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I can't really speak much for appliances in terms of culture and stuff. You would be doing the ACE track if you took A/B Courses, and at least at Aviation, if you already have your MS you can either take those credits and get another MS or do a PhD. I don't think they would let you "skip" any A/B course classes, but you wouldn't have to take as many classes at university. Yes they were looking to offload appliances during the recession, but recently GE has become more focused on their manufacturing businesses and investing a lot of money. I think they just committed to renovating all of the appliances assembly plants. Pay starting out was average / slightly above industry average when I graduated undergrad, you get a decent raise for completing the Edison program from what I have heard. As far as advancement goes a lot of lead engineer / senior engineer positions prefer to have Edison grads. Mobility between businesses isn't too difficult if you know what you want to work on and contact the hiring manager. Generally they want you to stay in the same job for 2 years before looking for another.
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Mar 24, 2013 02:37
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I'm about to graduate with a BSE in Bioengineering. What do I do now? I have no idea what type of positions and where I need to be applying.
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Mar 25, 2013 02:30
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If that is the same as biomedical engineering, I think the default answer is "Go to grad school"
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Mar 25, 2013 03:47
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KetTarma posted:If that is the same as biomedical engineering, I think the default answer is "Go to grad school" Well, gently caress.
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Mar 25, 2013 04:41
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Haha, yup. A BS in Bioengineering or BME does not have enough specialization or training to be competitive in industry. Additionally, Biomedical Engineering is primarily an academically focused degree, so any work you do is mostly gonna be in academia anyway. Hope you like being a TA  I want to say there's ways to transition into a different career path with a Bachelors in BSE, but hosed if I know how. (If it makes you feel better, I just graduated with a BS in BE/BME in October. I'm in the same position as you.)
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Mar 25, 2013 09:50
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I read this thread start to finish not too long ago. This popped up quite a few times. It sucks but there it is.
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Mar 25, 2013 11:25
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Tell me about it. I wish I had done Chem E or CS instead 
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Mar 25, 2013 12:44
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I've got a friend who did biomed engineering as an undergrad degree (australia). She's currently working for the therapeutic goods administration (a government body for assessing the quality of stuff that goes into people such as drugs / artificial hearts etc) doing assessment of transplant goods. They've encouraged her and are helping pay for a masters of biomed iirc. You may have something similar you can apply for. Edit: even if you don't waltz into biomed, a coworker who did biomed but ended up doing project management in construction ended up doing leaving for a job doing project management at cochlear. Now they're sponsoring her to do further technical studies. It all ends in further study but there are multiple paths there. boxorocks fucked around with this message at 13:07 on Mar 25, 2013 |
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Mar 25, 2013 13:04
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Yeah, the skills my BME program focused on was mostly project management, design (e.g. designing hip replacements and artificial skin), and industry-specific stuff like patenting and startups. I want to say that I can finagle that into saying "hey I learned how to do design engineering and management, hire me!", but I don't know for sure. How useful are those skills? What would a good starting point be for me?
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Mar 25, 2013 14:01
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Half of my BME labs were matlab heavy. The rest were other statistical analyses. We really didn't specialize in anything. I do have a minor in engineering entrepreneurship which could be useful for project development and operations planning. The problem is those jobs want more focused degrees also. Not to toot my horn but I do go to penn and was hoping the name would help on my resume a lot. The GPA isn't great though. My ideal plan from freshman year was to work for a big pharma company that would pay for a masters or PhD. Something like Merck or GSK in philadelphia. Not really sure that can happen though.
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Mar 25, 2013 19:24
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An engineering master's/phd should be paid for anyway, by the school, unless it's a lovely broke school. In fact, the better the program, the more you get paid to go there. But you should just be applying for every entry-level or intern position you can find in the big pharma / medical devices world. An engineering degree is still an engineering degree, and those are huge companies that hire hundreds/thousands of people a year. This is prime recruiting season, do not delay. Your school should also have on-campus interviews, and you should be submitting your resume to those.
