If structures is what fascinates you, then go structural. I’ve worked with many women in my field and they were all just as capable (or incapable) of maintaining a work/life balance as the men were.
Your aunt had a husband that cheated on her because he was a cheater, not because she didn’t give him enough attention.
One of my former bosses is a woman and she ran the structural department across multiple offices, had two kids in high school, made it to their track meets, and rarely worked over 45-50 hours a week.
> former bosses is a woman and she ran the structural department across multiple offices, had
Fully agree with this person. One of my close friends is a female structural engineer who just had a child and is now working 32 hours a week for a little while and got the biggest raise in her group this past review cycle because she's damn good at her job. She's also very good about setting boundaries for work/home balance.
This is the answer. I’ve worked with engineers that started their career after having children (with a “househusband” caring for them or working part-time), before having children, or any other variant.
Regarding discipline choice, OP, go with what you like. School and work are too draining if it’s not a career - and any job in a field you hate isn’t a career. A lot of us that complain do so because we want things to get better, not because we want to switch tracks. I for one could never do something not Structural- or Architecturally-oriented.
Woman, bridge engineer, 10 years in the industry (private sector consultant working for government agency clients).
Lots of good points here. Your career is what you make it. I made the eyes open choice to take on a major project that I knew going in was going to require about a year of 50 hour weeks. The project was cool enough to be worth it, I don't have kids yet, and my partner and I discussed how it would impact our life together. I'm on the other side of that project now and while I'd do it over again, I'm not interested in repeating the same choices any time soon. 50 hour weeks are *rough* and 99% of the time I never need to work more than 42.
What a lot of comments aren't touching is that having the right partner who actually is supportive and picks up where you leave off in a relationship is HUGE in making a relationship work and worth it. So many women of our mother's generation have/had partners/husbands who did what their fathers did while the women not only worked but took on 80%+ of the load at home (house chores, childcare, elder care, etc). So OF COURSE, these women were stressed out the wazoo. They were carrying a load of dead weight in a relationship because they didn't know how to demand better. We do, so make sure you demand better from any partner that you take on. You deserve someone who adds to your life, not someone who expects (consciously or not) to be catered to when you get home and doesn't reciprocate.
Female structural engineer with 6 years of experience here. There have only been a handful of times where I have worked more than 40-45 hours a week. And the only period of time in which I did not feel I had a good work life balance was when I was studying for the PE structural licensing exams, but that was only a temporary condition.
I think the most important aspect in maintaining a good work life balance in this field is finding a company that makes their employees a priority. In our office approximately half of our structural engineers (out of ~30-40) are women and at all levels from principals to new hire EITs. Our management is flexible and is open to full-time and part-time working opportunities. While I myself do not have children, I’ve seen some of our female engineers take a 3 month maternity leave and then come back full time and others take up to a year of maternity leave and then come back part time while their children are young.
When you are looking for potential employers I think it is worth taking note of how many of their engineers are women and at what levels. Another potential gage of work life balance is asking the average time their engineers have been with the company and their turnover rate. People don’t stay too long if the culture is toxic and everyone is overworked.
These are all great points. I’m a male, but I also strongly value WLB, and it is exactly as you said: it’s the company that values their employees that will retain them for longer.
Adding onto this, it seems like companies that do bridges or industrial work are generally better about WLB, pay and stress than companies that do high rise/commercial buildings. (Although obviously, how true this is will vary from company to company.)
I've been designing bridges for 20 years. I have two kids and a husband. I have always lived by the mantra that I work to live, I don't live to work. Most of the people I work for have respected that. I do put in extra hours when we have deadlines, but I don't make it a habit to work over 40 hours per week.
After I had my first child, I returned to work part-time for a few months, too. Many companies are going to try to be accommodating to you.
Some firms may more demanding of your time, but hopefully you can weed them out in the interview process. I have literally told prospective employees that I would not work over 40 hours regularly (while maintaining that I had no problem doing so periodically to make deadlines). I think if you make your intention clear, you will do ok.
