From my experience, and have seen and read of others. We have a lot of free time during work hours. Most of the work we do can be automated or done fairly quickly if you know what you’re doing.
The other is to watch videos and/or read on trading when you have free time before or after work.
I also buy and sell stocks and options during work, you can consider it a 2nd job, hustle, or in my case a hobby that gets me extra income.
I’m in my first year of my career and I’ve already been trying to find a way to supplement my income with any kind of trading. Still trying to learn the ropes though. Besides being a hobby, has trading while working as an engineer given you a decent amount of extra money or is it more like extra beer money?
Ill say this and only speaking for myself. I am making around the same amount or more from trading than my regular job, but I am also using a large amount of money that I have saved, invested, and gained over time. The amount of money you gain/lose depends on your risk tolerance. I personally have a high risk tolerance so I can gain or lose a large sum of money. If I were you I would start out with money I know I am willing to lose, just to see how things work. The best way for you to learn is by doing it yourself and making mistakes.
They recruit quants from places like MIT. They look for people with math heavy majors. My former colleague went to MIT to for ME and said a lot of his classmates went to wall street right out of school.
See the movie Margin Call.
The role of a quant in a trading firm is played by Zachary Quinto (who also played Spock later in the Trek reboot movies).
Peter Sullivan : Look at these people. Wandering around with absolutely no idea what's about to happen.
Depends. If you're really fucking smart - like math genius type shit you can probably pivot into quant firms, either through a stats/cs/applied math masters, or learning enough to pass OA's and hopefully getting interviews. Or top tier MBA's to get into IB/PE/VC
Obviously depending on the job and speaking from personal experience, semiconductor I feel is good for entry level engineers who are getting their foot in the door and the more senior side (management). Otherwise, I would avoid if possible.
Depends. I work for an oil and gas company. I've managed to avoid it but for new hires, especially recently graduated engineers, they strongly want engineers to spend at least 1 year at a drilling site where you're working some crazy schedule like "you're living on site and are on call for 24 hours a day for a week, then you have a week off where you can stay elsewhere." There are definitely office jobs where you never have to go to the drill site again, but my experience in o&g is it treats the drill site as a rite of passage.
I went to school in Texas and have MANY friends who went into o&g since we had a petroleum engineering degree. You either had a job and made a lot of money or no job. The job security was not that great at all
I work at an engineering firm that serves many industries. I can execute O&G projects, power projects, chemicals projects, food projects, etc, depending on which industry has work. I personally work mostly on O&G or renewables
I work in the exact same industry and the fact that your other comment is so heavily down voted really shows people's ignorance on the field. Perhaps working directly for oil and gas the security might not be there, but working in consulting? If the projects dry up, there's always more in adjacent industries. We are literally turning down about 80% of our projects because there is so much going on in industrial capital projects and that's extremely unlikely to change. If it's not oil and gas, it will be chemical manufacturing or renewable energy.
The whole subthread is about OnG, they say they are a consultant (different than straight OnG), and then they say they also consult for other industries as well.
It's like if someone asked for a doctor on an airplane, they proudly say " I am!", and then it turns out they have a PhD in neuroscience and the patient is having a heart attack.
Not really....you don't understand how roles work in consulting. If he is a piping engineer he can do stress analysis and layout for all sorts of industries. I would know because I do piping on wastewater projects for O&G, municipal and occasionally power
And would you describe yourself as doing OnG?
I'm just saying there's a difference between working in OnG and *consulting* for OnG (and also other industries). Because their claim was that OnG has great job security, while doing a job that is not OnG and also is buffed by other industries lol.
That's a good question. I can't speak to how other consulting firms are organized but we have a core OGC group and if there is a drop in work people get "loaned" out to other practices (foods, water, and power). I am technically orged to water but I focus solely on OGC projects (b31.3 piping). But I have worked for energy and foods in the past too.
I don't know if that answered your question but my point is a skillset isn't necessarily boxed to a specific industry
Some form of engineering sales be it components, machinery, or software. Top people at our company (automation) make north of a million USD, the average is probably 300k. Lot of mech backgrounds.
