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KaiserBen posted:You'd be surprised. As a field engineer, I've met plenty of steel-mill workers, and most are certainly guys I could (and do) get along with. Keep an open mind and talk to people, you'll learn a ton about good design from the user's perspective. Also worth noting, on my last project, ~50% of the people on the customer's side of things that I had contact with had at least a BS in engineering. I wish more engineers understood this. I really think that engineers should be required to have some field work if they are going to design. I worked construction for 6 years (HS and College) and it really opened my eyes to what is good and bad about designs of A&E's. The experience is not exactly applicable to what I do now in design but those experiences have stuck with me to look at my design from a construction stand point.
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Jan 5, 2010 03:16
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KaiserBen posted:You'd be surprised. As a field engineer, I've met plenty of steel-mill workers, and most are certainly guys I could (and do) get along with. Keep an open mind and talk to people, you'll learn a ton about good design from the user's perspective. Also worth noting, on my last project, ~50% of the people on the customer's side of things that I had contact with had at least a BS in engineering. Where are you working, exactly? I'm coming out of metalworking as a trade and most people seemed to have a very lovely, resentful attitude to 'all dem engineers right out of school making fifty thousand a year' - except for the foremen who basically did everything but fire me so I would go back to school while I still can. I guess I worked in a weird place, or shipyards are just crappy? I'm going M.E. myself, - what is ME field work like? I've wrenched on my own cars out of fun and later necessity for the past 9 years, starting at 16, and I've done my share of crawling into odd angles to hold or fix or fit or join things together. Will I be doing that or just inspecting things, measuring, etc? Also, does being a claustrophobic mean I should just stay in an office? I've had panic attacks trying to work inside of VERY small water tanks with 3 baffled sections the size of coffins to crawl through to get back to the manhole out of it. Not fun! w/r/t design engineers who don't care about people who have to use/maintain their designs - I will NEVER be 'that guy' who puts a bolt out of reach except for someone the size of a 10 year old or with 24" of socket extensions, or putting field welds in corners, out of position. Isn't this covered in class as something to save money on, though? I've met CE's who hate field welds with a passion nearing that of the guy who has to bend a rod or tig weld with a mirror to do it.
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Jan 5, 2010 03:42
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Designing stuff for ease of use/repair is actually what's attracting me to field of engineering. I get so frustrated with stuff that's been poorly designed, I'd like to at least make sure that some things are done right. With that said, I have a question I've been meaning to ask in this thread. It seems that a lot of you work in industrial situations. Is that where most jobs are? I'd really like to be designing for products that go out to a lot of consumers.
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Jan 5, 2010 04:08
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leo_r posted:Does anyone know anything about summer internships in Canada? I'm studying aerospace engineering in the UK, but I'm originally Canadian. All the public sector stuff seems to have a very confusing application process through some central organisation, or is directly linked to universities. Not studying in Canada, finding information about placements (or how to apply) is pretty tricky. The UK aerospace industry is pretty much 1 company, who I don't really want to work for. I can't give much advice, but I hope you remembered to check out Bombardier and MDA.
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Jan 5, 2010 04:54
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Thoguh fucked around with this message at 14:26 on Aug 10, 2023 |
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Jan 5, 2010 05:51
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Thoguh fucked around with this message at 14:26 on Aug 10, 2023 |
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Jan 5, 2010 05:55
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Thoguh posted:Have you thought about being a Manufacturing Engineer? That's what I did for my internship and coming up with parts for the machines that were easier to use and cheaper/quicker to repair was a big part of my job. Sometimes it's called "process engineering" rather than manufacturing engineering, but the end result is the same. Process engineers are what chemical engineers get called, in oil&gas/petrochemicals/power at least. Maybe in non-oil sectors the definition is different.
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Jan 5, 2010 06:14
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leo_r posted:Does anyone know anything about summer internships in Canada? I'm studying aerospace engineering in the UK, but I'm originally Canadian. All the public sector stuff seems to have a very confusing application process through some central organisation, or is directly linked to universities. Not studying in Canada, finding information about placements (or how to apply) is pretty tricky. The UK aerospace industry is pretty much 1 company, who I don't really want to work for. It's probably going to be difficult if you're not at a Canadian university. Most schools here have an organized internship program, so companies and organizations will just call up the local university and have them list the job openings with their students. You might have some luck if you contact the Engineering Co-op offices at schools near where you want to work and see if they can help you. You might have problems with that though, because it's likely they want to horde as many jobs as they can for their own students. It's worth a shot though. The other way to do things would be to just contact engineering companies and ask them if they're hiring students. You might have better luck with that.
