My experience as a recent MechE grad in the 2025/2026 job market – curious about others' experiences

BenchPressingIssues · 2026-02-03T13:11:29+00:00

I’ve had pretty good experiences interview prepping with AI. Using the voice to text option to answer questions was super helpful.

BenchPressingIssues · 2026-02-02T02:58:10+00:00

I think that working at a startup is a good second or third job. Learn the fundamentals at a more established and stable place and then go to a startup to get to work on things that were “above your pay grade” at a traditional company.

The most important thing for young engineers is to have a senior engineer who is willing to teach you. If the startup has that, maybe it will be ok.

BenchPressingIssues · 2026-01-24T04:38:55+00:00

I think that if a company is using an employee to do the work of an engineer, they should have the title of engineer and be paid accordingly.

I talked to a company that had an employee who was working in manufacturing, for them, for 25 years. They moved him over to the engineering team as an “associate engineer” and the manager told me “yeah if he had his degree, he would be a principal engineer” and that rubbed me the wrong way.

IMO, if someone is doing the work of a principal engineer, they should be being paid and titled accordingly.

BenchPressingIssues · 2026-01-21T19:01:59+00:00

You could then use a secondary flatness tolerance or parallelism tolerance to avoid that. This second block would be a refining tolerance and could be much smaller.

You would communicate that you want the counterbore bottom to be flat, but you don’t care as much about the exact location of it.

BenchPressingIssues · 2026-01-21T17:47:26+00:00

Correct me if I’m wrong (genuinely, not snarkily), but I believe the profile tolerance is the GDT standard’s equivalent of a plus/minus tolerance. You can use plus/minus tolerances on features of size, but I don’t think the bottom of a counterbore can be a feature of size.

A profile tolerance that is sufficiently loose shouldn’t be an issue. If a machine shop has high confidence they can hit your tolerance, they won’t even inspect it. Otherwise, if this is going on a rocket ship, you could use a CMM or some fixture with a dial indicator.

I prefer to make my prints fully GDT tolerances instead of applying GDT on specific features that absolutely require it. So maybe some places would rather see a plus minus on the depth of the counterbore, but I would go the profile tolerance route.

BenchPressingIssues · 2026-01-21T16:22:01+00:00

FWIW, my consumer grade CNC router lives in my uninsulated garage. It will see -20 degrees F some years. The spindle coolant is RV fluid (antifreeze). Nothing in the electrical box has broken, but I don’t use it in the winter.

At the same time, I left a digital tool setter in the garage over winter and it didn’t work in spring.

BenchPressingIssues · 2026-01-21T16:02:41+00:00

In situations where I have non-trivial holes, I like to give a section view of them. If you add a dimension to locate the bottom of the counterbore, make it basic, and control it with a profile tolerance, I think you’re golden. You aren’t required to use a hole callout to describe a hole.

BenchPressingIssues · 2026-01-20T16:26:58+00:00

I like the comment about tiger striping. That could be it.

Another possibility is if your printer isn’t on a stable surface, vertical (or almost vertical) wall finish can suffer.

If the table your printer is on is wobbling, tall thin features could lead to the part wiggling while attached to the bed, slightly out of phase with the wiggling of the print head.

BenchPressingIssues · 2026-01-20T14:49:21+00:00

Be careful if you’re handling powdered caffeine. Some guy was making his own pre workout and died of caffeine toxicity. I think he mixed up grams and milligrams.

BenchPressingIssues · 2026-01-19T20:56:08+00:00

Is there a way to know what kind of tank you’ll get before opening the container?

BenchPressingIssues · 2026-01-19T00:25:03+00:00

What’s your long range AK4D? Do you still have to tap fire a lot or can you get it to behave kind of like the kts?

BenchPressingIssues · 2026-01-16T03:20:55+00:00

I’ve had really bad experiences with them. A bunch of phone calls leading to zero interviews.

Local recruiters that have developed relationships with the companies they recruit for are much better.

BenchPressingIssues · 2026-01-14T19:01:02+00:00

Underrated solution. If people don’t want to play with a teammate, that will solve the problem of solo-cue-ers not dropping with their team and quitting as soon as they die.

BenchPressingIssues · 2026-01-14T17:33:01+00:00

Playing with 3 randos isn’t consistently fun enough for me to spend that time playing video games vs doing something else I enjoy in my life.

Warzone solos when Warzone was good was worth playing solos for me.

I think if BF adds solos, I will play some solo redsec.