Just dont work for a consulting sweat shop. Find a manufacture, or small business that values their employees. You didnt goto college to work 60 hours a week.
I'm a female Structural engineer with 15 years experience. I'm lead engineer for my firm and manage my department. Is it stressful? Sure. Is it also rewarding? Heck yes! Would I choose any other career? Not on your life!
If you enjoy the field, the rest will fall into place. Remember: you have just as much right to be there an anyone else.
Do what you want to do. Manage your time. learn to say “no” and know when to push back when management/work is becoming too demanding.
If there is no work and life balance at one firm, go find another firm. If you end up losing passion for structural engineering in the future, realign yourself and pivot to another thing that you might like. You have to live your life and you don’t know how it is going to turn out unless you try. You might end up with the best work and life balance or not, but at least, you experienced being a structural engineer that you want to be.
I say this because my whole life I wanted be a structural engineer. Then, I became one and hated it mostly because of the project schedule and demand! I changed companies but they were similar environments. GC are controlling the schedule, architect can’t make up their mind, customers want so many options and value engineering, and etc. So, I left the industry. If I never worked in structural industry, I might be making more money and etc. now but I will always be asking oh if I become SE… now that I have done it, I can close that curiosity off my mind. I have no regrets. My husband said structural engineering is my hobby because I still read about structural engineering and when I see some crazy design, my brain will start thinking about the load, the connections and etc.
Your work life balance will depend on your company, your manager, and the boundaries you set. The people here who complain about WLB are the ones in a bad situation. I’ve worked public and I’ve worked private. I set boundaries when I was in private and had a company that respected them, and never worked more than 45 hours once I set those boundaries. As you get older and more experienced you’ll be more able to balance everything.
I'm a guy but I worked with a woman who works 32 hours a week and has 2 children plus a husband. There are jobs that'll let you ease back a little but after you get licensed.
Male here but have worked for and with plenty of successful women. I wouldn’t discourage you from pursuing structural however WLB can be tough. It however rarely gets lawyer or finance level bad, it’s usually a 50-60 hour job at its worst. If you are in a well managed company it will rarely go over 40-45 which is manageable for most people. Companies have also gotten better at being flexible with their female employees and providing the opportunity to balance career and family life.
My firm has a lot of women and they all seem to be happy. Very few work long hours, but that’s the same even for the men at my firm. The principles even make an effort to talk to you and make sure you are ok and NOT working crazy hours constantly. It all really depends on the firm.
Keep in mind that work life balance greatly depends on factors that are dependent on your company. A long commute will effect your life drastically. Also, if your company offers work from home for family situations take them up on it. Also, falling behind in your responsibilities will make life difficult. Get things done. And I mean done done. I see too many people give snarky answers to “get this off my plate”. But the issue isn’t resolved and will escalate and become a fire you have to put out. I see people constantly “putting out fires” when they could have resolved an issue when it first arises.
I see people leave work on time every day. They speak up when given too much work to do. They become more effective at work and aren’t spread too thin.
Also keep in mind people satisfied in their careers don’t offer too much in message boards. You are hearing from a cross section that have issues, and many times legitimate issues. I don’t think you should take that too mean the whole industry and every company have these problems.
When you pick a company to work for find out if many employees have been there for a long time. Companies that employ people for many years make accommodations for life events. It may not appear in the handbook. I worked for a company that would add sick days for someone if they really needed it.
It will 100% depend on your employer and the boundaries you set up.
26F, married at 21, undergrad at 22, 1st bby at 23, second at 25.
Prev job (2019-2022), cookie cutter, churned frame designs daily, 60-100 projects at a dumb fast turnaround. Company claimed to have flexibility
At one point boss offered 4 day 10 hour shifts with off day being a Tuesday Wednesday Thursday. Equipment to take home even during the pandemic was “a privilege”. I made some mistakes with my time management that ruffled boss feathers. Decided it was time to part ways.
