Find me a new career

[yogiii]

May 21, 2017 10:14:36 GMT -5 giramomma said:

May 21, 2017 10:07:05 GMT -5 yogiii said:

36, if I stay I can probably pull off  50 pretty easily.

Do you want to retire that early? What's the plan for keeping busy for 35 years?

You are still are young enough that I think a switch can make sense.

Plus, you could always do fill in shift work and ramp down to retirement...

Oh no worries, I will not be someone bored in retirement.  Also, not to be morbid but I don't think my life will be particularly long!  Quite a few early deaths in my line.

[muttleynfelix]

May 21, 2017 10:11:54 GMT -5 NomoreDramaQ1015 said:

May 21, 2017 9:59:41 GMT -5 yogiii said:

I don't do anything because it's "hot".

It would be at least 4 years of schooling, which I believe is why DH is against it.  He thinks it will be too much time for not enough pay off.  I think if I am doing something I enjoy, I will not mind working so much.  Plus, it is just a very useful skill set to have in general.

Check out your local hospital career page and see if they offer job shadowing.

UNMC offers it to students and adults looking to switch careers. It's one day you follow the profession you pick around to get a glimpse of what it entails.

You could get your toes wet and talk at length with established nurses.

It might make DH more open minded. Plus I've been told it looks good on applications because it shows you've done homework. With limited slots available they want to give them to people who are serious.

UNMC let's you do as many fields as you want so if that's an option you could shadow other areas that don't require as much schooling and see if you like those.

Is there something that would be an easy transition with her existing degree? If I remember correctly it is applied math and it would feel like there would be sometho by that would transition to, but what do I know.

[Deleted]

Do you have to do a complete career switch?  Maybe just something else in engineering besides what you're doing now?  The field is so varied.  Even where I work there are the Design engineers that spend their day sitting in front of a computer with CAD programs, the Process engineers that are on the floor doing a lot of hands on stuff and the Product engineers that are more part of the business team and do a lot of document creation and maintenance. 

Oh, yeah, and then the Quality Engineers.  They just spend their day on the internet. 

[NomoreDramaQ1015]

May 22, 2017 12:47:40 GMT -5 muttleynfelix said:

May 21, 2017 10:11:54 GMT -5 NomoreDramaQ1015 said:

Check out your local hospital career page and see if they offer job shadowing.

UNMC offers it to students and adults looking to switch careers. It's one day you follow the profession you pick around to get a glimpse of what it entails.

You could get your toes wet and talk at length with established nurses.

It might make DH more open minded. Plus I've been told it looks good on applications because it shows you've done homework. With limited slots available they want to give them to people who are serious.

UNMC let's you do as many fields as you want so if that's an option you could shadow other areas that don't require as much schooling and see if you like those.

Is there something that would be an easy transition with her existing degree? If I remember correctly it is applied math and it would feel like there would be sometho by that would transition to, but what do I know.

I don't know what her statistical or IT background is but she could consider looking into bioinformatics.   Depending on her current degree she might meet more of the requirements for that than she would going into nursing.

[yogiii]

May 25, 2017 8:47:02 GMT -5 minnesotapaintlady said:

Do you have to do a complete career switch?  Maybe just something else in engineering besides what you're doing now?  The field is so varied.  Even where I work there are the Design engineers that spend their day sitting in front of a computer with CAD programs, the Process engineers that are on the floor doing a lot of hands on stuff and the Product engineers that are more part of the business team and do a lot of document creation and maintenance. 

Oh, yeah, and then the Quality Engineers.  They just spend their day on the internet. 

Even though I have worked for the same company since college, I have done exactly that.  I've worked at different locations and also many different engineering job functions.  It has sometimes felt like different companies because the cultures can be so different.  This has all been in an effort to avoid being in charge.  I just want to do my work, do it well and go home.  Now I am to the point where I feel like this is backfiring because I am still getting the push to be in charge and now instead of it being on something I've worked on forever, it's something I've just walked into.  I feel like this type of pressure will be the same at any other similar job which is why I haven't left and wouldn't  want to move on to the same or similar thing at a different place.  The pluses of where I am currently at is a know a ton of people and they all like me and think I do great work.  If I had some sort of family emergency, I know I could just take a personal leave and come back to a job.  If there are layoffs (many of which I have survived already), fairly confident I'll be kept and just shuffled where needed, so I feel like I have a good amount of security where I am. 

[tcu2003]

Sounds like you need an engineering job with a technical path. We have both where I work - I am on the management side of things, but we also have some great engineers who have zero desire to manage people and projects, but are tech experts, and that's what we utilize them for.

[yogiii]

May 25, 2017 9:37:17 GMT -5 tcu2003 said:

Sounds like you need an engineering job with a technical path. We have both where I work - I am on the management side of things, but we also have some great engineers who have zero desire to manage people and projects, but are tech experts, and that's what we utilize them for.

I'm on the tech path (though like I said above I have wondered to different areas for stints here and there).  At our place the technical people still end up being "in charge", which basically just means working a million hours.

[muttleynfelix]

May 25, 2017 9:41:00 GMT -5 yogiii said:

May 25, 2017 9:37:17 GMT -5 tcu2003 said:

Sounds like you need an engineering job with a technical path. We have both where I work - I am on the management side of things, but we also have some great engineers who have zero desire to manage people and projects, but are tech experts, and that's what we utilize them for.

I'm on the tech path (though like I said above I have wondered to different areas for stints here and there).  At our place the technical people still end up being "in charge", which basically just means working a million hours.

That stinks. Our tech path does not require one to go into project management. In fact we are starting to sort of discourage project management just for the sake of being a project manager, but to look critically at who can manage a project and who doesn't want/not the best fit. Sorry we don't have an East coast presence.

[tcu2003]

May 25, 2017 10:28:40 GMT -5 muttleynfelix said:

May 25, 2017 9:41:00 GMT -5 yogiii said:

I'm on the tech path (though like I said above I have wondered to different areas for stints here and there).  At our place the technical people still end up being "in charge", which basically just means working a million hours.

That stinks. Our tech path does not require one to go into project management. In fact we are starting to sort of discourage project management just for the sake of being a project manager, but to look critically at who can manage a project and who doesn't want/not the best fit. Sorry we don't have an East coast presence.

Ditto. Our tech lead on my team manages a few process improvement (internal tasks), but by and large he is a technical resource, does a fair amount of QC, and answers lots of questions for the younger designers. He also helps me and other PMs out during pre-design if we're dealing with new systems or things we may not be very familiar with.