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Mar 25, 2013 19:42
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Booties posted:Half of my BME labs were matlab heavy. The rest were other statistical analyses. We really didn't specialize in anything. I do have a minor in engineering entrepreneurship which could be useful for project development and operations planning. The problem is those jobs want more focused degrees also. Not to toot my horn but I do go to penn and was hoping the name would help on my resume a lot. The GPA isn't great though. My ideal plan from freshman year was to work for a big pharma company that would pay for a masters or PhD. Something like Merck or GSK in philadelphia. Not really sure that can happen though. What a coincidence, that is exactly what I wish I did in undergrad. Unfortunately, we didn't specialize in anything either - I got a bunch of classes in biomechanics, biomaterials, tissue engineering, medical device design and patenting, and also a senior-year design project. I only got one class in medical imaging/bioinformatics, and while I managed to get a MATLAB oriented part on my senior year project, that's about as far as I got with it. Apparently, BME is very undifferentiated at the undergrad level... I've had the same experience as you with job hunting, practically all BME positions in industry are for PhDs or at least MSs so there's literally no way to get an entry level job with a BS. At least, as far as I know. So far I've been applying to junior programming/research technician jobs and the like while I get my MS in bioinformatics, but I haven't been very successful on that front. Let me know if you ever figure out what to do next, okay? We graduates need to stick together  --- And yeah, I know that I still have a BS in an engineering field - but I haven't been able to parley that into a job, mostly because I don't think I have the skills necessary to get "an engineering job" or something. I admit to being totally loving lost re: entry level jobs and not being very informed on what to do after graduation (besides "go to grad school dummy"). Does anyone have advice for a newbie graduate? Pollyanna fucked around with this message at 23:21 on Mar 25, 2013 |
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Mar 25, 2013 23:19
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Yeah. Get your resume in order and apply to a shitton of jobs at bio companies. There's a big variety in how different organizations do things. Some want you to fill the requirements exactly, some just want you to be a bright, dedicated individual who can learn new things and take directions. You can't know unless you apply. If you still have access to your school's career center, hit up any sort of on-campus interviewing as well. Employers use campus career centers a lot for entry-level stuff so they don't have to weed through online stuff. So you get a different set of opportunities than you would applying online, and often better opportunities with a better chance of success for you. If you can set a goal for yourself like "take 1 hour and apply to 2 jobs every weekday" it helps to make it a lot more manageable. Once you've done 3 or 4 cover letters they start getting a lot faster to write, as well. Finally, and really, this should be first, network. Talk to professors, people you know who have graduated, family members, etc. Get a LinkedIn profile going. Connect with your professors, join groups connected to your college/major/field. If you're out of school and have some time, start a blog and do little engineering projects. Put that on your LI profile. Even just writing about news stories in the field you want to work in shows a lot of interest that lots of people don't have.
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Mar 26, 2013 03:01
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I hate to sound like a broken record but have you guys talked to your schools' career counselors? They are obliged to find you a job and they probably could help you in ways that you might not have considered. Given that the medical industry is on the brink of becoming a huge cash cow due to aging baby-boomers, I feel like there have got to be plenty of opportunities out there for people like y'all.
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Mar 26, 2013 03:34
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I do need to speak with my advisor again. I went to career services in the fall and built a much better resume, but the lady there didn't seem to understand what I was looking for. To be fair, i'm not sure I know what I'm looking for besides "a good paying job". I don't really want to be a lab bench jockey, I want to be a person organizing people, being the orchestrator behind the project. I realize that's a lofty expectation, so I am going to take all of your advice and just get my resume out there and apply to jobs frequently. Especially the big ones with so many things going on that there must be room for me. I'm at a lab now, working part time and for free, but it's a 2 man show and I still don't have a project to work on. It's incredibly frustrating because when I go there I do nothing for 4 hours until I watch a guy pipette for 20 minutes and go home. I've had a paid lab job in the past with supervised projects so I feel like I'm going to explode, but I need the letter at the end of it. The other problem is the semester is rapidly approaching and I haven't done poo poo there yet. Between having to pay my loans and not making any money I'm losing my mind. I feel like I should just stop loving around at this 2-person lab with no work and just get a restaurant job again and pay the bills while applying to real jobs as often as I can. I haven't taken a single step towards grad school so I'll have to work on that this year too.
