15 Reasons to avoid manufacturing engineering

Avoiding manufacturing engineering is becoming a big talk among engineers, Does manufacturing has something wrong to avoid?


why people are moving too much from the manufacturing industry? There is something common among these people?


So in this article, we’re going to discover the 15 reasons why engineers switch from manufacturing to other industries and why warn some stem student engineers to be away from them.

1 – It is not an office job

Manufacturing engineering is not an office job, in most cases, it is a handy job that requires a lot of consistent work. You will Turn machines on, change the parameters of machines, solving problems all day around.

So for people who love office jobs, this occupation is not something to consider at all.

Manufacturing engineering work in offices, but they spend most of their time between noisy machines, solving problems, orienting technicians, and also responding to heavy and blaming production managers.

Thus, for people who don’t like working in crowded and noisy environments, manufacturing engineering is to avoid it.

2 – There is no 9 to 5

If you dream of being a manufacturing engineer and working from 9 to 5 you have to forget that. Manufacturing engineers work long hours and don’t have fixed schedules. At most times, they are working in shifts.

That being said you will work like this schedule.

6pm —-> 2am
2am —-> 10am
10am —-> 6pm

In other words, you will work in the nights, mornings, and evenings. So, your mind will never settle at a stable schedule. This might create some health issues if you don’t know how to deal with them.

The hard thing that happens is when you are on the night shift, and the next week begins in the morning shift. This experience is terrible for the first 2 or 3 days. For instance, Tomorrow you have a job at 6 pm while is it 2 am and still have not fallen asleep.

The first 3 days of this transition are the hardest ones. So, on many occasions, you will get lack sleep which could affect badly your health.

The manufacturing engineer’s job is to avoid people who can’t function well in sleep-depriving situations.

3 – Harder and less paid than other engineering fields

Sometimes is unfair to see sweating manufacturing engineers making half money that a remote software engineer can make. This is a great example to see that hard work does have anything with making a lot of money.

Software engineers are working 40 hours a week or maybe less, they can work remotely or in the offices job. On the opposite of manufacturing, engineers could work up to 80 hours a week and sometimes more in emergency cases.

According to BLS and ZipRecruiter, the median salary of a software engineer is $110.000 a year while a manufacturing engineer only gets $66.000 which is almost double.

So the differences are clear to avoid this industry for people look a good and comfortable financial situation.

4 – You might have a lack of sleep

The lack of sleep is a common problem that many manufacturing engineers suffer from. working in shift always affect the quality of sleep. So the majority of engineers have a hard time sleeping enough times and feel rested in their mornings.

The bad thing is when you wake up and feel like you didn’t sleep, is a terrible sensation that makes a lot of engineers in this career.

Sleeping 8 hours in manufacturing engineering sometimes is not enough after having an exhausting day job. So we can find many people who are sleeping more than 9 to 10 hours and others who are developing dark eyes circles.

5 – You can’t do it remotely

A manufacturing engineer job is not something that you can do it remotely. It is a process that requires machines and a lot of physical stuff is not like sitting on a chair and starting working. It is impossible.

You are going to be responsible for making physical products. So you will deal with a lot of machines and different industrial components. Is a 90% handy job, most of the time you will be out of the office.

It is not an option for people who don’t have thick skin and high endurance for noisy environments.

For sensitive persons is highly recommended to avoid manufacturing engineering.

6 – Overwhelming

Manufacturing engineering is to avoid people who get easily overwhelmed. In other words, if you get stressed easily this job will be a nightmare. This I crowdy job and has full of surprises.

Production managers have a total focus on production, So you will be counted for any minute of delay. If the problem is big or small there is no difference for them no matter how much you’ve been sweating at it.

it’s not a warning but you have to understand that you will be under a lot of pressure and schedule to complete. As a result, many dramatic mistakes could happen in this situation. So, having the ability to work under pressure is the first requirement of this job.

7 – Work life balance

work-life balance in manufacturing engineering is not something to take into consideration. In most cases, you will work on holidays Christmas or thanksgiving, which is a big missing of spending sweet days with families.

This domain is volatile and requires sacrifice and flexibility. Many engineers have been forced to cut down their holidays and go back to work. As a result, could create familiar issues due to these unbalanced situations.

