Changing industries in engineering 2

[BamaSlammer]

I am about to graduate from the University of Alabama in May with a Mechanical Engineering degree. I currently have 2 offers, one from Georgia Pacific and one from a small company I am currently interning with. I am on the verge of accepting the job from Georgia Pacific but I know I don't want to be in the paper industry my entire life. How common is it to switch industries as an Engineer. I would lke to get into the petroleum industry and the majority of the jobs I have seen required 3 to 5 years of experience in a related field. I guess my biggest concern is cornering myself into the paper industry for a lifetime. Any thoughts?

 

[DRWeig]

Congratulations, BamaSlammer!

In my experience, it is hard to get pigeonholed or typecast in your first years out of school. Changing industries is not uncommon. If you make the oilfields your goal, you'll get there. Concentrate on picking up the experience you didn't learn in school that is relevant across industrial boundaries.

Best to you,

Goober Dave

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[JohnRBaker]

I worked my first professional job, as a Machine Designer in the R&D department of a multinational manufacturer of food and chemical machinery, for about 11 years (this includes credit for my co-op time while I was in school). Three years before I left there, the company became an early investors in CAD/CAM software (this was in 1977) and for those last three years I did virtually all of my work on the system including programming a lot of custom utilities which enhanced our workflow and leveraged what the system was able to do for our type of work. At the end of this period, in 1980, I decided to change careers (well sort of). I quit my job, put my fully-vested defined-benefit pension in the 'bank' as it were (which I started to collect when I turned 65 last year), sold my house, packed-up my wife and three sons and moved from Michigan to SoCal and went to work for the company that had sold us the CAD/CAM system in the first place. For seven years I worked in the sales organization first as an AE (Application Engineer, AKA 'demo-jock') and eventually as a regional technical manager after being transferred back to Michigan to head-up the technical side of a major sales effort which I worked on for nearly a year and half. After we had been awarded the sales contract I was asked to join the development organization to help make sure that we were working on the correct stuff so that we could keep the $100,000,000 piece of business that I had just been a part of winning (we made of lot of promises to nail down the contract), which necessitated moving BACK to SoCal where our R&D operation was headquartered. I've been part of the R&D operation ever since, currently working in the Product Marketing group (not to be confused with traditional 'Marketing' where they do adverts and public relations campaigns).

So in my 42 year (46 counting my co-op time) career I guess you could say that I've changed 'careers' twice (although the last change, Sales -> R&D, was internal) and have never looked back. Granted, these changes were each built on a foundation that had been established in the previous job that I had been doing so this might not appear to be as drastic as what some of my friends from engineering school did after graduation, two of which are now medical doctors and one who recently retired from the CIA.

So for what it's worth, if you think that the new, contemplated career more closely matches what your CURRENT goals are (NOT the ones that you may have had when you first left school), then I'd go for it. If you don't, 15 or 20 years from now you'll look back and wonder what your life would have been like if you had taken the plunge and if your situation did not turn as well as you had hoped that it would, you'll make yourself, and your family, miserable, just putting in your time waiting for either retirement or a pink-slip. As I said before, I thank God I made the decisions that I did, when I did, and I'm not sure that if given a second chance, that I would have done anything differently. Life is too short (or long, depending on your point of view) to spend your life second guessing what you did or did not do, so the best advise that I can give is to make a decision one way or the other, but once you have, go out and make the most of it otherwise you will always feel like you missed the target somehow.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[IRstuff]

"but I know I don't want to be in the paper industry my entire life. "

You wish that were your only problem ;-) The odds are high that you will change jobs/industries within 5 yrs, either voluntarily or not. I think it's absurdly soon to be worrying about being pidgeonholed. I thought I would be designing ICs with my BSEE, and for about 8 yrs, I was actually involved in the semiconductor business, but not as a designer. Since then, which is about 24 yrs, I've only seen schematics, and only used circuit boards, but no regrets.

http://www.johnnybunko.com/

talks about this as well; but I don't think you need to buy the book. The bottom line is that there is no grand master plan, at least, not for us peons. We dance around as if we were particles trapped in a Brownian motion world; you will get to some place, just not necessarily where you thought you were going.

And, changing industries is absurdly easy, I went from aerospace to commercial to aerospace with nary a problem. Learn as much as you can with as much breadth as you can handle, and you'll be fine. Breadth is better than depth, at least, for me. It means that I can handle stuff that's slightly or largely outside of my comfort zone without cowering in fear.

TTFN
faq731-376

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[tygerdawg]

Geaux Tigers. Oh...wait. Nevermind.

Your "career" is Engineering, and at this point it is a blank canvas. You get to color it by taking skills, knowledge, and experience from all the different sources you encounter along the way. Let your path take you where it may and enjoy the ride.

TygerDawg
Blue Technik LLC
Virtuoso Robotics Engineering

http://www.bluetechnik.com

 

[moltenmetal]

Personally I'm a refugee from environmental engineering, and that jump was the best thing for me. Jumps across industries get harder as you get older, but are still possible. Focus on building transferrable skills as an engineer.

 

[dig1]

BamaSlamer,

Going in the paper industry for a few years won't hurt and it isn't hard to switch. If you want to go into petrochem I would try to get in the pukp mill side (if the mill has one, Pennington, Leaf River, and Monticello all do and I assuming it may be one of those three mills) as it would be a better fit than a paper machine side as you have pressure vessels, piping, corrosion issues, etc. that are more in-line with a petro-chem plant. You can learn a lot of great skills that are eaily transferrable to other industries.

Everyone's advice above is solid and congratulations.

 

[fel3]

I know two mechanical engineers--each with a masters degree, an ME license, at least a decade's worth of experience in aerospace, and some additional experience in other mechanical fields--who made the jump to civil engineering, including professional licensure. That's not only changing industries, but changing engineering disciplines. There is some overlap between mechanical and civil, but one of the guys ended up doing things like street design, storm drainage master planning, and subdivisions, for which there is no counterpart in mechanical engineering. Both guys had to learn such things as reinforced concrete design from scratch just to pass the civil PE exam. The moral of the story is that changing industries is very doable if you want it bad enough.

==========
"Is it the only lesson of history that mankind is unteachable?"
--Winston S. Churchill

 

[Pmatherne]

I am in the same position. I went into the HVAC field because that was the only place I could get employment. I graduated right after the crash of 2008. I would like to get into other fields like petroleum or even ship building. Just wondering would I have to start from scratch and work my way up.
Also how does your pe license work with changing careers. If I passed the Mech PE in HVAC and changed say to Civil, would I have to take the PE again

Future HVAC PE Engineer

http://www.peexamquestions.com

 

[JohnRBaker]

Not sure about the petroleum industry, but from what I've seen dealing with ship builders, I would suspect that your HVAC experience could be very applicable.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.