| Author | Message | ||
     Ztferrari |
Ok guys, I need a few tips on how to start my new job. I just graduated with my Mechanical Engineering Degree (after 8 years, whoop) and have a fair bit of engineering work related experience, but none of them have been a complete desk job. I am working for Huisman Engineering in houston as a Mechanical Design Engineer. Basically I work with a team of 4 other engineers and design drilling/pipelaying/heavy lifting equipment. There will be a lot of design work involved with this job, calculating stresses and whatnot in structural members. That's OK, I was good statics. What is kind of weird is how I am not getting dirty. I've only been there 2 days and am having a rough time making it through the day sitting at a desk all day. My 50 minute commute sucks donkey as well, but that will change in a few months when I get an apartment closer to work. Anyways, I was just looking for support and maybe some tips from people who have been through a similar experience. Thanks Guys, here is a picture of the type of equipment they design/make.  | ||
| Boltrider |
Dude, send a PM to Blake. I think he's an engineer AND he's from Texas. | ||
| Augustus74 |
Wait, you are an engineer and you are wondering why you don't get dirty!?!? Hate to break it to you but the hands on guys in the field are not going to have any respect for you either. | ||
| Hughlysses |
Welcome to the grind, friend. I think it's fair to say almost any job (especially one like engineering) sucks at first. They probably haven't given you a lot to do yet other than read design standards, company policies, etc. which can be boring as hell. Hang in there. Jobs tend to be what you make them. Try to make yourself useful. Show interest in what people are doing. ASK if you'll be able to get out in the field at some point. Hopefully you'll be able to at least see some of the stuff you design get fabricated, and at least occasionally go in the field to help solve fabrication or operational problems with your designs. Yea, you can expect shop guys to give you hell if/when you go in the field, but it's usually good-natured. Laugh it off and give it right back. Good luck. | ||
| Nevrenuf |
after working most of my life as a carpenter and spending most of that trying to get out of the trade, i am finally doing what i started to go to school for after leaving the navy(79) and going back to school to get my associates(91). after that first job, i never thought i could get used to sitting at a desk but come to find out, this is the only job that i've had that i don't want to quit cause i'm frustrated or bored. imo, if you worked out in the field, that will make you a better engineer than those that never did cause you understand what happens out there. what my brother in law likes to do when he goes out to the field if it's in the morning, he'll pick up some donuts to give to the guys out there. and whether or not you use it, ask their opinion. i've been doing mostly piping design with some electrical and mechanical also and currently looking for work(shameless plug) for me, this is a lot more stimulating than pounding nails so just sit back and learn to enjoy it. i wish i would have stayed in college and got an engineering degree but i didn't. i still like what i'm doing now though. | ||
| Aptbldr |
Relax. Co-workers were in your shoes once. Structure your day, build task list/plan and work it. In it, plan activity breaks: step away from the desk. Offer co-workers opportunities to mentor/share with you in their style and time. Education/knowledge changed phase upon leaving school. Most importantly, revel in youth and opportunity. Best wishes. | ||
| Reepicheep |
A quote from a wise co-worker... "Once you learn to like the pain, they can't hurt you anymore.  ". Get yourself moved, make sure it has a garage, buy some nightmare hairball of a project like some old english car or motorcycle. Then get so frustrated with it every evening with broken somethings or stripped something elses... that you can't wait to go sit at a desk for the next 10 hours.  Seriously, the thing that has made my career successful more then any other thing, is the willingness to dig in to some exhausting intellectual exercise, and just not quit. Come back day after day and pour more energy into it, seek out every last problem and hunt it down and put a &*&^%^&* bullet through its forehead. Solve everything 6 ways and choose the best, and leave no issue dangling. You'll start your career doing things this way thinking you'll be the best engineer ever. You'll discover after a while, that this is simply par for the course for all the good engineers, and you are just a good one, and that's something to be proud of. IMHO. | ||
| Prior |
