re: SELA engineers: are things looking doom and gloom for you?

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As others have mentioned, location should absolutely be secondary, unless you have something really pressing with your immediate family IMO.

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As I mentioned earlier, I'm really close with my 84 year old gamgam. Plus I'm not great at making friends. Staying in NOLA is worth at least $5000/yr to me.

Like I said earlier, I hope it isn't important because I have a 2.1. Have like 200hrs, so it would take a lot for me to get dropped. I've got a shite ton of experience across the board.

I am guessing it matters a lot for younger guys with no experience. I don't think it'll prevent me from getting a decent job. Definitely will rule me out of some though. Basically, get some experience doing something mechanical. Maybe small equipment repair, working at a fab shop, or something similar if you can't find an internship with a bigger company. Just try to do something with your hands IMHO

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You never give bad news, you always frame it as great news. Say you have a month delay or something

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Its hard to frame as good news when a rig rate is $1MM per day and your current delivery of equipment is weeks after the start date. You blow smoke as much as you can but eventually they have to be informed. My job is to keep trying to make it better.

I'm not a natural salesman because I can be argumentative. If I'm right, I have a hard time backing down. Customers think they are right about everything and are constantly trying to shite on the service your company is providing. Some of it is true, some of it is on them but you have you have to know when to hold your tongue and when not to. I work with a few customers who think they are the smartest people ever and constantly throw out statements that I wish I could just respond with "well, you don't know what the hell you're talking about, so I'm going to ignore everything you say about this and move on", but I can't.

Plus our engineers are immune from this stuff. If you are in front of the customer and need an answer in a day, you take the heat until its done. If you need it in a day, the engineer will have it in a week and its still considered acceptable. Wouldn't mind going back if it wasn't for the pay

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Like I said earlier, I hope it isn't important because I have a 2.1. Have like 200hrs, so it would take a lot for me to get dropped. I've got a shite ton of experience across the board.

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This was me- I transferred to UNO and finished my CE degree after a previous Math degree ( I like pain ). My transferred GPA was a 2.0.

Graduated with a major 3.5 and on Deans List, and with internships. Moved to New York City the day after graduating, and am still up here. Don't move to New York if you're making less than $100k. The drop in quality of life isn't worth it.

With all that said, look into MEP work. Its not glamorous, but it will get your bills paid and with your previous HVAC experience, that's a plus.

That midtown life.

you can see my office in that pic.

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i didnt work my arse off to be a glorified technician

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You don't deserve a good job with that attitude.

I fricking dug ditches at shell norco with a fricking shovel in August with 95% of an ME degree and 2 internships under my belt for $14/hr and you're too good to work on MRI machines for $60k a year???

If it makes you feel better, I spent 4 days holding a paint brush 3 weeks ago with 100% of an ME degree as a project manager.

I would not call him a "real family" uncle

Upstream: oil and gas production. Exploration, Drilling, completions, ect.
Midstream: transportation of oil and gas, pipelines, shipping terminals, railroads, ect.
Downstream: what people do with oil and gas products. Refining, petrochemicals, power plants and factories that use it as a feed stock, ect.

And to answer the OP, I'm a CM graduate and crazy busy.

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One of the biggest gripes you hear from the older guys about the new guys is that they feel like they're above doing some less than glorious work

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I'm by no means an older guy, but I've seen this a few times. When we were in our "training" period, they used us to run errands to pick up gauges from the calibration shop, or run something to a local machine shop to show them exactly what we needed done. I remember one guy who had just started with us speaking out in a meeting with some pretty high up management saying that he thought the shop guys should be doing that stuff, he felt that as an engineer he had more important stuff he could be doing . Guy would only work on stuff he thought was worthy of him.

What some people don't realize is that doing those menial tasks teaches you how the whole operation works, so when you need to do something at the drop of a hat, you know what that machine shop can do for you in a pinch, and you know where you can get an out of date gauge calibrated in a few hours. Those people end up not working out for us.


But to the comment about having 95% of an ME degree, I would say that is pretty good for the resume of a waiter or something similar . Even with my degree, I don't think that the degree itself was worth anything. Still had (and have) learning to do. They hire you because they know you can make it through. I know people with 80% of an ME degree who dropped. That 80% is the same as 0% if you never finish. Now I know you finished, but just saying.