"Yes,
Mechanical Engineering is “still in demand”, but there are some things
you should understand about economics if you are really concerned about
job stability.
We call it the cycle. I have worked through a number of cycles over the last 35 years, here is what happens….
An
industry springs up to meet a market demand. For now, imagine wind
turbines get popular because other energy sources get expensive. So
there is a big demand for Engineers (mechanical, electrical, civil) to
design and build wind turbines! Great, right? Right! But soon enough
wind turbines have been designed, built, installed… now what happens?
It's
called layoffs. Sad but true. But then some of those Engineers go on to
develop something that “comes next”. It may be that if you want to go
work on that, you might need to get more training, you might need to
relocate, you might need to take a pay cut, and… here is the painful
part… you are an expert at wind turbines, it is all you have worked on
recently, and now it is a field no one has an interest in paying you to
do any more…. and new guys fresh out of University cost less, have an
easier time of relocating, and so on.
Hurts to
be obsolete. So if you really love being in engineering, you need to
love change, reinventing yourself, going where ever the work is, stay
trained on the latest computer tools and so on.
You
will be “in demand”, you just need to be demanding of yourself…. If you
can do it, welcome to the team! Now let's go design something cool…" -
