Mechanical and Civil Engineering

[Eagle]

I would advise a degree in ME, AE or MAE (I'm an an aerospace engineer). From there, he can apply for a job with the USPTO to be a patent examiner and be based out of the regional USPTO office in Denver, CO. He'll eventually have the opportunity to live anywhere he wants to in the US (up to two locations are authorized for each individual in telework, i.e. he could live half the year at the beach and the other half in the mountains). He can quickly advance to a GS-14 pay level (within 8ish years, possibly less) without having to become a supervisor. The job is production based (i.e. if you're efficient you can work lots of overtime and max out pay relatively easily, which is currently just under 192k/year not including potential bonuses that could take this well over 200k), and it's a government gig.

I've been with the USPTO for 6.5 years, spent the prior 12 as an army civilian doing helicopter airworthiness engineering. To me, this is the absolute best engineering related job in the world given all the benefits, including now that I'm over 15 years in, 208 hours of annual leave, and from 4 hours of sick leave per pay period (104/year). Hopefully, once my kids are out of the house, I'll spend 6 months in Wyoming or Montana per year and the other half wherever the wife wants.

 

[desertdwellerdyl]

I'm a Mechanical Engineer and graduated with my BSME in '21 and my MSME in '23 all while working and doing internships and such.

IMO undergraduate is a grind and more about who can stay disciplined and weather the storm (engineering degree). Being "smart" helps, but knew "smarter" people who couldn't hack it, if you can work hard, be patient, and withstand the load you'll make it through.

My only advice during college is if he does the ME route to do clubs during the school year specifically FSAE/SAE if he wants to be in design/manufacturing (still do clubs for Civil Engineering too). I did FSAE during my junior and senior years of undergrad and it was awesome for me, personally and professionally. IMO this will be the best experience design/manufacturing whise he'll be able to get. He'll interact if not perform the welding, machining, CNC machining, drawing creation/working with machinists/fabricators/manufacturers as all the fabrication is done by students with some machining/manufacturing outsources. Companies like this type of experience a ton as you'll have to balance schedule, cost and performance when making decisions since you usually have one year to build a car before the next competition. IMO this experience is better than internship as you'll get more relative responsibility than as an intern at a large company. Basically shows you have experience making decisions and fixing mistakes. Although....

Definitely do internships. I interned at a national lab year round during school and it was very beneficial as one of my mentors really helped in developing the "engineering" mindset in me. If possible you can do internships at defense companies/labs where they will pay for you to get your clearance and you can keep that until you graduate/leave. It's beneficial if you are looking to be in defense(Great $$/benefits but slower work) and it'll give you a leg up as a new grad since they can hire you without paying for your clearance.

My only gripe about mechanical engineering is that there don't seem to be a ton of opportunities that aren't near or located in major cities for the type of work I want to do (anything other than HVAC). Whereas Civil Engineering seems like there are jobs or firms anywhere there are people and can work for the state or federal organizations which seems nice. It seems like I at least need to be near a city that has 500K people to have decent opportunity.

Currently, I'm 25, working as a Mechanical Engineer at a large defense company. The benefits & work/life balance are great, started in May with 80 hours of PTO up front (120 for the year) and a pretty good salary for my age. We also work 9/80 which is sweet.

 

[Hydra6]

It's not a bash. It's just a different career, and I gave my opinion based on my experience and observation as both a civil engineering student and professional in industry. My own uncle is near the end of what has been a very lucrative career as an IE with a manufacturing company, but that's a different industry than civil.

My career was heavy manufacturing - pulp and paper - plus consulting engineering. All good.

 

[Hydra6]

My GF is IE and I am a CE. Really, the difference between IE and other engineers boils down to this. An IE will tell you how/why/etc something should be done, but they have no idea on how to actually do it (design). A real engineer has to design/implement it, then the IE takes credit for it. Simple

Exactly. I enjoyed being the "pointy haired boss"!

 

[ScottinPA]

MET here. Did a lot of BOM work on mature product lines out of college. Did manufacturing support engineering for Exide Batteries for a few years and realized that's the work I like doing. Taking projects from cradle to grave, concept to install. Exide relocated but I didn't and it took a while to find another job. I'm now a Plant Engineer for a steel producing company. Always something different and I get some really big projects. I have the EIT but never pursued the PE and in this position I don't work with enough other PE's to satisfy that requirement.
I'll echo some of the above - internships, get your PE, do research on jobs in states you want to be in.
As far as Civil vs Mech - its all in what he wants to do. IMO, civil is in more demand in the states you mentioned. Don't disregard some EE courses too. PLC's make the mill run.
My youngest is planning to go MET at Penn State in the fall of f2025 (WE ARE!) also and I'm pushing for him to get as much PLC classwork as he can.