The reason for this is you might be the only guy in the company who can solve this issue. This job is taking so much time to learn and acquire experience, and even sometimes experienced engineers stack in many things.

So there is always new things and new unexpectable situation. It is like being ready for war.

8 – Dealing with a lot people

For people who are introverts and don’t feel comfortable in crowded environments, this job is strictly avoided. manufacturing engineers are forced to deal with a lot of people and many troubles could occur.

In this environment is likely to find more toxicity and conflicts. In other words, you will need to be forced into disgusting people or haters. Because the nature of the work forces you to do that.

So introverts or INT’Js engineers might get drained easily in these kinds of environments. This is not a good environment for them.

9 – Not having a feeling of completion

you’re always running, when you get done with a project another one is one Queue. So the feeling of completion is never present. So new plans and new actions to do, sometimes you will feel deeply the meaning of the rat race.

what becomes frustrating for so many people is repetitive scheduled actions like preventive maintenance, retooling, recalibration, and so on.

Many engineers quit for this reason, especially for people who are not loving this domain, it could be frustrating and lead to burnout.

10 – You are always in the fight

Usually, in the manufacturing industry, 3 essential department engineers should work in collaboration.

  • Engineering departments
  • Maintenance departments
  • Quality departements
  • Production departements

So, the fire is open between these 4 departments. Production managers are blaming engineering, maintenance, quality. Everyone is blaming each other. So the blaming culture and battle are normal in these environments.

Everyone would not assume responsibility especially when a bad mistake happens in a company. The whole world is in trouble. Sometimes you have to work as a lawyer and defend yourself.

11 – It is not something that you could learn alone

manufacturing engineering is not something that you could learn alone or take an online course for it. It is something that requires special material to hand on and sweating in front of many problems.

You can’t learn it from your desktop computer, it needs a physical engagement. In manufacturing, you will learn the true meaning of learning by doing.

Otherwise, you won’t find any documentation or knowledge online about this machine. You could not even find on google the name of the brand that you are looking for. This domain has many industrial secrets and is illegible to share.

So learning or going into this industry requires having internships or personal mentoring which could not be affordable sometimes.

12 – Always improving

If you don’t like to make consistent tweaks and improvements the manufacturing engineering is to avoid. In this occupation, most times engineers are doing improvement and modification is what most engineering is doing.

Sometimes you have to modify machines and make them work for different references of pieces. Or maybe you have a new type of product to make and you want to add some options and tools to put this product in production.

it requires always solving issues and having critical thinking. But The most interesting thing is to make fast decisions which could be sometimes a lot stressful.

13 – Doing preventive maintenance and retooling

The one thing that many manufacturing engineers avoid and hate is retooling and doing preventive. Most people hate these actions because it’s done at crucial times like holidays and Christmas.

So for people who love to follow an organized lifestyle is recommended to avoid manufacturing engineering.

14 – You are always under the gun

It is true that most manufacturing engineers are under the gun, Sometiems they have to work harder to put products into production. Especially for manufacturing test engineers who need to work under a lot of pressure to respect deadlines.

So it is a stressful job that requires a lot of resilience and resistance. You will not work steady or in peace. Time is always pulling against you.

15 – It is not a job for anyone

The manufacturing job is not for everyone, is a job that requires some personality traits that can help you endure different situations. It is a kind of job that requires a strong personality and acceptance of critical opinions.

This job is not for:

  • not passioned people
  • introvert personality
  • INTJ’s
  • Highly sensitive people
  • freedom lovers
  • perfectionist people
  • intolerance people etc

The job requires having cold nerves and the aspect of not caring about anyone. So if you are a soft person is recommended to avoid manufacturing engineering.

Conclusion

this is not discouraging of future stem student engineers who are interesting in this field. But just a reminder of what to expect in this career. This career has many positive points that you can find in this video below.

yassin.ajanif

Yassin ajanif is a physics graduate and electromechanical engineer width more than 5 years in the field. My goal and my team are to share our experience to help you succeed in your career as a stem major. we talk about all tips, problems, and struggle STEM students face in their career and how to overcome them.

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