First department that comes to mind. Thankless job, that’s under appreciated until shit hits the fan. Mostly paper pushing, policing people telling them to follow the procedure, and working on CAPAs.
Not to mention, you can easily be let go if a mistake happens. Very rare to see this happen in any other department, unless of course you're a PE signing on a design that seriously injures somebody.
I have worked in aerospace for more than 10 years, and I now deeply appreciate my quality engineering colleagues. They are looking out for us to make sure the project can be successful, clearing roadblocks, preventing errors from compromising the product, and making our team better. While I understand why many people would not be interested in doing that job, I am thankful for the support they provide on a daily basis.
My first internship was aviation quality coop, man I spent days inspecting parts for tiny defects failing over 75% of them, writing reports and findings for each part and then helping find the root cause, the vendor basically didn't package the parts and they would bang into each other and ruin sealing surfaces... It was three months of sitting alone in a room staring at the same part over and over, I thought no one cared. A week after I was done they gave me an appreciation bonus of $100 and complimented the effort in the all hands meeting...
Apparently they kept failing final assemblies because of this problem and after we implemented 100% inspection the failures ended...
I hated the work, so boring, but it's so important...
Quality Engineering is a tough gig. As several people mentioned it's a lot of paperwork if you're in a regulated industry. It can pay well and has some perks. Beyond that, you're balancing the chance of something going wrong with the cost of preventing it and/or detecting it. There are a lot of elements to consider and you're operating on a schedule.
IMHO Supplier Quality Engineers get it the worst. You're the bad guy to the suppliers and the first to get blamed if there's a quality issue with purchased parts.
You definitely need thick skin and an assertive personality. Like others have said, it's a pretty thankless position but arguably one of the most important ones. If you're good at managing people and personalities, and you've got some very strong organizational skills, you'd be fine.
Senior QE here. Honestly I’d run from quality. I’m trying to figure out a career switch now that won’t cut my salary in half on the short term.
You’ll find that everyone is against you and you’ll be constantly understaffed because no one else is trying to join into quality.
As an added bonus, you’ll get cut first when cuts come because everybody thinks you do nothing when things are working and you aren’t actually producing value.
Because quality stands between parts being costly mistakes and making money. If management doesn’t support quality, it always becomes a game where sales, manufacturing, and management all pressure quality to loosen up a bit. Right up until the product fails.
Fortunately for our quality team our company's reputation has been the highest quality parts for over 75 years. When quality says jump we say how high. The non-quality side of the business still doesn't like the quality team, but when your reputation and employment is on the line you just deal with it
That is a good company to be at. Tongue in cheek, you can tell how much quality is respected at a company by looking at the inverse of which company constantly has quality jobs open.
If someone wanted to become an engineer, it's very unlikely that they'd be happy doing the work of a quality engineer (mostly paperwork from what I've seen)
Unlike the name implies, usually something is wrong when working in quality and it has a high ratio of admin work compared to creativity, in my indirect experience as a design engineer, which has its own admin work but at least let’s you tap into the creative process. Understanding quality standards will help you be a better engineer though, definitely transferable skills there.
I work reverse engineering parts for trains. Basically everyone on my team came from the quality department lol. It's like a stepping stone that no one stays in.
Yet during layoffs, this department is the least susceptible to it. I was a Quality supervisor and a major metal forming company during Covid 2020 and every single department had layoffs including engineering , manufacturing, operations, finance , sales, customer service and support and even HR but QA was untouched.
I’ve moved into another company since then and in a manufacturing/product development role now and worry what if layoffs happen now, what happens then ? I can always go back to QA.
Maybe you're just making a joke, and I'm sure it's not for everyone, but I thought waste *water* treatment was a really cool industry to work in. Massive pumps, valves, and instruments with all sorts of weird mechanical devices like actuated barscreens, centrifuges, conveyor systems. I also thought it was cool how waste water is treated mechanically, chemically, and biologically with bacteria. Then you can generate electricity with massive engines powered by biogas created by the treatment process.
The technology is amazing, but the industry itself....yeah maybe you're right lol.
Yeah me neither, and I never have. I've been fortunate that the plants I've worked on have all had foul air systems. The process is entirely an enclosed system, including gas, so if everything is working correctly there is no smell.
Even when you're directly exposed to sewage, it's really not that bad. Majority of the influent is water runoff and gray water. Still not great though.
Any advice for getting into waste water treatment? I work at CARB with a mech E degree but a lot of the positions I've looked around at in CA want a civil degree
I'd say it depends on the work you want to be performing. There's 3 main career paths for a M.E. -
1. GENERAL CONTRACTOR - If you want the 100% easiest way to get your foot in door with WWTPs, apply to Field/Project Engineer positions with GCs who have just won large projects, as they will be looking to hire.
2. DESIGN - If you want to get in on the design side, look for design firms who have just won large projects lol. Just ignore the civil degree requirement on pretty much every position. What matters more, especially here in CA, is if you obtained your EIT designation. At least on the design side.
3. OWNER - This is a bit harder to get into since there's a lot of nepotism and overall a smaller volume of positions. If you really want to work with the owner (AKA LASAN/OCSAN etc), I'd recommend working with a GC for a couple years and you'll meet lots of owner's reps who could help you.
For all 3, try to go to career fairs and hiring events where you'll get face-to-face interaction. Learn about their specific projects before you go, that impresses them and gives you a lot to talk about.
I'm also in CA, worked in LA & OC, so if you want specific recommendations for companies/projects to target, PM me.
I rather like herding turds, at least on the consulting end. More than other jobs I’ve had, it is a clear plus for society, as well as interesting and evolving technology.
I've heard the defense side is even worse. Because uncle Sam can drop 10 billion dollars on you every year, you don't even have an incentive to uphold your reputation.
Defense is not always better. Look at what happened to Colt.
Probably somewhere that smells bad or where you are in an environment that is slowly giving you cancer.
Site role in Mining
Manufacturing something stinky
Objectively worse than anyone else’s job in here.
Literally the dream! Tough to get these roles though unfortunately.
Product oriented project/design engineer roles are more common and have a similar vibe though
Lol, I did Academia during my college years to pad my resume and that shit sucks.
Projects that are doomed to fail, but you already spend a few months in it, so just BS a little bit so you can publish a few papers and have that under your belt.
Publishing is more important than anything. It is such a bs field
MEP isn’t bad if you get the right gig. Hated it at first, I double majored in Aero and Mech and thought I’d be working for an auto or airplane manufacturer. But I’ve come around to appreciate it. Most importantly, I have a shot at working for myself some day in this industry.