Scott, I've been in the same boat before in the engineering world. Big thing to remember is they are paying you for the intellectual work you do for them, for doing the right things and most of all, doing things right. There are jobs out there that have a good mix of doing design and analysis work and also getting hands on with the product. To get to that though, you need to know the designs and product in and out, and that only comes from doing the work you are now. I interned at Deere starting when I was 19, during my first year at Kettering. worked there for 4 years while I was in school, and then started full time in 2005. I did FEA, which was the LAST job I wanted to do, very dry, tedious work, but man did I learn a lot. Spent some time in manufacturing doing weldment design and weld robot programming and helping out day to do issues on the assembly line. My current job, I am the product specialist for Deere's entire American excavator line- anything from a mini excavator all the way up to mining shovels. I do a TON of data analysis, hydraulic control design etc, but I also get to spend quite a bit of time in the field with customers and testing machines hands on. Took a while to get there, and there are aspects of this job that I really do not like to do, but ultimitely, it makes you a stronger engineer. Depth of knowledge, like Reep said, and leaving no stone unturned is the way to do. Be dilligent in the work you do and it'll reap rewards down the road. Prior | ||
| Xbeau12s |
I'm in the truss design field and I to am a "desk jockey" Hughlysses hit the nail on the head. I put myself out there and asked if I could go work in the field and get my hands dirty for a few days. This helps you better understand what your working with to. And if they guys give you chit just give it right back! They'll respect you more for it  | ||
| Blake |
Once a week, take a short walk out to the shop, get your lead engineer to accompany you if possible. Design engineers rarely perform the structural analysis, but need to know enough to understand what is in the ball park of being acceptable. There is just WAY too much to consider in the field of structural analysis, trying to do that while simultaneously defining a design amid all the concerns for manufacturability, cost, schedule, systems integration, shipping and of course performance would be a near impossible task. Statics gets you some of the loads. Cranes however are not static structures, those borne by floating vessels even less so. Unless you've been through some serious civil engineering curriculum including steel design and welding design, you'll be hard pressed to efficiently size major structural members and their welds or bolted connections. You sure can learn to do so, but it's a very heavy load. Besides just the plain raw stresses (shear, tension, compression, bearing), there is fatigue, buckling, crippling, connections (welded, bolted, riveted), structural dynamics, corrosion, brittle fracture, ... A good lead engineer is a wonderful thing. A bad one, one that doesn't know how to mentor, is a terrible ordeal, and a danger to the company and its products. Find yourself a good mentor, the older and wiser the better. Never trust the pretty pictures. Obtain and learn the major structural and mechanical codes to which your designs must conform; these will include safety codes for human access. Learn what conditions govern the structural/mechanical design, what causes the worst case loading. Keep a daily log of everything you do. I used good old MS Word. It is wonderful for accepting cut and past images from just about any other application. I use a ton of screen shots. Check out the free application MWSnap. It's a huge productivity booster for my daily log. Enjoy, learn, learn, learn. Have fun. Once a week take an hour to learn and investigate new ideas that you may have. If you don't enjoy the desk job, start looking for a job as a liaison or field engineer. | ||
| Blake |
>>> "Wait, you are an engineer and you are wondering why you don't get dirty!?!? Hate to break it to you but the hands on guys in the field are not going to have any respect for you either." That is an unmitigated load of crap. Nothing but miserable petty divisiveness. It takes ALL disciplines and job descriptions in order to achieve a successful result. None are more important than any other, therein lies the key to mutual respect. Take every opportunity that presents itself to learn from the tradesmen and journeymen in the shop and in the field. Hence my advice to visit the shop floor once a week. Stay late on occasion and crawl around the major sub-assemblies that are taking shape in the shop. It's amazing how differently things can look in real life when their scale is right there in front of you. | ||
| Ztferrari |
