The usual restless youth plus work questions

August 2, 2008 11:32 AM

If you were an entry-level MechE with only a year and a half of not-so-great experience under your belt, what would you be doing?

As it turns out, it only took me six months to become this guy. While I'm not entirely sure about leaving the engineering field entirely, it's certainly something I'm considering.

I currently work for Big Defense Contractor, which I find slow, uninspiring and generally uninteresting, even after asking for and receiving additional duties to try and stay challenged and learning (management was super nice about this, and I really do like them as people but the environment is just larger than they are). I worry that if I stay here much longer (I've been here a year and a half) I will be utterly unemployable elsewhere due to both accumulating apathy and lack of compelling engineering experience. I'm thinking of doing one of the following:

- Beating around as hard as I can for work in a solar energy startup which I find to be an interesting and growing market, though I worry about oversaturation
- Looking for work in consumer electronics, although I worry my growth would be limited there, since I'm not a EE
- Taking a class or two in market and/or data analysis, and then trying to find a job in that field if I enjoy it (which will be difficult to do with no experience or relevant education, and I might have to stomach a pay cut, but not being bored would be worth it)
- Giving into cynicism and finding more hobbies outside work (which is always great, but I can't help that I have to spend 40+ hrs a week at work). Well, at least my personal life is great.

I'd prefer not to go back to school full-time unless it's for an MBA - I pretty much figured myself done with that after my M.S. Traveling the world for an extended period is unfortunately also not an option.

If you were in my shoes, what would you opt to do? Are there industries other than aerospace that need MEs you'd seriously want to jump into? I'm female, mid-twenties, and in the SF Bay Area.

posted by universal_qlc to work & money (9 comments total)

I'm not an engineer, so I can't offer you anything very specific. But my engineering friends who work for big defense contractors tell me that a lot of people stick it out until they have an assignment that requires them to get a high-level security clearance. So, they get the clearance, and so become extra-marketable.
posted by Airhen at 12:06 PM on August 2, 2008

My career started out like yours. I'm a ME. I worked for Lockheed in Sunnyvale at the beginning. At first I had a job that was pretty dreary, but within a short time as things go there people found out I could help and that was the ticket to getting better and better slots on fun projects.

There was a running joke there about going out into other industries and getting a "real job". The thing is - since I did that - Lockheed was better managed than anyplace else I've worked, and a lot of projects I worked on were tons o'fun. What might look like a waste of money or otherwise uncompetitive behavior is merely the trade-off made for absolute, unswerving dedication to meeting schedule. This doesn't happen to -quite- the same extent in some other industries.

You won't be unemployable elsewhere because you work at $BIG_DEFENSE_CONTRACTOR. You -might- have a hard time getting work if you are doing nothing but writing service manuals or flight test plans. If you are building actual hardware and understand the problems real hardware develops, you're totally competitive.

The following Silicon Valley industries employ MEs in bunches: semiconductor capital equipment, consumer or specialty electronics (I build navigation equipment now and that's just fascinating), oil-patch instrumentation, other military specialties, all the chip manufacturers, alternative energy start-ups, design houses like Frogdesign, tons of small shops cooking up The Next Big Thing.

email's in my profile if you have more questions.
posted by jet_silver at 12:15 PM on August 2, 2008

well, jobs that require an existing security clearance are almost always at big defense contractors anyway, right? it sounds like that would just make the poster extra-marketable for other jobs she'd hate. i don't know how much of a cultural difference there is between them, but i'd imagine they have a pretty similar feel.
posted by sergeant sandwich at 12:15 PM on August 2, 2008

Depending on your interests, the auto industry hires a lot of mechanical engineers. Even when one company isn't doing well (GM, Ford), others are (Toyota), and many of them have multiple facilities in the US.

I am a mechanical engineer, 2 years out of school and work for a large defense contractor in the space division. I happen to like my particular niche and job responsibilities. I think you were on the right track when you went looking for additional duties. I always tell my peers that there is no way for your manager to know you are unhappy unless you tell them. At least until you decide to leave or find another opportunity, you should not hesitate to develop a good relationship with your supervisor so that they can better help you develop your skills and find interesting work. It is in their best interests as well as yours.

How do your co-workers feel? Are others in similar roles facing the same challenges? It may help to ask them. Do you have a mentor at work? Are there other areas/projects/contracts/divisions in your company that interest you? One of the benefits of working in a large company is that there is more than one place for you.

If you discover that they are unable to help you develop because there is no "need" for you to be growing so much, then I think you will be at the time/place to move elsewhere. 2 years is long enough that your next (potential) employer will not care that you left.
posted by kenbennedy at 2:18 PM on August 2, 2008

Are you cleared? You could move into intelligence analysis. They like folks with science and engineering backgrounds and don't get enough of them... and they also like anyone who's cleared. If you in a track to get security clearance, I definitely agree with the above, that you might want to stick it out just for that reason. It's very marketable.
posted by Jahaza at 2:23 PM on August 2, 2008

(I am an engineer, and somehow ended up on the advising ends of a lot of people with similar questions. That's where these thoughts come from.)