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Jan 5, 2010 19:52
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Nihilanthic posted:I'm going M.E. myself, - what is ME field work like? I've wrenched on my own cars out of fun and later necessity for the past 9 years, starting at 16, and I've done my share of crawling into odd angles to hold or fix or fit or join things together. Will I be doing that or just inspecting things, measuring, etc?
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Jan 5, 2010 20:21
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Nihilanthic posted:Where are you working, exactly? I'm coming out of metalworking as a trade and most people seemed to have a very lovely, resentful attitude to 'all dem engineers right out of school making fifty thousand a year' - except for the foremen who basically did everything but fire me so I would go back to school while I still can. I guess I worked in a weird place, or shipyards are just crappy? I work for a pretty decent sized supplier to the steel industry (automation equipment supplier/systems integrator/general "make it work" contractor), mostly working in primary/secondary metals production. I've pretty much only worked in hot strip steel mills, but my group does hot and cold steel and aluminum mills, as well as production of both metals. Steel mills tend to be a more educated workforce due to the immense amount of technology in use now, so maybe I'm just spoiled, but the worst I've gotten is some lighthearted ribbing about being overeducated. Nihilanthic posted:I'm going M.E. myself, - what is ME field work like? I've wrenched on my own cars out of fun and later necessity for the past 9 years, starting at 16, and I've done my share of crawling into odd angles to hold or fix or fit or join things together. Will I be doing that or just inspecting things, measuring, etc? The MEs that work with me do almost the exact same job I do, most of it electrical/software in nature. I rarely get truly "dirty", unless I'm troubleshooting some particularly annoying issue; most of the time, I'm telling the grunt workers what to do, then checking their work, calibrating the equipment, measuring, etc. I do tend to do final wiring hookups, minor changes, etc, but I leave the major wiring runs to the electricians. Our ME guys tend to get a bit more into things, helping troubleshoot motors and such. You likely won't do much "hands-on" installation, but you will test equipment, make sure it works to spec, and troubleshoot it when it doesn't (all the time, FYI, Murphy is a bastard). Last project I was on, we spent 90% of our time with the ME from the mechanical contractor verifying that all our equipment was working and that the local contractors did everything right (they didn't). His job was almost exactly like ours at that point, just making sure everything works and is done right. More "hands-on" time with a radio than a wrench. Honestly, the biggest adjustment to a field engineering job isn't what you do at work, it's the effects on your life. I can't make real firm plans due to being called to jobs on short (at best) notice. For example, last field assignment I was on, I got ~3 days notice (booked tickets friday afternoon for 6am monday flight) for an 11 day international trip. I was supposed to leave this week/next for a longer assignment, but it ran into issues, so I'm stuck in limbo since I have 4 projects going on now (2 in the office, 2 in the field). The two in the field should start around the same time, and they're on different continents. This may get interesting. Nihilanthic posted:Also, does being a claustrophobic mean I should just stay in an office? I've had panic attacks trying to work inside of VERY small water tanks with 3 baffled sections the size of coffins to crawl through to get back to the manhole out of it. Not fun! Maybe. I don't usually have to deal with confined spaces, but I have had a few. Most of our work is in cabinets/HMI panels/wallmount panels, but some of our sensors get "interesting" mounting locations. Most mechanical equipment we deal with is designed for ease of access, but some of it is necessarily hidden/enclosed. Even so, they try to make stuff pretty accessible, as chances are it will fail at least once. Shalinor posted:I'm curious about this, and also how M.E. work differs between larger firms and smaller firms? Does the work get more applied and less cubical-based if you move away from corporate firms? Or is this purely a function of job title / "field work" in larger and smaller companies is identical? I think it's more dependent on job title/skillset. In my experience (comparing my company of ~500 people to GE, where I have friends), the work is pretty similar. The pay and travel policies differ hugely though. I talked to the guy from our mech. supplier on the last job, and he was making $30 less/day in per diem, no location premium, and vastly tighter restrictions on travel. EDIT: this is solely speaking of field engineering, there are plenty of engineers at both companies stuck in cubes. KaiserBen fucked around with this message at 02:02 on Jan 6, 2010 |
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Jan 6, 2010 00:48
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Thoguh posted:Have you thought about being a Manufacturing Engineer? That's what I did for my internship and coming up with parts for the machines that were easier to use and cheaper/quicker to repair was a big part of my job. Sometimes it's called "process engineering" rather than manufacturing engineering, but the end result is the same. This is exactly what I did for my co-op. I feel like it has helped me tremendously in the transition to design. Just talking to the machine shop guys was more helpful than anything we covered in school. Shalinor posted:I'm curious about this, and also how M.E. work differs between larger firms and smaller firms? Does the work get more applied and less cubical-based if you move away from corporate firms? Or is this purely a function of job title / "field work" in larger and smaller companies is identical? I work at a large corporation, and spend the majority of my time in my cube modeling or drafting in ProE. I don't do any analysis work, I simply hand my work off to a stress guy and he tells me if poo poo is gonna break. If I need something machined, I just call the shop and parts magically appear on my desk a few days later. Every once in a while I get lucky and get to help build up some test hardware.