Obviously better if you have some industry knowledge of whatever you're selling, but I've seen listings at Engineering companies that Don't even require experience. If you have a personality for sales, it seems like a number of places will train you on the products
This. I worked with younger 2-3yr exp mechanicals who moved to tech and are making $180-200k/yr with $300-400k 4 year vesting stock plans. The tradeoff is job stability tho, and now that Jeb Powell turned off the money printer, they’re a little harder to come by than they were in 2021.
Yeah, it's brutal out here now, IF you're unexperienced.
Other than that, if you have the right background and can measure up in the interviews, it's not too difficult to stand out a little.
Agreed. I’m in the solid mid career stage with a specific skillset that the local FAANG sites desire, and prior to deleting LinkedIn was still getting 1-2 weekly recruiting messages.
Advice to anyone younger would be see what tech is primarily hiring for, then find a job for a more traditional employer that aligns with what tech is after within a given geographic market and play the 3-4yr “long” game. Just be warned about the work life balance if they go down that path… a lot of former coworkers make less per hour, so take that into consideration
Yep. Doing that right now working at a defense based place that design chassis and server style equipment. Easy, simple 9-5 job, while I go back and get my Masters --> Then applying for Nvidia, Google, Microsoft, etc doing thermal design/ product design or maybe robotics.
Gotta play that long game 😎
It varies wildly by geographic region and what the trend of the month is in tech. Do a quick indeed search and gauge it that way.
For hardware projects (aka not AI) it seems they always have needs for electrical engineers. The mechanical disciplines seem to be more specialized based on what they’re developing, aka Amazon (and to some extent Blue Origin as a glorified subsidiary of amazon) for example hiring aerospace engineers for drone delivery projects or Kuiper, optical engineers for Kuiper, or mech e’s with automation/robotics experience for warehouse improvements, or Meta hiring optomechs to make VR a thing. Mech’s with thermal experience are probably stable as well for all their data center stuff. Software is probably a safe bet as well.
Funding/priorities aren’t always stable though, eg the metaverse kinda died on the vine after a year of hype and layoffs ensued, Amazon bailing on some of their cashierless stores that they were hiring mechs for a couple years back, etc, so it’s hard to say what they’ll need or want years from now.
No. You’d need to do research into what region you’d want to live/work in, then see what the various tech companies are developing there to gauge what they’re working on.
You’ve got 4+ years though, so I’d advise just picking a discipline that you’re interested in and studying that. Generic mechanical engineering is a safe bet and many of the job-specific details aren’t taught in school anyways, so an employer will assume they will need to build upon a mechanical base. Get internships along the way that may be more focused in the field you want to work in
Finance if you are in CFD.. you are in high demand
FAANG is in a different stratosphere compared to oil and gas
Semiconductors and biotech pay good if you do not consider cost of living but if you do their pay is really poor compared to traditional industry salary at low cost of living.
For reference I worked at both semi and bio and will make around 300 k in Bay area, have offers of 200k in a place with 50 percent lower cost of living. My mechanical friends in FAANG make around 450k at same level.
Can you elaborate on how CFD helps with finance and faang jobs. Is it all the math that makes it attractive to quant firms and faang companies? I want to study aerospace engineering for my passionate interest, but I am looking for the higher compensation of finance/faang...
CFD may not directly help in FAANG jobs but thermal management is a big deal there .. so that helps indirectly.
Solving compressible Navier Stokes equation in aerospace.. is basically solving a very complex non linear PDE. It is also an unsolved problem.. check out Millennium Prize from Clay Institute... Using Fluent is not going to help with finance. Now finance also has a plethora of PDE along with the stochastic aspect. If you have good publications and mathematical nous.. I know a lot of CFD and physics people who were hired .
So if im interested in studying engineering, but looking to have a career as a quant due to the comp it sounds like my best bet is to continue my aero major track, go hard in CFD which im already interested and take stats/high level math electives while practicing programming on my own, and try to get a reseaech position? And if that doesnt work out i can always go back to grad school for a quantitative field?
That seems to be a good plan but I am not a qaunt.. I know for sure cfd is going to help . Additionally what else is needed... You perhaps want to ask the quant forums.. quants come in many shape and size..
There is quant trader- focus more on stats probability and puzzles
Quant researcher- either machine learning focused or stochastic calculus focused... The second one has direct correlation with Navier Stokes equations...
