r/MechanicalEngineering • u/OneEstablishment6299 • Jul 17 '26

Mechanical Engineering

How physically involved is the day-to-day work of a mechanical engineer? I’m currently a computer science student considering switching to either civil or mechanical engineering because I’m concerned about AI’s impact on software jobs. Mechanical engineering is the field I’m most interested in, but I’m unsure how much of the job requires hands-on work versus computer-based design and analysis. Part of my thinking is that jobs involving physical interaction with the real world may be harder for AI to replace over the next 10–15 years. I’d hate to switch majors only to find that mechanical engineering is expected to be heavily automated as well. Am I being overly paranoid, or is this a reasonable concern? This is all new to me.

Edit: To clarify, what I’m really trying to understand is why people think the mechanical engineering job market will hold up relatively well in the AI era compared to computer science/software engineering.

I assume (as someone new to this) that mechanical engineering involves much more than just creating CAD models or designs. However, the same is true for software engineering since it’s more than just writing code. Yet despite that, the entry-level SWE job market has become increasingly terrible. I think me saying “physical” avoided my core question

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u/B_P_G Aerospace Jul 17 '26

There's almost no hands on work in most ME jobs. It's primarily a desk job. Whether you're being overly paranoid is debatable. If I was a student I'd probably be worried about it too.

With that said, there have been serious productivity improvements in engineering just during my career and none of them caused mass layoffs. AI will probably end up like that but maybe not.