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Jan 6, 2010 01:56
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This may not be the thread for it and if not my apologies, but my job has recently taken a downturn (cut hours) and my dad (who is a pipeline engineer) said he's willing to pay for me to take an AutoCAD course at the local community college. My background is in IT, but I took drafting in high school and aced it effortlessly, and I enjoy sketching and drawing things out on paper and on computer (paper feels better though), so I'm giving it a try. I know this class won't count for anything real beyond making sure I'm familiar with a particular software package, but if I were to follow this career change through, what would my likely path look like? I'm 10+ years out of high school, worked a variety of jobs in that time mostly in IT, just a smattering of college credits, so I know I'm not getting right into any high-falutin' university, but if I wanna be able to sketch things out on a computer or on paper all day with little customer interaction, what am I looking at? Could I potentially take this course then intern with a drafting firm for a bit til they hire me on and pay for the rest of my education? Are there certifications I need to be looking at? Or will I need to go the whole 9 yards and get some sort of degree before anyone will so much as glance at my resume as it heads to the waste bin?
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Jan 6, 2010 06:01
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TheTarrasque posted:Should I learn AutoCAD? Not to discourage you, but in my experience (engineering contractor) we don't do any AutoCAD work in-house any more, it just gets farmed out to low cost centres in India etc. where they have cad monkeys prepared to work for a hell of a lot less.
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Jan 6, 2010 06:26
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AllAmericanAndy posted:Not to discourage you, but in my experience (engineering contractor) we don't do any AutoCAD work in-house any more, it just gets farmed out to low cost centres in India etc. where they have cad monkeys prepared to work for a hell of a lot less. What kind of engineering do you do? I've never seen a significant amount of drafting being contracted outside of the firm in any company I've worked in or anyone I've really discussed it with in civil or structural engineering. It seems like it would be impossible to actually work like that in any sort of time critical scenario.
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Jan 6, 2010 06:43
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SubCrid TC posted:What kind of engineering do you do? Yup this. We have lots of drafters in our office. I could not imagine farming it out... communication is hard enough on drawings when it is face to face. The class may allow you to get come work but most of our drafters have 2 years from ITT or wherever... (most of them I could draft circles around though taking only 2 class in college)
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Jan 7, 2010 02:07
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Shalinor posted:I'm curious about this, and also how M.E. work differs between larger firms and smaller firms? Does the work get more applied and less cubical-based if you move away from corporate firms? Or is this purely a function of job title / "field work" in larger and smaller companies is identical? I work for a large firm, 15,000+ employees when including our manufacturing departments. Here, yes I do ride my cube most of the day, fixing MRB issues and generally addressing failed inspections and reworks. At least I'm in an IPT that's on the shop floor, so I'm a bit more hands on and close to the action; but the vast majority of our ME's and design guys sit in rooms the size of a football field on Catia V5 all day.
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Jan 7, 2010 03:33
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All drafting is done in house where I am. It'd be impossible to outsource.
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Jan 7, 2010 04:35
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Thoguh fucked around with this message at 14:26 on Aug 10, 2023 |
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Jan 7, 2010 05:52
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Pocket Billiards posted:All drafting is done in house where I am. It'd be impossible to outsource. I draw up PID's in the home office, scan andand e-mail to India where they cad it up, make numerous mistakes, send it back to me where I get to unleash my red pen on it till I get a PID i'm happy with. Nothing too difficult with this arrangement. Admittedly I guess it depends what cad is being used for as to where its possible/impossible.