Thanks guys, I LOVE you all. Reepicheep; I have tons of projects. Bike and cars and no girlfriend :-). Prior - I try to be pretty meticulous in my calculations, but it scares the crap out of me that I may miss something and kill someone or cause the next biggest environmental disaster Blake - I jumped into this job not knowing what it really invovled. I turned down 4 other job offers because this one paid about 10g more and was located where I wanted to be. I know why the price was so good. They are expecting a lot from me. I will be working with 4 other engineers (all have masters degrees) and we are responsible for complete design of certain parts of these cranes/pipelaying ships. This starts with conceptual design up to signing off on shop drawings. The problem is that the manufacturing shop is literally located in China. They have daily correspondence on project progress via pictures and a limited amount of text. The lead engineer didn't even know my name or agreed upon salary 3 days into the job. He is a man of few words, I dont think I can count on him as a good mentour... The company is a private company, Huisman-US (part of huisman-intrepid). Today was spent basically doing homework problems, shear/moment diagrams. I was assigned a task to determine forces acting on a tug line for a 5000 ton load @ a varying angle. The scale that these guys work with is amazing. My hope is that I put in enough effort and learn how to do all this and fairly quickly. I have a 6 month grace period where I can get fired at will! Thanks for the pep talk! | ||
| Cityxslicker |
well there is always badweb, porn and solitaire... it seems to work for the SEC, Homeland, and MMS guys | ||
| Mikej |
From your description of him he just might be the best mentor you could ever find if you learn how to work with him and his expectations, and if you can accommodate how he needs to be worked with, assuming you have the patience to wait and be ready when he accepts you into his world. Lots of newbies flash out quick or wander off to easier fields so he might be watching you out of the corner of his eye to see how you develop and integrate yourself into their environment and their way of working together. Working with overseas manufacturing will have its own issues to deal with. Never assume you are understood and never assume you are not understood. Understanding what I mean by that will come in due time. Enjoy your new world. With great responsibility comes great rewards and satisfaction, the salary is functionally secondary once your needs are met. I'm not an Engineer but have worked next to some great ones over the years. | ||
| Jrfitzny |
join motohouston.com also | ||
| Buell2001b |
i think that is a dilema a lot of us have runned across. specially if you are hands on type of person its hard to sit behind a desk, but then when you think about working out in the cold in the winter you realize being an engineer making 3 times as the guy on the field it has its perks. specially in thsi economy consider yourself you have a job, we are runing a 9.9 unemployemnt thanks to Obama boy and I think we will hit 10% before we start recovering. another wave of forclousures is coming soon!!! | ||
| Jrfitzny |
P.S. and welcome to Houston, there are a bunch of Buellers here. | ||
| Whatever |
That is ok, the Commander's Representative (the woman in charge of all 200 of us) doesn't know my name either and I have been there almost four months... but I make it a point to get her to laugh every so often... and she will probably remember that if I get into to some really hot water... my boss gave me a warning this week for taking too many pictures... when the entire point of me doing a field survey was to write a report and take pictures... oh well...  Do your best. Do not take yourself too seriously. And when people start to gossip, keep your mouth shut and/or just walk away... that last one has been a very hard lesson... also, if something fishy is happening, take lots of notes at home, with dates on them... always always cover your own a$$... | ||
| 99savage |
Take a step back and appreciate the elegance of well done stress analysis. - That was what attracted me to engineering; the ability to take a big 3 dimensional world & reduce it to the thickness of a sheet of paper. Do the jobs(s) they assign you well - To the best of your ability follow up on your projects in the field. - The people implementing your ideas will notice & eventually management will notice. | ||
| Johnnylunchbox |
Not an engineer here, but I will say that you should find someone who you respect on the job and learn from them. The job is not always about the work. Make some sense of my nonsense and you'll be OK. | ||
| Ztferrari |
Awesome guys, I appreciate the input again. I will do my best to be the engineer A&M trained me so well to be. analytical and precise. The group I work with is small, about 6 people. 5 engineers and a salesguy. They are all super bright people. I'm sure I will learn a lot from them.  | ||
| Nevrenuf |
got hired yesterday from the job i interviewed with and one of the things i let people know is, i know how to ask questions. my last boss got a kick outta that and wanted me to repeat it when his vp walked in. don't be afraid to ask questions cause if you try and second guess someone,it could create another problem. | ||
| Fahren |
Reading Blake's advice post above, I sure wish he had had the ear of someone in BP's offshore drilling division... |