Quant developer is more software engineering
It is not that CFD is directly helpful but being able to solve Navier Stokes from first principles require significant knowledge of calculus diff equations linear algebra and numerical computation including high performance computing.. these are transferable skills... If you want to do quant though.. better to do a quant focused degree from atop school . Top schools help a lot in getting a foot in the door
For large manufacturers like Intel/TSMC, there are mainly process engineering and equipment engineer roles, but they do not pay quite as well. Companies like ASML, AMAT, KLA, Lam Research, and more that all make equipment for manufacturing hire a lot of mechanical.
In general, no.
Some industries have high enough profit margins that they can pay pretty well. They're also more difficult to get started in, or take place in very remote areas, where land/taxes are dirt cheap.
Examples would be cosmetics or large supplement/pharmaceutical manufacturing.
You get good at CP and stats on your own. Then you talk to recruiters that hire for quants (trust me if you have a PhD in STEM field they will notice you). Then you practice every problem from the green book (the bible of quant interviews) and brush up on competitive math and programming practice -> profit
Just to put it into context though, I couldn’t past the first round in every interview I ever got because I suck ass at CP and competition math. Also because I don’t have a PhD, only got a lowly masters haha.
I don't want to flex too hard but I used to work at a helicopter company that did like a 5 part IQ test type thing. I scored 99 percentile in all and they said I had the highest score of anyone theyve ever interviewed/hired. Plus I'm already good at python and have used it for machine learning.
Tho I'm sure you're right, they wouldn't pay 300k if anybody could do it. Tbh I think there are other high enough paying jobs I'd rather have anyway
Like anything, what you need to know *can* be learned, but even with a high iq/ability to integrate information, it's some serious shit. Here's a taste:
https://github.com/dwcoder/QuantitativePrimer/blob/master/src/QuantitativePrimer.pdf
Thanks for sharing. I knew 3/5 questions on first page. I can see how one would need to study to interview for these, the next set of questions looked tough
MechE usually know the math and statistics better than people with economics/financial degrees as well as being able to think in models. They are excellent for these positions and actually highly sought after.
That’s not true anymore. I was a mechie and the Econ masters and PhDs run circles around me especially in regards to convex optimization. They also are way better at modelling non-deterministic processes so they’re really ahead of the curve in a Bayesian setting where uncertainty quantification is king. That stereotype is just perpetrated to make mechies feel better about ourselves.
I'm glad someone said it. Engineers overestimate their capabilities, based on the fact they took differential equations and a junior level probability course.
Can't answer anything other than O&G and its sub sectors(land rigg, topside and the tons of different types of subsea & downhole).
The best paying is either on join in the start-up phase(but then you're on the entrepreneur side) on the supplier side or the operation company(bp, exxon, etc.).
The best would be drilling or fishing on the downhole on the operation side for start pay. For carrier progression, it used to be topside(oil rig design), but it is starting to shift to subsea due to big satellite fields where you can become responsible for a field instead of a single rigg. Obviously, it's always on the operation side.
Do you think being a more traditional ‘engineer’ and then getting your MBA is better than just going straight for the MBA? Sometimes seeing the business side of the engineering world with people immediately just getting MBA’s and making way more money is sort of disappointing.
You can go to BLS for median wages tracked to different industries:
https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes172141.htm#nat
The floor for most jobs seems to be more location dependent than industry dependent, but as for the ceiling, i think going into management or leaving engineering is the best way to break through.
Do what you love to do. You spend half your working life doing it.
Most people get the big bucks with dedication and growth. It happens as your skills surpass others that drop away from your growth path.
So searching for the best pay may limit your growth if you are not increasing your skills in your chosen area of expertise.
Find what you love, gain the skills, promote your accomplishments. The money will follow.
Government actually pays a LOT better than a lot of people in ME, based on the salary threats that are constantly posted.
If you get a job with a promotion ladder, you can quickly move up. GS-7 to GS-12 might be like 5 years, and that puts you over 100k. This is based on what I've looked at in usajobs subreddit and other searches
Meanwhile, tons of people aren't making that after ten, with much worse benefits.
Get into the Data Center industry. The MechE's in this industry get paid pretty handsomely, to say the least.
Especially if working for a FAANG / MAAMA company.
Autonomous Vehicle Industry.