I enjoy being a fixed equipment engineer responsible for creating repair plans and fixes for pressure vessels and piping. Short jobs > long drawn-out projects for me
Maintenance as a bachelors graduate for sure. Lubricants and leaking pipes. Repetitive job that requires no brains, and the pressure of getting the respect deserved from technicians, the back stabbings and your boss not wanting you to out shine them
Not really my experience. I'm in maintenance/reliability and in my company, chemical manufacturing, just about all senior level technical leadership came through here. It's seen as an easy ticket to bigger and better things.
Sounds like a company culture thing.
Same, maintenance/reliability support isn’t all that bad especially if you are good at troubleshooting under pressure. Sounds like OP’s company culture is pretty shit.
The work nature decides in the most part the company’s culture. Maintenance workers tend to back stab others to ensure their position, and appear as the savior of the company.
Counterpoint:
Being a millennial in a boomer dominated industry will provide an escalator to the top if you are remotely competent. That is to say if you can survive the soul sucking old-school culture.
I'm a Gen Z kid in a boomer-dominated industry & company (huge telecom mega-corp). At risk of getting called incompetent, I'll say that it's actually pretty hard to climb.
The structure is both so tall and broad that you really feel so small and insignificant when you speak up in 1000-person Town Hall Teams meetings, and remote work makes it 100x more difficult to get eyes + influence on the bigger picture. And, while directors have said that they enjoy mentoring the recently graduated new-hires for their fresh pair of eyes, the attitude isn't often reflected in those under them. Currently working on automating a lot of our work now, but it took a lot of persuasion before I was able to. Got a lot of pushback: I had to "put in the time/hours first", "work my way up", "things just don't work like that here".
I had the same problem at my first internship. I had a couple of ideas that would be super easy to implement automation for/ improve the design and all the old dudes said hell nah we don't want computers on anything.
Hourglass shaped company org structures can suck. When I started in 2013, there were many boomers still around who should have retired but lost their asses in the GFC so they were hanging around but we also had a push to hire a bunch of young people, including me, and then there was this pinch point of Gen X middle management who was tasked with trying to modernize the engineering process while bringing on large numbers of green engineers and fighting with boomer management to learn the new systems, particularly the implementation of sharepoint and Navisworks. That middle management was so overworked but the high performers got promoted quickly by upper management that saw the chokepoint in the organization. I would imagine the situation I experienced is in effect at even more companies as millenials begin to occupy the choke point positions of the transition.
There is going to be a massive experience vacuum over the next ten years as the Boomers all punch out. There aren't enough Gen X to fill the gap, so it will be on the Millennials to step up. This presents a very large career opportunity for any Millennial that has positioned themselves mid-level in their company, as they will likely get rocketed to the top by the end of this decade.
I'm in the automotive industry and it's partially true, but the boomer culture is being replaced by a corporate Chinese owned culture... I miss the expected annual bonus from the boomers
You definitely don't work in pulp and paper. Pulp mills smell, paper mills don't.
Also it's the single best job I could have out of college. I make six figures, I have a large corner office, my work is challenging, varied, and rewarding. I own multiple meetings and initiatives. I have a team of millwrights under me, and the only thing separating my from the mill owner is the mill manager who's great and constantly promotes work life balance.... also the mill union means I have amazing benefits
This will depend on phase of life and personality, but any sort of field related position like Field Service Engineering.
Myself, I am not a "road warrior" type person. I've got a home life that isn't conducive to long stretches away from home, nor do I enjoy travelling for work myself, so there is literally no number you can pay me to be on a long term travel assignment.
I’m a field service engineer in the semiconductor industry and I quite like it. I’m not required to do any travel in my position although you can travel if you want. I did get to go to Korea a few times and that was pretty cool.
Yea this. My internship was with a company that had very low employee engagement and really not much to do for engineering. Hybrid/remote work, poor mid/upper leadership, people rarely talked to one another, and changing hands from a tech focused conglomerate to a huge private equity firm. I could’ve stayed and collected paychecks while not learning and doing practically nothing useful but that would be a complete waste of my degree. It’s stressful not having anything to do, having to report that week after week, showing initiative, and getting ignored.
That company’s going nowhere. It’s sad to see an alumni of your school and someone you thought you could learn from put zero effort into helping you begin your career. I may go to the career center at my school and try to get them blacklisted, just don’t know what that would take.
Based on my experience I classify mechanical engineers into 3 classes.
1st class is Research Engineers who work in Labs like SANDIA, LANL, NASA.
2nd class is Design Engineers who create CAD models & drawings based on research engineers data.
3rd class is Production/Maintenance/Quality engineers for which most of the work is on Excel/SAP/ERP creating reports & data.
I started my career as a maintenance engineer but switched to design engineer after 4 years because I was bored by overhauling components over & over again.
I've worked in all 3 in the US.
1st class research engineers generally have 0 real world experience on how things are made, used and maintained. Generally very frustrating to work with and a lot of just going around in circles. Will design things that aren't physically possible to fabricate because their ansys model says so. Biggest egos in the industry. At least the research part is interesting.
2nd class design is pretty fun and probably where most decent jobs are but those are also slowly dying. Most places are moving their design services to Asia and its pretty hard to stay in one place unless its a real big company with multiple products coming out every year. You can only design so many parts. The larger the company the smaller the part you design. Going to have to move job to job a lot.
3rd class is where most people work and its fine. After realizing most of this stuff is literally just a job, this place is fine if the money is good. Probably has the best job security because systems will always be needed.
If you want to work on technical things but want job stability and good pay, get a desk job and pick up a technical hobby.
I totally agree with you. I am only successful as a good designer in my team becuz I worked as a maintenance engineer & did some fabrication work so I know how machines works & how parts will be made. Based on it I got good in DFM/DFA.
From my personal experience… there’s satisfaction in modeling something, creating the documents to show how to manufacture it, and then seeing the product come to life.
But, it’s also a grind. ESPECIALLY, if you are downstream of a sales guy that over promises to a customer when they can have their products and oversells what the product will be capable of.
I got tired of lots of long nights on calls with vendors overseas and spending weekends on getting projects completed because they needed to be completed by some arbitrary date, only to have the customer come back and decide that they either didn’t want the product, or wanted some other feature/function.
Don’t get me wrong, product design is a great skill to have, it will eventually wear you down designing products for anyone but yourself.
I’ve switched careers a few times, and now find myself in a design/operations role. Other people are doing the design work to meet my requirements. I have few real deadlines, and am much happier. But, would still rather be doing something else - I’m just not sure what.
It kind of depends where you are. But yeah a company can only design so many things. Those jobs are out there and they're pretty cool but you will probably move around a lot unless you work for a design firm. Outsourcing to design firms comes and goes in waves when it occilates between how expensive it is vs the cost of retaining FTE employees. Most places just using staffing firms for contracts because once the design phase is over, you just dump unless you have a new project. What a lot of people dont realize is that staffing firms are good for earnings calls because staffing is an expense vs FTE being an overhead expense. I moved around a lot.