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Mar 26, 2013 06:30
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Booties posted:I do need to speak with my advisor again. I went to career services in the fall and built a much better resume, but the lady there didn't seem to understand what I was looking for. To be fair, i'm not sure I know what I'm looking for besides "a good paying job". I don't really want to be a lab bench jockey, I want to be a person organizing people, being the orchestrator behind the project. I realize that's a lofty expectation, so I am going to take all of your advice and just get my resume out there and apply to jobs frequently. Especially the big ones with so many things going on that there must be room for me. Spoiler alert: these two things are pretty much the same.
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Mar 26, 2013 06:49
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Noctone posted:Spoiler alert: these two things are pretty much the same. If that's what I signed up for, then that's ok. This is a problem for me because I was told I'd be working on a project. Except the lab has hardly any funds, one guy does all his work at night (by himself, and doesn't speak english well). The other guy is a dick who works in the hospital every other week. The PR doesn't have anything for me to do either. If I was getting paid I wouldn't be posting here at all.
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Mar 26, 2013 07:04
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Booties posted:I do need to speak with my advisor again. I went to career services in the fall and built a much better resume, but the lady there didn't seem to understand what I was looking for. To be fair, i'm not sure I know what I'm looking for besides "a good paying job". I don't really want to be a lab bench jockey, I want to be a person organizing people, being the orchestrator behind the project. I realize that's a lofty expectation, so I am going to take all of your advice and just get my resume out there and apply to jobs frequently. Especially the big ones with so many things going on that there must be room for me. Or, you could always take the big gamble and start your own company
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Mar 26, 2013 10:47
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I got accepted onto an Engineering course at a college yesterday. It's designed to get you ready for an undergraduate course at university when you finish it which is what I intend to do. The course doesn't start till September so I have plenty of time to get studying, I was wondering if you folks could shed some light onto what I could do to help me get ready for the course. Bear in mind I'm going into this completely blind, I really do not know what to expect. Should I be looking at stuff like calculus and algebra? Any books you could recommend?
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Mar 26, 2013 13:38
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Well, what course is it? What discipline? You're asking an extraordinarily vague question. I think most engineering programs generally assume you know highschool level math including a vague idea of what mathematical limits are. As a freshman, I was dumped straight into calculus. My first actual engineering class (Circuit Analysis 1) requires completion of calculus2 and takes physics 1 (w/calculus) as a co-req. Not sure if that helps.
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Mar 26, 2013 13:53
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Yeah sorry, should have been clearer about that. It's mainly mechanical but has emphasis on electrical as well.
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Mar 26, 2013 14:00
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Frankston posted:Yeah sorry, should have been clearer about that. It's mainly mechanical but has emphasis on electrical as well. Classical physics then. Brush up on calc 1 and 2. Derivatives and integrals area big part of mechanical and electricity and magnetism.
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Mar 26, 2013 16:03
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Just being fast and confident at basic algebra, trig, and calc (if calc isn't part of the course) is a huge part.
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Mar 26, 2013 17:36
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Frankston posted:Yeah sorry, should have been clearer about that. It's mainly mechanical but has emphasis on electrical as well. Getting decent at calc (or at the least the topics and how it can be applied) is pretty big, at least in my experience, since calc smacked me upside the head pretty hard, and it is used in a lot of different areas.
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Mar 26, 2013 21:55
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CCKeane posted:Getting decent at calc (or at the least the topics and how it can be applied) is pretty big, at least in my experience, since calc smacked me upside the head pretty hard, and it is used in a lot of different areas. Calculus is pretty much the foundation on which the rest of your engineering classes are built. If you go into the EE side, you'll get 4 years of math/math-related classes. I don't think ME is quite as bad but it's still pretty heavy.