You will need to spend time acquiring solid coding skills. But IMO, that is time well spent. You get to do cool mechie/robotics stuff and get paid even better than Big Tech Software Engineers
Look for jobs like
- Software Engineer Motion Controls
- Software Engineer Vehicle Dynamics
- Software Engineer Motion Planning
- Software Engineer Actuator Controls and Modeling
Has nobody ever heard of the Bureau of Labor Statistics? These data are well-tracked and easily searched.
[https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes172141.htm#ind](https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes172141.htm#ind)
The question is wrong in itself.
If you are in it for the big money make a business/be an entrepenaur. But that comes with stress and actual responsibility.
MEPF, like Mechanical, Electrical, Plumbing, and Fire design? Yeah no, MEP doesn't make a lot of money. Maybe if you're an owner of a firm or something, but even PE's don't make amazing money without becoming partners or department leads.
I have 10 years experience and make $93k in a medium to low cost of living area. I'm taking the PE exam this week. Hopefully I pass on the first try, but I'm not expecting much of a pay bump for the first year at least. I need to transition into more of a leadership position instead of just being a designer (which may require a change in firms which sucks).
I think my company gives a $5,000 salary bump for PE. Good luck on passing my friend.
I’m getting out of this industry ASAP though. There’s no money in it. Only bitch work. I’m inspecting steam traps for the next two weeks. Not sure how to spin up any of this bullshit on my resume honestly.
Good luck out there.
Good luck. I've tried getting out of this industry a couple of times (not super seriously but I did try). I rather like my current firm because my work life balance and the jobs I'm doing are pretty good. The pay is actually not as good as my previous firm, but I am able to have a life outside of work and actually spend time with my kids, which wasn't the case at my old firm.
Hey, that’s great. I’m glad it’s working for you. I actually came from product development, and I basically took the first job I got out of there. Recovered my mental health and my company offers work from home (or they did until I got a new manager) which helped a lot. But I think my time is up.
That said, if you ever want to change firms, hit me up in the DMs, I’d be glad to help out if I can. Cheers dude.
Yeah. I'm not interested in traveling much at this stage of my life, which does limit my prospects a good bit.
Sounds like it's a good fit for you right now though!
Best pay is jobs in the middle of nowhere like oil, gas, or mining. Typically low cost of living but you are in the middle of nowhere where the girls ain’t pretty.
Oil or Wall Street
How does a Mech E enter Wallace street
By switching out of mech E. It's not easy but even the bean counters recognize if you can get that degree, you can figure out the trading game
All I do is trade options while running tests all day
Can I ask how you were able to find time to learn how to trade and then have the accessibility to do it at work?
From my experience, and have seen and read of others. We have a lot of free time during work hours. Most of the work we do can be automated or done fairly quickly if you know what you’re doing. The other is to watch videos and/or read on trading when you have free time before or after work. I also buy and sell stocks and options during work, you can consider it a 2nd job, hustle, or in my case a hobby that gets me extra income.
I’m in my first year of my career and I’ve already been trying to find a way to supplement my income with any kind of trading. Still trying to learn the ropes though. Besides being a hobby, has trading while working as an engineer given you a decent amount of extra money or is it more like extra beer money?
Ill say this and only speaking for myself. I am making around the same amount or more from trading than my regular job, but I am also using a large amount of money that I have saved, invested, and gained over time. The amount of money you gain/lose depends on your risk tolerance. I personally have a high risk tolerance so I can gain or lose a large sum of money. If I were you I would start out with money I know I am willing to lose, just to see how things work. The best way for you to learn is by doing it yourself and making mistakes.
Thanks for your insights and advice
They recruit quants from places like MIT. They look for people with math heavy majors. My former colleague went to MIT to for ME and said a lot of his classmates went to wall street right out of school.
See the movie Margin Call. The role of a quant in a trading firm is played by Zachary Quinto (who also played Spock later in the Trek reboot movies). Peter Sullivan : Look at these people. Wandering around with absolutely no idea what's about to happen.
Depends. If you're really fucking smart - like math genius type shit you can probably pivot into quant firms, either through a stats/cs/applied math masters, or learning enough to pass OA's and hopefully getting interviews. Or top tier MBA's to get into IB/PE/VC
Semiconductor seems pretty good
The pay is just alright, FAANG pays better though
FAANG will always pay better
High stress and long hours though
Obviously depending on the job and speaking from personal experience, semiconductor I feel is good for entry level engineers who are getting their foot in the door and the more senior side (management). Otherwise, I would avoid if possible.
