<p>I'm looking into engineering as a prospective major for college, but before I settle on it as my choice of major, I wanted to hear from any of the engineers out there, to gain an understanding of the lifestyle and work that an engineer would perform on a daily basis. Yes, I do understand that there are many different types of engineering out there; the types I'm mainly looking into are chemical, petroleum, civil, and computer engineering. I would greatly appreciate it if those, or any other type, of engineers in the crowd could tell me a little bit about their jobs and how much they liked them.</p>
<p>I know from experience, though I am no longer an engineer major, your first 2 years are focused on completing major gen eds i.e. the math, the science. You really do not start doing engineer specific classes until junior year. I spent Monday - Friday doing work, working projects, math homework, and study groups. I went out on Friday and saturday nights but not every week. Most of my weekend was spent working on more complicated group projects. Some days we would go golfing and discuss class related material while we golfed. I was a so so engineer student with a 3.2 when I transferred out of it. My cousin spent more time working on his major though he graduated with a 3.8. And my brother spent little to no time working “hard” and still graduated with a 3.9.</p>
<p>The fields you listed are extremely varied and diverse. You could have a job working on an oil rig or in the middle of nowhere as a petroleum engineer. The hours could be long and you might have to work outdoors in less than ideal locations. Contrast this with a computer engineer, who is more likely to have a job that is 40 hours per week in an office.</p>
<p>My job is currently somewhat of a computer engineering type job. I sit in an office and write code to solve whatever problem needs solving. I also tell others what to do and help them with any problems they run into. I like that I work with some cool people in a laid back environment, which is independent of job function. The job itself is hardly exciting, but I think someone who greatly enjoys programming would probably enjoy it more.</p>
<p>You may be asked to one just one phase of the production of a product (software is a product). If the steps needs are Requirements Analysis, Design, Development, Test, Deployment and Sustainment, you may only do the design and be a design engineer (role) or development engineer or test engineer or deployment engineer.</p>
<p>PurdueEE touched on a good point, which is the tradeoff of a stress-free, yet less exciting job vs. an exciting and interesting, yet demanding and stressful job. Personally I would take the exciting job, granted its something I enjoy doing, while I’m young and move into the back office when I get older.</p>
<p>Exciting and stress-free are not mutually exclusive qualities of a job. You can have a job that is both exciting and stress-free. At the same time, you can have a job that is boring and stressful. A job that one finds incredibly stressful may be relaxed for someone else. Similarly, a job that one finds extremely engaging may be mind-numbingly boring for another.</p>
<p>How a job is perceived seems to largely be a product of the individual. One engineer who does not enjoy software development, for example, may find it difficult to deliver quality results in a timely manner and subsequently find the job stressful. However, another engineer who loves programming may spend a substantial amount of time, perhaps even as a hobby, refining his programming skills may allow him to easily tackle similar challenges in much less time and result in him viewing the job as entertaining and interesting, rather than stressful. You could say that the first engineer should do something to increase his competency in programming, but it’s not always that easy to do when you lack interest.</p>
<p>I like programming, but not to the level of hard-core object-oriented programmers that can create data type classes upon classes and sift through lines upon lines. It was one of the reasons I moved to the database side of things. You are not going to have to create too many levels of object classes when writing stored procedures. At the same time, I can also dive into the actual design (data architecture) of systems.</p>
<p>My uncle is a petroleum engineer and he loves his job. He helps to fulfill the worlds energy needs. Works a tough job but likes the new challenges that he must face and enjoys working in interesting and diverse locations. Then during his 3 weeks vacation every 3 weeks he is with his family and vacations. He is working near the caspian in kazakhstan these days. He inspired me to follow a similar path and now I am studying to become one too!</p>
<p>In the end it is about what you like doing. For some they may hate the long hours and field work. But others may hate sitting in an office even more in front of the computer… like me lol</p>
<p>Everyone is different and you shouldn’t just follow the status quo. Pursue what you love and go beyond it!</p>
<p>Wow thanks a lot for all the helpful information guys. Engineering sure is a very general term that covers a broad range of fields. However, I suppose asking to hear about an engineer’s lifestyle was the wrong way to approach it. I think I’d have to intern with or shadow an engineer to really get a clear picture of whether or not I want to pursue it as a career. Does anyone know if any large engineering/petroleum/computer companies accept high school interns?</p>
<p>I’m a ChemE and have been an engineer for 10 years. I’ve held several jobs the past decade thanks to a rollercoaster economy, and this probably skews my view point somewhat. Still, you asked:</p>
<p>My roles have primarily been as a process engineer and/or project engineer. My duties have been to develop, impliment, and troubleshoot wet processing of biotechnological products. This makes each day slightly different and undpredicatable as you never know when a problem will arise, or what it will take to fix it. This I like.</p>
<p>What I haven’t like is mainly two things; management and job security. If you get a good manager than life is good, if you get a bad one life can be very very bad. IMO engineers need direction and mentorship more than management. If your manager feels this way too than you will probably do fine. However, if you get one who thinks you are a task monkey you might best find another job and fast. These idiots will view you as someone to yell at, mainly because they think that will get the job done faster. They will also view you as a liability, meaning if there is nothing to improve on than you are dead weight. My experience has been that these manager are generally not engineers. If the engineering group is being ran by a production manager with an econ degree, run.</p>
<p>The other sour pill engineering has given me is job security. As mentioned above engineers are a liability. It’s nice to think that you can troubleshoot and optimize a process forever, but this is hardly the case. Projects end and processes become efficient enough, and then what? While this sucks, the good thing is that your skills will be highly transferable and you shouldn’t have a problem finding a job. I’ve been laid of twice in the past 3 years and have had 3 jobs in past 5, but have never been without work for more than 3 months, even in this bad economy.</p>
<p>I hope this doesn’t discourage you from engineering, there are bad managers everywhere and job security can be questionable almost anywhere. If you like doing something different everyday, drawing a large toolbox of tools, and constantly learning throughout your career than engineering is a good place to be, and it can take you to a lot of places.</p>