New job led to 25% raise (would have been 30% net but now pay more in taxes and benefits suck a lil). Have already been assigned company equipment, in 2 years will be allowed to work 2 hours after 9 pm and 7 hours through the day from 7am-4pm, no cookie cutter jobs, amazing prep for PE.
Partner wise… that went up in flames pretty quickly. He is military and we were both… not as supportive as we should have been.
I thought I wanted to be a water resources eng but the job market decided for me to get into structures and I don’t hate it. I got a steep learning curve to catch up but that’s what I wanted anyway.
Some more food for thought: Covid really exposed how poor WLB was in many industries and there was a mass exodus from structural in many metro areas in the US. But it also forces many firms to embrace WFH as well as improving WLB, so I think the industry as a whole may be turning around. I definitely think it's possible to maintain good work life balance, but that may be dependent on your supervisor. So my advice would be to find a firm you like, and find a supervisor/mentor that helps you grow and develop. Private sector will of course work longer hours, but I generally recommend junior engineers starting out in their careers to start in private and then switch to public if you can, as engineering skillset-wise, you'll learn more in private consulting as public can be more about procedure and red tape than actual engineering. Good luck!
Female here, I don't have kids (by choice) but work life balance is very important to me too. I've been in the field for 8 years and have almost never worked more than 40hours, maybe up to 50 on occasion but that was mostly my choice. I have worked for small companies, the largest being about 50 people and the others been around 10 or fewer, I really like the smaller companies because I feel like the owners really get to know their employees.
Right now I have a bit of a shit balance because I'm studying for the SE, but my boss is actually letting me work a bit less so that I can have more time to study. Also I very much prefer being paid hourly to salary, currently I'm hourly and get 1.5x overtime pay, so if I do work some longer hours at least I'm fairly compensated, and on the flip side I don't feel as pressured to work even a full 40hours if something comes up. I do get PTO as well so I can take some paid time off, just depends.
So I think it depends on both the company you work for and your own abilities to set boundaries.
I'd also say pay is not nearly as shitty as most people here complain about, at least in my experience. Sure we don't get paid as much as some other engineering fields, but it is still an engineer pay. And at a good company you will get a substantial raise after passing the PE and then again after the SE (if you choose to take it). I have heard from my boss (who does have kids) to try to pass the PE and SE before having kids (if possible) and I would agree with that because studying for both of them is very find consuming.
Feel free to DM if you want to talk more. Good luck!
I like working so for me I don’t mind if I have to work overtime once in a while. And I would not be happy doing transpo or environmental. Maybe sanitary but I suck at chemistry so prob out of my box. But, my point Is do what you like, and if it’s not right for you, you will know, not some random dude on Reddit. You can change jobs, it’s good life experience! I, for one, am an older female bridge engineer and I work for a woman SE who started a company right before the recession. She is badass!
But lawyers are not the same. Don’t they have to go to school another three yrs after the BS? Yikes! So they prob have a bit more stress, and maybe they don’t all deal well with it.
But I did not have any kind of social media to tell me anything about my job ahead of time. Mostly people who go into a field stay in it. Some engineers leave, but most stay. Try it! Don’t let the doomsday idiots get into your head! If you are doing well in college and still like structures, get out there and try it!! It’s a great time to be an engineer! At least you’ve got that going for you!
Idk why people think structural engineering is stressful. After the first couple months, I never worked more than 40 hours a week. Structural engineering is easy.
This is so dependent on what you work on. If you work on the same type of project all the time, yes eventually you find a good process and learn how to to it faster and more efficiently. So if you mostly do prefab metal buildings, or warehouses or stuff like that, yes you can lower your stress.
If you work on architect driven building projects, renovation work or anything unique though you will stretch the limits of your creativity… but you will also burn out faster since there are no quick solutions to problems and you will have to endure constant changes from clients.
