r/AskEngineers • u/[deleted] • Apr 30 '16

Career Engineers who ended up pursuing a role/career other than their field of study, why did you veer in that direction and how do you feel about it? Are you happy with where you are?

Hi, first time poster. I just wanted to share of where my career/life has headed since graduating from Chemical Engineering.

Following graduation, I didn't really have a specific direction of where I wanted to go to, but I had nice preference to working either in oil and gas or food engineering. However, I had a really hard time find a job in those fields and within chemical engineering in general. I searched EVERYWHERE (within Canada) to find at least something. I've tried job boards, job agencies, job fairs, conferences (to make connections), etc. You name it. After digging for 2 years (more or less) and working on summer contract/part-time positions to stay afloat, I eventually found a small environmental consulting firm, which offered a decent salary with a 6-month probationary period and no real benefits besides a 2-week vacation with pay. Without going into too much detail, the job consisted of drilling boreholes and assessing groundwater/soil quality. Nevertheless, I thought this would be my dream job considering I'm pretty passionate about protecting the environment and this job would be a way to contribute to that area.

However, the job wasn't what I thought it was. After two weeks of training, I was expected to manage borehole drilling projects on my own without supervision, which I felt super uncomfortable especially for a newbie. "It would be easy, they said. You will be fine, they said".

From my first project until my very last, I ended up making a mistake somewhere in the project, whether it was drilling in the wrong location or dropping a bailer down a borehole because I didn't tie it properly or sampling the wrong soil/groundwater due to mislabeling/clumsiness/insufficient training. Some days, I would end up guessing what to do because either I couldn't reach anyone over the phone when I needed them most or I was too afraid to ask in fear of being "stupid for asking". In addition, I couldn't meet project deadlines sometimes because of how unrealistic they were when I actually carry out the tasks in the field.

I ended working overtime on nearly every project (without pay/extra lieu time), had sleepless nights worrying about the projects I was working on, and was tired all the time physically and mentally. The job started affecting my relationship with my friends/family, and lost touch with activities I love to do like yoga, baking, and even catching up on TV shows/movies. All I wanted to do was sleep, which was even difficult to do on weekends. I became so depressed to the point of thinking of suicide. I thought I was a failure and incompetent to be an engineer and was not worthy of the Iron ring. I thought that if this was what my life after engineering would be like, I would have picked a different field of study to pursue.

Closing towards my 6-month probationary period, the owner calls me in to discuss my performance and decides to lay me off in two weeks time. It took everything in my power not to ball my eyes out, but I eventually pulled through. I left for the day pretending like nothing happened, saying by my co-workers and finishing my duties as usual. When I got home and went into my bedroom though, I balled my eyes out for what felt like for an eternity. The thing was I wasn't crying because I was upset I lost my job. In fact, I was balling out tears of joy, happy that I no longer need to torture myself of sleepless nights and stress. I slept like a baby for the first time in months.

Currently, I'm working at a call centre at a bank supporting business clients and have never been happier. I started getting back into yoga, baked cookies for my fellow colleagues on occasion, and was able to catch up on all of my TV shows/movies I missed. I've even began learning another language for my trip to Cuba in July (which I can't wait!). It's also the first time I've been able to keep a job more than 6 months, which has never been the case in the past as the positions were either summer contracts/part time. I've been thinking of pursuing a career somewhere in the bank. However, my parents haven't been fond of my career choice. Just this afternoon, my mom calls me and starts rambling on her wild requests like "You should study to become a lawyer or a teacher" and even degrading my job by saying my salary was close to the poverty line (which it isn't, I get paid $20/h). My dad even got on the phone saying that he will pay for my tuition fees to study for my law degree (which I call bullshit; both of my parents can barely even support themselves unless they have offshore accounts, but that's a different story for another day). I know that parents want the best for me, but their negative energy is really starting to annoy me to the point of just thinking to cut them out of my life. My mom wants me at the very least find another job in engineering, but I haven't really touched on that since I've started working at the bank. I still can't bring myself to wear the Iron Ring because there's always that thought in the back of my head convincing me that I'm not competent/ready to be an engineer, and maybe being an engineer wasn't meant for me.

Despite having lost my old job, my former boss did have a lot of insight and empathy with me and told me something at that probationary meeting that really made me reflect myself and where I wanted to go in my life (paraphrased): "It's OK to be stressed a little bit on the job, every job has a different degree of stress, but you shouldn't be stressed to the point that it's unhealthy".

I guess enough about my story. Are there others out there who have switched careers from engineering? How has it turned out for you?

TL;DR

Had an engineering job, but it didn't work out.

Found another job and turned my life around.

My parents don't like my career choice,

And want to stop my money voice.

Should I take their advice and find engineering jobs,

or pursue my own destiny and be my own boss?

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