Reason #25: Pipeline Mismatch Is Built In

On campus at 1 a.m., the EE is tracing a jittery signal on a scope. The SWE just pushed a tiny script that saves a teacher an hour a week. The Aero kid glues a cracked airframe, rebalances the CG, tries again. You printed a pristine CAD bracket and told yourself you were done with grease. In EE, Aero, and SWE, the hobby becomes the job. In ME, the hobby is what you hoped to leave behind.

Those other pipelines filter for patience early. Debugging code, chasing noise, and fixing airframes are slow loops, and the people who stick with them already like the rhythm they will live inside later. Mechanical engineering takes two kinds of students, hands-on tinkerers and problem-set specialists who want hardware without touch time. That split makes expectations fuzzy. You picture systems thinking, not stripped threads. You imagine invention, not fixture buy-offs. Then the semester count creeps and you are still orbiting labs, CAD, and theory while the patience you were trying to avoid waits for you at the door.

Recruiters can read this mismatch. A SWE shows a GitHub with working commits. An EE brings schematics with oscilloscope traces and notes. An Aero shows flight logs, repairs, and performance. Your portfolio is a team CAD file, a campus machine shop part you could not personally fabricate, and a simulation snapshot. None of that proves you can live in the slow loop that physical products demand. So internships, the few that exist see Reason #5, slip away to the classmates who already like the loop, and the first real offer comes from a place that needs bodies near the line, see Reason #11 and Reason #20.

Day one on the job explains the fine print. You do not hold the socket, but the socket still decides your calendar. You move holes on drawings, call out threads, argue over a torque table, and update test plans so the unit survives vibration. Suppliers were locked before you arrived, so your clever redesign becomes a washer stack note and a test fixture tweak. The technician next to you learned the tools your work actually needs, see Reason #10 and you learn what that means for status the first time a build slips tolerance, and when your borrowed authority fails there is no shield around the title, see Reason #13.

You do not turn the wrench; you answer to it.

Reason #24: Your Applicant Pool Is Global

The hiring funnel for mechanical engineers in the United States is structurally crowded, see Reason #1. Labor-market totals show fewer projected openings than new graduates, and that baseline oversupply is further amplified by a steady inflow of H-1B workers in mechanical engineering occupations. Together, these streams create a persistently deep applicant pool for entry-level and early-career ME roles (Bureau of Labor Statistics [BLS], 2025; National Center for Education Statistics [NCES], 2022; U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services [USCIS], 2025). 

Quantitatively, the BLS projects about 18,100 mechanical-engineer openings per year on average over 2024–2034 (BLS, 2025). In the latest fully consolidated NCES year, U.S. institutions awarded 36,224 bachelor’s degrees in mechanical engineering (AY 2020–2021), roughly two graduates for every projected opening (NCES, 2022). This two-to-one ratio exists before adding experienced candidates, internal transfers, or those re-entering from graduate programs: factors that further intensify competition (BLS, 2025; NCES, 2022). 

Global labor supply compounds the squeeze. In FY 2024, USCIS approved 8,010 H-1B petitions in Mechanical Engineering Occupations alone (2,714 initial and 5,296 continuing. The practical result is that the same requisitions attract domestic new grads, experienced MEs, and returning H-1B candidates who already know the employer’s systems, fixtures, routings, and paperwork. 

These conditions are visible on the shop-floor side of ME work. Day to day, junior engineers are evaluated on risk reduction rather than invention, moving holes and thread callouts to match supplier revisions, rewriting DFMEAs when a casting tolerance shifts, shimming test fixtures to preserve repeatability, and pushing ECOs through signatures. In an oversupplied market, managers can wait for applicants who already did these tasks in the same plant. As if not bad enough, internally, the pressure is reinforced by peer competition and by the lack of a protective professional guild, see Reason #6 and Reason #13.

You were never outmatched, only outnumbered.

