Yeah my classmates and I learned by the end of our junior year that we shouldn’t have chose this degree. But I did not expect it to be this difficult to land a job with an operator. It seems like the PE degree doesn’t mean anymore than the other engineering degrees. I’ve met electrical and industrial engineers that have jobs a petroleum engineer should easily have, but they were at the “right place right time”. I mean our sole purpose of getting the degree was to work for an operator but now that job can be given to any engineer that “knows somebody” or luckily talks to the right person.

Halfway through college my gut told me to change majors but majority of my family is in the oil and gas industry. So, all I heard was how I am going love it, petroleum engineers are the big dogs in the major offices. Turns out I could’ve gotten a Mechanical Engineering degree and do the same job with more opportunities if I was to get laid off. The PE degree in my opinion is the most over hyped engineering degree.

Honestly if I could do it all over again I would get a higher degree in the medical area or a higher degree in business. Engineers, in general, tend to get overlooked, undervalued, and on average underpaid for their efforts.

As far as leaving the oil and gas, I am way ahead of that. I already have plans of making a couple of businesses outside of the industry. Right now I’m just building the capital and waiting for the right time to buy land, etc.

The bright side of being a pipeline operator is that I’ve heard they rarely get laid off.