<p>I was talking to a friend the other day, when the topic of what we were planning on majoring in College. I brought up Chemical Engineering, and he scoffed at me, claiming it was a "desk" job. Of course, the idea seemed ridiculous, since (to my understanding) all engineering fields (aside from Industrial Engineering) could hardly be considered desk jobs. He seemed very confident about his assertations, which made me wonder how so. He didn't have time to tell me since we were finishing this conversation as we walked to class but I was just wondering how much truth was there to his statement.</p>
<p>As in most cases, it depends. If you do design work, it’ll be mostly a desk job up until construction (that is, if you’re even involved in construction).</p>
<p>If you work in plant operations and troubleshooting, you’ll be in the plant daily, climbing towers, taking samples, etc. If you’re in a central engineering group of a manufacturing firm, you’ll do a little bit of both.</p>
<p>At the end of the day, though, with the many, many options for ChE’s, it’s hard to even generalize about these sorts of things.</p>
<p>All engineering fields probably have some desk-heavy positions but also some field-heavy positions.</p>
<p>A desk job generally have higher status than other jobs though, why is this a concern? </p>
<p>And chem eng is no more desk heavy than any other eng.</p>
<p>A desk job also tends to be less exciting than a field job.</p>
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<p>That’s what appeals to me the most. Being the troubleshooting guy, or maybe settling or both. Does that pay any good, are they the minority or what? Btw, how are there so many options for Ch.E in comparison to MechE, or Electrical?</p>
<p>To the rest:</p>
<p>A desk job is a desk job. I think if I were to prefer one, it’d probably be one like Actuary, or something with heavy math.</p>
<p>Engineering doesn’t involve “heavy math”? You’ll see more complicated math in chemical engineering than you will in actuarial science.</p>
<p>Really? With all the negative stuff I keep seeing in the forums, that doesn’t sound so right. I mean, People with Ph. D. in engineering who can’t even evaluate a derivative? What kind of math do you use with engineering, exactly?</p>
<p>A desk job in chem eng would definitely be safer</p>
<p>All depends what kind of job you get. You could certainly get a “desk job,” or you could get a job that involves being in the plant, climbing towers, etc. (they’ll give you a desk too though.)</p>
<p>Just remember that if you get a job that involves being in the plant/field a lot, make sure you can handle working with blue-collar guys. As a young engineer, you’ll have to depend on those guys for a lot, because they know how the processes run and you won’t. Come in with an attitude about having a degree, etc. and you’ll probably run into some trouble.</p>
<p>Where on earth did you here that someone with a PhD in engineering couldn’t evaluate a derivative? As a chemical engineering student in the fire at the moment, I can assure you, we learn and use an incredible amount of math. Good luck doing maxwell relations in thermodynamics without understanding ordinary and partial differential equations, let alone basic calculus. Or anything in transport phenomena for that matter.</p>
<p>How much math you use on the job is a completely different question, to which I don’t know the answer.</p>
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<p>I’m sure it happens that people can’t take complex derivatives on their own. I have a very strong math background, and still need to pull out my undergraduate Calculus book. It’s literally falling apart at this point.</p>
<p>Yeah, definitly keep your text books. Chemical Engineering is a very “use it or lose” it field. Even the PEs and PhDs I work with are constantly updating their own personal library with articles and texts. You are not really going to remember how to calculate a heat transfer coefficient for tube side condensing of water in a horizontal tube condensor (which you really shouldn’t do) until you really need to… And then, you should definitly check your texts.</p>
<p>I’m in design now, but spent years in the field. I loved, and still do, troubleshooting, debottlenecking, and improving processes. However, I needed the years of experience doing that to be a better designer. I needed to know what the issues were in the field, every day. And, the best person to learn that, either than doing it yourself, is from the operator or technician. The better your relationship with them, the better your performance will be.</p>
<p>I do a lot more what we call “value engineering” now then I did before. This means I get to look at designs and ask the questions; is their a better way to do this? What does the budget for the project allow? What are the margins needed on the product? Does the allow for process changes to be made easily? If I was an engineer troubleshooting how would I cus out the designer?.. because I always did.</p>
<p>Anyway, I still get to troubleshoot. Yet it’s only when process improvements won’t cut the mustard and you need a total redesign, or if the problem is the entire design of the plant and not just an individual component or system.</p>
<p>When I was a process engineer in the field I still was at my desk about 30-40% of the time. This may have been more due to the fact that I was in an FDA regulated environment; tons of paper work. </p>
<p>I’m now consulting to the biofuel facilities; ethanol, biomass, etc. Supplying technology to these industries and some equipment. While my move has taken me out of the field more, and put me behind a desk, it suits my family life better (no more working nights), gives me more opportunity to learn something new, and expands my offerings as an engineer. Also, I get to post here!</p>
<p>If you want to do field work, and troubleshooting or processes then Chemical Engineer can give that. And, in the event that your preferences change it can give you more opportunity as well.</p>
<p>Hi, I am also considering chemical engineering. I have acceptances in some universities for that major. I would like to know if you have come across women in chemical engineering and what they do?
Thanks</p>
<p>I’ve known several women with ChemE degrees, my class of around 25 had only 3 or 4, but they were very smart. One of them I ended up running into in my career and she had continued in school, gotten an economics degree, and is a very respected project manager. Others I know have worked for Dow Chemical and another is in Marketing and pursuing her MBA.</p>
<p>I really wish women wouldn’t shy away from engineering. It’s only man’s club because there aren’t a whole lot of women.</p>
<p>I was under the assumption that chemical engineering had one the highest women-to-men ratios in engineering (especially in school). I’m going by what I’ve seen at my school and schools in the Southern region.</p>
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<p>Let me tell you a story. When I was an undergrad, I had an internship at an R&D lab that employed numerous MS and PhD engineers. Not to pat myself on the back, but my math skills were far and away superior to anyone else’s there. In fact, when one guy, who had a PhD, wanted to help his daughter with her high school calculus homework, he turned to me and had me teach him how to calculate basic derivatives and integrals. This was just high school calculus, yet he didn’t know how to do it. </p>
<p>Now, to be clear, I’m sure that the guy did know calculus at one point, and in fact, far more math than I ever have. But he never used it. The truth is, most engineering jobs - including R&D jobs - aren’t highly mathematically complex. Practically nobody outside of academia spends their time deriving pages and pages of differential equations or inverting matrices. Yet that is exactly what you do as an engineering student. Engineering curricula are therefore teaching levels of mathematical knowledge that, frankly, the vast majority of engineers never actually use.</p>
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Chemistry is a subject that attracts women, don’t ask me why.</p>
<p>The most accurate answer you can get is “it just depends.”</p>
<p>I do agree with what someone said where the desk job is probably “superior” to the job out in the field. The desk job probably would be in a supervisory/research/design/senior position. </p>
<p>But when someone sais all engineering jobs are like this or that, they are speaking nonsense. Employment “conditions” are very diverse, and vary at each company. Thats part of what makes engineering exciting - not everything is the same.</p>
<p>i don’t think engineering schools can “skimp” on the math though, even if a lot don’t use it. think about a company like qualcomm, and the immense amount of math that was needed to create their cdma technology for example</p>