References

Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor. (2025). Mechanical engineers (Occupational Outlook Handbook). https://www.bls.gov/ooh/architecture-and-engineering/mechanical-engineers.htm 

National Center for Education Statistics. (2022). Table 325.47: Degrees in chemical, civil, electrical, and mechanical engineering conferred by postsecondary institutions, by level of degree: Academic years 1959–60 through 2020–21. In Digest of Education Statistics. https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d22/tables/dt22_325.47.asp 

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. (2025, April 29). Characteristics of H-1B specialty occupation workers: Fiscal year 2024 (Annual report to Congress). https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/reports/ola_signed_h1b_characteristics_congressional_report_FY24.pdf 

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. (2025, July 18). H-1B specialty occupations. https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/h-1b-specialty-occupations

Reason #23: You Are a Cost Center, Not a Contributor

Your badge says engineer, your cost code says overhead. The first-time finance walks the floor you learn the hierarchy that matters. Sales is revenue, operations is throughput, you are an expense to be managed. You propose a better bracket; they ask about unit cost and cycle time. You save a line from slipping schedule, the thank you is a reminder to hold the tooling budget flat next quarter.

This is not personal; it is how mechanical engineering is positioned. You live in validation, fixtures, packaging, and release, work that companies file under cost containment rather than value creation. The board is picked, the software is chosen, the suppliers are locked, and you inherit a pile of drawings that need holes moved, threads called out, and a torque table that nobody agrees on. The more disciplined you are, the more invisible you feel, because a perfect day has nothing to show but a green dashboard and a smaller variance. What does that do to your raise conversation.

Being labeled a cost center shapes everything downstream. Your projects are approved when they reduce scrap, shorten test time, or make the same thing cheaper, not when they make a new thing possible. When a fixture slips out of tolerance, a technician shims it and keeps the cell alive, you route the ECO and update the model later, see Reason #16. 

When the plant calls at 5 a.m., you drive in because the product exists where you live, not in a slide deck, see Reason #20.

Cost center status also drags your calendar toward coordination. You sit in three standups to defend capacity and two reviews to defend tolerances. You ship more slides than designs, see Reason #9.

Meanwhile, the programs that earn strategic credit live elsewhere. Budgets and headlines migrate to batteries, chips, and code, see in Reason #7. 

You will work hard, reduce risk, and keep the operation steady. The spreadsheet will still call you a cost to be minimized.

Reason #22: You Probably Won’t Work in the Field

Your first badge may say Engineer. Your second one often does not. You start by covering a launch, you sit in on supplier calls, you own a cost tracker for a quarter that never ends. Soon your calendar measures your value better than your drawings do, and people introduce you as the point of contact, not the designer.

This drift is ordinary, not dramatic. Sales wants a technical voice, so you quote from vendor selectors and learn the discount ladder. Operations wants throughput, so you chase OTIF, expedite a liner that missed a truck, and move a build because the shaker is only free on Sunday. Quality wants a narrative, so you write CAPAs, tidy control plans, and paste three clean screenshots from a test that passed on the third try. You are near the product, see Reason #20, but you are not really doing mechanical engineering.

The data matches the feeling. In the National Survey of College Graduates, among employed workers whose highest degree is a bachelor’s in mechanical engineering, about half say their job is closely related to the degree, roughly four in ten say somewhat related, and about one in ten say not related at all (National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics [NCSES], 2025). The Census reports that the most common occupation group for mechanical-engineering majors is Computer, Engineering, and Science, yet it covers only 48 percent of degree holders, with the remainder spread across management, business, and other groups (U.S. Census Bureau, 2025). Broad snapshots from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show engineering degree holders dispersed across architecture and engineering, management, and computer occupations, not just engineer titles (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2025).

You saw the contours on day one. The technician hears the bad bearing first and gets the cell running, while you document why the deviation is acceptable so production can keep the build alive. That is why Reason #16 reads like a map of the exits. If the company rewards schedule, cost, and customer emails, how long before your title follows the work?

