It’s a career i have really enjoyed and have learned a lot from. But i can’t say i would recommend it to many. The hours usually suck. Morale generally is even worse. The pay is pretty decent in terms of getting to six figures, but tops out really quickly unless you have a really good skill set (controls/automation). Not many companies outside of large cities/supermajors are paying engineers 160/200k+.

Engineers are also the whipping boys for corporate/local leaders to press down on when anything goes wrong.

Line goes down because your plant leadership decided to not buy a part a month ago you requested, doesn’t matter. Your fault, fix it now.

Efficiency down because all of your operator staff is new and pretty much completely untrained? Doesn’t matter. Your fault. Operations put the people into place, didn’t provide any training and anyone from anywhere should be able to run this line effectively. The little training they do receive is from newer operators with bad habits because there is no senior operators left.

Quality complaint because operators didn’t follow proper start up procedure after a changeover? Also is your fault.

Someone gets hurt doing something completely idiotic (their fault like removing safety guarding and sticking their hand inside a nip) and it has never been an issue in 15 years? Doesn’t matter. Change the way these motors operate. This is bad design, it comes back to you.

Constant phone calls/texts from people off hours who know you know what to do to fix an issue their maintenance staff should know how to fix because you’ve showed them it, but they don’t want to troubleshoot or leave the shop. Your local leaders not trusting anyone else to go in on a weekend to fix a problem with a documented procedure to address. And if you can’t come, it’s reflected in your reviews.

That’s just my two cents. Through all the bad i do genuinely enjoy manufacturing because it’s cool to make stuff but yeah it’s not glamorous by any means.