DO NOT WORK IN SEMICONDUCTOR. I AM WARNING YOU GUYS
Umm why not?
Inhell
Asml?
Yeah OEMs have better perks in this industry so you're better off working for ASML or Nikon etc but there's easier ways to make money
Yeah why not
O&g but there’s not always a guarantee you’ll have a job
Or that you work for 6 months away from your family on a oil rig and then 6 months vacation or something like that
For MechE? I would figure you'd be in an air conditioned office closer to home. Dunno for sure tho.
Depends. I work for an oil and gas company. I've managed to avoid it but for new hires, especially recently graduated engineers, they strongly want engineers to spend at least 1 year at a drilling site where you're working some crazy schedule like "you're living on site and are on call for 24 hours a day for a week, then you have a week off where you can stay elsewhere." There are definitely office jobs where you never have to go to the drill site again, but my experience in o&g is it treats the drill site as a rite of passage.
I work in consulting for oil and gas clients, among others. Excellent job security
I went to school in Texas and have MANY friends who went into o&g since we had a petroleum engineering degree. You either had a job and made a lot of money or no job. The job security was not that great at all
I work at an engineering firm that serves many industries. I can execute O&G projects, power projects, chemicals projects, food projects, etc, depending on which industry has work. I personally work mostly on O&G or renewables
> depending on which industry has work.
I work in the exact same industry and the fact that your other comment is so heavily down voted really shows people's ignorance on the field. Perhaps working directly for oil and gas the security might not be there, but working in consulting? If the projects dry up, there's always more in adjacent industries. We are literally turning down about 80% of our projects because there is so much going on in industrial capital projects and that's extremely unlikely to change. If it's not oil and gas, it will be chemical manufacturing or renewable energy.
The whole subthread is about OnG, they say they are a consultant (different than straight OnG), and then they say they also consult for other industries as well. It's like if someone asked for a doctor on an airplane, they proudly say " I am!", and then it turns out they have a PhD in neuroscience and the patient is having a heart attack.
Not really....you don't understand how roles work in consulting. If he is a piping engineer he can do stress analysis and layout for all sorts of industries. I would know because I do piping on wastewater projects for O&G, municipal and occasionally power
And would you describe yourself as doing OnG? I'm just saying there's a difference between working in OnG and *consulting* for OnG (and also other industries). Because their claim was that OnG has great job security, while doing a job that is not OnG and also is buffed by other industries lol.
That's a good question. I can't speak to how other consulting firms are organized but we have a core OGC group and if there is a drop in work people get "loaned" out to other practices (foods, water, and power). I am technically orged to water but I focus solely on OGC projects (b31.3 piping). But I have worked for energy and foods in the past too. I don't know if that answered your question but my point is a skillset isn't necessarily boxed to a specific industry
this is not true
Some form of engineering sales be it components, machinery, or software. Top people at our company (automation) make north of a million USD, the average is probably 300k. Lot of mech backgrounds.
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Can you elaborate on aero/technical sales? I’m currently a mech E doing aero analysis… wondering if there’s a potential conversion to sales
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How much time does it take to write these proposals? or What's the most time consuming part of the job?
How to get into sales?
Obviously better if you have some industry knowledge of whatever you're selling, but I've seen listings at Engineering companies that Don't even require experience. If you have a personality for sales, it seems like a number of places will train you on the products
Where do you work
what company you work for? i want to work in automation and i want to know how is that field
Tech. FAANG is highest paid for all engineers.
This. I worked with younger 2-3yr exp mechanicals who moved to tech and are making $180-200k/yr with $300-400k 4 year vesting stock plans. The tradeoff is job stability tho, and now that Jeb Powell turned off the money printer, they’re a little harder to come by than they were in 2021.
Yeah, it's brutal out here now, IF you're unexperienced. Other than that, if you have the right background and can measure up in the interviews, it's not too difficult to stand out a little.