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Mar 27, 2013 03:55
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evensevenone posted:Yeah. Get your resume in order and apply to a shitton of jobs at bio companies. There's a big variety in how different organizations do things. Some want you to fill the requirements exactly, some just want you to be a bright, dedicated individual who can learn new things and take directions. You can't know unless you apply. Yeah, that's been something that's bothering me. There's a whole bunch of entry level positions in MA that want an advanced degree. For example: quote:Principal Duties and Responsibilities: It sounds like I could do that, right? But it wants someone with a Ph.D.  quote:If you still have access to your school's career center, hit up any sort of on-campus interviewing as well. Employers use campus career centers a lot for entry-level stuff so they don't have to weed through online stuff. So you get a different set of opportunities than you would applying online, and often better opportunities with a better chance of success for you. quote:I hate to sound like a broken record but have you guys talked to your schools' career counselors? They are obliged to find you a job and they probably could help you in ways that you might not have considered. Given that the medical industry is on the brink of becoming a huge cash cow due to aging baby-boomers, I feel like there have got to be plenty of opportunities out there for people like y'all. I've got an appointment with the career development center sometime next week or so. Last time I went, I told the lady "I'm not doing so well finding jobs, can you tell me what I'm doing wrong?" and all she told me was to search Indeed.com or Monster for jobs.  Obviously, that wasn't helpful at all. This time, I'm going as an alumni rather than a senior, so I'm considering bringing up job search issues that have been annoying me - e.g. I don't know what I qualify for, I don't know where to develop my career further, etc.So yeah, I'm stopping by the career center soon for some counseling. Just, last time didn't go so well... quote:If you can set a goal for yourself like "take 1 hour and apply to 2 jobs every weekday" it helps to make it a lot more manageable. Once you've done 3 or 4 cover letters they start getting a lot faster to write, as well. Yeah, I'm always scouring Indeed and Monster and such for jobs I qualify for, and I probably apply to 5-6 a day. Still no bites quote:Finally, and really, this should be first, network. Talk to professors, people you know who have graduated, family members, etc. Get a LinkedIn profile going. Connect with your professors, join groups connected to your college/major/field. I made a LinkedIn profile long ago, and...it's actually kind of depressing. Everyone else there has tons of friends and contacts and they have jobs and stuff and I'm sitting here with like three profile views per month and nobody really giving a drat that I exist  story of my life quote:If you're out of school and have some time, start a blog and do little engineering projects. Put that on your LI profile. Even just writing about news stories in the field you want to work in shows a lot of interest that lots of people don't have. This is what I'm trying to do for bioinformatics, i.e. doing some of the gene analysis on my own machine. But it's a little harder to do a project yourself when you're typically used to drawing up plans for a Co-Cr hip implant or a stent that won't grow cells on it... --- Like, this is a good example of what I learned and what I can do. The second part, where it talks about a semi-automated image analysis system, was basically "my" part of the project - not in the sense that I did it all on my own, but it was the portion of my senior project that I personally made sure advanced to the same degree as the rest of it, figured out the needs of the client and user, handled the client/user interviews, drew up the basic plans for what they needed, etc. That's what I want to do, but I don't know where to start if I want to do that.
Pollyanna fucked around with this message at 06:21 on Mar 27, 2013 |
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Mar 27, 2013 06:13
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You CAN get jobs that you're massively underqualified for and be successful. Anecdata: friend with a master's applied for a job, didn't get it, but was hired into another position that was looking for PhD + 10 years experience. He then went to win the company's (a very large international one) engineer of the year award and is in general very successful. Point is: apply. The worst thing that can happen is literally nothing.
