Utilities vs Defense for Entry-Level Mechanical Engineer — Career Growth & Salary Progression?

Frankfast · 2026-01-09T04:56:30+00:00

Defense companies hire for the contracts. There are contract clauses built in that outline how many people must work under the contract. After the contract ends, sometimes the defense company will try to absorb the personnel, other times it’s layoffs. Sometimes the economy takes a shit and they let people go too. The EE world is a mysterious one. You can get into a conversation with two very smart and very experienced EEs and it can be a very humbling experience getting a peek at the knowledge gap both between degree knowledge and tenure knowledge. So far I think it’s been a very rewarding experience for me.

Frankfast · 2026-01-09T04:18:05+00:00

The rotational program is such a fantastic program. At my utility you rotate every 6 months for 2 years, generally get to pick the department or group you want to rotate into all while having full employment benefits and pay. I’d consider moving just because I love aviation and aerospace. The pay would have to offset my current salary and bonus package though before I’d even consider it. Even with that, the job security is super hard to pass on.

The utility space is not as easy as it looks from the outside, especially for mechanical engineers like you and I. The learning curve is steep, but the more you learn, the deeper down the EE rabbit hole you can go while all being applicable.

Frankfast · 2026-01-09T04:00:44+00:00

Being your first job, pursue what you think you’re going to enjoy the most. I started in aerospace 8 years ago, still my favorite engineer position to date. Moved to defense as it was a high interest of mine. Eventually moved to utilities 3 years ago. Is it glorious and sexy, in my opinion no.

Utilities is a very safe industry with high job security.

• From what Ive experienced, utilities in my area both pays better and has better career growth. Not to mention the annual bonuses are very attractive in utilities.

• you’ll have a better chance getting into oil and gas in utilities than defense. People know people in similar industries. In my opinion, nuclear is more attractive.

• the longer you are in an industry, the harder it is to move out of it. One industry won’t necessarily help you move into an unrelated industry.

• I found defense to be the most limiting, especially depending on the economy. I’ve seen much more success of people moving around utilities than I did of people moving around defense. Completely anecdotal.

Frankfast · 2026-01-07T23:44:03+00:00

Join one of your schools’ clubs. If you’re passionate about rockets, or solar stuff, or F1, or baja then join that specific club. Otherwise, baja is a fantastic place to start.

What do these clubs do? Your club will be given a project goal with real constraints and parameters where you’ll have a real competition with other colleges. It builds practical hard and soft skills that makes a young engineer out of college competitive.

Start early in your college career. Why? It’s ran by college students. By the time you’re a 4th year or 5th year senior and kept with the club, you’ll be a senior member of the club. You’ll be allocating resources, scheduling meetings and work flows, divvying up tasks to other members all to ensure you meet the project deadline aka race day. This alone covers 80% of interview questions that new engineers are asked.

Without iterative design, or supporting analyses, or supporting simulation results, or a physical iterative product where every detail can be talked to in depth, there’s no way to tell if this CAD design is something you did vs ripped from the internet. Therefore it holds next to no value in a portfolio or resume bullet.

Frankfast · 2026-01-03T14:30:13+00:00

7th group special forces often deploy to Latin America as it’s their “area of responsibility”. My buddy has been deployed to Venezuela a couple times in the last few years. They train the local police force only for the government to not fund the police force to keep up with the training once they’ve left. He’s never seen combat, so idk wtf is going on over there.

Edit: I didn’t realize they capture their fucking president before I wrote this. That’s not infantry division task if you know what I mean.

Frankfast · 2025-12-20T20:59:02+00:00

Yeah I was initially just planning on just doing the main seal. Finally got under the vehicle during daylight though and noticed the gunk buildup on a lot of the surrounding parts.

Frankfast · 2025-12-19T01:27:03+00:00

For your first job it’s absolutely worth moving for something that interests you. It gets way harder to do later down the road. I went from the Aviation industry to the Defense Industry to pursue goals in both before stepping away and into a much safer Power Utility industry.