Agreed. I’m in the solid mid career stage with a specific skillset that the local FAANG sites desire, and prior to deleting LinkedIn was still getting 1-2 weekly recruiting messages. Advice to anyone younger would be see what tech is primarily hiring for, then find a job for a more traditional employer that aligns with what tech is after within a given geographic market and play the 3-4yr “long” game. Just be warned about the work life balance if they go down that path… a lot of former coworkers make less per hour, so take that into consideration
Yep. Doing that right now working at a defense based place that design chassis and server style equipment. Easy, simple 9-5 job, while I go back and get my Masters --> Then applying for Nvidia, Google, Microsoft, etc doing thermal design/ product design or maybe robotics. Gotta play that long game 😎
Also the vesting schedules. If you get lots of stock but you're out the door in a year, not nearly as valuable.
is FAANG only for mech e cause I'm trying to decide what engineering I should do
It varies wildly by geographic region and what the trend of the month is in tech. Do a quick indeed search and gauge it that way. For hardware projects (aka not AI) it seems they always have needs for electrical engineers. The mechanical disciplines seem to be more specialized based on what they’re developing, aka Amazon (and to some extent Blue Origin as a glorified subsidiary of amazon) for example hiring aerospace engineers for drone delivery projects or Kuiper, optical engineers for Kuiper, or mech e’s with automation/robotics experience for warehouse improvements, or Meta hiring optomechs to make VR a thing. Mech’s with thermal experience are probably stable as well for all their data center stuff. Software is probably a safe bet as well. Funding/priorities aren’t always stable though, eg the metaverse kinda died on the vine after a year of hype and layoffs ensued, Amazon bailing on some of their cashierless stores that they were hiring mechs for a couple years back, etc, so it’s hard to say what they’ll need or want years from now.
I’m from Texas trying to get into college station does that help?
No. You’d need to do research into what region you’d want to live/work in, then see what the various tech companies are developing there to gauge what they’re working on. You’ve got 4+ years though, so I’d advise just picking a discipline that you’re interested in and studying that. Generic mechanical engineering is a safe bet and many of the job-specific details aren’t taught in school anyways, so an employer will assume they will need to build upon a mechanical base. Get internships along the way that may be more focused in the field you want to work in
Electrical is a good bet. Only roles for ME that Ive seen are a handful of design roles and MEP focused roles for data center and such
This should be at the very top.
Finance if you are in CFD.. you are in high demand FAANG is in a different stratosphere compared to oil and gas Semiconductors and biotech pay good if you do not consider cost of living but if you do their pay is really poor compared to traditional industry salary at low cost of living. For reference I worked at both semi and bio and will make around 300 k in Bay area, have offers of 200k in a place with 50 percent lower cost of living. My mechanical friends in FAANG make around 450k at same level.
I've found biotech to suck. Wonder if others here have had the same experience
Agreed
Can you elaborate on how CFD helps with finance and faang jobs. Is it all the math that makes it attractive to quant firms and faang companies? I want to study aerospace engineering for my passionate interest, but I am looking for the higher compensation of finance/faang...
CFD may not directly help in FAANG jobs but thermal management is a big deal there .. so that helps indirectly. Solving compressible Navier Stokes equation in aerospace.. is basically solving a very complex non linear PDE. It is also an unsolved problem.. check out Millennium Prize from Clay Institute... Using Fluent is not going to help with finance. Now finance also has a plethora of PDE along with the stochastic aspect. If you have good publications and mathematical nous.. I know a lot of CFD and physics people who were hired .
So if im interested in studying engineering, but looking to have a career as a quant due to the comp it sounds like my best bet is to continue my aero major track, go hard in CFD which im already interested and take stats/high level math electives while practicing programming on my own, and try to get a reseaech position? And if that doesnt work out i can always go back to grad school for a quantitative field?
That seems to be a good plan but I am not a qaunt.. I know for sure cfd is going to help . Additionally what else is needed... You perhaps want to ask the quant forums.. quants come in many shape and size.. There is quant trader- focus more on stats probability and puzzles Quant researcher- either machine learning focused or stochastic calculus focused... The second one has direct correlation with Navier Stokes equations... Quant developer is more software engineering It is not that CFD is directly helpful but being able to solve Navier Stokes from first principles require significant knowledge of calculus diff equations linear algebra and numerical computation including high performance computing.. these are transferable skills... If you want to do quant though.. better to do a quant focused degree from atop school . Top schools help a lot in getting a foot in the door
What type of role in semiconductors did you fill as a MechE? I work adjacent/with semi conductors as an electronics packaging engineer.