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Mar 27, 2013 14:21
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After a long period of nothing I have finally been lucky to get two job offers, but I am having a extremely difficult time deciding between them. As my first engineer job will obviously effect much of my career I was wondering if I could get some advice on what you guys think is the best route. The first position has more benefits for future growth: +Working for a high security facility +Will be working on something that could be considered of high prestige +Will obtain high security clearance +Training and mentor ship program +High pay: $60k -Will be dealing with countless regulations and bureaucracy -Job will be largely writing reports on issues and changes to be made -No hands on work -Will need to commute 1 hour each way The second would be more in line with what I would want to do in my long term career(design): +Working for a small company (>200) +Working with tools I enjoy using (Inventor and Visual Basic programming) +Will be involved in designing the latest products and exposing myself heavily to full process of manufacturing +Friendly and lay back environment -Not nearly as prestigious of a focus (furniture design) -Lower pay: $50k -Would be remaining in my hometown Any advice that you can give me for this kind of choice would be extremely helpful.
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Mar 27, 2013 17:18
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An hour commute is a dealbreaker in my opinion--unless it's on a bus/train/taxi where you can do stuff while commuting.
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Mar 27, 2013 18:06
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If I were in your position, I would take the latter. A 1 hour typical commute is going to be worse on some days throughout the year. That kind of commute length is what I'd be expecting if I lived in D.C. or the surrounding northern Virginia areas. Maybe it's just me, but you couldn't possibly pay me just 60K/year to put up with that. In addition to that, I can pretty much guarantee you'll end up working more than 8 hours per day on a regular basis. Your best-case scenario is already committing 10 hours per day to this. That will probably look more like 11-12 hours a lot of the time. The security clearance is nice, but I don't think it would be worth it to me. At a 10K/year difference, it would be like saying you're willing to sell your free time for about $20/hour. Personal anecdote: I'm still working at the first job I took after college. It's in that college town, which I love, and it's a pretty low cost-of-living environment. I took that job for 45K/year starting out and was as happy as could be. My commute length is like 7 minutes; hell, it doesn't take me more than 15 minutes to go anywhere that I'd typically want to go in my free time. At this point, it would take a huge, unreasonable increase in pay to pull me away from this kind of environment. There's so little overall stress that I think the only way I could be more relaxed is if I worked from home 100% of the time.
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Mar 27, 2013 18:40
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I would pick it based on what career you want, and not the compensation or particulars of the commute. The first one has way way more potential for growth and you will probably move up pretty quickly if you are moderately competent. The training/mentorship thing is a big deal, as is the security clearance. Down the road a few years, the compensation gets pretty high, assuming it's a defense/aerospace type thing. You'll probably move on from just doing reports. However, you will never get away from the bureaucracy and the corporate environment, at least as long as you're in the industry. That said you'll probably be in good shape to transition to something else in 5-10 years, or get into consulting where you have a bit more flexibility with hours. The other job... I feel like you'd get pigeonholed and have a hard time getting out of furniture or home products, unless you're just a great industrial designer or something. And the problem is that these fields just don't hire as many engineers. That said, having a work environment that doesn't involve Dockers and watching middle-managers play cover-your-rear end in meetings is pretty nice, as is not commuting. The commute will probably kill you unless you just love driving.
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Mar 27, 2013 18:50
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On the topic of the commute seeing as it comes up allot, there is a shuttle that can goes to and from the facility.
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Mar 27, 2013 19:02
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On a scale of 1 - 5: Rate your ambition, desire for job satisfaction, $$$ requirement, desire for life outside of work, location requirement. Do not re-use numbers. Now rate both jobs in the same way. See which one matches up the closest.
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Mar 27, 2013 19:08
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That you all for the input, it really helped. I ended up calling the second job and got them to raise the income to $55k making it my final choice. I was surprised the amount of focus on the commute, though I have never had experience with anything like it.
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Mar 28, 2013 02:02
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Corla Plankun posted:An hour commute is a dealbreaker in my opinion--unless it's on a bus/train/taxi where you can do stuff while commuting. I graduated at an unfortunate time (2009) and I ended up with a very long commute. Long commutes suck. A lot. A lot a lot. I am mid level now and I would pass on any offer that was longer than an hour commute. It really eats into your day. Unless you are prepared to just eat it entirely during the week, be ready to move. Seriously.
