I'm a mechanical engineer and I have an professional engineering license, an ASME GD&T certification and a membership to ASME (which I just renewed). The certification/license were once a point of professional pride, but starting to wonder if they're worth maintaining.
The PE license is not necessary in my field (consumer products) and I don't even have it on my business cards or e-mail signatures. If anything most people in consumer products seem to resent it and think you are snob. Most factories that manufacture consumer products don't pay attention to +/- tolerances, let alone GD&T. In my experience consumer products are way different than aerospace and automotive in this regard. We always just modify the mass production tools/molds until the product functions. The ASME membership is a little valuable in that I occasionally look up things on AccessEngineering, but doubt it would help me land another job and I'd probably be able to find as good an answer by google or just calling people in my network.
Currently these things cost me about
PE License PDHs: $75/year
PE License Renewal Fee: $75/year
GDTP-S Cert: $150/3 years
ASME Membership Dues: $200/year
Which works out to about $400/year, which is about 0.5% of my gross income, but still, that's 0.5% that I could bump my savings rate up by.
Anyone here get any certifications and then not bother to maintain them? Do you regret it? Do you still put them on a resume and just say (expired)? Would hiring managers look down on that?
I do plan on bringing it up to my manager and wondering if my company would pay for these things, but with COVID and recent salary cuts, I don't have high hopes.