×
INTELLIGENT WORK FORUMS
FOR ENGINEERING PROFESSIONALS

Log In

Come Join Us!

Are you an
Engineering professional?
Join Eng-Tips Forums!
  • Talk With Other Members
  • Be Notified Of Responses
    To Your Posts
  • Keyword Search
  • One-Click Access To Your
    Favorite Forums
  • Automated Signatures
    On Your Posts
  • Best Of All, It's Free!
  • Students Click Here

*Eng-Tips's functionality depends on members receiving e-mail. By joining you are opting in to receive e-mail.

Posting Guidelines

Promoting, selling, recruiting, coursework and thesis posting is forbidden.

Students Click Here

Jobs

Work Experience/College Degree

Work Experience/College Degree

Work Experience/College Degree

(OP)
Hope everyone is doing well. I will keep it to the point. After how many years of related work experience does work experience become more important, for future jobs than engineering college degree?

How much more important, say when one apply for a Structural Egr position for a Aerospace/Defense does a Master in MECHANICAL Egr with a Structural focus, as compared to Master in CIVIL Engineering with a Structural focus. For most Structural position, required qualification simply states BS or MS in Civil (Structural), Mechanical, or Aerospace. With several years of related work experience, does it matter?

Thanks!  

RE: Work Experience/College Degree

My gut feeling is 4 years. After all, your first degree didn't teach you all about civil engineering and more than mine taught me all about mechanical engineering, it just pointed you at the basics and showed you some depth in some areas.

Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies  http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

RE: Work Experience/College Degree

I would tend to agree with Greg at 3 years. As long as the person "gets" it then I see no difference between a degreed engineer and one who learned from experience. If the job requires detailed analysis then the person would have to be pretty special or their would be pigeon holed in their entry level engineering job.

RE: Work Experience/College Degree

In Oil & Gas, most of the major companies have implemented some sort of apprenticeship program where you spend 3-4 years working with/for experienced engineers, rotate assignments every year, and attend a defined set of classes.  At the end of that period you are assumed to be qualified to make engineering decisions without technical oversight.  Using that as my guide I subtract 3 years from after-graduation experience to determine experience level.  If the difference is greater than zero then I'm more interested in work experience than academic experience.

David

RE: Work Experience/College Degree

From experience, 5 years.

Some of those through the college time, some after. It took about 3 years after graduation for me to be able to fly without assistance.

- Steve
 

RE: Work Experience/College Degree

I disagree, but I am more conservative (pessimistic).  To me, experience starts outweighing the degree when you start seeing "re-runs" (i.e., "been there, done thats") in the assignments or projects you are doing.  To me, that didn't start happening until 10 years or so.  then again, I did a whole bunch of a lot of different stuff in my first decade after graduation.

Regards,

SNORGY.

RE: Work Experience/College Degree

I feel like depending on your job about 3-5 years of full time work is where you are at the possible sweet spot of your career, you are either good at what you do or you aren't.

For what my business does, I wouldn't count schooling as experience.  Only real life working full time in an office is experience.

B+W Engineering and Design
Los Angeles Civil and Structural Engineering
http://bwengr.com

RE: Work Experience/College Degree

I dissagree with some of the above posters and agree with some.

Depends on the industry. If you are thinking "CAD jokey" type techie stuff then, experience. If you are going into something that is specialized or 'real engineering' then there must be minimum great academic excellence as well as experience. 5-6 years seems to me a good basis point.
This can get ugly...
Cheers,  

peace
Fe (IronX32)

RE: Work Experience/College Degree

I don't think the OP ever mentioned no education, just simply when education became less important than experience.

I agree with Greg... 4/5 years sounds about right.  But that is 4/5 years of the right type of experience.

-Dustin
Professional Engineer
Pretty good with SolidWorks

Red Flag This Post

Please let us know here why this post is inappropriate. Reasons such as off-topic, duplicates, flames, illegal, vulgar, or students posting their homework.

Red Flag Submitted

Thank you for helping keep Eng-Tips Forums free from inappropriate posts.
The Eng-Tips staff will check this out and take appropriate action.

Reply To This Thread

Posting in the Eng-Tips forums is a member-only feature.

Click Here to join Eng-Tips and talk with other members!


Resources