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Jan 7, 2010 05:55
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Recent Civil Engineering graduate with a resume question for those of you with any hiring experience. I graduated with a poor GPA (2.5), but I put myself through school. Some people have told me to post my GPA on my resume followed by "self-funded." Can anyone back this up? Will it increase my chances of landing an interview or should I just leave the whole thing off?
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Feb 17, 2010 19:18
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I graduated Mechanical last may with a 2.68. I found I got a much better response just leaving GPA off the resume entirely. If anyone wants it they'll ask and you can hopefully talk it up some. In my case, I had a rough Freshman year but did great later on. If you can show them transcripts of you doing good in the Engineering classes that matter, people can get over the GPA. Also passing the FE helped a bit, maybe more for Civil.
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Feb 19, 2010 00:52
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I could use some advice as a student. I'm a Mechanical Engineering student finishing up my third year of curriculum. After spending the last three years searching for an internship, I finally got an offer for a co-op position at a very large agriculture/food processing company. Keep in mind, with the way the economy has been, it's been rather difficult for me to get an internship/co-op at all, so this is a huge relief, because I would just love any experience. I'm genuinely interested in what the company does (even though the position is more production management oriented and not technical) and it's generally agreed upon that co-op's from here get fulltime positions in the company upon graduation. The thing is I also interviewed with a power company for another co-op position, and power plants are what I would really love to do. I can't guarantee they will offer me anything, but I can say my interview with them was the best interview I've ever had and the interviewer himself told me he was extremely impressed with me. The problem is they won't be getting back to me for another 1-2 weeks, while I have less than a week to respond to the first place. Getting a full-time position with this place isn't guaranteed, but the experience will be invaluable. Would anyone who has experience/knowledge about these fields (agriculture vs power) share what they know about each one and which one would offer a better future? Which one is more stable (I'm from a heavy agricultural state, for what that matters)? I'm leaning towards accepting the first place and just taking what I can get experience-wise at this point.
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Feb 19, 2010 01:17
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NativeAlien posted:The thing is I also interviewed with a power company for another co-op position, and power plants are what I would really love to do. I can't guarantee they will offer me anything, but I can say my interview with them was the best interview I've ever had and the interviewer himself told me he was extremely impressed with me. The problem is they won't be getting back to me for another 1-2 weeks, while I have less than a week to respond to the first place. Getting a full-time position with this place isn't guaranteed, but the experience will be invaluable.
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Feb 19, 2010 01:54
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grover posted:Those are two completely different fields! And very broad ones, too. It's hard to really get into specifics. The question is, which do you enjoy more? I really don't know much about agriculture, but I've worked in a food plant before and really enjoyed the atmosphere. As for power plants, I loved thermodynamics courses and I've taken one course on power plants and found them very interesting. Really it's a toss up as to which one I will like more.
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Feb 19, 2010 02:29
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Have you told the power plant that you have another offer and don't want to risk not getting any job, and if they could let you know sooner? I have no idea if that would help, hurt, or not affect your chances, but its what I would do in your situation.
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Feb 19, 2010 02:37
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Dooey posted:Have you told the power plant that you have another offer and don't want to risk not getting any job, and if they could let you know sooner? I have no idea if that would help, hurt, or not affect your chances, but its what I would do in your situation. I've thought about it and I see pros and cons with contacting them about it. I don't want seem like I think I'm some hot commodity throwing my weight around when I don't have any at this point, and I also don't want them to think "well, this kid's got his opportunity, let's give someone else a try" either. I have no idea if that's how it works, but it's what I'm afraid of. What I am sure of is not to take one position and then back out of it later. I don't want to bite any hands feeding me.
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Feb 19, 2010 02:57
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NativeAlien posted:I've thought about it and I see pros and cons with contacting them about it. I don't want seem like I think I'm some hot commodity throwing my weight around when I don't have any at this point, and I also don't want them to think "well, this kid's got his opportunity, let's give someone else a try" either. I have no idea if that's how it works, but it's what I'm afraid of. There's no harm telling them you have another offer. When I took my job, I had 3 offers I was considering, told each company that I did, and none had issue with it. This was March/April '08 though, so better economic times to be sure, but none acted surprised or thought I was "throwing my weight around". They know that if they're interested, someone else probably is too. Don't accept then turn it down, just tell the power guys that you have another offer and would like to know sooner rather than later (most can at least try to accommodate you).