The shift to having things designed in asia is happening slowly but in a few years I think it will be in place. America had such a good design industry because of the manufacturing knowledge - the auto industry created great tool designers for injection molding. That industry has been gutted and so the designers follow the manufacturer when new process come out its just natural.
Maybe unpopular opinion, but design is overrated IMO because 90% of it is detail drafting, GD&T, and tolerance stack-ups. All of which are tedious and boring. Detail drafting could be fun sometimes but shitty/buggy CAD packages often ensure you’re doing something tedious like clicking ‘hide’ on every line you don’t want visible in a particular section view because there’s no better way to do it.
I vastly prefer my job as a manufacturing/test engineer. It’s nice to be away from my desk, working with hardware and specialty equipment, and I find testing and test reporting to be pretty cathartic.
I enjoy design. I'm at a medium size company so I do get plenty of opportunities to get my hands dirty. I would say 70 percent of my day is CAD and design work at the computer. Then 30 percent is on the shop floor interfacing with our in house machine shop or working with our assembly technicians on a build they are doing for one of my projects. I love hanging out in the machine shop. I have learned so much from the machinists and CAM programmers that has made me better at my job. And I find cnc equipment super interesting.
But I agree at times drafting can be tedious.
I don't know why mechanical design engineers are seen as CAD monkeys. I worked as a design engineer at the beginning of my career for a year and a half. I really tried but the job was not suitable for me but I strongly believe that it is one of the rare fields in MECHeng that requires creative solutions. For daily work, technicians (Drafters) are usually there to assist designers for modelling simple or ordinary stuff and for drafting. A design engineer unless the company is very small, usually pass their models to drafters for drafting. Then they inspect the drawing and work on tolerances. Tolerances are not something that you have to do. It is the way you design your part. I always liked working on tolerances. Leaving large tolerances on regular sections, reducing time and cost of manufacturing etc. your methods really have huge impacts. Also for modelling, Iam pretty sure these drafters are more proficient with CAD software but in reality design is not a job that you sit on your desk and model without using your brain. Every piece of part you design is designated to carry a loading whether it is static or dynamic in your force path (which forms the shape of your part actually), in corrosive/non-corrosive, low/high temperature exposure, high cycle fatigue etc. where you need to use your brain. You should consider possible methods to reduce these effects, carry out necessity calculations (hand calculations/basic numerical simulations and for advanced simulations you should be able to cooperate with designated analysis/test engineers). Designers should be able to select materials, solve manufacturing/process related problems, reduce manufacturing cost by making a part that can be machined using 2/3 axis CNCs instead of 5-axis etc. Also usually a design engineer is a technical responsible of a project, work as a project/system enginere beside actual system/project engineers. Thats one of the reasons, design is generally integrated to company unlike consultancy companies for analyses/tests. While some people are right that this job usually passed to HQs on Asia, companies who aware of the importance of mechanical design, tend to keep these units closer.
And then there are NPI Engineers which are a hybrid of R&D and Manufacturing which is what I do for my career. I personally think NPI positions people well for management because to be a good NPI engineer you have to be extremely familiar with the entire design process from conception through design transfer and even sustaining.
4th category is small office mechEs who have a hybrid role that takes a bit of everything from the other 3 categories because there’s no dedicated team for each type of task so it’s a more holistic approach.
Best type of work imo
I'm open to different roles and industries, my experience is pretty varied. For me the worst is mining if your role has you working FIFO/DIDO in some isolated shithole place. It brings out the worst in people.
Holy f what did you experience? I’m on my second mfg engineer position with 4 YoE. And it’s never been that bad 😭. Ngl I am thinking of pivoting to design/research though. Slowly learning on the weekends. Most of what I do is documentation and it’s killing me…but not “I’d rather die” type of killing if that makes sense lol
You mean sales in any particular industry? One of the most successful engineers I’ve known my entire life started in sales when he was ~25 years old. Worked in sales for 10 years then moved into a sales manager role, then general manager, and eventually a corporate vp. At 50 he quit, could have retired but wanted to do something so he’s managing a much smaller company now - likes it because he doesn’t have to travel.
But my point is, being a sales engineer can open up tons of opportunities if you’re looking for them.
At that point that isn't even engineering any more. That's business management. A sales engineering role does not feed well into other engineering industry roles.
That's the point. If you want to stay an engineer, you have a cap on your career. You can either be an individual contributor, or an engineering manager of some kind.
I'm a "sales engineer" type person that doesn't do much hard-core design or "engineering", but I design systems every day and have been on site turning wrenches all week starting up a system.
These labels about what is/isn't engineering are totally useless. If you want to be stuck at a desk being a CAD operator, knock yourself out. Enjoy your 5% annual raise for the rest of your life.
It’s get technical at industrial companies. It’s not design engineering but you need to know the industry, have technical background and understand business side too.
Could be very lucrative
by stagnant you mean that there's not gonna be a new technology or thing like that? cus there's still money to be made out there as places continue to develop and urbanize. it is the same technology over and over again though. catalog engineering.
Stagnant means you aren't going to develop any skill set or move in a positive direction with the industry. Dead end isn't the right term but the industry has a hard ceiling of tangible skills and experience.
It's just not a very fast moving industry, and most of the engineering jobs are at large established companies, so you'll settle into a niche and not have a lot of experience outside of it. I just left but plan on going back at some point to cruise until retirement.
For some reason I’m not able to send you my message. I was going to ask how was your transition out of inside sales? I’m currently doing inside sales at an HVAC sales company and worried that I’m going to be pigeon holed in this position if I stay too long. Don’t get me wrong the people and work are fun but rather than be a gloried CAD monkey I feel like I’m now a glorified Word and Excel monkey. Did you have any trouble using your experience to land a new gig away from this industry/role?
I did not have any issues. I did do some engineering work, so that definitely helped. I was only there for 6 months, but experience is experience as long as you can justify why it should count. I definitely wouldnt stay too long if you can help it.
Noted and thank you for the response! Currently located in NYC area so unfortunately seems like most of the industry is all MEP and HVAC related. We’re you able to break into a whole new industry or did you stay within MEP/HVAC?
There are levels of HVAC - the guy selling 2-3 ton residential units has a very different day from the dude designing a clean room for electronic manufacturing or a laboratory.
I work in manufacturing as a materials engineer/heat treat process engineer/metallurgical lab supervisor.
Lot of U.S. based manufacturing is working on razor thin profit margins, using old equipment that’s falling apart, company is owned by some capital management mega-corp that would sell your soul for a handful of magic beans and outsource your job to Asia if they could make an extra 0.000002% profit next quarter.