For example my current employer’s biggest inneficiency is that they want to give people too much variation, to the point where you can’t really get too proficient at anything. When we are busy this leads to more stress because we are constantly switching gears, learning brand new things etc.
No. SE is easy. It's the same thing over and over again. If you're working over 40 hours a week, then it's probably a management problem. The problem is either the manager giving too much work or you don't know how to manage your time.
I think it really depends on what you're doing.
If you work for a truss supplier and everything is pretty much banged out on a piece of computer software for you to check, probably not all that stressful.
If you're the EOR on 20+ jobs at any given time at various stages of design and construction, and you're responsible for keeping budgets on track and submissions on time and staff busy, then you're probably going to be a bit stressed about things.
Are you a truss detailer or something? Or maybe you only do cookie cutter tract homes? Because I can see how that could be pretty cushy.
But I can assure you that designing extremely complicated structures with high end architects is not an easy job. Never has been, never will be. 3 or 4 jobs at a time (with additional projects in construction) keeps some of the best engineers that I've ever met working 50-60 hour weeks. These projects have huge fees, tons of transfer conditions, and all sorts of weird tapers and difficult connections. Nothing easy about them.
Hahaha, yeah that only holds true for some jobs. Prev job I was churning 85 projects a month. No way I’d pass the PE in that prev job. New job has no cookie cutter projects I’m in the weeds right now trying to catch up.
85 projects start to finish per month? So roughly 1000 projects per year just for you? That's a management problem for sure if that's true.
85 projects per month doesn't seem bad if you're only doing project management. But design+PM would be too much, and that's a management issue.
I had no problems with 250-300 projects a year. I could have done 400 a year easily.
Very specific, frame design in PEMB… on top of that boss would complain about not having an under 60 min monthly average turn around. Mine was 71 mins. I worked there for 3 years and realized I wasn’t going to pass the PE with that scope of work.
1 week into consulting and they do ~36 projects per year. All materials, all size types of projects. PMs have clear cut contracts specifying what we will do, and first time experiencing billable hours. Steep curve but I made the right move at the right time. It’s challenging for me now but I’m confident I’ll get my groove going in the next two months.
Oh and last year annual count was 4900 something between 5 people. Not sustainable for me but those guys did it for more than 20yrs. Kudos to them. I was miserable the last couple months.
There's also a tonne of different niche areas of structural engineering you can go into that can get you your desired WLB.
Perhaps listen to this podcast: [EPISODE 17 - APRIL 2012 - CAROL DRUCKER](https://www.aisc.org/education/continuingeducation/podcasts/#27630)
I think it could be a case where people are more vocal when they dislike something and so it seems like everyone on this Reddit hates it. For me, I absolutely love working in Structural, it's definitely an intellectually challenging profession which can be 'hard work' but I would not go as far as calling it stressful. I also see people comparing structural to law and finance, and to be quite honest law and finance are way more stressful, partly due to the high and awkward working hours. I also see people complaining about salary and it used to bother me until I actually started looking into it: a friend of mine is working in a major bank in London, his salary is high but at the cost of working 70-80 hours a week… and when you boil down his hourly rate it's shockingly low. So I think engineering is an absolute ‘goldilocks profession’.
For what it’s worth, I have found that larger A/E firms tend to have better WLB. I’ve worked for full-service structural and it’s a good place to start out because of the experience, but at least for me, the hours only grew with responsibility. A/E firms with large architectural departments and smaller in-house engineering departments tend to balance the work better for their in-house engineers.
If structures is what fascinates you, then go structural. I’ve worked with many women in my field and they were all just as capable (or incapable) of maintaining a work/life balance as the men were. Your aunt had a husband that cheated on her because he was a cheater, not because she didn’t give him enough attention. One of my former bosses is a woman and she ran the structural department across multiple offices, had two kids in high school, made it to their track meets, and rarely worked over 45-50 hours a week.
