Industry or Consulating firm?

I am working at Utility, I had PE last year. I am wondering which direction to go after having license.

As a engineer at power plant, 80% of the time does not feel the need of PE, but relatively stable, income is okay, not as high as the firms. I had no firm experience at all.

Anybody had silimar experience for career development?

Somerset said:

I am working at Utility, I had PE last year. I am wondering which direction to go after having license. As a engineer at power plant, 80% of the time does not feel the need of PE, but relatively stable, income is okay, not as high as the firms. I had no firm experience at all.

Anybody had silimar experience for career development?

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No job is perfect and any experience is good experience. It's rare to see a true symbiotic relationship between the employer and employee where the employer find the perfect employee and the employee finds the perfect job. If you do not feel challenged in your current position, then you should bring it up to your manager, but make sure the conversation stays on a positive note; otherwise, you can be perceived as a disgruntled employee.

Also, you need to weigh out the pros and cons of your current job. A utility is always required, regardless of the economy. These days, job volatility is high and you should keep what you have and establish seniority rather than be a new employee elsewhere, unless you are confident that another job opportunity would be better for you.

Good luck!

I am looking for Sr outside when I am building the seniority now. It is hard to find 100K income, does anybody has successful experience?

Personally I think a PE with 14 years expericne shall deserve that amount income.

And if you work for a small consulting firm, you do not want to be the new guy if the business turns south for 6-12 months. And yes the salary is higher, but losing your job is much more likely than at a Utility. -And typically the benefits are not as rich.

Somerset said:

I am looking for Sr outside when I am building the seniority now. It is hard to find 100K income, does anybody has successful experience?Personally I think a PE with 14 years expericne shall deserve that amount income.

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Unfortunately, there's no absolute rule that a PE plus experience, regardless of the amount of time, guarantees a specific income. In today's economy, it's an employers' market and they can pick and choose whomever they want. In a consulting firm, it's all about being billable, regardless of who you are and how much experience you have. Being billable is about winning projects, and winning projects is about competing against other firms and keeping costs low while making a profit. Also, in an engineering firm, one's reputation in the engineering community speaks volumes. If you have such a reputation among your peers outside of work, then that can be advantageous to your career development. If not, then it will be very difficult to establish seniority elsewhere.

You also have to look at where you want to grow professionally. Does your current position offer professional development / growth opportunities? That is the reason I am leaving my job for a new one. While I enjoy the office/company/coworkers where I'm at, I've stalled professionally. It's very difficult for me to justify requesting any promotion and/or payraise because there's no position to get promoted into and like sac was saying, the company is trying to keep costs low so they have no incentive to give payraises (except just enough to try to keep me from quitting). The new position I'm taking offers plenty of growth opportunities both immediately as well as positions that I can grow into.

This is pretty much why I left my first job. The company was really good to me but the only development I could really do after 4 years was to go into Management and I wanted to be an Engineer. So I started over in consulting. And really if you haven't done much consulting work it really is starting over. Certain fields may be more similiar but coming out Heavy Industrial Manf. to a consulting firm which actually worked in Heavy Industrial Manf. I still had a ton to learn. But on the plus side, it is like they are paying you to learn!

Dexman PE said:

You also have to look at where you want to grow professionally. Does your current position offer professional development / growth opportunities? That is the reason I am leaving my job for a new one. While I enjoy the office/company/coworkers where I'm at, I've stalled professionally. It's very difficult for me to justify requesting any promotion and/or payraise because there's no position to get promoted into and like sac was saying, the company is trying to keep costs low so they have no incentive to give payraises (except just enough to try to keep me from quitting). The new position I'm taking offers plenty of growth opportunities both immediately as well as positions that I can grow into.

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I think consulting will eventually pay more, we run into salery caps in industry all the time where its hard to pay and engineer more than a manager or other upper person. Consulting depends more on what you work will be billed at and how much work you can get. With a PE you can supervise more projects and have a higher billing rate.

Consulting is a really tough way to make $$, unless work just falls onto your desk and in that case expect less pay. To make $100K/year you will need to bill out at over $150/hr which is a project manager or above. This means full supervison of field work or oversight of at least 3 other jr. engineers.

EnvEngineer said:

To make $100K/year you will need to bill out at over $150/hr which is a project manager or above.

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Or you could just work for a company with much lower overhead, where instead of a multiplier of 3, its closer to 1.5.

Just a thought.