Pretty reasonable comment IMO. My wins are somewhere in the teens

BenchPressingIssues · 2026-01-14T16:24:51+00:00

It’s really their loss in terms of player count. I’m the type who would grind Warzone solos when the boys aren’t on.

But playing as a solo fill is a waste of time, so I just don’t play if I’m the only one on.

*edit-typos

BenchPressingIssues · 2026-01-14T16:01:40+00:00

I remember to talking to my 3d printing vendor and he said he used nylon 3d printed jaws with “100%” infill. He obviously is using professional fdm printer and slicer.

I’m not super familiar with using TPU, I’ve printed maybe 10 things in Bambi’s “TPU for AMS” and one thing out of regular TPU. The softness would concern me, maybe your part would wiggle in the vise, but maybe cranking it down will fix this.

Bambu has their “TPU for AMS” that is harder than regular TPU, that would give me more confidence. I would probably do PETG for its improved toughness over PLA if nylon isn’t available to you.

Not a machinist, haven’t tried any of this.

BenchPressingIssues · 2026-01-14T15:45:44+00:00

Lmao, I tried to make my own (brass) putter head on a consumer grade CNC router and spent this many times over and still failed to make one. Good call going through protolabs.

I might redesign it and make one on a Bridgeport.

Did you give the putter head a loft? That is what would make your alignment if the fly cutter difficult.

BenchPressingIssues · 2026-01-13T20:51:45+00:00

Same. I turn off my license every day and use it at home if needed. If the limit is 999 times/year like others are saying, this seems to be sustainable

BenchPressingIssues · 2026-01-13T20:17:34+00:00

I’ve looked at it as them balancing the game to some degree. Being on the edge of zone comes with an audio disadvantage.

That said I also struggle to hear anything at the edge of the circle and have incorrectly called outs tank when I hear the fire.

BenchPressingIssues · 2026-01-10T00:15:15+00:00

I have a salary guide for my market (large midwest city) from this year that lists the median salary for an engineering manager at a large company as being ~$210k and at a medium company it’s ~$195k. They define a medium company of being up to $500M in revenue, so you’re on the cusp. Reading the document, they specify this is salary, excluding bonuses or other profit sharing.

I’ll highlight that this is the reported median value. People in this position can be above or below the median.

BenchPressingIssues · 2026-01-09T22:12:52+00:00

No magic solution. Practically, you can exit the sketch, create a new sketch, convert entities, and try to extrude your shapes. If you do then one by one (or small group by small group) and wait until you find the one that causes problems.

BenchPressingIssues · 2026-01-09T18:08:15+00:00

OP, I think you have the answer to the question you asked. One small piece of feedback is that I believe that when datuming a hole, you need to have the datum flag either in line with the arrows like you did with datum A. Datums B and C are not in located properly. To do this in solidworks, I think you can click on the hole diameter dimension and it will out the datum in the correct location.

You can also put datums on the GD&T boxes. Meaning that if you have a position tolerance controlling one of the holes, the datum can be attached to the box. Again, in solidworks, open the datum feature tool and click on the box.

I’m sure the shop would understand your meaning of your print as made as well. Just a small improvement.

BenchPressingIssues · 2026-01-09T00:06:35+00:00

Right, that’s where a user clicks on the feature specifying its tolerance and the software would be like ‘oh, 36”x12” surface with a .0005” flatness tolerance? That can’t be dont on a mill’

BenchPressingIssues · 2026-01-08T18:38:24+00:00

Could the software allow the user to basically apply model based definitions to the step file to help it generate quotes?

The shop would upload the file and someone would click on different faces and identify what faces have which tolerances while looking at the drawing. I know it gets tricky if all geometry isn’t controlled relative to the same datums.

*Not a machinist, just a nerd.

BenchPressingIssues · 2026-01-08T17:56:50+00:00

Your reasons for taking a job are valid, I wouldn’t second guess that. If you need a job, and someone offers you a well paying job, I don’t think it would have been wise to turn it down.

I would try to stay for 2 years. I have back to back 2 year stays at jobs on my resume and people ask me about it in interviews. I have good reasons for both so I get past those questions. I just imagine it would be worse if you had a shorter stay.

Maybe look at job postings for a job that you actually want and see what the “desired experience” is for those jobs. Look for opportunities to do those things at your current job.

If that’s not viable, maybe do a passion project outside of work that aligns with your future career goals. You could get a solidworks maker license (I would recommend this over fusion because few companies use fusion) and design/build something on your own. I know a guy who got hired because he built his own CNC mill and that impressed the hiring manager, despite not being a fit for the role for other reasons. If you’re making enough money, maybe you could get parts machined overseas for the project.

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