 

[Yellowknife]

There's major lack of new civil engineers in ak.

Sent from my SM-S921U using Tapatalk

Can confirm. Specifically the geotech type. Took me a year to hire the last one. Retirements are outpacing new graduates at a good clip here in Alaska.

Lots of good commentary on this thread, but I'll add my 2 cents anyway.

Civil Eng can vary widely in scope. The traditional route is to work for a large corporate consulting firm, starting in cubical land and working up through to management. Super stable, good benefits and with a solid upward track.

The flip side of the coin is getting into the construction management side. In Alaska and likely most western states, that usually means highly seasonal work and lots of days on the construction site. If you like big yellow iron, that's a great career track as well. If you aren't careful, your job title ends up being VP of Operations for a construction company.

Middle of the road is the many many smaller consulting firms, often with specific specialties. That's where my business falls. Our staff will spend 30-50 days in the field each year and we travel to every remote and rural corner of the state solving issues of all types.

Lots of variety in the civil field for those that want to chase it. And many end up being business owners if that's of any appeal.

 

[mtntppr]

Yea but if you do EE you'll have to do lots of stupid math involving Maxwell's equations.

I will never forget taking 3 semesters of calculus, 2 semesters of DiffEq, and getting into a grad level linear algebra course that I used (along with DiffEq) to satisfy a requirement for a EE class I had not been able to schedule.

I had a tutor, this old man, a retired professor, he said, "This is where math actually starts, everything up until this point is elementary." I felt like I'd been eating glue and playing with crayons. But of course he was right.

 

[hikenhunt]

Internships have been mentioned several times which I also highly recommend and I personally used to help narrow down what I wanted to do after graduating. I also job shadowed as many engineers as I knew to try and get an idea of what various engineering jobs were like. I wound up getting hired by one of the guys I job shadowed several years later.

 

[kwackkillncrew]

Can confirm. Specifically the geotech type. Took me a year to hire the last one. Retirements are outpacing new graduates at a good clip here in Alaska.

Lots of good commentary on this thread, but I'll add my 2 cents anyway.

Civil Eng can vary widely in scope. The traditional route is to work for a large corporate consulting firm, starting in cubical land and working up through to management. Super stable, good benefits and with a solid upward track.

The flip side of the coin is getting into the construction management side. In Alaska and likely most western states, that usually means highly seasonal work and lots of days on the construction site. If you like big yellow iron, that's a great career track as well. If you aren't careful, your job title ends up being VP of Operations for a construction company.

Middle of the road is the many many smaller consulting firms, often with specific specialties. That's where my business falls. Our staff will spend 30-50 days in the field each year and we travel to every remote and rural corner of the state solving issues of all types.

Lots of variety in the civil field for those that want to chase it. And many end up being business owners if that's of any appeal.

Seems like we work for the same size eng firm.

 

[Vids]

Internships have been mentioned several times which I also highly recommend and I personally used to help narrow down what I wanted to do after graduating. I also job shadowed as many engineers as I knew to try and get an idea of what various engineering jobs were like. I wound up getting hired by one of the guys I job shadowed several years later.

Important point. I started college as civil, switched to mechanical, then back to civil. All due to internships and getting familiar with what I'd likely be doing after graduation.

 

[roadrunner]

A real engineer has to design/implement it, then the IE takes credit for it. Simple

...and then the guys in the field have to fix that design when building it so it will work

Those of us with both hands on work experience as a grunt and inside office engineering design have a saying: it takes math and science to build stuff, but to really screw things up it takes an engineer...

On a serious note though, make sure your son understands that engineers often get to drop everything on a whim because "we've got a problem" or "waiting on engineering to tell us what to do" and only the engineer can be the one to lay an eye on it. This can most definitely put a dent in time off for hunting. He'll run into this issue in the energy sector (power plants, refineries, etc).

If I could go back in time 30 years and do it all over again, I'd avoid engineering like the plague. But that's just me.

