<p>Has anyone hear heard of Exponent (Exponent</a>) or have had experience with them?</p>
<p>University</a> Recruiting | Careers | Exponent</p>
<p>They seem to hire a lot of people from top engineering schools. It must be pretty decent.</p>
<p>Whoa!!!!
You already now where you want to work at!!!!</p>
<p>By no means do I know where I want to work at--I just am curious about this company since I haven't really heard much about them.</p>
<p>Yes.</p>
<p>I worked for their competitor for a while, and I think that my former company is a better company to work for, having sat on the opposite side of the litigation room from a couple of their folks a few times. I think we train our people better. I got the sense that Exponent's engineers had never really been on a job site before (had trouble assembling their hard hats, etc.) and a few of them were "senior engineers," as revealed by the business cards they handed me. I'm not sure they're as hands-on as they tout.</p>
<p>They're a failure analysis firm. A large chunk of the work that they do is structural and architectural, which is the sort of thing that my old company did. (Though my old company also reassembled TWA Flight 800, so they're not strictly limited to buildings and bridges...)</p>
<p>What field are you in that you're interested in Exponent?</p>
<p>aibarr,</p>
<p>I got the same feeling from the webpage--seems like they are more academic than "real world". I'm curious about the Mechanical/Thermal Fluids portion of exponent. What are more capable firms?</p>
<p>I know of a few in structural engineering, but not so much in mechanical/thermal, unfortunately. What you're looking for is "forensic engineering," though. There's a National Academy of Forensic Engineers (nafe.org), which is a subgroup of NSPE. Most of their members seem to focus on accident reconstruction, but they might be able to point you in the right direction to firms that do the sort of thing you're looking for.</p>
<p>Maybe also check out opportunities at the UL.</p>
<p>I usually talk with their recruiters every year at my schools job fair. Too bad they are only looking for people with a masters degree. I got interested in this field after attending a presentation on disasters and forensic science. The lecturer was an engineer that worked for exponent for several years before moving on.</p>
<p>A masters degree only takes a year, two tops.</p>
<p>It's a good career, incidentally. I really loved the work I did at my old firm (WJE, if you'd like to look 'em up and see the stuff they work on), just wasn't too keen on SoCal, and I wanted some design experience before I took the PE exam, and now I really kind of like my current gig... But it's a really exciting profession. In my interview, they asked me "Are you afraid of heights? What about enclosed spaces?" Six months later, I find myself riding a swing stage down the side of a building, and crawling around under a massive hangar collapse. Definitely worth the masters degree!</p>
<p>I graduated recently and definitely going for my masters in ME. I was mostly interested in an internship when I was talking to the exponent recruiters at that time.</p>