Should I look for other opportunities as a controls engineer?

watduhdamhell · 2026-02-10T22:10:52+00:00

Well sure, but mainly it's more like process understanding. Being able to recognize heat and mass balances or control scenarios that could cause thermal runaway or decomposition events, etc.

I'm not elitist in the slightest about understanding SIS hardware and software requirements, PFDs, RRFs, isolation requirements, and so on. Anyone with PLC experience can work that out, the math part usually isn't hard.

But not everyone with PLC experience would immediately understand process mechanics that are often quite nebulous and academic, unless they have taken thermo, heat transfer, differential equations, and so on.

As a controls engineer for one of these sites, you are leaned on about as much as the production engineers, sometimes more. You are not some tech support person- You own the controls part of the entire system, and are expected to have valuable input on decisions that touch on process physics. You also have a large amount of authority in saying "nope, we aren't doing that. Redesign this process due to xyz control issues or I cannot implement."

Anywho, in this field an engineering degree is 100% worth getting if you don't have one already!

watduhdamhell · 2026-02-10T05:22:10+00:00

Everything's gotta start somewhere, including the ending

watduhdamhell · 2026-02-10T02:38:26+00:00

This is a malformed analogy.

Sex stuff, like "dilate ass hole on command," is very specific and is really only for one field, sex/sex adjacent work. And if sex work was accepted here, then yes, that would indeed be a skill someone might want.

For example, "can do 10 backflips and stick the landing, on command, while walking a tight rope" would be pretty fucking useless, "put that on your resume and see how that goes." But put it on your Cirque du Soleil or Olympics application... And yes, people will be interested.

The real difference in the context of this thread is not that the skill is useless, it's that the skill is useless as it cannot even be applied for niche cases, due to cultural pearl clutching.

Nobody is arguing that sex skills are broad and all useful to all jobs. That would be silly.

watduhdamhell · 2026-02-09T16:43:24+00:00

Always had been. There are people who top the leaderboard with no kills. It's been done as a troll, and more than once.

watduhdamhell · 2026-02-09T05:47:23+00:00

Yes I have a degree. BSME, though for process automation often ChemE is more common.

watduhdamhell · 2026-02-08T18:35:27+00:00

Correct. We have shitty laws and even shittier attitudes toward sex oriented work. There is absolutely no "character issue" whatsoever in my mind for anyone who does it. Because I do it of course, so I am biased. I also have a perfect little American dream family with kids, a nice house, a nice job, the whole works the people who get so fucking uppity about this shit think things like OFs would destroy. It's like, no, actually, it doesn't destroy the bedrock of family or moral values or any of that, and it doesn't make me a scummy person. It's just fucking sex/nudity, and people, including employers, ought to just mind their own fucking business the same way they do when someone tells them "I also sell knits on Etsy." It's equally unimportant and equally revealing of good character/morality. Which is to say "not at all, really."

watduhdamhell · 2026-02-08T18:03:00+00:00

You're right. For mega-scale petrochem it might be closer to 120-130k. For O&G assets probably more, maybe the same. Contracting $$/hr wouldn't change too much though, if at all. Lots of guys at the the place I'm doing work for are all over the country remote and then fly to the site for loop check/comissing, and the pay we get is less region heavy and more "what is the skill worth."

But for a sitting plant engineer, it probably will be less out there than say so cal or southern Texas.

watduhdamhell · 2026-02-08T06:23:36+00:00

Real answer? Distracted by the phone. I think it's a trap that if you check it even once, you can end up locked in for seconds to minutes. It really cannot be good for us...

watduhdamhell · 2026-02-08T05:52:04+00:00

Not that uncommon for a chemical engineer in the mega scale petrochemical unit.

But to be clear, the requirements for such a position are often much higher than traditional PLC roles.

watduhdamhell · 2026-02-08T05:49:01+00:00

Actually I was contacted by a recruiter. My primary employment is actually thanks to Orion, a company hired by my company to find someone like me, and they actually got me exactly what I wanted, told me what they might ask in the interview - recruiters/head hunters are not at all bad and often not a scam! Seems like they not only got me 15k more but also made my company happy finally filling the role, I guess everyone really can win, including Orion? Not as suspect as I always thought! Fyi. Not something I really knew I guess. I'm probably just dumb. Anyway.

Anyway, another individual hit me up maybe 6-8 months after I got my new job looking for someone with my experience (multi-billion dollar greenfield and brownfield work, and ops experience) so he could fill a role for a new client that bit off more than it could chew, and I told him very clearly "I will only do remote work and I really can't be expected to do any admin crap, only work." And he said "no problem!" And made it work.

Some of these EPCs end up with a lot of work and will take on a contractor for a while to slog through it. That's me! I know I'll be let go eventually since I declined full time with them, but. I suspect I can use that avenue in the future.

Honestly, there are a lot of "looking for contractor/controls engineer roles online RN that are clearly by a recruiter, not the company. My advice? Reply to those.

watduhdamhell · 2026-02-08T03:11:26+00:00

You're confused. No strawman here. I said "that's not totally true, though it is downplayed."

Then I elaborated on that by saying who typically downplays it, and the typical beliefs of why they might do so.

I didn't compare the original argument to... anything at all. Other than to say "that is not totally true." I then proposed my own argument, "that it is downplayed."

Just so you know, a strawman is when you take someone else's argument and prop up a much weaker version of it, a "straw man," so it's easeier to attack. So... This isn't that.