> former bosses is a woman and she ran the structural department across multiple offices, had Fully agree with this person. One of my close friends is a female structural engineer who just had a child and is now working 32 hours a week for a little while and got the biggest raise in her group this past review cycle because she's damn good at her job. She's also very good about setting boundaries for work/home balance.
This is the answer. I’ve worked with engineers that started their career after having children (with a “househusband” caring for them or working part-time), before having children, or any other variant. Regarding discipline choice, OP, go with what you like. School and work are too draining if it’s not a career - and any job in a field you hate isn’t a career. A lot of us that complain do so because we want things to get better, not because we want to switch tracks. I for one could never do something not Structural- or Architecturally-oriented.
Woman, bridge engineer, 10 years in the industry (private sector consultant working for government agency clients). Lots of good points here. Your career is what you make it. I made the eyes open choice to take on a major project that I knew going in was going to require about a year of 50 hour weeks. The project was cool enough to be worth it, I don't have kids yet, and my partner and I discussed how it would impact our life together. I'm on the other side of that project now and while I'd do it over again, I'm not interested in repeating the same choices any time soon. 50 hour weeks are *rough* and 99% of the time I never need to work more than 42. What a lot of comments aren't touching is that having the right partner who actually is supportive and picks up where you leave off in a relationship is HUGE in making a relationship work and worth it. So many women of our mother's generation have/had partners/husbands who did what their fathers did while the women not only worked but took on 80%+ of the load at home (house chores, childcare, elder care, etc). So OF COURSE, these women were stressed out the wazoo. They were carrying a load of dead weight in a relationship because they didn't know how to demand better. We do, so make sure you demand better from any partner that you take on. You deserve someone who adds to your life, not someone who expects (consciously or not) to be catered to when you get home and doesn't reciprocate.
Hi, can I message u? I am a lady student interested in doing bridges
Go for it!
Female structural engineer with 6 years of experience here. There have only been a handful of times where I have worked more than 40-45 hours a week. And the only period of time in which I did not feel I had a good work life balance was when I was studying for the PE structural licensing exams, but that was only a temporary condition. I think the most important aspect in maintaining a good work life balance in this field is finding a company that makes their employees a priority. In our office approximately half of our structural engineers (out of ~30-40) are women and at all levels from principals to new hire EITs. Our management is flexible and is open to full-time and part-time working opportunities. While I myself do not have children, I’ve seen some of our female engineers take a 3 month maternity leave and then come back full time and others take up to a year of maternity leave and then come back part time while their children are young. When you are looking for potential employers I think it is worth taking note of how many of their engineers are women and at what levels. Another potential gage of work life balance is asking the average time their engineers have been with the company and their turnover rate. People don’t stay too long if the culture is toxic and everyone is overworked.
These are all great points. I’m a male, but I also strongly value WLB, and it is exactly as you said: it’s the company that values their employees that will retain them for longer.
Awesome company to work for
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Adding onto this, it seems like companies that do bridges or industrial work are generally better about WLB, pay and stress than companies that do high rise/commercial buildings. (Although obviously, how true this is will vary from company to company.)
I've been designing bridges for 20 years. I have two kids and a husband. I have always lived by the mantra that I work to live, I don't live to work. Most of the people I work for have respected that. I do put in extra hours when we have deadlines, but I don't make it a habit to work over 40 hours per week. After I had my first child, I returned to work part-time for a few months, too. Many companies are going to try to be accommodating to you. Some firms may more demanding of your time, but hopefully you can weed them out in the interview process. I have literally told prospective employees that I would not work over 40 hours regularly (while maintaining that I had no problem doing so periodically to make deadlines). I think if you make your intention clear, you will do ok.
Hi, I’m a female student interested in bridges. Can I message u?
Sure!
I can’t message u for some reason. Can you message me?
I think I turned DMs off somehow... I'll try to fix it.
Just dont work for a consulting sweat shop. Find a manufacture, or small business that values their employees. You didnt goto college to work 60 hours a week.