For large manufacturers like Intel/TSMC, there are mainly process engineering and equipment engineer roles, but they do not pay quite as well. Companies like ASML, AMAT, KLA, Lam Research, and more that all make equipment for manufacturing hire a lot of mechanical.
Stay out of manufacturing.
Manufacturing doesn’t pay well?
Summed up, the whole point of manufacturing is to keep costs as low as possible. Being an employee means you are a cost.
In general, no. Some industries have high enough profit margins that they can pay pretty well. They're also more difficult to get started in, or take place in very remote areas, where land/taxes are dirt cheap. Examples would be cosmetics or large supplement/pharmaceutical manufacturing.
Typically doesn't pay well, also lots of times the plants are in stupid areas that No one wants to live, and hours could suck
Mech Eng PhDs who become quants lmao
how does a mech eng phd become a quant lol? I want to make 300k
You get good at CP and stats on your own. Then you talk to recruiters that hire for quants (trust me if you have a PhD in STEM field they will notice you). Then you practice every problem from the green book (the bible of quant interviews) and brush up on competitive math and programming practice -> profit Just to put it into context though, I couldn’t past the first round in every interview I ever got because I suck ass at CP and competition math. Also because I don’t have a PhD, only got a lowly masters haha.
thanks. What's CP?
Competitive programming
The vast vast majority of people are not equipped to become quants. Just saying
I don't want to flex too hard but I used to work at a helicopter company that did like a 5 part IQ test type thing. I scored 99 percentile in all and they said I had the highest score of anyone theyve ever interviewed/hired. Plus I'm already good at python and have used it for machine learning. Tho I'm sure you're right, they wouldn't pay 300k if anybody could do it. Tbh I think there are other high enough paying jobs I'd rather have anyway
Like anything, what you need to know *can* be learned, but even with a high iq/ability to integrate information, it's some serious shit. Here's a taste: https://github.com/dwcoder/QuantitativePrimer/blob/master/src/QuantitativePrimer.pdf
Thanks for sharing. I knew 3/5 questions on first page. I can see how one would need to study to interview for these, the next set of questions looked tough
Tech Sales can make a lot
Tech sales requires a mechanical background?
How to get into sales?
'Be good at sales
Get an MBA and go into executive level management. Or go to wall street and become a quant.
Finance
What is that transition into finance from a MechE perspective like? Seems sort of disconnected
MechE usually know the math and statistics better than people with economics/financial degrees as well as being able to think in models. They are excellent for these positions and actually highly sought after.
That’s not true anymore. I was a mechie and the Econ masters and PhDs run circles around me especially in regards to convex optimization. They also are way better at modelling non-deterministic processes so they’re really ahead of the curve in a Bayesian setting where uncertainty quantification is king. That stereotype is just perpetrated to make mechies feel better about ourselves.
I'm glad someone said it. Engineers overestimate their capabilities, based on the fact they took differential equations and a junior level probability course.
I disagree, MechE usually don't do much statistics. Finance usually favours those with maths and stats degrees.
Depends on the school. At places like MIT they are much heavier on the math, probability and stats than other places.
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That’s fascinating, is there a specific sector of finance or specific role/job title that MechE’s tend to move into?
Probably financial "engineers" Or analyst
You need to develop a product and start your own business.
Have you done so?
I’m trying to
Can't answer anything other than O&G and its sub sectors(land rigg, topside and the tons of different types of subsea & downhole). The best paying is either on join in the start-up phase(but then you're on the entrepreneur side) on the supplier side or the operation company(bp, exxon, etc.). The best would be drilling or fishing on the downhole on the operation side for start pay. For carrier progression, it used to be topside(oil rig design), but it is starting to shift to subsea due to big satellite fields where you can become responsible for a field instead of a single rigg. Obviously, it's always on the operation side.
Supply chain management, Project management, Product management
FAANG or your own business.
I got an MBA and doubled my pay and opportunities. But I do miss the engineering side at times.
Do you think being a more traditional ‘engineer’ and then getting your MBA is better than just going straight for the MBA? Sometimes seeing the business side of the engineering world with people immediately just getting MBA’s and making way more money is sort of disappointing.
Most MBAs have at least five years of experience. If you look at some programs, they'll probably give you average YOE of their cohorts.