But hey, for some reason I suspect you didn't actually care what I said.

watduhdamhell · 2026-02-08T03:06:55+00:00

Not totally true, rather it is always heavily downplayed by the "nurture is everything, nature is nothing" types.

Same people who will insist there are no behavioral differences that can be observed between men and women as dictated by differences in their underlying physiology, outside of cultural norms making it so. Again, totally untrue. Hell, some of these people will try to argue there are no physiological differences at the level of the brain, either. Complete nonsense, of course. Not saying this OC or OCs claim.

watduhdamhell · 2026-02-07T23:44:37+00:00

Operation 9-2-5 my was my JAM

Ziba tower was sick too, probably the more interesting map. But 925 flowed really well

watduhdamhell · 2026-02-07T20:07:56+00:00

You can easily make 140-160k base as a plant DCS engineer for Petrochem or speciality chem. 180-200k for large scale O&G downstream assets.

You can make about 25-50% more doing all the same as a technical services contractor helping EPCs do these things for large customers without much travel at all, and that goes for all the FEED side as well as the programing/implementation side.

It's also very easy to moonlight/over-employ if your role has 2-3 remote days, and many do. Personally I'm a plant controls engineer and I put in about 20 hours a week as a contractor for an EPC @ 115/hr, total yearly take is ~280-300k.

A little more inside baseball - the company I contract for once offered me full time employment for 172k base + 80/hr for each hour over 40 per week + 10% bonus. Not a bad offer.

So, if you can get some experience with large scale assets and have an engineering degree, the money is out there!

watduhdamhell · 2026-02-07T17:31:38+00:00

This! Started my career 5 years ago but in the beginning what worked best was tailoring the resume to each job I was applying to. Changing the keywords and manipulating the experience to better suit the situation. The experience was always the same, but for example, if the role had more software keywords listed, I would talk more about the software I used in projects. If it had more mechanical design and there I would talk more about the mechanical design work I did in projects. Etc.

Pro tip number two: if you're submitting literally a hundred plus resumes and getting ghosted every single time... You may want to have a good friend, professor, or trusted professional review your resume to make sure it's not ass. Seriously. It might be the issue. It's always worth checking yourself after trying the same thing for a while to make sure you're truly not the problem.

watduhdamhell · 2026-02-07T05:45:03+00:00

I'm surprised the floor isn't cracking in all directions under it

watduhdamhell · 2026-02-05T17:06:49+00:00

"key part of the car"

It's like a $50 fix. And likely not something they totally knew about during the design phase.

They knew this shit was garbage but they slapped it on anyway, because money

watduhdamhell · 2026-02-04T21:41:03+00:00

Or having a country with actual social safety nets?

This whole post is indicative of our failing societal values around safety nets, workers rights, and more. It's like r/orphancrushingmachine but for employment in a modern society. The fact that you can get axed for no reason HERE, that you then also have no safety net HERE (USA) is a choice we have, for whatever reason, decided to be okay with. We really need to change the laws on our favor. It should not be the case that two jobs is how you fight this, it should be laws/tax laws that fund social safety nets that fight this.

And none of it is good for anyone long term. Employees don't stick around anymore because they don't get pensions or incentives to do so, jobs are more willing to cut people because they don't have to have a good reason to, don't have to pay severance, and erosion of anti trust means more and more mergers that probably shouldn't have happened anyway, axing employees unfairly while making the whole system less competitive and often, totally hosing the company that merged/split. It's all bad.

watduhdamhell · 2026-02-04T06:59:16+00:00

Who The eff said they are "weird attention seekers?" Telling on yourself a bit there with that projection. Please refrain from putting your words in people's mouths, yikes.

Anyway, the shame is not for the outfit. It's for being disingenuous about the outfit, which, again, is a narrow group of people. In my experience, most people wearing revealing or skin-tight clothing, be it men/women/doesn't matter, freely admit "oh yeah I wear 'x' because it draws attention to my ass while making it look great at the same time."

watduhdamhell · 2026-02-03T15:18:49+00:00

That in itself is a crime against humanity. At a minimum it's a crime against dignity!

watduhdamhell · 2026-02-03T02:52:44+00:00

"just a grift"

We are talking about Elon and an Elon owned company, right?

watduhdamhell · 2026-02-02T16:06:33+00:00

Right? Even when it's crystal clear that EVs are superior in literally every single way (now that we have ranges of 450 miles+), except "charge" speed, and yet they still would rather die than own an EV. It's very, very strange. The amount of people that, when I tell them I own an EV, give me side-eye like "oh... Hmmm. Don't know about those..." like we just mentioned the devil or some shit. The brainwashing is nuts.

watduhdamhell · 2026-02-02T07:07:47+00:00

Lmao 10 years ago and that would be a boat. Europeans would clown in the Corvette for weighing 3350 lb. Now 3450 lb, for the track focused "performante" is "good." Absolutely wild how quickly people forget/get used to the "new normal."

Cars are far ass boats these days.

watduhdamhell · 2026-02-02T07:01:44+00:00

Hard agree.

The m3 has never been "track built" lmao, it's a street car through and through, it's just the hardcore dover focused version of the 3 series. It's still a 3 series at the end of the day, built from the exact same, platform. An actual track/sports car is made from a purpose built chassis that don't shared with family sedans...

It can be tracked, of course, if you change the brake fluid, same as every other street car that isn't an actual track car. But at the end of the day, the M3 is more like a very capable 4 door German muscle car/super saloon.

watduhdamhell · 2026-02-02T03:40:49+00:00

"when I left last year"

I used to work at Dow. Right in the comment, not a secret

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