Future for beginner Mech Eng graduate in EU / MechEng career in general

[Stahlmann]

In 1 year time I will graduate of mech eng (diploma from Middle European country).

I know English and German.

Do you see any specific edge for the given circumstances?

I am able to relocate, invest in specific area (I mean certification).

I want to have f(happiness;money;health)=Pareto efficiency.

Any ideas?

[arebelspy]

I want to have f(happiness;money)=Pareto efficiency.

I like your goal.

To that end, I'd go where you can crank up the savings rate the most, while still enjoying yourself.  Europe is likely not the place due to cost of living.  I could be wrong, and it may turn out to be, but that's my guess.

Start looking at salaries and cost of living in various places, and how difficult it would be to get a job (and potential visa, hopefully job-assisted) there.

Cross out places that sound miserable to you, for whatever reason, and choose the top place that maximizes the income to COL ratio, and then go crank up that savings rate and enjoy yourself with the stuff they have available there that you didn't get before.

[Stahlmann]

I want to have f(happiness;money)=Pareto efficiency.

I like your goal.

To that end, I'd go where you can crank up the savings rate the most, while still enjoying yourself.  Europe is likely not the place due to cost of living.  I could be wrong, and it may turn out to be, but that's my guess.

Start looking at salaries and cost of living in various places, and how difficult it would be to get a job (and potential visa, hopefully job-assisted) there.

Cross out places that sound miserable to you, for whatever reason, and choose the top place that maximizes the income to COL ratio, and then go crank up that savings rate and enjoy yourself with the stuff they have available there that you didn't get before.

The FIRE idea is quite US-centric.
Heh, now I even changed my formula, I added health.
I modified topic to gain more info, because it was too specific.

[Playing with Fire UK]

Hi Stahlmann,

I'm also a Mech Eng in the EU, and on my way to FIRE, so just to let you know that this can be done!

Unfortunately I can't recommend my industry (Energy) at the moment. If it picks up then it is a great place to work.

[Cromacster]

There are many US companies, especially tier 2/3 automotive suppliers that would love to have german speaking engineers (chinese, japanese, and korean as well).  Most companies will have a engineer or sales person in the region, but there is always something lost in translation.  Would be one area I would look into.

[Stahlmann]

I wanted to bump the topic due to inactivity but there are 2 replies!

Hi Stahlmann,

I'm also a Mech Eng in the EU, and on my way to FIRE, so just to let you know that this can be done!

Unfortunately I can't recommend my industry (Energy) at the moment. If it picks up then it is a great place to work.

Can you tell me about your education?
How much of theory from uni do you use?
Have you graduated from Big Name uni?
Your experience?
Workload?

Thanks in advance for reply.

There are many US companies, especially tier 2/3 automotive suppliers that would love to have german speaking engineers (chinese, japanese, and korean as well).  Most companies will have a engineer or sales person in the region, but there is always something lost in translation.  Would be one area I would look into.

What do you mean?
My rephase is: It is possible to move to US (from EU) knowing the other language (German) (there is this edge). Or do you mean working in EU for American auto companies?

[Stash Engineer]

I'm pretty sure he means working in US for an EU auto supplier.  Many have large manufacturing operations in the US (i.e. BMW in South Carolina).  South Carolina = LCOL.  There are many German companies that have US divisions if you are looking to move to the US.  I worked for one some years ago in North Carolina that specialized in aluminum heat exchangers.  The hard part is deciding what industry to work in ;)

[Stahlmann]

,,The hard part is deciding what industry to work in ;)"

What do you mean?
So many jobs offers?
Are you PE licensed?

[Playing with Fire UK]

Hi Stahlmann,
I'm also a Mech Eng in the EU, and on my way to FIRE, so just to let you know that this can be done!
Unfortunately I can't recommend my industry (Energy) at the moment. If it picks up then it is a great place to work.

Can you tell me about your education?
How much of theory from uni do you use?
Have you graduated from Big Name uni?
Your experience?
Workload?

Thanks in advance for reply.

Hi, I studied maths, physics and English at high school, and then a four year Masters in Engineering. I graduated from BigName, but with a below average grade. I don't use much of the actual theory I learnt, but I use the thinking process and problem solving abilities most days.

I graduated around ten years ago and I've worked in four roles in three companies since then.

I'm now working for an insurance company doing risk assessments, using experience in industry to determine what the potential for loss is.

The factor that has had the biggest impact on my career is being able to deliver powerful presentations. It took me a while to realise that the limit to a great engineering solution is the number of people who can understand it.

I work 9-5, most days from home and then 3-4 days a month longer days visiting sites.

[Stash Engineer]

,,The hard part is deciding what industry to work in ;)"

What do you mean?
So many jobs offers?
Are you PE licensed?