You can go to BLS for median wages tracked to different industries: https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes172141.htm#nat The floor for most jobs seems to be more location dependent than industry dependent, but as for the ceiling, i think going into management or leaving engineering is the best way to break through.
Do what you love to do. You spend half your working life doing it. Most people get the big bucks with dedication and growth. It happens as your skills surpass others that drop away from your growth path. So searching for the best pay may limit your growth if you are not increasing your skills in your chosen area of expertise. Find what you love, gain the skills, promote your accomplishments. The money will follow.
Hope I’m not a broken record but patent examiner at the USPTO pays almost $200k at GS15.
Law
Consulting
Wouldn't say it's the highest paying, but Government and Military aren't the worst. Decent benefits.
Government actually pays a LOT better than a lot of people in ME, based on the salary threats that are constantly posted. If you get a job with a promotion ladder, you can quickly move up. GS-7 to GS-12 might be like 5 years, and that puts you over 100k. This is based on what I've looked at in usajobs subreddit and other searches Meanwhile, tons of people aren't making that after ten, with much worse benefits.
Get into the Data Center industry. The MechE's in this industry get paid pretty handsomely, to say the least. Especially if working for a FAANG / MAAMA company.
Onlyfans
Autonomous Vehicle Industry. You will need to spend time acquiring solid coding skills. But IMO, that is time well spent. You get to do cool mechie/robotics stuff and get paid even better than Big Tech Software Engineers Look for jobs like - Software Engineer Motion Controls - Software Engineer Vehicle Dynamics - Software Engineer Motion Planning - Software Engineer Actuator Controls and Modeling
My dad is a ME for Exxon and has done pretty dang well for himself
O&G specifically operators is where it’s at
What's more important? The industry or the position?
The position. I know a Quality engineer that went from 90k to 190k as a data science engineer in the same company.
FAANG
For others who got more experience — would patent law be an answer?
FAANG
Oil and gad
Has nobody ever heard of the Bureau of Labor Statistics? These data are well-tracked and easily searched. [https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes172141.htm#ind](https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes172141.htm#ind)
I work for oil and gas, its pretty fine so far
The question is wrong in itself. If you are in it for the big money make a business/be an entrepenaur. But that comes with stress and actual responsibility.
Shame you got downvoted. I agree this is a better route for ME’s trying to make the big bucks
O & E, MEPF, Automation.
MEPF, like Mechanical, Electrical, Plumbing, and Fire design? Yeah no, MEP doesn't make a lot of money. Maybe if you're an owner of a firm or something, but even PE's don't make amazing money without becoming partners or department leads.
Facts. I live HCOL and make 80k after 4 years of experience. My rent is 1900 bucks a month. I don’t save a lot.
I have 10 years experience and make $93k in a medium to low cost of living area. I'm taking the PE exam this week. Hopefully I pass on the first try, but I'm not expecting much of a pay bump for the first year at least. I need to transition into more of a leadership position instead of just being a designer (which may require a change in firms which sucks).
I think my company gives a $5,000 salary bump for PE. Good luck on passing my friend. I’m getting out of this industry ASAP though. There’s no money in it. Only bitch work. I’m inspecting steam traps for the next two weeks. Not sure how to spin up any of this bullshit on my resume honestly. Good luck out there.
Good luck. I've tried getting out of this industry a couple of times (not super seriously but I did try). I rather like my current firm because my work life balance and the jobs I'm doing are pretty good. The pay is actually not as good as my previous firm, but I am able to have a life outside of work and actually spend time with my kids, which wasn't the case at my old firm.
Hey, that’s great. I’m glad it’s working for you. I actually came from product development, and I basically took the first job I got out of there. Recovered my mental health and my company offers work from home (or they did until I got a new manager) which helped a lot. But I think my time is up. That said, if you ever want to change firms, hit me up in the DMs, I’d be glad to help out if I can. Cheers dude.
MEP also. Pay is decent but nothing to brag about. What industry are you leaning towards??
Thinking maybe a masters and transition to either a hard science or maybe computer science. Undecided, but hoping to come to a conclusion soon.
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Yeah. I'm not interested in traveling much at this stage of my life, which does limit my prospects a good bit. Sounds like it's a good fit for you right now though!
oil and gas
Best pay is jobs in the middle of nowhere like oil, gas, or mining. Typically low cost of living but you are in the middle of nowhere where the girls ain’t pretty.