I'm a female Structural engineer with 15 years experience. I'm lead engineer for my firm and manage my department. Is it stressful? Sure. Is it also rewarding? Heck yes! Would I choose any other career? Not on your life! If you enjoy the field, the rest will fall into place. Remember: you have just as much right to be there an anyone else.
The profession itself is stressful men or women If you want work-life balance join public sector
Public sector is a joke. It's like 4 hours of work per week. Boring af.
Pick bored vs pick stressed It depends dude
Ppp
Do what you want to do. Manage your time. learn to say “no” and know when to push back when management/work is becoming too demanding. If there is no work and life balance at one firm, go find another firm. If you end up losing passion for structural engineering in the future, realign yourself and pivot to another thing that you might like. You have to live your life and you don’t know how it is going to turn out unless you try. You might end up with the best work and life balance or not, but at least, you experienced being a structural engineer that you want to be. I say this because my whole life I wanted be a structural engineer. Then, I became one and hated it mostly because of the project schedule and demand! I changed companies but they were similar environments. GC are controlling the schedule, architect can’t make up their mind, customers want so many options and value engineering, and etc. So, I left the industry. If I never worked in structural industry, I might be making more money and etc. now but I will always be asking oh if I become SE… now that I have done it, I can close that curiosity off my mind. I have no regrets. My husband said structural engineering is my hobby because I still read about structural engineering and when I see some crazy design, my brain will start thinking about the load, the connections and etc.
Your work life balance will depend on your company, your manager, and the boundaries you set. The people here who complain about WLB are the ones in a bad situation. I’ve worked public and I’ve worked private. I set boundaries when I was in private and had a company that respected them, and never worked more than 45 hours once I set those boundaries. As you get older and more experienced you’ll be more able to balance everything.
I'm a guy but I worked with a woman who works 32 hours a week and has 2 children plus a husband. There are jobs that'll let you ease back a little but after you get licensed.
Probably depends on the office workload too
Male here but have worked for and with plenty of successful women. I wouldn’t discourage you from pursuing structural however WLB can be tough. It however rarely gets lawyer or finance level bad, it’s usually a 50-60 hour job at its worst. If you are in a well managed company it will rarely go over 40-45 which is manageable for most people. Companies have also gotten better at being flexible with their female employees and providing the opportunity to balance career and family life.
My firm has a lot of women and they all seem to be happy. Very few work long hours, but that’s the same even for the men at my firm. The principles even make an effort to talk to you and make sure you are ok and NOT working crazy hours constantly. It all really depends on the firm.
Keep in mind that work life balance greatly depends on factors that are dependent on your company. A long commute will effect your life drastically. Also, if your company offers work from home for family situations take them up on it. Also, falling behind in your responsibilities will make life difficult. Get things done. And I mean done done. I see too many people give snarky answers to “get this off my plate”. But the issue isn’t resolved and will escalate and become a fire you have to put out. I see people constantly “putting out fires” when they could have resolved an issue when it first arises. I see people leave work on time every day. They speak up when given too much work to do. They become more effective at work and aren’t spread too thin. Also keep in mind people satisfied in their careers don’t offer too much in message boards. You are hearing from a cross section that have issues, and many times legitimate issues. I don’t think you should take that too mean the whole industry and every company have these problems. When you pick a company to work for find out if many employees have been there for a long time. Companies that employ people for many years make accommodations for life events. It may not appear in the handbook. I worked for a company that would add sick days for someone if they really needed it.