Although I will say good luck and fortune as a petroleum engineer (both drilling and production) allowed me to become debt free at the age of 42...

 

[kad11]

If I could go back in time 30 years and do it all over again, I'd avoid engineering like the plague. But that's just me.

Same here...

 

[CodeMonkey]

I will never forget taking 3 semesters of calculus, 2 semesters of DiffEq, and getting into a grad level linear algebra course that I used (along with DiffEq) to satisfy a requirement for a EE class I had not been able to schedule.

I had a tutor, this old man, a retired professor, he said, "This is where math actually starts, everything up until this point is elementary." I felt like I'd been eating glue and playing with crayons. But of course he was right.

At my school EEs were one to two courses away (based on electives) from a math minor and nearly none took the school up on that offer.

 

[hikenhunt]

...and then the guys in the field have to fix that design when building it so it will work

Those of us with both hands on work experience as a grunt and inside office engineering design have a saying: it takes math and science to build stuff, but to really screw things up it takes an engineer...

On a serious note though, make sure your son understands that engineers often get to drop everything on a whim because "we've got a problem" or "waiting on engineering to tell us what to do" and only the engineer can be the one to lay an eye on it. This can most definitely put a dent in time off for hunting. He'll run into this issue in the energy sector (power plants, refineries, etc).

If I could go back in time 30 years and do it all over again, I'd avoid engineering like the plague. But that's just me.

Although I will say good luck and fortune as a petroleum engineer (both drilling and production) allowed me to become debt free at the age of 42...

Not all engineering jobs fall into this category. I interned in the petroleum industry and they paid extremely well, but when they flew the blower engineer home from vacation because his part of the plant went down, I decided to look into other industries...

 

[30338]

Daughter went through biosystems engineering in 4 years. Worked two different gigs in last 6 years and decided to self study civil engineering and passed her PE on first try 2 years ago. Works as an engineer in the water proofing industry and does well. Enjoys it.

 

[Stocky]

3. Time off is good should start with 2-3 weeks depending on the job along with some sick time and holidays.

Is this typical in the states? I don't know what I'd do if I only had 2-3 weeks of leave a year. Can you take unpaid leave on top typically?

 

[mooretitan]

I have told him the degree gets you in the door and after that your career will depend on you. He is a hard worker and pretty level headed so I think he will do well once he settles into something. Hunting and fishing seems to always be the number one priority and finding a job and money to make this happen right now is important to him. Probably will change once life really starts to happen but now it’s how can he achieve the North American Slam. That’s been his goal for as long as I can remember. This will be an interesting year to see what he does.
Thanks again. I am sure he will PM some of you to ask more direct questions

 

[WiscoHoundsman]

Is this typical in the states? I don't know what I'd do if I only had 2-3 weeks of leave a year. Can you take unpaid leave on top typically?

Don’t know, never tried. So got 2 weeks when I started and could carry over two weeks each year after 5 years that went to 3 weeks and now hitting 10 years I’m at 4 weeks.

I also get 7 sick days a year and about 9 holidays.

It’s always been enough for me.

 

[WDO]

I have told him the degree gets you in the door and after that your career will depend on you. He is a hard worker and pretty level headed so I think he will do well once he settles into something. Hunting and fishing seems to always be the number one priority and finding a job and money to make this happen right now is important to him. Probably will change once life really starts to happen but now it’s how can he achieve the North American Slam. That’s been his goal for as long as I can remember. This will be an interesting year to see what he does.
Thanks again. I am sure he will PM some of you to ask more direct questions

If the goal is the North American Slam, take the best paying job.

 

[Stocky]

Don’t know, never tried. So got 2 weeks when I started and could carry over two weeks each year after 5 years that went to 3 weeks and now hitting 10 years I’m at 4 weeks.

I also get 7 sick days a year and about 9 holidays.

It’s always been enough for me.

Fair enough. I like to do a few long hunting trips a year and by the time I visit family a couple times a year the 4 weeks we get in NZ is gone pretty fast. Luckily I work a bunch of overtime and I've found if your good at your job most companies will where possible try to be flexible when they can to accommodate. Unfortunately as much as some of our holiday etc sound great we pay for it in that our salary/wages aren't super competitive but I'll put up with that for 365 day a year access to hunting. Still love to visit the US when possible almost moved over for College but costs made it much easier to stay in NZ.