to figure out how to work in any other city in America despite the distance to Chicago. 2+ years ago the problem was that I had 3 vehicles [now 2]. Now the problem is that if I moved nobody would live here to watch and take care of the house. We're thinking that we should trust our neighbor since 1976 - Ritchie - with our house keys and we pay him to watch and maintain the house.

I just got a call from a recruiter for a Sr Mech Eng job in S. GA doing Proe and battery design work. Pays $70 to $85 k / year but I'm not a Sr Eng to boss and manage other Mech Engrs.

I went to the CC where I learned Proe and they stopped training classes for it. They said there wasn't much industry demand for it. I guess many small and medium sized companies are doing Solidworks.
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Old 05-23-2013, 07:21 PM
 
Location: USA
7,474 posts, read 7,017,971 times
Reputation: 12503
There is some truth to this - there are far fewer major engineering centers in say... Wyoming than in California.

The problem only gets worse the deeper into your career you get, especially in the STEM world since workers get pigeon-holed very quickly into only being able to work in the exact career field in which they used to work. So, if you started in aerospace, you can only work in aerospace, and so on. This further limits a person's options greatly.

Sadly, mechanical engineering is one of the worst STEM fields these days. It has been hit very hard by outsourcing of manufacturing jobs overseas, and the two largest states for mechanical engineering - California and Michigan - are either severely overpriced or suffering from crushing unemployment. Also, much like IT, mechanical engineers get narrowly classified by their preferred CAD package, since apparently engineers are unable to learn new forms of software (*rolls eyes in disgust*) - every week I get job emails where half the requirements are software specific, which is simply insane and cannot be controlled by the would-be employee since nobody can gain "3+ years of Pro/E experience" at home in their free time.

About the only form of engineering that seems to have any long-term potential right now is software/systems in the DoD world, especially for folks with Top Secret clearances, but even those jobs are probably on hold thanks to the budget problems. I guess petroleum engineering counts, but that's a very cyclic field - I have an uncle who went to college for that, but when he graduated, he was never able to get a job in that field thanks to the market being in a huge rut.
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Old 05-23-2013, 07:45 PM
 
Location: Wicker Park, Chicago
4,789 posts, read 14,720,237 times
Reputation: 1966
I wish I could get a Chicago job because all of my possession fit in our big enough 3 story remodeled Wicker Park house, and I wouldn't have to pay rent.

I thought I was good enough to get the few Mech Eng / Tech Writer jobs in Chicago yet companies that hire for this probably go through 200+ resumes for the job.

Maybe to break my 4.7+ years of unemployment I have to do a nationwide job search, and we'll have to get in touch with our neighbor, Ritchie. Also, I have to put a Blue Ox tow bar baseplate on my 1999 Honda Civic HX so that it can be towed by my 2005 Dodge Grand Caravan SXT with tow package.

Almost no Unigraphics and Catia jobs in Chicago, but Inventor is picking up. I can't self train on Unigraphics because you can't get a working bootleg copy of it.
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