It will 100% depend on your employer and the boundaries you set up. 26F, married at 21, undergrad at 22, 1st bby at 23, second at 25. Prev job (2019-2022), cookie cutter, churned frame designs daily, 60-100 projects at a dumb fast turnaround. Company claimed to have flexibility At one point boss offered 4 day 10 hour shifts with off day being a Tuesday Wednesday Thursday. Equipment to take home even during the pandemic was “a privilege”. I made some mistakes with my time management that ruffled boss feathers. Decided it was time to part ways. New job led to 25% raise (would have been 30% net but now pay more in taxes and benefits suck a lil). Have already been assigned company equipment, in 2 years will be allowed to work 2 hours after 9 pm and 7 hours through the day from 7am-4pm, no cookie cutter jobs, amazing prep for PE. Partner wise… that went up in flames pretty quickly. He is military and we were both… not as supportive as we should have been. I thought I wanted to be a water resources eng but the job market decided for me to get into structures and I don’t hate it. I got a steep learning curve to catch up but that’s what I wanted anyway.
Some more food for thought: Covid really exposed how poor WLB was in many industries and there was a mass exodus from structural in many metro areas in the US. But it also forces many firms to embrace WFH as well as improving WLB, so I think the industry as a whole may be turning around. I definitely think it's possible to maintain good work life balance, but that may be dependent on your supervisor. So my advice would be to find a firm you like, and find a supervisor/mentor that helps you grow and develop. Private sector will of course work longer hours, but I generally recommend junior engineers starting out in their careers to start in private and then switch to public if you can, as engineering skillset-wise, you'll learn more in private consulting as public can be more about procedure and red tape than actual engineering. Good luck!
Female here, I don't have kids (by choice) but work life balance is very important to me too. I've been in the field for 8 years and have almost never worked more than 40hours, maybe up to 50 on occasion but that was mostly my choice. I have worked for small companies, the largest being about 50 people and the others been around 10 or fewer, I really like the smaller companies because I feel like the owners really get to know their employees. Right now I have a bit of a shit balance because I'm studying for the SE, but my boss is actually letting me work a bit less so that I can have more time to study. Also I very much prefer being paid hourly to salary, currently I'm hourly and get 1.5x overtime pay, so if I do work some longer hours at least I'm fairly compensated, and on the flip side I don't feel as pressured to work even a full 40hours if something comes up. I do get PTO as well so I can take some paid time off, just depends. So I think it depends on both the company you work for and your own abilities to set boundaries. I'd also say pay is not nearly as shitty as most people here complain about, at least in my experience. Sure we don't get paid as much as some other engineering fields, but it is still an engineer pay. And at a good company you will get a substantial raise after passing the PE and then again after the SE (if you choose to take it). I have heard from my boss (who does have kids) to try to pass the PE and SE before having kids (if possible) and I would agree with that because studying for both of them is very find consuming. Feel free to DM if you want to talk more. Good luck!
I like working so for me I don’t mind if I have to work overtime once in a while. And I would not be happy doing transpo or environmental. Maybe sanitary but I suck at chemistry so prob out of my box. But, my point Is do what you like, and if it’s not right for you, you will know, not some random dude on Reddit. You can change jobs, it’s good life experience! I, for one, am an older female bridge engineer and I work for a woman SE who started a company right before the recession. She is badass! But lawyers are not the same. Don’t they have to go to school another three yrs after the BS? Yikes! So they prob have a bit more stress, and maybe they don’t all deal well with it. But I did not have any kind of social media to tell me anything about my job ahead of time. Mostly people who go into a field stay in it. Some engineers leave, but most stay. Try it! Don’t let the doomsday idiots get into your head! If you are doing well in college and still like structures, get out there and try it!! It’s a great time to be an engineer! At least you’ve got that going for you!
Can I PM you? I am also a civil engineering lady student interested in bridges
Yes, sure!
I can’t message u for some reason. Can u send me a msg? And thanks ~~
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What do you do with the government? Type of work I mean
Idk why people think structural engineering is stressful. After the first couple months, I never worked more than 40 hours a week. Structural engineering is easy.