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Feb 19, 2010 06:09
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NativeAlien posted:I've thought about it and I see pros and cons with contacting them about it. I don't want seem like I think I'm some hot commodity throwing my weight around when I don't have any at this point, and I also don't want them to think "well, this kid's got his opportunity, let's give someone else a try" either. I have no idea if that's how it works, but it's what I'm afraid of. I was in exactly this spot before taking my current position - I emailed the slower of the two I really wanted to work for, explained and asked politely, and they said "oh, yeah, sure, one sec... <quick conference>... yeah, you're hired."
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Feb 19, 2010 16:02
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Thoguh fucked around with this message at 14:26 on Aug 10, 2023 |
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Feb 19, 2010 22:23
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So I called the power plant, the guy said he'll get back to me with a final decision on Monday. From the way he worded it, it pretty much sounded like it was going to be an offer, but I don't want to get my hopes up. Thanks for the advice guys...but that brings me to a new question. What's the likelihood of a co-op leading to a job upon graduation? Does it even matter where you go in the long run?
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Feb 20, 2010 00:59
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NativeAlien posted:What's the likelihood of a co-op leading to a job upon graduation? Pretty high. In fact, I think every single person I know who did a co-op got an offer from the company after graduating. Of course, that was 3 years ago, when things weren't quite as grim.
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Feb 20, 2010 03:42
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plester1 posted:Pretty high. In fact, I think every single person I know who did a co-op got an offer from the company after graduating. "Sorry, we have a hiring freeze." "I'll be in grad school if you need me  "Is the story of about 5 people I know.
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Feb 20, 2010 03:47
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hobbesmaster posted:"Sorry, we have a hiring freeze." Yeah, I guess I'm getting karmic justice for all those times I thought "heh good luck getting a job arts majors". Honestly where do you branch out from electronics engineering? Software development jobs have always outnumbered hardware jobs around 10:1 in my city, and I'm not really a great coder, although I can do it well enough when need be.
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Feb 20, 2010 03:54
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DuckConference posted:Yeah, I guess I'm getting karmic justice for all those times I thought "heh good luck getting a job arts majors". Does your diploma say "Electrical Engineering" or "Electronics Engineering"? I was pretty heavy into semiconductors and MEMS in school, and ended up working in a completely different field on my first job, and a completely different branch again on my second. A lot of people are like that. If you can get a job coding, hey, it's a job! You can always keep looking, and having some good work experience on your resume will help, too.
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Feb 20, 2010 04:33
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Late to the party and didn't read the whole thread, but this site: https://www.eng-tips.com is a pretty great resource for actual engineering questions. Mech Eng. graduate here who fell backwards into medical devices (mostly small companies) and has been loving it for about 5 years now, if anybody has any particular questions on that. For the record, a PE means nothing in this particular industry, but I'm sure the opposite is true for structural/civil types.
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Feb 20, 2010 05:59
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B.S. Chemical Engineer here. Currently working in China for an American company!
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Feb 20, 2010 09:07
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ForeverFlashlight posted:Mech Eng. graduate here who fell backwards into medical devices (mostly small companies) and has been loving it for about 5 years now, if anybody has any particular questions on that. This is actually something I'm interested in getting into once I graduate, I'm currently a freshman in mechanical engineering. What sort of work have you done? The only experience I have with the medical device field is a tour through Ventana medical supplies here in town so I don't know a whole lot about what gets done, but I thought it was pretty cool.
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Feb 20, 2010 09:36
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My degree was straight mechanical, although if you're interested in it taking a few extra biology courses would be smart. I think a few places are starting to offer actual bio engr. degrees but I'd wager you'd be better off with just mechanical until they're well-established. Personally I've worked at a spinal implant place (basically a start-up) and now at a trauma company (mid-range ~200 employees). Either way it's very precise work with an insane laundry list of regulations to follow, but also relatively high margin/low volume so you can afford to spend a lot of time getting something right and/or spec out some drat tight tolerances. Of course, if you ever need to "service" your parts "in the field" then something has quite literally gone very wrong. Like any other job, internships are a must - but you can range pretty wide between 'standard' manufacturing or even get into the sales side where you go into the cases with the surgeons...
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Feb 21, 2010 01:19
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hobbesmaster posted:"Sorry, we have a hiring freeze." What was their work experience like prior to graduation? Also the economy will be better in two years...right? Please?
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Feb 21, 2010 02:46
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Stup posted:B.S. Chemical Engineer here. Currently working in China for an American company! Tell me more. I graduate next May and am looking for a job outside the US for a while before I settle down with a family.
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Feb 21, 2010 03:24
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