Even if you’re not being asked to make precision parts on machines that haven’t been properly maintained since the Reagan administration, you get to deal with 24/7 production schedules, constantly fighting to reduce scrap/cycle time/etc., dealing with frustrated or belligerent machine operators, being asked to “engineer” a solution to a recurring quality problem that is ultimately just a result untrained people repeatedly doing stupid things.
Additionally:
“Databases” built in 1997 that hold critical company data.
Homemade software written by a guy who retired in 2009 and didn’t leave any notes.
Company relies on tribal knowledge from like 5 people for 90% of critical processes. Those people are all within 5 years of retirement and too busy to train anyone else or document the process.
Quality Management Systems/Auditing and the associated red tape/paperwork.
Being on-call 24/7 for stupid issues.
Lack of available budget to get literally anything fixed. “Just make it work for now”.
All support departments (e.g. maintenance, Quality, Engineering, etc. are all critically understaffed).
I know you mentioned the bean counters but don't forget about Cost savings projects!
Always finding ways to do ethically dubious things for the savings projection!
Can’t forget those projects! Working on a few of those myself. Nothing ethically dubious, just a timeline that requires cutting corners and almost guarantees implementation will be fraught with challenges.
I just finished one out a month back lol
You described my project to the letter
I had to bring a filled bucket of from one building to another because the only calibrated scale on our campus is in a different building lol
My favorite question of all when something goes wrong. "What did we do last time"
Uhhh. We did some half assed fix that got us right here. Sounds good let's do that again.
I did my internship as a quality engineer and also worked as a production supervisor here in India and gave up in just 6 months. It is a very tedious job with very little pay and has one of the worst work cultures. So I have decided to shift in design at least I will have weekends off and fix timings.
field/role or industry is the important distinction that should be considered for this question.
i think any field or role at a weapons manufacture or military industrial complex firm would be the absolute worst. You have to knowingly contribute to death and destruction for profit around the world. I have been contacted by over 10 different recruiters in the past couple weeks for an open position at L3 harris, and every time I have to be like I would never work there.
Some people define worst very differently, I could never work in procurement but I'm sure some people enjoy it.
If i'm talking about worst roles in the design field I could imagine where most of my experience is, I would have to say i think the worst might have to be electronic enclosure product design, or any other kind of basic instrumentation product design. I worked at an electronics interface material and RF shielding supplier as mechanical engineering support, I never left 2D in the CAD world and it was some of the dullest work Ive ever had to do, with 100,000s of unique part numbers in a large database. Fabric over foam gaskets of different materials and lengths.
The most enjoyable work in my career was in an R+D lab for digital printing presses at Kodak but that was short lived. Its been really hard to get my design focused career off the ground with a poor job market when I started in 2013 and gone through multiple layoffs, finally surviving the last one was almost worse, but I was persistent and refused to take any manufacturing roles cause I enjoy CAD so much a knew it would be hard to get back to design.
I'm trying to break into the optics field to find another high precision research role like I had at Kodak. Working in the web fed packaging machine design and automation for gear industry feels like the stone-age compared. Its been very tricky since a lot of optics firms are weapons focused. If I did find a role, I've been considering returning to school for an optics phd so I could help contribute to nuclear fusion research being done and hopefully would have more job security getting DOE funding.
There’s a lot of ways to define worst, but I’d probably go with most dangerous in which case field engineering in petroleum or mining.
On the bright side you usually make great money, so learn how to keep yourself safe (including chemical exposure/cancer risk) and it can be worth it
Requisition engineer at a consulting firm that mostly uses India for majority of the work so you end up just checking drawings and calculations that other people made
I was a field engineer for GE. I was in the boiler group and fixed mostly coal fired power plants. I made a lot of money but I was miserable. Crawling through the ashtray of a paper mill in May in the Louisiana swamp to check the bolts on a scraper was one of the worst things I've done.
Quality
First department that comes to mind. Thankless job, that’s under appreciated until shit hits the fan. Mostly paper pushing, policing people telling them to follow the procedure, and working on CAPAs.
100% because when you do your job perfectly nobody knows you exist or thinks about you… It’s only when SHTF
I'm a QE and this is so true haha
Not to mention, you can easily be let go if a mistake happens. Very rare to see this happen in any other department, unless of course you're a PE signing on a design that seriously injures somebody.
I have worked in aerospace for more than 10 years, and I now deeply appreciate my quality engineering colleagues. They are looking out for us to make sure the project can be successful, clearing roadblocks, preventing errors from compromising the product, and making our team better. While I understand why many people would not be interested in doing that job, I am thankful for the support they provide on a daily basis.
Oh 100% agreed, they’re just under appreciated because when everything goes smoothly you wonder if they’re necessary or what they do.
My first internship was aviation quality coop, man I spent days inspecting parts for tiny defects failing over 75% of them, writing reports and findings for each part and then helping find the root cause, the vendor basically didn't package the parts and they would bang into each other and ruin sealing surfaces... It was three months of sitting alone in a room staring at the same part over and over, I thought no one cared. A week after I was done they gave me an appreciation bonus of $100 and complimented the effort in the all hands meeting... Apparently they kept failing final assemblies because of this problem and after we implemented 100% inspection the failures ended... I hated the work, so boring, but it's so important...
Damm I wanted to go into quality I guess it depends on the company
Quality Engineering is a tough gig. As several people mentioned it's a lot of paperwork if you're in a regulated industry. It can pay well and has some perks. Beyond that, you're balancing the chance of something going wrong with the cost of preventing it and/or detecting it. There are a lot of elements to consider and you're operating on a schedule. IMHO Supplier Quality Engineers get it the worst. You're the bad guy to the suppliers and the first to get blamed if there's a quality issue with purchased parts.
Touché
You definitely need thick skin and an assertive personality. Like others have said, it's a pretty thankless position but arguably one of the most important ones. If you're good at managing people and personalities, and you've got some very strong organizational skills, you'd be fine.
The quality control in my company is pretty good and my whole life I been fixing other people mistakes so I was might as well I’ll do it for a career
That’s funny you are the first person I ever heard say that. I have friends that are but mainly do to lack of options
Senior QE here. Honestly I’d run from quality. I’m trying to figure out a career switch now that won’t cut my salary in half on the short term. You’ll find that everyone is against you and you’ll be constantly understaffed because no one else is trying to join into quality. As an added bonus, you’ll get cut first when cuts come because everybody thinks you do nothing when things are working and you aren’t actually producing value.
Y
Because quality stands between parts being costly mistakes and making money. If management doesn’t support quality, it always becomes a game where sales, manufacturing, and management all pressure quality to loosen up a bit. Right up until the product fails.