- Beating around as hard as I can for work in a solar energy startup ...: In terms of wattage, production was up 69% in 2007 over 2006, globally, and numbers are expected to continue growing. BUT the US overall is down in production, and most of the start-ups are outside the US now (Asia in particular is up, due to some real big lines starting in (duh) China). There was recently a great article on this in PHOTON called "The Q Factor." If you want to know who's growing, you should find a copy.
- Looking for work in consumer electronics...: No need to be so discouraged on this end. A lot of these companies do the design of their whaddyacallit shaped components as well. e.g. Bose does the shape of its earphones in-house (true). This is totally mechanical, but to do it, it really helps to get the electronic interactions your device depends on.
- Taking a class or two in market and/or data analysis...: Being an engineer with additional business or economics skills is never going to make it harder for you to find a job. It actually puts you in a pretty good position for doing things like industry analysis for the big banks or consulting firms.
- Giving into cynicism and finding more hobbies outside work... It's not worth settling yet. So much of your life is spent at work, and in many places your social life starts from work, that hating 40+ hours of your waking life will kill off your desire to do anything else, and the hate easily seeps into your non-work hours, as well. Especially since you and I are in fields where the work is often in your head, and it's harder to shut it down just by leaving for home. I know from which I speak.
posted by whatzit at 7:37 PM on August 2, 2008

How good are you with programming? Or more to the point, do you enjoy programming?
Speaking from personal experience:
Automation (scripting) and developing using APIs to increase interoperability between engineering software packages certainly has a future and an engineering background is preferred to a Comp Sci future for obvious reasons.
posted by spacefire at 9:38 PM on August 2, 2008

Thanks everyone for the responses so far.

You won't be unemployable elsewhere because you work at $BIG_DEFENSE_CONTRACTOR. You -might- have a hard time getting work if you are doing nothing but writing service manuals or flight test plans. If you are building actual hardware and understand the problems real hardware develops, you're totally competitive.

Well, that's a relief. You'll definitely be getting some email from me.

You could move into intelligence analysis
I had actually never heard of this, but sounds like an interesting possibility.

How do your co-workers feel?
They're kind of restless as well, but I'm lucky in the sense that the higher-ups have given me a reasonable amount of support to try new things in the corporation - but I'm also the one of only a handful who's been brazen enough to ask after only a few months on the job. And my mentors are great, but I feel a bit weird saying "hey guys, I'm starting to think your industry kind of blows."

I'm feeling discouraged because it seems like I have to spend 6-18 months at a time doing one very specific, possibly repetitive task on a very specific stage of project development. As a result, it feels like it'll be a long time before I accumulate enough knowledge to understand one of the products from beginning to end. This is a problem for both the company and me, since I tend to be impatient and want to learn as much as I can and as quickly as possible, and then do something challenging with it (though I know this a job and not school); one manager of a group I was interested in said he wouldn't take me because he wanted "B-level people" (his words) who would have no qualms about staying and doing the same thing for two years - which is totally understandable. Anyhow, I get the impression that the necessity for such rotations is just a byproduct of the insanely long proposal/dev/production cycles and the massive scope of projects in aerospace - hence the interest in an industry with shorter production cycles and smaller teams. But I know the knife cuts both ways - I could cycle through a dozen projects in an different industry, only to watch them be killed because there's no market for them. I bet that'd be frustrating, too.

There was recently a great article on this in PHOTON called "The Q Factor." If you want to know who's growing, you should find a copy.
Ooh, thanks. I'll look it up.

How good are you with programming? Or more to the point, do you enjoy programming?
It's mostly something I look at when I find myself with too much free time, and basically I end up doing some light scripting on the job as a way to grease the wheels a bit and get a certain repeatable task done a lot faster. So I'm by no means a guru, or in a position to say, architect a large computing system or environment (I also have no idea if what I just said makes any sense). In a perfect world where time, money and my affinity for really nice things weren't issues, I'd go back for a second M.S. in computer science or managerial science, because I can see such a large need for economic and/or general system optimization in an industry like defense, which from my own observation seems to have a hard time hanging on to talented software engineers.

Anyhow, thanks again everyone, I feel like I've got a bunch of stuff to look into.
posted by universal_qlc at 10:28 PM on August 2, 2008

Hmm, also I just realized the irony of my saying this: "In a perfect world where time, money and my affinity for really nice things weren't issues, I'd go back for a second M.S. in computer science or managerial science, because I can see such a large need for economic and/or general system optimization in an industry like defense, which from my own observation seems to have a hard time hanging on to talented software engineers." I take it back - I probably wouldn't go back to defense after that, based on my experience thus far.
posted by universal_qlc at 10:52 PM on August 2, 2008