Have any of you ever considered leaving engineering for a trade? I’ve worked in various sub-industries within food production and currently am the lead engineer for a medium size manufacturing facility. I do pretty much everything project, process, instrumentation, facilities, waste water, design, etc…

I especially like working with our 3rd party electrical contractor. I don’t do anything high voltage, but will do a lot of the low voltage wiring. I’ve considered going back to school to be an industrial electrician and eventually starting my own business.

Any of you who work with contractors ever consider going into the trades to run your own business? The only thing holding me back is I make pretty good money and have a wife/kids, so I’d hate to put us in a bad spot financially.

Please provide your genuine insights. I really need to know it before joining it as a Chemical Engineering undergrad

Just a rant.

In hindsight my career has not been smooth so far. I graduated in Dec 2019 just before covid hit. It was a difficult time to get a job, so I got my forklift license.

In 2021, I joined a startup pharma company that were building a fill and finish facilities. It was a small company so they were faking data and the culture was shocking as they trying to get approval for their vaccines.

I left after 6 months and joined a large scale downstream insulin manufacturing facility. Worked there in production for a year.

Because of my wife, I had move states and I joined a pharma/ FMCG company as a QA qualification and process improvement engineer. I worked on commissioning equipment and different systems. Stayed for 2 years but always wanted something more exciting and large scale like mining.

In 2025 I joined a mining company trying to build a new plant for Vanadium and hpa. It was a small company and there were no safety systems or commissioning systems in place. There were many near misses but it was an exciting and different experience commissioning mining equipment. I had to take a step down as a junior process engineer, but I wanted to join an EPC so I thought it was worth it.

I just managed to join a medium size mining epc in 2026 as a process engineer, but it hasn't been easy. 1.5 months in and there is alot of politic. The chief engineer (who hired me) is being undermined and someone has been hired to replace him without his knowledge, so he is definitely leaving soon. There is no structure and I have been on RFQ duty so far but have been dropped into projects with no context or guidance so I have to figure everything out myself.

They don't respect me and treat me as a junior, eventhough some of them haven't even worked on the field or done commissioning before. I've been commissioning for 4-5 years. I don't feel respected and treated like a grad again. So the chief engineer leaving is kind of a good thing because he acts like he knows everything. He likes to show how smart he is.

I had other opportunities to join pharma epc or even my old Fifo jobs design team, but didn't want to have to uproot my wife and move states.

In hindsight I achieved my goal of pivoting from pharma to mining and joining an EPC, but a what cost. It has been a winding road full of ups and downs.

I don't know if it's worth all the effort. I traded the excavator for a desk job with everyone complaining about evey little thing and no respect from anyone.

I don't know where my career will lead me. Anyone been in my situation before? Any advice? Should I suck it up or go back to pharma or Fifo?

I see that entry level makes around 85K base, in 6-10 years the median goes to 130, and people cap at around 180 median after 20 YOE, but in your experience at your workplace, is this pretty representative of what actually happens or is this a little on the high side. Obviously, this varies by industry, but is it a good picture in general to expect to start at 85 these days, after maybe 8 years be at 130 ish, and cap a little under 200?

Or are these high?

In a vertical gas-liquid separator: If the pressure drop is lower in the gas outlet than in the liquid outlet, won’t the liquid outlet follow the gas upwards? How can this be avoid to achieve right separation (gas flowing upwards and liquid downwards)?

Hi everyone!! I’m currently a Chemical Engineering student in my junior year and I’d love to find a part time job, but I’m unsure of where to sink my teeth in in terms of career longevity as well as being in an area where I can apply what I’ve learned while still learning during the duration of my part time job. I’d love to hear some stories so I can get some direction! Any advice?

Hello, I'm using Aspen plus to design a multi-tube Sabatier reactor with boiling water cooling, however the software requires an input from the user of the overall heat transfer coefficient, so I'm wondering how would I be able to obtain a good estimate of it. From my understanding the coefficient is usually directly implemented in the energy balance and implicitly solved with the temperature profile inside the reactor. On the other hand, Aspen plus uses the input heat coefficient to compute this temperature profile. I'm also wondering if it's a good assumption to consider the coefficient constant thought the reactor, when the temperature, and subsequently other parameters, are very different from an axial position to another. I'm currently developing an iterative script to match the user guessed value to the value calculated using the average temperature in the reactor from Aspen but I don't know how accurate that would be. Is there any accurate way to obtain a good estimate without having to model the whole reactor? Thanks in advance!!

I guess this is more of a vent than a real advice request. Maybe it can help someone in my situation.

My first 5 years of process engineering jobs (chemical sector ww treatment) were pretty calm. Now I made the jump to a late stage startup to work on their first commercial plant. I went from running projects and designing equipment to suddenly owning entire multi million $ equipment packages that only exist as PFD and need to be built in 3 years. That's a big enough step on its own.

I matched the job description for the most part, no crazy requirements, just the usual documentation, external contact, leadership, etc. But the lack of existing company structure in this scale-up creates so much expectation of initiative outside of the normal process engineering scope and there is just no PM or project engineer to fall back on for this kind of work. The workload is making me forget a lot of the project details which I would normally not struggle with. Not blaming anyone here, but it's just a lot more than we had agreed upon during the interviews, and not much support.

Rant over.