I mean that there are so many types of engineering and fields you can go into.  There's design engineering, manufacturing engineering, safety (don't do this one), testing, field support, R&D, etc.  As far as fields, the list is endless.  Automotive, equipment, aerospace, housing, furniture, security, energy, cat toys, I could go on forever...

I am not PE licensed as it isn't required for the field/job I work in (aerospace) and wouldn't benefit me to have it.  At this point in my career (middle management), project management certifications are much more valuable than technical certifications. 

[Stahlmann]

Could you give opinions on different fields of mech eng from your perspective?

How many ,,expats" do you know?

[Stahlmann]

Well, (bi)monthly bump.

To broaden topic - how has your country solved idea of lack real-life experience for (especially) engineering students?

Does your country offer dual studies?

[Sean Og]

A European educated engineer here (Aerospace BEng), now working in the US.

My studies in Ireland included a 9 month work placement in industry with opportunities to work across Europe, many traveled to UK, France and Germany for placements. Here in the US there are similar internships through universities, although like Ireland, not all universities choose to offer this. I 100% recommend choosing a university which offers work placement as many students graduate with job offers from their placement companies.

As has been mentioned, Mech engineering covers many different industries and specializations. I studied aerospace engineering so I gravitated to that field and over the past 10 years have spent time in R&D, Materials, Manufacturing and Design roles within Aerospace. If you have graduated, you have likely specialized during your years at university already, based on electives, projects etc...fluid dynamics or materials science were two of the bigger paths in my own degree.

I have split my career to date equally between Europe and USA. The earnings/savings potential in the US is certainly greater and cost of living is lower but it is not an easy task to obtain a visa to work here (and may only get harder with the current administrations proposed reform of the H1B visa program). I have found the work-life balance better in Europe but that is not to say companies that value that culture don't exist here in the US, I know they do, but many have an almost mandatory overtime and live to work culture.

If you are looking to immigrate here, there are probably two options outside of marriage to a US Citizen.....H1B and L1 visas, and of the two, L1 may be the easier to obtain for the Mech Eng industry. This is the inter-company transfer of an employee. You work for a European company with USA locations or US company in Europe and then transfer to the companies USA location when you are eligible and there is an opportunity to do so. Automotive is probably the obvious choice as mentioned but there are many more. Aerospace would be another, my company has european locations, we work regularly with Airbus Hamburg who have a number of USA locations and there are many German suppliers to US aerospace companies with locations in the USA, one example is Diehl.

[Stahlmann]

I am writing my final thesis.
Any success stories would motivate me :P
Share them here.

[Stahlmann]

Just with regards to what kind of a job you want, I'd say there are 4 categories of things to considered:

1) What technical area(s) are you interested in?
- Solids/structures
- fluids/aero
- thermo/heat transfer
- dynamics/vibrations
- controls/mechatronics
- CAD/manufacturing
- technical communication/systems, etc.

2) What industry are you interested in?
- satellites
- rockets
- airplanes
- helicopters
- military
- automotive
- oil and gas extraction
- energy generation
- HVAC
- consumer products/appliances
- scientific or industrial equipment (vacuum chambers, photolithography equipment, microscopy equipment, etc.)
- raw material processing
... and far more than I could list

3) What size of employer and role of employer do you want?
- system integrator
- contractor
- subcontractor
- specialized lab
- startup
- local utilities or construction company
- vertically integrated in a small stable niche

4) What type of role do you want in the company? (with the cynic's take)
- designer (CAD monkey)
- analyst (FEA, CFD, pretty pictures for management, vanity hand calcs)
- R&D (it will be fun, but it won't reach production)
- testing (How can I get this piece of shit to work? What would be a good way to break it?)
- manufacturing (catching problems and getting the appropriate people to fix it for you)
- quality assurance/control (you'd like to do testing but you hate fun)
- field engineering (mostly in-person tech support)
- applications engineering (mostly not-in-person tech support)
- systems engineering (quality control on the real engineers, documentation, requirements management, lightweight testing)
- program engineering (bureaucrat, logistics, managers that aren't in charge of anybody)
- sales engineering (why bother tacking on engineering?, sales reps that supposedly know what they're talking about)
- engineering management (read Dilbert)
- consulting (I can't pick just one joke)
... and many others varying distances from what one normally considers to be actual real engineering

Interesting piece of data. Unfortuantely I have not graduated from MIT :P
I even don't live in America (not yet :P).


Somewhere else I have heard about such insight:

There are lots of jobs where you show up at 9 and leave at 5 not needing to think about work "after work". Analyst isn't one of them. Or more precisely, if you approach it that way, you're probably not going to last long. You can tell the types of jobs apart by looking at the difference between the best performer and the worst performer. For analysis, it's pretty high, more than an order of magnitude if not two. For number entry, it's pretty low, maybe a factor 2 at most.

I really value my peace of mind. Fellow mech-engs, do you know where I could apply given rule (in terms of mechanical engineering)?
It is probably time for day dreaming, before reality kicks in :D