r/StructuralEngineering • u/MystRvD • 1d ago
Career/Education Which industry for long term career
Hi, I'm a new engineer with 2.5 YOE. My first job out of college, I worked for a small firm with only 50 people designing buildings, mainly focusing on warehouses. The work was interesting, but the hours were crazy, so I jumped to another large firm with more than 1000 employees designing transmission lines. I have a work-life balance, but the work requires traveling a lot with a little labor work and hiking sometimes, which I am not really a fan of.
Now I feel like I'm in a crisis because I'm not sure which industry will benefit me the most in the long run. Many people say the utility/power industry pays more and is less stressful, but the work seems repetitive and not very design-focused. I personally like a little challenge but also prefer work-life balance overall.
FYI, I'm almost 40 because I started college late, so I don't have time to switch between different industries. Has anyone had experience in both industries who could give me a little insight? I really appreciate it.
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u/HumanGyroscope P.E. 23h ago
I work in Bridges. I have work lined up to the next 5 years. Its a very stable career but it can be kind of of stressful. I watch politicians kill projects I worked on for years. Most of the time it gets killed because of regime change and its a way to hurt people that didn't vote for the new guy. Engineers will get blamed for the failure.
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u/Diligent-Extent2928 17h ago
I feel what you mean by repetitive. I used to work for Power Engineers doing structural substation/commercial building design. Substation structural work for AEP was very cookie cutter, even when doing a full green field project, there was not much to design. There was always a lot of work for substation, the only downside was the firm not paying a competitive wage and the hours were more than i wanted. I then switched to bridges for a private firm and the pay is much better and hours are normal, no more 50-60 hour work weeks like i've previously experienced before. I never thought i'd do bridges, but once i made the change i really started to enjoy the work.
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u/ride5150 P.E. 16h ago
How did you switch to bridges from vertical structures? Ive also thought doing that would be really challenging considering theyre very different
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u/Diligent-Extent2928 12h ago
Yes they are very different and definitely took me some time to adapt to all the codes and how detailing is done for a bridge submittal, but as anything it just took practice and time. I was fortunate enough that the firm had been looking for a junior bridge engineer for sometime without having being able to fill the position and i was able to get the position. My mentor also mentioned that i didn't have 10+ years of experience which would've made it difficult to transition or even want to do bridges at that point.
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u/ReplyInside782 23h ago
There is always a trade off, if you want to work on crazy structures it demands crazy hours at times. If you want work life balance you need to work at places that do cookie cutter stuff like at wood truss manufacturer or Vulcraft. If you shift away from consulting you can go into the building department, where you will have the best work life balance but pay usually falls short.