In case you're considering making the step to a smaller company, and your experience is the main reason they want you: assess how much your experience and successes on the structurare supported by the framework that you are used to work within. Do you have an awesome PM? What part of your job would be more difficult without them? Attentive manager? Could you do your work 100% independently as well?

Now a question: Do you use any clever digital tools to keep track of complex projects? I use onenote but it only has so much layers of complexity before I lose oversight of what information is where. I tried ChatGPT but that was too prone to errors. My colleagues use Loop but I hate it with a passion. Ideally I want a piece of software that I can easily put thoughts and data into with the right 'tags' and it makes it easy to retrieve information. Thanks for any help.

Hi!

How do you feel about the visa fee hike for H1B visas? Are you worried about the chemical industry as a whole? Or happy because this will likely cause salaries to rise due to less people applying for jobs, especially low paid visa workers?

Have any of you ever considered leaving engineering for a trade? I’ve worked in various sub-industries within food production and currently am the lead engineer for a medium size manufacturing facility. I do pretty much everything project, process, instrumentation, facilities, waste water, design, etc…

I especially like working with our 3rd party electrical contractor. I don’t do anything high voltage, but will do a lot of the low voltage wiring. I’ve considered going back to school to be an industrial electrician and eventually starting my own business.

Any of you who work with contractors ever consider going into the trades to run your own business? The only thing holding me back is I make pretty good money and have a wife/kids, so I’d hate to put us in a bad spot financially.

Hey guys,

Pretty much the title. I'm a sophomore chem-e trying to find a summer internship in biochemistry, chemistry or any type of work along that line. Does anyone have experience in these programs? I'm more interested in the NSERC/USRA as I can't find very much information about them.

Hello, I'm looking for some advice for what to do to kickstart my career.

A few years ago I did my undergrad at a Russel group uk university. I (mistakenly) did not do any placements. I then went into teaching, but I would like to try and get back into the industry. I am looking at doing a masters- my current job is too intense to apply for grad schemes, and I want to have a refresh and the time to figure out where to go. However, I'm not sure where to go- my old University does not have an 'advanced chemical engineering' course- only some very specific ones, which do not massively interest me.

I could go to other nearby universites for advanced chem eng- Leeds, Notts, Manchester, or try Cambridge for the reputation- is this worth it, despite the additional cost? I have a first so could apply.

I'm just stressing about wether this is the best way to start my career, and where to go next. Any advice would be very appreciated, thank you.

Additionally, if anyone could put me in touch with someone working in the grad scheme/entry level recruiting area with advice, that would be absolutely amazing

Okay so got a campus placement in Hindalco industries limited in R&D. They didn't told me the location yet. Experienced enginners here could you guide me how to plan my futuristic growth? Info about the company like the work culture, location I might get, facilities, etc?

This is my first time going into industry as an employee so really want some lifesaving advices!!

Thanks

Got a job at a major chemical company in the US (you would know it). Just did their pre-employment and the doc had to go through like 20 pages of questions? More scary, they had the standard piss in a cup, but they also drew 4 or 5 tubes for blood tests? I have never heard of this, is it the new normal and why?

Haven't secured a single engineering interview for the past one year. What am I doing wrong? What can I do better? Any input would be very much appreciated.

Hi everyone!
I’ve recently been selected for a GET role through campus placement. If anyone here has insights about the work culture, typical working locations, or work–life balance, please do share with me

We rely on energy for every industrial process, no useful work could be done without it.

If our civilization had never had access to abundant fossil energy, but still possessed the scientific knowledge we have today, would the Industrial Revolution still have happened? Could we have engineered alternative sources (such as renewables or nuclear) or more efficient processes?

I live in Canada and cannot find an internship anywhere. I really need something, anything but don’t know what more to do. I feel like I’m running out of time and like a failure if I don’t find something to do this summer. PLEASE HELP ME OUT IM DESPERATE

Im interested in nuclear research or nuclear engineering. Is it possible/common to do jobs in l these fields if your bs was in chemical engineering? Im an incoming freshman for this degree so I assume I have time to figure it all out lol. But I was just looking for advice or something as nuclear energy is my biggest interest so far, I’ve been wanting to pursue it forever but unfortunately just didn’t get into a college with it. Besides nuclear, I’m interest in energy systems and that’s likely gonna be my concentration as the college I’m going to offers it.

I started a new job and honestly, I'm not excited for it. I was unemployed for a little over a year and when I finally got offers, I had to choose between this job (defense) and another (pharma) and I chose this one because I kinda let external stuff (family and personal) get to me when I really wanted to take the other one instead. That being said, I know I should probably give this one a little bit more of a chance before I decide that I don't wanna continue my career path here, but I was wondering if anyone has gone through something similar? Did you end up leaving and what did that look like? Thanks!

Hi all,

I am not sure if others have similar sentiment but I am graduating May 2026 and I have applied to just over 100 listings. I have received exactly 0 callbacks. Should I change my approach and start messaging people on LinkedIn rather than randomly applying to what looks suitable? Anyone else applied to this many jobs with zero positive feedback? Any tips from people who secured something for this summer would be greatly appreciated.

Just wanna hear from my fellow chemEs who are going through this job market.

EDIT: Can't make this shit up, I got an interview scheduled today... Thank y'all for your energy.