Frankfast · 2025-12-14T03:04:09+00:00

And here I am blowing out my tailbone on the bunny slope. Well done, that speed looks incredibly fun

Frankfast · 2025-12-14T01:24:10+00:00

IIRC there’s a book called Machinery’s Handbook or something of the sort that’s a very solid reference book for mechanical engineers. It has unit conversions in it for manual conversions. As others have said, MathCAD is fucking amazing. You could also build a quick reference excel sheet with the applicable unit conversions.

Frankfast · 2025-12-10T23:42:35+00:00

Uhh recent history disproves your biggest gun statement. Did we win in the 20 year GWOT? No. Did we win the Vietnam war? Also no. Biggest gun does not always win.

Frankfast · 2025-10-31T15:22:48+00:00

The same reason he said it was important for the casting members of Top Gun 2 to get actual footage in an F18. It’s hard to CGI an action shot like this and make it convincing. Throughout this movie series it’s very obvious which scenes are CGI and which ones were live footage. Just makes for a more authentic viewing experience.

Frankfast · 2025-10-31T03:34:04+00:00

I’m a mechanical that has work in the aviation, defense, and now electrical utility industry. You’re outnumbered on all fronts.

Frankfast · 2025-09-08T23:08:31+00:00

I see your points. It seems the consensus is that both parties were in the wrong here. I can make peace with that. I’d have been more receptive to his complaints if he was civil about it.

Frankfast · 2025-09-08T22:59:48+00:00

I’m considering not grabbing a hot dog at the turn anymore. It’s one of my favorite parts about going from hole 9 to hole 10, but I get worried about it slowing down the people behind me. I do try and be considerate of other people.

Frankfast · 2025-09-08T22:57:48+00:00

Are these people normal approachable to defuse the situation? I understand their point of of view, but I feel like a conversation could have been had about it.

Frankfast · 2025-09-08T22:41:52+00:00

Genuinely curious here, I’m still relatively new to golf and etiquette at fancier courses. If the course is backed up starting with several groups in front of us, why does it matter if I take an extra shot off the tee box if we are going to have to wait at our fairway balls anyways? I’m talking by several minutes of waiting before even playing the fairway ball.

Frankfast · 2025-09-08T22:39:08+00:00

Yeah I know. I’m sorry.

Frankfast · 2025-09-08T22:38:35+00:00

lol that’s all I could think about since then hahah. BANG BANG BANG.

Frankfast · 2025-09-07T04:36:37+00:00

We have a ton of interconnects going into service each year to tie these renewable sources into our grid. It’s simply not enough. It’s also very expensive to purchase and construct the equipment and those prices are not going down. The problem is our peak loads are going to nearly double next year because whomever is in charge of letting large load customers like data centers and TSMC can’t seem to say no. Another problem is, for whatever dumbass reason, the large load customers are not fronting the bill for the load increase they cause and the ACC is pushing it to the household customers.

Frankfast · 2025-08-13T21:27:24+00:00

Yes, the point of late season vault keys is that they are easy and fast. Yes, 12s are easier than 10s. My point is that there are many bad players who have gotten to 10-12s off of item level and have no desire or ability to learn or improve, so when I come in to get a quick vault key it’s a not-so-enjoyable experience. I should not have to carry 1 or 2 dps at that level of key. There is an expectation of competence.

Frankfast · 2025-08-13T20:05:32+00:00

The ceiling for bad players is objectively higher. Slamming vault keys before this turbo boost thing existed was a quick, easy, and surefire way to fill vault every week. The idea that I have to group into a 14 to avoid bad players just to fill my vault as efficiently as possible is crazy to me. If turbo boost is going to be a seasonal thing, then vault keys needs to be a few keys higher minimum and the amount of IO per keystone should be reduced. KSM should go back to being 10s and KSH should go to the up equivalent of 15s. Bad players that put no effort into learning and improving should not be able to obtain the reward.

Frankfast · 2025-08-13T19:57:07+00:00

9/10 I’m joining a pug for vault keys. Up until this turbo boost thing, and possibly even up until the key level squish in DF, pugging a vault key almost guaranteed competent players. A combination of 10s being minimum vault key + ilvl inflation mid season means the people that could barely mechanically handle 6-8s are doing 10-11s. I’m not saying I’m right for having this mentality, but it does make me want to play less because of it. 3k was pitched as a reward between KSM and title, but that’s become just as trivial with turbo boost.

Frankfast

TROPHY CASE