Monday, 5 June 2017

Are Mechanical Engineers in Demand?





"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…" - 

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