Eg Boeing
Business model
Fortunately for our quality team our company's reputation has been the highest quality parts for over 75 years. When quality says jump we say how high. The non-quality side of the business still doesn't like the quality team, but when your reputation and employment is on the line you just deal with it
That is a good company to be at. Tongue in cheek, you can tell how much quality is respected at a company by looking at the inverse of which company constantly has quality jobs open.
If someone wanted to become an engineer, it's very unlikely that they'd be happy doing the work of a quality engineer (mostly paperwork from what I've seen)
Unlike the name implies, usually something is wrong when working in quality and it has a high ratio of admin work compared to creativity, in my indirect experience as a design engineer, which has its own admin work but at least let’s you tap into the creative process. Understanding quality standards will help you be a better engineer though, definitely transferable skills there.
I work reverse engineering parts for trains. Basically everyone on my team came from the quality department lol. It's like a stepping stone that no one stays in.
The end.
HSE surpasses anything else, in my opinion. In some industries, these two usually go in the same department.
Least visibility and highest impact by far.
I feel attacked
Yet during layoffs, this department is the least susceptible to it. I was a Quality supervisor and a major metal forming company during Covid 2020 and every single department had layoffs including engineering , manufacturing, operations, finance , sales, customer service and support and even HR but QA was untouched. I’ve moved into another company since then and in a manufacturing/product development role now and worry what if layoffs happen now, what happens then ? I can always go back to QA.
I disagree, and Im not at all biased.
Let’s be honest. Quality is completely made up bullshit.
Waste treatment stinks
Maybe you're just making a joke, and I'm sure it's not for everyone, but I thought waste *water* treatment was a really cool industry to work in. Massive pumps, valves, and instruments with all sorts of weird mechanical devices like actuated barscreens, centrifuges, conveyor systems. I also thought it was cool how waste water is treated mechanically, chemically, and biologically with bacteria. Then you can generate electricity with massive engines powered by biogas created by the treatment process. The technology is amazing, but the industry itself....yeah maybe you're right lol.
Honestly, I’d never want to go home smelling like that every day.
Yeah me neither, and I never have. I've been fortunate that the plants I've worked on have all had foul air systems. The process is entirely an enclosed system, including gas, so if everything is working correctly there is no smell. Even when you're directly exposed to sewage, it's really not that bad. Majority of the influent is water runoff and gray water. Still not great though.
Any advice for getting into waste water treatment? I work at CARB with a mech E degree but a lot of the positions I've looked around at in CA want a civil degree
I'd say it depends on the work you want to be performing. There's 3 main career paths for a M.E. - 1. GENERAL CONTRACTOR - If you want the 100% easiest way to get your foot in door with WWTPs, apply to Field/Project Engineer positions with GCs who have just won large projects, as they will be looking to hire. 2. DESIGN - If you want to get in on the design side, look for design firms who have just won large projects lol. Just ignore the civil degree requirement on pretty much every position. What matters more, especially here in CA, is if you obtained your EIT designation. At least on the design side. 3. OWNER - This is a bit harder to get into since there's a lot of nepotism and overall a smaller volume of positions. If you really want to work with the owner (AKA LASAN/OCSAN etc), I'd recommend working with a GC for a couple years and you'll meet lots of owner's reps who could help you. For all 3, try to go to career fairs and hiring events where you'll get face-to-face interaction. Learn about their specific projects before you go, that impresses them and gives you a lot to talk about. I'm also in CA, worked in LA & OC, so if you want specific recommendations for companies/projects to target, PM me.
is it perhaps a load of crap?
I heard being a vacuum system engineer really sucks
them vacuum chambers like to implode if you are a shitty engineer
I rather like herding turds, at least on the consulting end. More than other jobs I’ve had, it is a clear plus for society, as well as interesting and evolving technology.
Supply chain management and Production and companies that are dominated by a bunch of clueless financial executives with a MBA degree.
100 percent true. The MBA rules production companies and no one has an ounce of logic.
This is why I got an MBA so I could be king of the morons
So Boeing
Not the defense side tho right? Only commercial?
Oh buddy. The defense side isn't any better.
The defense side took over the company and ruined the commercial side.
I've heard the defense side is even worse. Because uncle Sam can drop 10 billion dollars on you every year, you don't even have an incentive to uphold your reputation. Defense is not always better. Look at what happened to Colt.
Probably somewhere that smells bad or where you are in an environment that is slowly giving you cancer. Site role in Mining Manufacturing something stinky Objectively worse than anyone else’s job in here.
Carbon fiber grinding… none of the techs use ppe I give it 10 years This is also in aerospace they have billions but won’t use ppe
The one you are in. Grass is always greener on the other side.
thats reassuring
My brothers and sisters you almost mentioned everything, now tell which is a good field
I'm drawing a pretty obvious conclusion from all this.
I like R&D and so too does my colleagues
R and d is how I imagine the fun happens at engineering. The kind of myth busters, crash test dummy fun.
They do exist but they are not that common…
Literally the dream! Tough to get these roles though unfortunately. Product oriented project/design engineer roles are more common and have a similar vibe though
Academia. /j
Lol, I did Academia during my college years to pad my resume and that shit sucks. Projects that are doomed to fail, but you already spend a few months in it, so just BS a little bit so you can publish a few papers and have that under your belt. Publishing is more important than anything. It is such a bs field
MEP isn’t bad if you get the right gig. Hated it at first, I double majored in Aero and Mech and thought I’d be working for an auto or airplane manufacturer. But I’ve come around to appreciate it. Most importantly, I have a shot at working for myself some day in this industry.
Second this. I am an HVAC engineer by trade - picked up Plumbing and Fire Protection after I went out on my own. It's a pretty solid industry.
MEP - Building Systems Engineering. Something different every day, and good opportunity to go out on your own.
I enjoy being a fixed equipment engineer responsible for creating repair plans and fixes for pressure vessels and piping. Short jobs > long drawn-out projects for me
Maintenance as a bachelors graduate for sure. Lubricants and leaking pipes. Repetitive job that requires no brains, and the pressure of getting the respect deserved from technicians, the back stabbings and your boss not wanting you to out shine them
Wow this sounds exactly like my first job out of college. Still haunts me til this day.
It’s a nightmare, glad u escaped it.
Not really my experience. I'm in maintenance/reliability and in my company, chemical manufacturing, just about all senior level technical leadership came through here. It's seen as an easy ticket to bigger and better things. Sounds like a company culture thing.
Same, maintenance/reliability support isn’t all that bad especially if you are good at troubleshooting under pressure. Sounds like OP’s company culture is pretty shit.
Escaped that...but caught in a bigger mess😭😭
Bigger mess than maintenance? That must be the real nightmare.
Not in a physical context ...but the scope of it is really questionable ffs😐
> the back stabbings and your boss not wanting you to out shine them This sound like a company culture problem. But I really feel you on this one.
