Mechanical Engineering Student Almost Finished 9

[CodeRebel]

Hey,
I'm an honors mechanical engineering undergraduate with plans to pursue my P.E. license in the State of Alabama. I have seven years experience as a millwright working in power plants on gas turbines. I want to be able to utilize all the resources I have available to me while in my university to maximize my return on investment. Currently, I have won awards for math and leadership. I'm very active in my school events and volunteer work. I was president of S.G.A. and received a full tuition presidential scholarship. I have worked hard developing a school resume to be impressive like my work resume without going too far into my accomplishments because I don't want to come off as bragging. I'm not even sure if these extra-curricular accomplishments will benefit me in my career, but I do understand they are benefiting me currently by providing opportunity.

I have looked into engineering societies of which to become a member to help prepare myself for after graduation. I try to find engineering websites to watch and I bought The Great Courses Engineering Lectures. I know I need to work for a P.E. after college for 4 years and then take my last test before I become licensed. My questions are, as a college junior, What should I expect down the pipeline. Should I really consider a paid internship even though i have prior work experience? I hear that my first job out of engineering school will define the rest of my career, is there any truth to this? What are the best resources I can familiarize myself within the field? Should I go after a masters degree? I was told that a PHD is only required for executive positions. Am I going to be traveling? Is a LinkedIn account critical? I'm also working on a minor in business because of gaps in my scholarships because I felt this would be more beneficial than wasting credit hours. I would love to hear any thoughts on my situation.

F.Y.I. Lockheed Martin seems interesting to me.

 

[GregLocock]

"I hear that my first job out of engineering school will define the rest of my career, is there any truth to this? " Not much. In my career I've mostly worked in automotive, but also agricultural and marine electronics. Mechanical engineering is a flexible degree.

"Should I go after a masters degree?" I'd get a job first, you may find they'll pay you to do a Masters.

"I was told that a PHD is only required for executive positions." You seem to have been talking to people who are talking gibberish. A PhD is a fairly rare beast in industry, and I doubt they make up a significant proportion of the executive ranks. Where I work out of 50 engineers in our little office one is a PhD.

I doubt LM, for example, would be much bothered either way as to whether you have a PE.

Cheers

Greg Locock


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[IRstuff]

I suggest you read

https://www.danpink.com/books/johnny-bunko/

"There is no plan."

I started out as an EE designing integrated circuits, and now am working as a systems engineer doing electro-optical sensor systems designs and analyses.

I agree with Greg; get a job first and find out if that's what you really want to do for the rest of your life and go from there.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg

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[MJCronin]

I have recently retired after having a 43 year career as a Mechanical/Chemical/Power engineer..

You seem to be highly motivated and concerned about your future ....

I STRONGLY agree with the two postings above, but I would add ...


1) Determine where and how you want to live. If you love Maine and the seacoast, perhaps a background in Metallurgy is not best. Love California and the outdoors ?..., then Lockheed Martin may be a good choice

2) Determine which dynamic companies that are growing and making more revenues. These are the ones that will be hiring young people, get the best clients and assignments and, because everyone is busy, will have the most internal opportunities for promotion.

3) Determine if, at some point that you want to start your own consulting company by yourself or in partnership with others. This can be highly exciting and rewarding and can be run on the side with other employment

MJCronin
Sr. Process Engineer

 

[weldstan]

Take the paid internship at a company with engineering opportunities closest to your engineering desires. It will likely help your full time employment opportunity after graduation, especially f the economy sours. It sure did for me.

I know of no engineers who have determined their career by the first job they took after graduation. I do know a handful that stayed with the same company or merged company for their entire career but all had numerous changes in what they were doing.

I would advise as others have to get some real time experience before obtaining a masters degree. In all of the larger firms that I have worked for paid or subsidized education for advanced degrees have been awarded to promising employees.

Whether you will travel much will depend on your employers. While I have travelled extensively in my work and for the most part thoroughly enjoyed those experiences, I know many fellow engineers who have not travelled much.

 

[TheTick]

If you're thinking about who to work for more than what you want to do, you're asking the wrong questions.

PE is of limited value in the mechanical field. Most of the coolest jobs don't require it.

 

[dvd]

You are going to get frustrated with the engineering world - most people in big companies don't even understand what a millwright does. Find a full-service millwright company that designs, manufactures, and installs systems and equipment for industries that you are interested in. There will be PE's employed at these firms that you can work under. You have lots of opportunities to do plenty of engineering and be inventive. I have worked in and around millwright companies for thirty years and find it quite interesting. I started my career by serving an apprenticeship in the sheet metal trade and then went to engineering school and then on to work for a big aerospace company. I lasted four years. It was not my cup of tea.

 

[TheTick]

If you work at Lockheed-Martin, you can put your millwright skills to work moving tons of paperwork.

 

[GregLocock]

One relevant job for a millwright that often gets overlooked is designing the production facilities. We had one go-to supplier for assembly lines. Lots of one-off engineering there.

Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376

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[CodeRebel]

Thank you for all the information. Every bit of it is more and more helpful in me determining the direction I want to go. IRStuff, I love reading, so I will check out that book.

MJCronin mentioned starting my own firm, and I was unaware that you would be able to do both simultaneously. That is news to me. My ultimate goal was to eventually have my own firm. It also seems he understands my train-of-thought. I want to be a great engineer.

Greg Locock, you're probably right about the people talking gibberish. I get so much distorted information from people that it's hard to tell which is true, so you've definitely helped clear up some of the fog.

I also realized I should spend more time looking into what avenue inside mechanical engineering I can take. Just that post alone showed me there were many different fields within mechanical engineering that I didn't even realize existed after researching further, so thanks TheTick.

DVD, I'm pretty experienced in nobody understanding what a millwright does. It's funny you say that because, it did used to frustrate me. Now it doesn't bother me. I've realized my work experience only gets me in the door, I then have to demonstrate my worth regardless of my experience. What I find useful about my millwright experience, is the ranks I was able to obtain at prestigious companies show employers I'm likely able to do the same at their company.

Thanks Weldstan for confirming and giving me more insight. It helps. I feel I can decide how much I want to travel by which job I go after.

Based on this advice, I will take an internship. Even though I have work experience, I don't necessarily know the day-to-day of being an engineer.

I still want a P.E. because I've set it as a main goal of mine. I understand that a P.E. license allows more opportunity whether it's required for employment or not.

I appreciate everybody's help! Thank you everybody for your time!

 

[CWB1]

I want to be able to utilize all the resources I have available to me while in my university to maximize my return on investment.

Should I really consider a paid internship even though i have prior work experience?

Much like grades and your prior working experience, your extra-curricular activities will be of little/no interest to anybody in the working world nor help you obtain your first job. Internships will make you or break you in that regard. No doubt you have seen the current gripe about needing 3-5 years experience for an entry-level job, the reality is that its not far off. Top graduates commonly have been interning nearly their entire college career, learning the soft-skills and basic process methodology that rules every organized engineering office. In real world dollars and cents, the cost of training you as an engineer vs an intern is significantly higher and you're adding to the already steep learning curve every engineer faces their first few years. Consequently, resumes with limited/no internship experience often get filed in the circular bin, particularly if the grad has taken the full four or more years to finish a bachelor's rather than shown the motivation to graduate early.

I concur with the advice above to get out in industry and follow your interests. Ultimately you're only limited by your willingness to learn and the industry in your locale. While you're young, I would highly recommend being open to relocation as it only gets more difficult with age and family. Large corporations provide great learning opportunities as they usually own a variety of facilities, often offering rotational programs placing junior engineers in a design role for a few months, followed by manufacturing, followed by product definition, marketing, or other roles. Even without a RDP, job-hopping between roles and locations within a big company every 3-5 years is usually considered normal and supported by management as staff professional development. Most will also pay for advanced degrees and have PEs on staff so finding folks to sign off on licensing requirements is fairly easy if you decide to go that route. At a small company you're often stuck in one role, in one location, with a small group of colleagues until you quit. To get the same broad experience you must job-hop between companies which is often viewed negatively for various reasons by employers. There are other pluses and minuses to big vs small companies which are good fodder for other threads, to each their own but personally I've always preferred large companies to small.

On the great yardstick of our career you're a half-inch before zero, focus on finding whether/not you enjoy engineering and are decent at it before investing too much more yourself. Others can share the statistics, but the reality is that most engineering grads aren't career engineers and often move into the trades, law, medicine, or business otherwise.

 

[TheTick]

Your past industry work is resume gold. Many employers love engineers with past hands-on experience. I was a machinist, and it was a huge plus getting my first engineering jobs.

I was unable to do internships during college due to military commitments. Doing contract work right after graduating was a good way to make up for that.

As I said before, it really helps to know what you want to do. I wanted to design. That meant saying no to material science, quality, and manufacturing engineering jobs. Getting on the right track early is important. Changing employers is simple. Changing tracks, not so much.

 

[TheTick]

Circa 1998, I was on a small design team designing high-end turf equipment. Great team. 4 ME's, 1 EE, and an awesome project lead. 6 people designing one vehicle. Each of us got out fingerprints on everything. The protos were built on the other side of the door, and production was right across the alley. We could feel our progress almost daily.

My friend Eric and I left for greener pastures at the same time. I went to design fancy blue plastic parts for computers. Eric went to Boeing. Eric ended up on the 747 wing spar team.

A team. For one part.

Barely a month later, my new boss asks who else I know might be interested. I placed a call to Seattle...

"Eric, how much do you hate it?", I asked.

"Oh, God, what did I do to myself?", was his reply.

72 hours later he was working next to me and never looked back.

15 years later, he returned the favor with a career-resuscitating call to me. Now I work for him.

If you want to do, you need to be where things get done. If you want to monitor, evaluate, and traffic in BS, well, there's places to do that as well, if you like.