Course Correcting my Career
Course Correcting my Career
(OP)
Hi guys, I'm 10 years into civil engineering (geotechnical) but it's not paying much so now im trying to course correct with the least amount of financial damage. What's the best thing i can do now to boost my salary or go into a different field?
I feel like with covid, i have an advantage because most unis offer online degrees/programs that i could enroll in in the fall while holding down a full time job. I want to take advantage of location being irrelevant at the moment.
For example I'm thinking of transitioning into a civil software design firm..for those who are from the world of tech, what kind of courses can I take on my own now to give me the right skills? (i have zero computer science background).
Any ideas would be appreciated.
Cheers.
I feel like with covid, i have an advantage because most unis offer online degrees/programs that i could enroll in in the fall while holding down a full time job. I want to take advantage of location being irrelevant at the moment.
For example I'm thinking of transitioning into a civil software design firm..for those who are from the world of tech, what kind of courses can I take on my own now to give me the right skills? (i have zero computer science background).
Any ideas would be appreciated.
Cheers.
RE: Course Correcting my Career
RE: Course Correcting my Career
RE: Course Correcting my Career
@oldestguy... i have a masters..im not in charge of a unit just project manager of small-medium sized jobs..so basically just a grunt..i was thinking of getting an executive MBA or going in the tech field to get a salary boost. I feel like geotechnical consulting is a dead end in terms of pay.
RE: Course Correcting my Career
RE: Course Correcting my Career
RE: Course Correcting my Career
Edit: With this statement these days, I wonder why? "(i have zero computer science background " In these forums we get all sorts of questions but many times the post starts of with lots missing and it my take 20 postings on the subject and comments here to do the poster any useful info.
RE: Course Correcting my Career
RE: Course Correcting my Career
RE: Course Correcting my Career
RE: Course Correcting my Career
If you are in the private sector, you will have to work yourself up to a geotechnical department manager position or branch manager position to bump up your salary. Staying as a geotechnical project manager is not going to make a lot of $.
You could also make a move to government work. You can make around $100k as just a geotechnical engineer in my area of the states. Moving up to a lead geotechnical engineer position would bump you up $15-20k more.
It is easier to work your way up in the private sector than the government though.
And if I was only focused on $, I probably wouldn’t have chose geotechnical engineering.
RE: Course Correcting my Career
I'm with a private employee owned consulting firm...hard to move up I find within an employee owned company as they require you to sink in alot of cash. This scares me as one of our top associates got laid off during the pandemic right after they announced the company stock price had fallen by 50%. if she invested 100k (which is what is required roughly to make associate/partner) she would have been out 50K and unemployed. At least if i take that cash an invest in a diversified fund of my choice I can chose when to sell and will stay the course during economic downturns.
government work isnt for. I need fast paced exciting work.
Mining in private consulting (Golder, Kleifelder, Coffey and the likes) pays 10% more but not much.
I'm thinking of starting my own geotechnical engineering support services firm (traffic control services, utility clearance etc) as I see how expensive these subcontractors have become. I'm just not sure if legally i'm able to explore this idea while being employed.
RE: Course Correcting my Career
RE: Course Correcting my Career
Only figuratively related is possibly data mining (bad pun); starting salaries are upwards of $100k
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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RE: Course Correcting my Career
My mortgage guy tells me he had to work and chase for about 2 years before getting a steady client flow earning more than $150K selling mortgages. If you want to go big you can also look at real estate sales which are paid on commission, selling $10 million in properties per year gets you a decent payday.
RE: Course Correcting my Career
https://www.indeed.com/cmp/Uber/salaries?job_categ...
TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg
FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies forum1529: Translation Assistance for Engineers Entire Forum list http://www.eng-tips.com/forumlist.cfm
RE: Course Correcting my Career
============
"Is it the only lesson of history that mankind is unteachable?"
--Winston S. Churchill
RE: Course Correcting my Career
I graduated in 1979, and my excuse for not pursuing the PhD that my father craved for me was the low salaries of professors, at that time.
TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg
FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies forum1529: Translation Assistance for Engineers Entire Forum list http://www.eng-tips.com/forumlist.cfm
RE: Course Correcting my Career
RE: Course Correcting my Career
RE: Course Correcting my Career
RE: Course Correcting my Career
As for the original question, lots of analysis is done by finite element analysis (FEA), which involves discretization of partial differential equations.
TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg
FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies forum1529: Translation Assistance for Engineers Entire Forum list http://www.eng-tips.com/forumlist.cfm
RE: Course Correcting my Career
RE: Course Correcting my Career
RE: Course Correcting my Career
A teaching university that doesn't engage in much heavy research - you're absolutely right.
Storm-water: Have you looked into getting out of design and into industrial work? You can get a job as a staff/site engineer for an industrial facility and do pretty well (depending on the industry, of course). If you have a lot of experience in storm water already, going into an environmental compliance department at a large industrial site is probably a good way to go. Those spots can pay pretty well. Then you can move from there to environmental compliance consulting. Insurance is outrageous, but the pay is pretty nice, too.
RE: Course Correcting my Career
What country are you from?
I think that maybe the salary is linked to were you are living.
For instance I know that in South Africa engineers are generally well paid and when you look at the top earning fields there are a number of engineering jobs present, haven't seen geotechnical engineering in the list ever. I have heard that in many other countries engineers are not as well paid. Would like to other peoples opinions on this?
With regards to the software development if you are starting your own company I think you should be fine, however going to work for another company would probably require dual doctorate in many cases (for the companies i'd love to work for), generally one in engineering and another in applied mathematics or something along those lines. I was previously given the opportunity to interview at a firm that did software design where they didn't ask for these types of qualifications but in the grand scheme that company made little Mickey mouse software.
If you are going to do this professional I would suggest looking into a graduate diploma in computer science and maybe post graduate courses in applied mathematics (the honors level courses generally include some good stuff that is used in engineering software, these can generally be taken as a causal student since you obviously don't have the correct degree to get into the course).
RE: Course Correcting my Career
@phamENG - my user name is misleading..most of my experience is geotechnical design in the transportation sector. I have done some construction phase services during construction...is that what you mean by site engineer? Do you mean working for the contractor? honeslty I'm a little sick of dealing with contractors.
RE: Course Correcting my Career
RE: Course Correcting my Career
RE: Course Correcting my Career
A lot of these types of jobs are looking more for high functioning and self starting individuals who have a background in quickly learning and mastering technical material. They may define it differently, but most of the good ones are willing to blur some of the stated requirements to get the right people.