I am feeling lost being a mechanical engineer. I don't see much growth in the career (TC, promotions, etc.). Any advice is appreciated
Made the switch years ago. Best investment of my career. Now in Solutions Architecture. Start by building a lot, it'll come fast. I switched to a team for no tc or title to get experience, and it paid off
What is solutions architecture and how do you make the switch?
Change career path to SWE if TC is main concern. On average, mechanical engineer TC will never be close to SWE.
Learn to code. t. ex-mech eng and current PEng
Professional Engineer?
Principal
Bro, go the PM route or become an SA. 85-90% of SWE TC.
What’s SA?
SA = solutions architect?
Become an expert on a valuable area in your field of expertise. I know several CATIA experts who have carved their own niches and doing well for themselves. Not to mention they could rebound to consulting more easily if they wanted to.
I think the silver lining with being a ME as opposed to SWE is that you don’t face ageism - if anything, the more seasoned you are, the more it pays off for you. You will be looked at as an expert as you advance in your career and your degree will always hold value. ME career path age like fine wine.. slow and steady, but SWE career path starts off on a high trajectory very early on in career, but hard to project 10-20+ years.
Kind of agree
I agree with this, my daughter has ME bachelor's degree and an AE master's degree. She does not have the same salary as a SWE, but it is decent. She has many 50+ year old engineers in her group. Also, as she works for a defense contractor, she does not have to worry about being pushed out by visa holders because US citizenship is required.
Blind is mostly software engineers so the opinions you’ll get will be biased (mine included). The truth is, what do YOU want to do with your career? What’s your passion? Simply switching to SWE isn’t going to solve your problems expect TC and benefits. Maybe you’re interested in VR. There are companies in LA that need mechanical engineers to work on building those fancy moving seats for VR. Maybe you’d be interested in working on Ring or other high tech hardware. Trust me, there’s way more opportunity with Mechanical Engineering background than with Chemical Engineering (my background) As for me, I worked in manufacturing for a few years until I had the guts to just go for it and change my career to be an SWE because that’s how badly I wanted to get out of manufacturing AND I really did love tech. iOS development to be specific
Do you have any computational experience? Or is it all product development? Depending on the experience you can move to the ISV in sales/ account management. If you are into product development you can try product management (not software PM) within your industry. Good luck.
Thanks man. I have computational experience. Yep, account management is an option
If you know coding,try companies like Siemens,Dassult or Ansys.They need mechanical engineers with programming skills.From.there you xan make your next move as a software engineer elsewhere.
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As a fellow mech eng my recommendation is to try to develop some software skills as mechanical engineers that are decent at coding are very valuable. The best suggestion is to see what kind of simple software tools you can develop to make your team’s job easier. My first crack at it was developing a mobile app on powerapps for engineers to collect data in the field. Now I have progressed to stuff that is far more advanced in a company I enjoy working for.
Thanks for the advice. I currently spend about 30% of time developing scripts using software's API for automating simulation tasks. From past 4 months, I am looking for positions in the software development group which also requires mechanical degree. No luck yet
Scripting won’t teach you programming Not use of data science and algorithms that you’ll encounter in interviews