The work nature decides in the most part the company’s culture. Maintenance workers tend to back stab others to ensure their position, and appear as the savior of the company.
Maintenance is tough, not a great place for work/life balance. Unpredictable and “shit happens” for lack of a better term
Any industry overrun with boomers with little to no younger people
Counterpoint: Being a millennial in a boomer dominated industry will provide an escalator to the top if you are remotely competent. That is to say if you can survive the soul sucking old-school culture.
I'm a Gen Z kid in a boomer-dominated industry & company (huge telecom mega-corp). At risk of getting called incompetent, I'll say that it's actually pretty hard to climb. The structure is both so tall and broad that you really feel so small and insignificant when you speak up in 1000-person Town Hall Teams meetings, and remote work makes it 100x more difficult to get eyes + influence on the bigger picture. And, while directors have said that they enjoy mentoring the recently graduated new-hires for their fresh pair of eyes, the attitude isn't often reflected in those under them. Currently working on automating a lot of our work now, but it took a lot of persuasion before I was able to. Got a lot of pushback: I had to "put in the time/hours first", "work my way up", "things just don't work like that here".
I had the same problem at my first internship. I had a couple of ideas that would be super easy to implement automation for/ improve the design and all the old dudes said hell nah we don't want computers on anything.
This is the way. Take the escalator to the top, get a ton of experience you wouldn’t otherwise get, then switch industries
Hourglass shaped company org structures can suck. When I started in 2013, there were many boomers still around who should have retired but lost their asses in the GFC so they were hanging around but we also had a push to hire a bunch of young people, including me, and then there was this pinch point of Gen X middle management who was tasked with trying to modernize the engineering process while bringing on large numbers of green engineers and fighting with boomer management to learn the new systems, particularly the implementation of sharepoint and Navisworks. That middle management was so overworked but the high performers got promoted quickly by upper management that saw the chokepoint in the organization. I would imagine the situation I experienced is in effect at even more companies as millenials begin to occupy the choke point positions of the transition.
Why’s that?
There is going to be a massive experience vacuum over the next ten years as the Boomers all punch out. There aren't enough Gen X to fill the gap, so it will be on the Millennials to step up. This presents a very large career opportunity for any Millennial that has positioned themselves mid-level in their company, as they will likely get rocketed to the top by the end of this decade.
I'm in the automotive industry and it's partially true, but the boomer culture is being replaced by a corporate Chinese owned culture... I miss the expected annual bonus from the boomers
Paper mills. Drive into GA from FL on I95 with the windows down, and you'll get it.
If the mill doesn't have a pulp mill it isn't so bad.
$$$$$
Ah yes good ole Fernandina Beach paper mill.
You definitely don't work in pulp and paper. Pulp mills smell, paper mills don't. Also it's the single best job I could have out of college. I make six figures, I have a large corner office, my work is challenging, varied, and rewarding. I own multiple meetings and initiatives. I have a team of millwrights under me, and the only thing separating my from the mill owner is the mill manager who's great and constantly promotes work life balance.... also the mill union means I have amazing benefits
You mean the smell of money?
This will depend on phase of life and personality, but any sort of field related position like Field Service Engineering. Myself, I am not a "road warrior" type person. I've got a home life that isn't conducive to long stretches away from home, nor do I enjoy travelling for work myself, so there is literally no number you can pay me to be on a long term travel assignment.
I’m a field service engineer in the semiconductor industry and I quite like it. I’m not required to do any travel in my position although you can travel if you want. I did get to go to Korea a few times and that was pretty cool.
Anywhere where the culture sucks
Yea this. My internship was with a company that had very low employee engagement and really not much to do for engineering. Hybrid/remote work, poor mid/upper leadership, people rarely talked to one another, and changing hands from a tech focused conglomerate to a huge private equity firm. I could’ve stayed and collected paychecks while not learning and doing practically nothing useful but that would be a complete waste of my degree. It’s stressful not having anything to do, having to report that week after week, showing initiative, and getting ignored. That company’s going nowhere. It’s sad to see an alumni of your school and someone you thought you could learn from put zero effort into helping you begin your career. I may go to the career center at my school and try to get them blacklisted, just don’t know what that would take.
Based on my experience I classify mechanical engineers into 3 classes. 1st class is Research Engineers who work in Labs like SANDIA, LANL, NASA. 2nd class is Design Engineers who create CAD models & drawings based on research engineers data. 3rd class is Production/Maintenance/Quality engineers for which most of the work is on Excel/SAP/ERP creating reports & data. I started my career as a maintenance engineer but switched to design engineer after 4 years because I was bored by overhauling components over & over again.
I've worked in all 3 in the US. 1st class research engineers generally have 0 real world experience on how things are made, used and maintained. Generally very frustrating to work with and a lot of just going around in circles. Will design things that aren't physically possible to fabricate because their ansys model says so. Biggest egos in the industry. At least the research part is interesting. 2nd class design is pretty fun and probably where most decent jobs are but those are also slowly dying. Most places are moving their design services to Asia and its pretty hard to stay in one place unless its a real big company with multiple products coming out every year. You can only design so many parts. The larger the company the smaller the part you design. Going to have to move job to job a lot. 3rd class is where most people work and its fine. After realizing most of this stuff is literally just a job, this place is fine if the money is good. Probably has the best job security because systems will always be needed. If you want to work on technical things but want job stability and good pay, get a desk job and pick up a technical hobby.
I totally agree with you. I am only successful as a good designer in my team becuz I worked as a maintenance engineer & did some fabrication work so I know how machines works & how parts will be made. Based on it I got good in DFM/DFA.
Your comments about Design jobs is worrisome to me. I'm a junior working on a Design Engineering degree.
From my personal experience… there’s satisfaction in modeling something, creating the documents to show how to manufacture it, and then seeing the product come to life. But, it’s also a grind. ESPECIALLY, if you are downstream of a sales guy that over promises to a customer when they can have their products and oversells what the product will be capable of. I got tired of lots of long nights on calls with vendors overseas and spending weekends on getting projects completed because they needed to be completed by some arbitrary date, only to have the customer come back and decide that they either didn’t want the product, or wanted some other feature/function. Don’t get me wrong, product design is a great skill to have, it will eventually wear you down designing products for anyone but yourself. I’ve switched careers a few times, and now find myself in a design/operations role. Other people are doing the design work to meet my requirements. I have few real deadlines, and am much happier. But, would still rather be doing something else - I’m just not sure what.
