Tell me about being an Engineer!

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Business, Finance, and Careers > Tell me about being an Engineer!

illcendiary: Dec 4, 2005; Damn, this is good coffee.

Am I gonna get an engineering job eventually? I have a BS in ME with a 3.6 GPA from a Top 20 university and still nothing :smith:

# ¿ Oct 14, 2009 15:30

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# ¿ May 2, 2024 01:52

illcendiary: Dec 4, 2005; Damn, this is good coffee.

So how hard is the FE anyway? I'm getting my BS in Mechanical Engineering in January and I plan on taking the FE pretty soon.

# ¿ Dec 3, 2009 19:01

illcendiary: Dec 4, 2005; Damn, this is good coffee.

Calef posted:

When you take the FE they give you a ridiculously comprehensive booklet full of engineering equations and tables. When you get to the questions on electricity, immediately flip to the section of the notebook on electricity. This makes it much easier for you. For some reason, when I took the test, everyone around me seemed to avoid using the massive cheat sheet they we were supplied with.

I graduated with a B.S. in Chemical Engineering and could not find a job to save my loving life. Or more specifically, none of the big companies with high-paying jobs that I thought I deserved would even interview me. This was because
1) I honestly believed that "GPA doesn't matter for ChemE's, we're in such high demand!!!"
2) I had zero internships or work experience of any kind. I got out in four years flat.

So instead I went to grad school and am now having the time of my life getting a PhD in Petroleum Engineering, which is much cooler than I ever would have imagined. Getting a PhD allowed me to become much more technically savvy in both breadth and depth, get a "second chance" at a good GPA, and most importantly form a solid network with some big-name professors and use that to land some excellent internships.

I guess I come off as recommending grad school here. Frankly, I do recommend it. 80% of the managers in respectable companies seem to have an M.S. A disproportionate number of executives have PhDs. I guess a B.S. is fine if you're fine making "enough" money but if you have an ambition of really being an industry leader I'd go for grad school. Grad school is usually free, i.e. they pay your tuition and a decent stipend.

This is what I don't get about the FE. As far as I can tell, based on the sample problems I've seen and the massive booklet they provide, it's more a matter of being able to find equations in books than actually recalling learned stuff. I guess if you already know something, you just finish faster than normal.

Anyway, was there a gap between your graduation and applying to grad school? I am thinking of getting a Masters in Petroleum Engineering, but I think there will be a six-month gap or so between graduation and the start of grad school.

I'm pretty much in what your shoes once appeared to be. Gonna graduate in January with so few job prospects it's dizzying. I've already interviewed at several oil companies around here and been turned down, so I don't really know what to do. Thing is, I have a 3.6 GPA and previous intership experience (albeit only one summer's worth). All I know is that come January, I'll have a BS from a top-20 school, and my parents will have wasted all sorts of money and I'll be unemployed and oh god :ohdear:

# ¿ Dec 10, 2009 06:47

illcendiary: Dec 4, 2005; Damn, this is good coffee.

huhu posted:

I need some help with my mechanical engineering woes and I feel like in the next week or two I'm going to get ball rolling in the right direction but I'd just like any extra help from the engineering community at large. How do you guys deal with the feeling of being overwhelmed at times? I really don't have any engineering friends right now but I'm trying to work on that so I feel like that might be one outlet. PS I'm in my fourth semester of engineering and have been making good progress so it's not like I'm being overwhelmed by Calculus 2 or something like that.

My third and fourth years of undergrad were the real killers for me. I didn't really decided on mechanical engineering until my fourth semester, so I basically took nothing but engineering classes my last two years of college and it was pretty overwhelming at times.

I dealt with it by working out and learning to manage my time better. Any time I had work to do and found myself on the forums or playing video games, I made it a point to pull myself away from it and finish my stuff up. It's not hard once you get into a rhythm.

Seconding what Frinkahedron said about TA office hours. That is one resource I didn't use nearly enough in undergrad.

# ¿ Mar 2, 2010 22:17

illcendiary: Dec 4, 2005; Damn, this is good coffee.

ch3cooh posted:

Petroleum Engineering. I'm doing what I love. I've been drilling and completing two wells since Memorial Day. And even though I get paid poo poo by the hour there is more than likely a significant raise and bonus for completing a project of this magnitude (first two horizontal shale wells ever drilled in this basin).

Sup oil services buddy :hfive:

What kinda drill bits you using :smugbert:

# ¿ Oct 29, 2010 07:07

illcendiary: Dec 4, 2005; Damn, this is good coffee.

RogueLemming posted:

Thanks for the advice all. I'm a civil, so I'm not overly worried about calculations. I just need to get a new calculator, so I thought I might as well get acquainted with an FE approved model. It can't hurt, right?

Also, I've never seen RPN before. It looks interesting.

Can you explain what you mean in the bolded part? I get annoyed by parenthesis, but I'm not sure I see how RPN would allow me to "start anywhere"?

Once you get the hang of RPN (and it happens quickly), you'll start getting good at looking at a large calculation and knowing where to start, and then working your way outwards.

RPN works with stacks, so instead of working left to right like with a normal calculator, you essentially work from the inside out. It's much faster (in my opinion) and more intuitive as well. Of course there are people that are incredibly good at keeping track of order of operations and parentheses and whatnot on a regular TI-89 so your mileage may vary.

The Wikipedia example for RPN does a halfway decent job of explaining its advantages.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_Polish_notation#Example

# ¿ May 8, 2011 15:53

illcendiary: Dec 4, 2005; Damn, this is good coffee.

