How stressful is your field?

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I work for a small engineering contractor, and my role is software/control systems engineering, primarily. Roughly 70% of my job is engineering control systems for customers, and the other 30% is starting up those control systems at the customer site. I've been at this job for almost 7 years (considered a senior engineer now, so my level of responsibility is mid-to-high level), and it's my first job out of college.

My work is about a 7/10 or 8/10 stress level right now. But it fluctuates depending on how busy we are. The primary reasons the job can be so stressful are as follows:

1) We're frequently up against very tight deadlines.

2) Customers are not always responsive and won't always provide us with the information we need to make a project successful in a timely manner.

3) Customers expect control systems/software engineers to be wizards who should be able to wave their wand and make things work, and get very irritable when the situation turns out to be anything to the contrary.

4) Starting up control systems is a huge gamble, because you never know what's going to happen (obviously, we do as much preparation as possible, but even with this there are unknowns that inevitably crop up).

5) Control systems can be dangerous and kill someone if not done properly. You constantly have to be concerned with how what you are doing may affect the safety of the end user.

All this said, would I trade my job for anything less stressful? I don't think so, at least not at this stage of my life. I'm hardly ever bored in my role and I feel very accomplished whenever I complete a project, especially a large one.

On top of that, being at my current role has helped me learn to deal with stress in ways that I would not have learned anywhere else.

 
From what I'm gathering, a lot of it seems to be due to a schism between the technical and non-technical people. Is that somewhat right?

 
I'd like to add after reading some responses....

Not all stress is bad. Too much stress can certainly be bad, but I would find a job with zero stress VERY boring. Stress is what moves people to getting stuff done. 

Stress = pressure (both in measured in force per area). I would be skeptical of any job with zero pressure. #BadEngineeringAnalogies :) LOL

 
I work for a small engineering contractor, and my role is software/control systems engineering, primarily. Roughly 70% of my job is engineering control systems for customers, and the other 30% is starting up those control systems at the customer site. I've been at this job for almost 7 years (considered a senior engineer now, so my level of responsibility is mid-to-high level), and it's my first job out of college.

My work is about a 7/10 or 8/10 stress level right now. But it fluctuates depending on how busy we are. The primary reasons the job can be so stressful are as follows:

1) We're frequently up against very tight deadlines.

2) Customers are not always responsive and won't always provide us with the information we need to make a project successful in a timely manner.

3) Customers expect control systems/software engineers to be wizards who should be able to wave their wand and make things work, and get very irritable when the situation turns out to be anything to the contrary.

4) Starting up control systems is a huge gamble, because you never know what's going to happen (obviously, we do as much preparation as possible, but even with this there are unknowns that inevitably crop up).

5) Control systems can be dangerous and kill someone if not done properly. You constantly have to be concerned with how what you are doing may affect the safety of the end user.

All this said, would I trade my job for anything less stressful? I don't think so, at least not at this stage of my life. I'm hardly ever bored in my role and I feel very accomplished whenever I complete a project, especially a large one.

On top of that, being at my current role has helped me learn to deal with stress in ways that I would not have learned anywhere else.
I'm still struggling to accept that you're not structural, apparently...

 
I feel like my stress level is HIGH AF right now. 

I'm in between doing the work myself and managing/delegating to more people, so my pay is lower than desired and my responsibility is higher and I am a very dependable and responsible person so I end up trying to delegate and then balls get dropped or higher ups take that help away and I end up having to pick it up myself anyway. 

 
I feel like my stress level is HIGH AF right now. 

I'm in between doing the work myself and managing/delegating to more people, so my pay is lower than desired and my responsibility is higher and I am a very dependable and responsible person so I end up trying to delegate and then balls get dropped or higher ups take that help away and I end up having to pick it up myself anyway. 
Oh ive been there too. It sucks. Hope theres light at the end of the tunnel friend

 
the-light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel-demotivational-poster-1257986269.jpg
Is that a subway tunnel? This may have just turned morbid.

 
Usually not very stressful at all. It was pretty stressful today though. I’m responsible for keeping a workforce of 400+ working on programs (requirements through construction) so I had to create policies, procedures and workflows that didn’t exist before. 

 
You will have stress when you have to babysit the company you work for, that is you are responsible for finding clients, performing the work and ensuring your department makes a profit every time regardless of circumstances.  Recession?  Not the company's problem, that's YOUR problem.   Clients going bankrupt or moving operations to China?  Same thing, the company bears no responsibility for that.  A recipe for ulcers and heart disease.  

 
First of a kind, incredibly high regulatory scrutiny, uneducated/nonexistent supply chain, payments tied to milestones, high employee turnover, huge workforce generation gap, huge workforce knowledge gap - just about any variable you can throw into the equation exists. 
Sounds what I used to experience working on oil and gas pipelines. Plus someone with an 8 to 5 mentality in a 24/7 environment. And the 100-150 nights a year in hotel rooms.

 
I feel like my stress level is HIGH AF right now. 

I'm in between doing the work myself and managing/delegating to more people, so my pay is lower than desired and my responsibility is higher and I am a very dependable and responsible person so I end up trying to delegate and then balls get dropped or higher ups take that help away and I end up having to pick it up myself anyway. 
This is a constant battle for me, I'm supposed to be delegating my stuff to the young engineers, yet the engineers above me are delegating to the same people, and who are they going to work harder for, me or their supervisor?

 
This is a constant battle for me, I'm supposed to be delegating my stuff to the young engineers, yet the engineers above me are delegating to the same people, and who are they going to work harder for, me or their supervisor?
YEP

i just got scolded for taking away some of my required hours of a young engineer today, because now they had to fill it, when i was assuming the intent of whether theywouldneed all their scheduled time was because they wanted some. LOSE LOSE LOSE 

 

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