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Mar 28, 2013 02:07
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Wanecdotal story regarding large multinationals: Upward mobility can be difficult if you're not prepared to fight for it and constantly promote yourself. I've found in a more sales based organisation, the engineering/delivery teams lose out squarely and have more difficulty getting that personal growth realised (unless you're just talking about putting some good looking stuff on a resume). Personally the company I'm is got at selling dreams of growth and personal development but fails to deliver. Beyond that, we've got a pay increase freeze as well and they've cut any and all things that would have been seen as perks over the past few years. The only plus side is they've given me work on some killer/interesting projects and as such my resume looks good. My team is extremely fertile headhunting ground right now. Also, enjoy having a whole swathe of middle management that takes an active interest in micromanaging you / being your boss.
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Mar 28, 2013 04:21
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CCKeane posted:I graduated at an unfortunate time (2009) and I ended up with a very long commute. Long commutes suck. A lot. Yeah, I might actually take a shorter lease on my apartment in case I have to move. I don't think I can deal with a long commute, but since most of my prospects are in Cambridge or Boston...yikes. I don't want to spend my entire morning on I-90
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Mar 28, 2013 11:58
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Here is another "I got a job offer and am not sure what to do posts". I am really stuck on what to do and would greatly appreciate any insight at all. I'm graduating in May as a mechanical engineer, have been applying for work since September and this is the first I have gotten. I have had 10+ initial on-campus interviews with big companies but nothing further at all came of them. I figure this is possibly because I have no internship experience (just research) and possibly because I suck at interviewing; I can't really tell. Because of that I feel like I should be happy I have any sort of offer at and it would be stupid to turn it down. The problems are: -It's essentially hands on design consulting and the work is entirely at client sites which are split between being a one hour commute north and one hour south. So, I can basically never move closer. -The "company" is currently the owner and one other engineer so there is definitely no benefit packages although the owner said he pays travel expenses. I'm also not sure if working in a company this small devalues the experience I would get for the future. -The other engineer told me he works something like 45 to 50 hours a week plus commute time (~10 hours). I haven't gotten an exact number for salary other than it is "Average engineer pay in NJ" during the initial interview. I haven't asked further because I am doing some initial paid work for him while I finish my degree and the offer is contingent on doing well with it. However, I am sure I won't screw it up and obviously when it gets closer I will get an exact number from him. The work sounds fun, but the thought of a possible 60 hour work week makes me depressed and I definitely cannot see myself doing it forever for that reason alone. However, I be happy to do it for awhile to get some experience. In the long term I basically want to get out of NJ and get a job that involves sitting at a desk for 40 hours a week doing design and just make enough money to be comfortable. I have a few questions: -Should I take it? My family is totally open to me staying with them for as long as I need to to get on my feet so there is no risk of me being homeless if I don't work right away. However, I also am worried I may find nothing else for a year and regret not doing this. I have great grades, good project experience, and people say my resume is interesting, so it shouldn't be totally impossible, but I don't know how good/bad the job market is for entry level. -Am I a big baby and the idea of working 40 hours a week, especially as a new engineer, is unrealistic and 50-60 hours a week isn't that bad? -Will having any form of professional experience make it any easier to get an engineering job in general or could it just screw me because I won't be fresh out of college anymore and nobody will want to take a second chance on me if I leave my first job within a year or two? Piggycow fucked around with this message at 20:18 on Apr 1, 2013 |
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Apr 1, 2013 20:13
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If you think taking a job would make you unhappy, unless you have a family to feed, don't loving do it. I can tell you from experience, it is not worth it. There are other jobs out there.
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Apr 1, 2013 22:16
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Piggycow posted:-Am I a big baby and the idea of working 40 hours a week, especially as a new engineer, is unrealistic and 50-60 hours a week isn't that bad? Being unhappy with the idea of working more than 40 hours a week seems like engineering is a field where you will be frequently unhappy. I don't think the working hours get better as you increase in seniority. Many engineers work 40 hours a week but many also work 80 hours a week.
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Apr 1, 2013 23:05
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