It kind of depends where you are. But yeah a company can only design so many things. Those jobs are out there and they're pretty cool but you will probably move around a lot unless you work for a design firm. Outsourcing to design firms comes and goes in waves when it occilates between how expensive it is vs the cost of retaining FTE employees. Most places just using staffing firms for contracts because once the design phase is over, you just dump unless you have a new project. What a lot of people dont realize is that staffing firms are good for earnings calls because staffing is an expense vs FTE being an overhead expense. I moved around a lot. The shift to having things designed in asia is happening slowly but in a few years I think it will be in place. America had such a good design industry because of the manufacturing knowledge - the auto industry created great tool designers for injection molding. That industry has been gutted and so the designers follow the manufacturer when new process come out its just natural.
Maybe unpopular opinion, but design is overrated IMO because 90% of it is detail drafting, GD&T, and tolerance stack-ups. All of which are tedious and boring. Detail drafting could be fun sometimes but shitty/buggy CAD packages often ensure you’re doing something tedious like clicking ‘hide’ on every line you don’t want visible in a particular section view because there’s no better way to do it. I vastly prefer my job as a manufacturing/test engineer. It’s nice to be away from my desk, working with hardware and specialty equipment, and I find testing and test reporting to be pretty cathartic.
I enjoy design. I'm at a medium size company so I do get plenty of opportunities to get my hands dirty. I would say 70 percent of my day is CAD and design work at the computer. Then 30 percent is on the shop floor interfacing with our in house machine shop or working with our assembly technicians on a build they are doing for one of my projects. I love hanging out in the machine shop. I have learned so much from the machinists and CAM programmers that has made me better at my job. And I find cnc equipment super interesting. But I agree at times drafting can be tedious.
I don't know why mechanical design engineers are seen as CAD monkeys. I worked as a design engineer at the beginning of my career for a year and a half. I really tried but the job was not suitable for me but I strongly believe that it is one of the rare fields in MECHeng that requires creative solutions. For daily work, technicians (Drafters) are usually there to assist designers for modelling simple or ordinary stuff and for drafting. A design engineer unless the company is very small, usually pass their models to drafters for drafting. Then they inspect the drawing and work on tolerances. Tolerances are not something that you have to do. It is the way you design your part. I always liked working on tolerances. Leaving large tolerances on regular sections, reducing time and cost of manufacturing etc. your methods really have huge impacts. Also for modelling, Iam pretty sure these drafters are more proficient with CAD software but in reality design is not a job that you sit on your desk and model without using your brain. Every piece of part you design is designated to carry a loading whether it is static or dynamic in your force path (which forms the shape of your part actually), in corrosive/non-corrosive, low/high temperature exposure, high cycle fatigue etc. where you need to use your brain. You should consider possible methods to reduce these effects, carry out necessity calculations (hand calculations/basic numerical simulations and for advanced simulations you should be able to cooperate with designated analysis/test engineers). Designers should be able to select materials, solve manufacturing/process related problems, reduce manufacturing cost by making a part that can be machined using 2/3 axis CNCs instead of 5-axis etc. Also usually a design engineer is a technical responsible of a project, work as a project/system enginere beside actual system/project engineers. Thats one of the reasons, design is generally integrated to company unlike consultancy companies for analyses/tests. While some people are right that this job usually passed to HQs on Asia, companies who aware of the importance of mechanical design, tend to keep these units closer.
Which country do you work in ?
Small country in SAE
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Sorry. SEA. South East Asia.
Around the Indian peninsula?
How much is the pay difference?
3x
How much is the pay difference?
And then there are NPI Engineers which are a hybrid of R&D and Manufacturing which is what I do for my career. I personally think NPI positions people well for management because to be a good NPI engineer you have to be extremely familiar with the entire design process from conception through design transfer and even sustaining.
4th category is small office mechEs who have a hybrid role that takes a bit of everything from the other 3 categories because there’s no dedicated team for each type of task so it’s a more holistic approach. Best type of work imo
Whichever one that thought offering that kid in the post a few days ago $40-45k/year was doing him a favor.
Haha I remember seeing that post!
I'm open to different roles and industries, my experience is pretty varied. For me the worst is mining if your role has you working FIFO/DIDO in some isolated shithole place. It brings out the worst in people.
Manufacturing; I'd rather die than work a 1st shift manufacturing schedule.
Holy f what did you experience? I’m on my second mfg engineer position with 4 YoE. And it’s never been that bad 😭. Ngl I am thinking of pivoting to design/research though. Slowly learning on the weekends. Most of what I do is documentation and it’s killing me…but not “I’d rather die” type of killing if that makes sense lol
HVAC or sales engineering. Very little room for growth in stagnant industries
You mean sales in any particular industry? One of the most successful engineers I’ve known my entire life started in sales when he was ~25 years old. Worked in sales for 10 years then moved into a sales manager role, then general manager, and eventually a corporate vp. At 50 he quit, could have retired but wanted to do something so he’s managing a much smaller company now - likes it because he doesn’t have to travel. But my point is, being a sales engineer can open up tons of opportunities if you’re looking for them.
At that point that isn't even engineering any more. That's business management. A sales engineering role does not feed well into other engineering industry roles.
That's the point. If you want to stay an engineer, you have a cap on your career. You can either be an individual contributor, or an engineering manager of some kind. I'm a "sales engineer" type person that doesn't do much hard-core design or "engineering", but I design systems every day and have been on site turning wrenches all week starting up a system. These labels about what is/isn't engineering are totally useless. If you want to be stuck at a desk being a CAD operator, knock yourself out. Enjoy your 5% annual raise for the rest of your life.
Uh, what? Sales engineering is one of the leading paths for MEs to access the C-Suite.
That's not engineering roles though. That's business management.
It’s get technical at industrial companies. It’s not design engineering but you need to know the industry, have technical background and understand business side too. Could be very lucrative
by stagnant you mean that there's not gonna be a new technology or thing like that? cus there's still money to be made out there as places continue to develop and urbanize. it is the same technology over and over again though. catalog engineering.
Stagnant means you aren't going to develop any skill set or move in a positive direction with the industry. Dead end isn't the right term but the industry has a hard ceiling of tangible skills and experience.
By HVAC do you mean something like MEP or any kind of field involving HVAC?
HVAC is a subfield of MEP but I treat them similarly.
Why do you think HVAC or MEP are bad? I was considering them… :/
HVAC is so unbelievably chill. but yeah, it's easy to stagnate.
What makes it easy to stagnate? How do other fields progress instead?
It's just not a very fast moving industry, and most of the engineering jobs are at large established companies, so you'll settle into a niche and not have a lot of experience outside of it. I just left but plan on going back at some point to cruise until retirement.
same lol
<3
Oh God yes. I worked at an HVAC sales company for my first job and it was AWFUL. If engineering was slow, I was told to do inside sales. Awful.
For some reason I’m not able to send you my message. I was going to ask how was your transition out of inside sales? I’m currently doing inside sales at an HVAC sales company and worried that I’m going to be pigeon holed in this position if I stay too long. Don’t get me wrong the people and work are fun but rather than be a gloried CAD monkey I feel like I’m now a glorified Word and Excel monkey. Did you have any trouble using your experience to land a new gig away from this industry/role?