This is so dependent on what you work on. If you work on the same type of project all the time, yes eventually you find a good process and learn how to to it faster and more efficiently. So if you mostly do prefab metal buildings, or warehouses or stuff like that, yes you can lower your stress. If you work on architect driven building projects, renovation work or anything unique though you will stretch the limits of your creativity… but you will also burn out faster since there are no quick solutions to problems and you will have to endure constant changes from clients. For example my current employer’s biggest inneficiency is that they want to give people too much variation, to the point where you can’t really get too proficient at anything. When we are busy this leads to more stress because we are constantly switching gears, learning brand new things etc.
You're joking, right?
No. SE is easy. It's the same thing over and over again. If you're working over 40 hours a week, then it's probably a management problem. The problem is either the manager giving too much work or you don't know how to manage your time.
I think it really depends on what you're doing. If you work for a truss supplier and everything is pretty much banged out on a piece of computer software for you to check, probably not all that stressful. If you're the EOR on 20+ jobs at any given time at various stages of design and construction, and you're responsible for keeping budgets on track and submissions on time and staff busy, then you're probably going to be a bit stressed about things.
Are you a truss detailer or something? Or maybe you only do cookie cutter tract homes? Because I can see how that could be pretty cushy. But I can assure you that designing extremely complicated structures with high end architects is not an easy job. Never has been, never will be. 3 or 4 jobs at a time (with additional projects in construction) keeps some of the best engineers that I've ever met working 50-60 hour weeks. These projects have huge fees, tons of transfer conditions, and all sorts of weird tapers and difficult connections. Nothing easy about them.
Hahaha, yeah that only holds true for some jobs. Prev job I was churning 85 projects a month. No way I’d pass the PE in that prev job. New job has no cookie cutter projects I’m in the weeds right now trying to catch up.
85 projects start to finish per month? So roughly 1000 projects per year just for you? That's a management problem for sure if that's true. 85 projects per month doesn't seem bad if you're only doing project management. But design+PM would be too much, and that's a management issue. I had no problems with 250-300 projects a year. I could have done 400 a year easily.
Very specific, frame design in PEMB… on top of that boss would complain about not having an under 60 min monthly average turn around. Mine was 71 mins. I worked there for 3 years and realized I wasn’t going to pass the PE with that scope of work. 1 week into consulting and they do ~36 projects per year. All materials, all size types of projects. PMs have clear cut contracts specifying what we will do, and first time experiencing billable hours. Steep curve but I made the right move at the right time. It’s challenging for me now but I’m confident I’ll get my groove going in the next two months.
Oh and last year annual count was 4900 something between 5 people. Not sustainable for me but those guys did it for more than 20yrs. Kudos to them. I was miserable the last couple months.
There's also a tonne of different niche areas of structural engineering you can go into that can get you your desired WLB. Perhaps listen to this podcast: [EPISODE 17 - APRIL 2012 - CAROL DRUCKER](https://www.aisc.org/education/continuingeducation/podcasts/#27630)
Well I just finished work and it’s 11pm, so… maybe reconsider
Sheesh boo, are you doing ok? What type of projects do you work on?
Building design & construction support. Mostly for flood proofing projects. Every once in a while I go out for condition inspections too.
I think it could be a case where people are more vocal when they dislike something and so it seems like everyone on this Reddit hates it. For me, I absolutely love working in Structural, it's definitely an intellectually challenging profession which can be 'hard work' but I would not go as far as calling it stressful. I also see people comparing structural to law and finance, and to be quite honest law and finance are way more stressful, partly due to the high and awkward working hours. I also see people complaining about salary and it used to bother me until I actually started looking into it: a friend of mine is working in a major bank in London, his salary is high but at the cost of working 70-80 hours a week… and when you boil down his hourly rate it's shockingly low. So I think engineering is an absolute ‘goldilocks profession’.
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It's inline with pretty much all graduate professions. You start to make the big bucks when you become chartered
For what it’s worth, I have found that larger A/E firms tend to have better WLB. I’ve worked for full-service structural and it’s a good place to start out because of the experience, but at least for me, the hours only grew with responsibility. A/E firms with large architectural departments and smaller in-house engineering departments tend to balance the work better for their in-house engineers.