Thoguh posted:

Not for engineering classes. Get a TI-89, or if you want to be really baller, the version of the TI-89 with a QWERTY keyboard, whatever they are calling it now.

That would be the TI-92, if I recall correctly.

Just looked: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TI-92

# ¿ Aug 22, 2011 14:51

illcendiary: Dec 4, 2005; Damn, this is good coffee.

Anyone have any experience with PE exam prep companies (PPI2Pass, Testmasters, etc)? Planning on taking the mechanical PE in October and was thinking of signing up. $1600 seems steep, but if it improves my likelihood of passing I think it's worth the money. Just wanted some feedback before I pull the trigger.

# ¿ May 17, 2016 16:52

illcendiary: Dec 4, 2005; Damn, this is good coffee.

spwrozek posted:

The study materials are good. I also did a face to face class at the local university though (only $900).

I ended up just ponying up the cash. Figure it'll be good for me to have some set structure to follow as I'm typically scatterbrained. Hope it goes well!

# ¿ May 19, 2016 03:43

illcendiary: Dec 4, 2005; Damn, this is good coffee.

Anyone know of a good online resource for steam Mollier diagrams? Taking the PE in a few months and thought it'd be nice to have something of a little better resolution than what I currently have (page in a textbook).

# ¿ Aug 10, 2016 19:46

illcendiary: Dec 4, 2005; Damn, this is good coffee.

osker posted:

ill,
I've been using the Mollier from the back of the MERM for years. I used a hand scanner to get at it and I've been telling myself that I'd rescan it to get rid of the slight warp it has, but it works just fine as is: https://www.dropbox.com/s/9v3fuki4vlsj1ul/MOLLIER.pdf?dl=0

If you're sitting for the Thermal Fluids PE I strongly suggest getting a copy of Keenan and Keyes Steam tables. Not having to interpolate or calculate fg deltas is a crazy time saver in the exam. The books include a banging Mollier diagram that is 36"x42" but it is so detailed that resizing it to 11x17 makes it almost unreadable without a magnifying glass.

Thanks! This will help big time. I'm currently waffling between taking the Thermal Fluids/Mechanical Systems tests, but I'm leaning Thermal Fluids. I'll get the Keenan & Keyes book if I go that route, the detailed tables sound helpful.

# ¿ Aug 14, 2016 22:05

illcendiary: Dec 4, 2005; Damn, this is good coffee.

I'd be interested in feedback on a standalone GD&T course as well. That's an area of improvement for me and I'm in a similar boat (laid off a few months ago), albeit with less experience.

# ¿ Sep 12, 2016 23:15

illcendiary: Dec 4, 2005; Damn, this is good coffee.

The Royal Scrub posted:

I'd say save your money and pick up a book with exercises. If you have experience designing/drafting then it's pretty sensible stuff and you can pick up the basics in a day or two.

If you're looking at jobs where you need to be a total expert then that ASME class doesn't get you that far into it anyways. I'm enrolled in it through work right now and it's just boring videos that go over the book page by page.

Figured that might be the case. I think once I'm done studying for the PE, I'll pick this up:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0971440166/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=XYQRDV1YHE53&coliid=I12BWINHIDUDN2

You can buy that, the workbook, and the tolerance/stack-up analysis text for a shade under $300. It's a lot, but it's cheaper than the course and I imagine slower-paced self-guided study would be more beneficial in the long run.

# ¿ Sep 13, 2016 04:26

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# ¿ May 2, 2024 01:52

illcendiary: Dec 4, 2005; Damn, this is good coffee.

ch3cooh posted:

Any of y'all work in process automation and PI controller tuning? I'm trying to optimize the use of automatic driller and trying to understand why it won't work the way I want it to.

Edit: OK more details now that I have some time. The automatic driller on the rig that I supervise has four parameters that it controls. They are Rate of Penetration (ROP), Weight on Bit (WOB), Rotary Torque, and On Bottom vs. Off Bottom Pressure Differential (DIFF). It uses these parameters to control the speed of the drawworks (essentially ROP). WOB, Torque, and DIFF also have gain values that can be adjusted. The problem I am running into is that when the system is limited by the ROP setpoint, the other 3 parameters are not stable causing downhole vibrations that damage the bit and other tools. Ideally I want the system to be WOB limited, but it is not possible to disable the ROP limiter.

So I figured we could functionally turn the ROP limiter off by setting it to such a high value that it would never be the controlling loop. This worked well, for a while. This is what it looked like when we were drilling in a consistent formation. Things were stable and downhole vibrations were relatively low.

But then we would drill into something softer and things would go a bit haywire. WOB would decrease rapidly so the drum would speed up, but then the WOB would start to increase and overshoot the limiter. So the drum would stop turning, causing a large decrease in WOB, so the drum would speed up...

These large fluctuations in WOB also damage bits pretty quickly. We tried low gain settings and high gain settings. We also tried lowering the WOB set point to try to catch the drum before it sped up too much. But even then it would overshoot and get into the same cycle.

Do any of you folks have suggestions on if we can do something with the gain values to try to minimize this?

I don't have anything in terms of suggestions but boy does this bring back some memories (being a former bit designer). Was a lot of fun getting yelled at in the company man's trailer for our allegedly crappy designs, then getting the Pason data and seeing the crap that the autodriller was putting the bits through.

# ¿ Jan 9, 2017 03:38

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Business, Finance, and Careers > Tell me about being an Engineer!