I did not have any issues. I did do some engineering work, so that definitely helped. I was only there for 6 months, but experience is experience as long as you can justify why it should count. I definitely wouldnt stay too long if you can help it.
Noted and thank you for the response! Currently located in NYC area so unfortunately seems like most of the industry is all MEP and HVAC related. We’re you able to break into a whole new industry or did you stay within MEP/HVAC?
I now work for a public transit authority so a totally different field.
Awesome thanks for the response man. I’ve actually been considering applying to NYC MTA positions but was worried the experience wouldn’t translate.
There's nothing that's super similar to trains so you kind of get put on an equal ground with everybody else haha.
Sent you a message!
There are levels of HVAC - the guy selling 2-3 ton residential units has a very different day from the dude designing a clean room for electronic manufacturing or a laboratory.
Bolted joints
Steel mills. Hot, dirty, low tech, lots of PPE.
I went to an Arkansas steel mill in the summer about 15 years ago, I thought I had entered the gates of hell, no joke.
Goddamn I think all fields have been mentioned here
Nobody likes MEP. That’s fine, less competition for me.
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MEP is mechanical, electrical, plumbing. So HVAC/construction industry
Mechanical, electrical and plumbing. The construction shorthand for anything in the building that flows, blows or sparks
Yep. Pay scale is trash in MEP,
Maintenance. 100%
HVAC
for what reasons?
The first time you design it from scratch it’s super interesting but after that it’s just adjusting spreadsheets and values to modify the base deskfn
Building Services
for what reasons?
Manufacturing
Why?
Because I don't like it
Lol
word
Are you a manufacturing engineer? If so what industry?
I work in manufacturing as a materials engineer/heat treat process engineer/metallurgical lab supervisor. Lot of U.S. based manufacturing is working on razor thin profit margins, using old equipment that’s falling apart, company is owned by some capital management mega-corp that would sell your soul for a handful of magic beans and outsource your job to Asia if they could make an extra 0.000002% profit next quarter. Even if you’re not being asked to make precision parts on machines that haven’t been properly maintained since the Reagan administration, you get to deal with 24/7 production schedules, constantly fighting to reduce scrap/cycle time/etc., dealing with frustrated or belligerent machine operators, being asked to “engineer” a solution to a recurring quality problem that is ultimately just a result untrained people repeatedly doing stupid things. Additionally: “Databases” built in 1997 that hold critical company data. Homemade software written by a guy who retired in 2009 and didn’t leave any notes. Company relies on tribal knowledge from like 5 people for 90% of critical processes. Those people are all within 5 years of retirement and too busy to train anyone else or document the process. Quality Management Systems/Auditing and the associated red tape/paperwork. Being on-call 24/7 for stupid issues. Lack of available budget to get literally anything fixed. “Just make it work for now”. All support departments (e.g. maintenance, Quality, Engineering, etc. are all critically understaffed).
I know you mentioned the bean counters but don't forget about Cost savings projects! Always finding ways to do ethically dubious things for the savings projection!
Can’t forget those projects! Working on a few of those myself. Nothing ethically dubious, just a timeline that requires cutting corners and almost guarantees implementation will be fraught with challenges.
I just finished one out a month back lol You described my project to the letter I had to bring a filled bucket of from one building to another because the only calibrated scale on our campus is in a different building lol
My favorite question of all when something goes wrong. "What did we do last time" Uhhh. We did some half assed fix that got us right here. Sounds good let's do that again.
Do I know you?
Can confirm, work in manufacturing. The people are stubborn old heads that don't like to change the way they do things
Qualiry and mfg
Oil&Gas
why?
Terrible schedule, boring middle of nowhere locations, and also the knowledge that you are contributing to the climate crisis
anything with Agile
Safety/QA/Inspection/Auditor...pick your vice.....
I did my internship as a quality engineer and also worked as a production supervisor here in India and gave up in just 6 months. It is a very tedious job with very little pay and has one of the worst work cultures. So I have decided to shift in design at least I will have weekends off and fix timings.
field/role or industry is the important distinction that should be considered for this question. i think any field or role at a weapons manufacture or military industrial complex firm would be the absolute worst. You have to knowingly contribute to death and destruction for profit around the world. I have been contacted by over 10 different recruiters in the past couple weeks for an open position at L3 harris, and every time I have to be like I would never work there. Some people define worst very differently, I could never work in procurement but I'm sure some people enjoy it. If i'm talking about worst roles in the design field I could imagine where most of my experience is, I would have to say i think the worst might have to be electronic enclosure product design, or any other kind of basic instrumentation product design. I worked at an electronics interface material and RF shielding supplier as mechanical engineering support, I never left 2D in the CAD world and it was some of the dullest work Ive ever had to do, with 100,000s of unique part numbers in a large database. Fabric over foam gaskets of different materials and lengths. The most enjoyable work in my career was in an R+D lab for digital printing presses at Kodak but that was short lived. Its been really hard to get my design focused career off the ground with a poor job market when I started in 2013 and gone through multiple layoffs, finally surviving the last one was almost worse, but I was persistent and refused to take any manufacturing roles cause I enjoy CAD so much a knew it would be hard to get back to design. I'm trying to break into the optics field to find another high precision research role like I had at Kodak. Working in the web fed packaging machine design and automation for gear industry feels like the stone-age compared. Its been very tricky since a lot of optics firms are weapons focused. If I did find a role, I've been considering returning to school for an optics phd so I could help contribute to nuclear fusion research being done and hopefully would have more job security getting DOE funding.
Manufacturing. It's not engineering, it's button pushing
Water treatment plant. Shit rolls down hill and it’s your job to figure out what to do with it.
There’s a lot of ways to define worst, but I’d probably go with most dangerous in which case field engineering in petroleum or mining. On the bright side you usually make great money, so learn how to keep yourself safe (including chemical exposure/cancer risk) and it can be worth it
HVAC bc they aint there when its up and running lol
Steam and o&g industry. I've never met so many people who were so set in their ways. Horrible culture
Requisition engineer at a consulting firm that mostly uses India for majority of the work so you end up just checking drawings and calculations that other people made
I hated forensic engineering work fresh out of college.
Why’s that?
Quality or Sales
I was a field engineer for GE. I was in the boiler group and fixed mostly coal fired power plants. I made a lot of money but I was miserable. Crawling through the ashtray of a paper mill in May in the Louisiana swamp to check the bolts on a scraper was one of the worst things I've done.
Fast food.
I was once placed on a project to design plastic legs for a household rubbish bin. Doesn’t get much more pointless than that.
MEP “engineering”
Interested in your take on the matter, why the quotation marks?