You keep the degree, the job description keeps walking.

References

NCSES. (2025). National Survey of College Graduates: 2023 (Table 1-3). National Science Foundation. https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf25322/assets/nsf25322.pdf

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2025, August 28). Field of degree: Engineering (Occupational Outlook Handbook). https://www.bls.gov/ooh/field-of-degree/engineering/engineering-field-of-degree.htm

U.S. Census Bureau. (2025, July 9). Field of Bachelor’s Degree in the United States: 2022 (Table 7). https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/2025/demo/acs-59.pdf

Reason #21: Cost Down Is the Job

Your first performance goal is not invent something, it is remove dollars. You get a number that looks small on paper and huge in tooling, a cost-down target to hit before year end. You change a fastener to a cheaper grade, you shave thickness and promise the test will still pass, you swap a supplier the buyers can process in two hours. The part survives, the margin smiles, the word innovation stays in the slide template.

Most mechanical work is value engineering in plain clothes. You trade stainless for zinc-plated steel and attach a salt-spray chart. You drop an ABEC rating and accept a bushing where a bearing lived. You consolidate fastener lengths so the kit has one size instead of five, then switch to flange bolts to kill the washers. You relax a flatness from 0.05 to 0.10 so grinding disappears, you bump a surface finish from Ra 0.8 to 1.6 so a polishing step goes away, you trim weld lengths and thin a gusset because FEA says it still clears fatigue. You replace a machined spacer with a laser-cut shim stack, you change FKM to NBR and add a line in the temperature table. None of this is glamorous, all of it moves the costed BOM.

What counts as innovation when the goal is pennies? You write the ECO, update the control plan, and paste the before-after rollup so Finance can see the delta. The architecture does not change, the interfaces get cheaper. You want invention, but instead you will find yourself packaging other people’s breakthroughs see Reason #7 and Reason #14

You hit the target, then you get a new target, and that is the plan.

Reason #20: The Plant Picks Your Zip Code

Your offer letter came with a map, not a skyline. You drove past cornfields, smokestacks, and a rail spur, then parked beside a building that smells like coolant and cardboard. Before lunch, a supervisor asks if you can swing by bay three. This is mechanical engineering. You are hired to be near the thing as it becomes the product.

Other disciplines can float above the factory. An electrical or software team can design, develop, and ship from an air-conditioned office park two time zones away, surrounded by white-collar peers who speak in tickets and sprints. You live closer to the point of delivery. When a test fixture drifts out of tolerance, you tweak it so the data survives review. When the vendor’s motor shows up with a new flange, you adapt the mounting, update the keyway, move holes on drawings, call out threads, and rewrite the torque table so the build keeps moving. If a line stops, your phone rings at 2 a.m. The shop does the hands-on work while you route ECOs and CAPA rationales, which is exactly why you must be present, see Reason #16.

Oversupply makes the geography harsher. There are more mechanical engineers than attractive roles, so openings are where the plant is, not where you want to be. You take the job in a town chosen by rail, utilities, and tax abatements because you cannot negotiate for remote when ten qualified applicants will move tomorrow, see Reason #1.

Managers will say we are flexible, then schedule standups around the production shift. Proximity buys you credibility with technicians, which you need, but it also traps you in calendars and zip codes you never would have picked. Why would leadership pay for you to live wherever you want when the bottleneck is ten steps from your desk?

The irony is that the closer you are to shipping, the further you are from freedom. Your impact is real, very, very real, but the badge opens doors to the plant, not to a coastal remote policy. You can pick the job or the place. In ME, the place usually picks you.

Reason #19: Grad School Doesn’t Help

You might think the answer to your lack of traction is more school. After all, professors hint at it, job postings sometimes list “MS preferred,” and recruiters love to say “graduate-level experience” like it means something. But in mechanical engineering, the extra degree rarely moves the needle.

The job market does not value letters. It values experience. A master’s in mechanical engineering rarely substitutes for the three years of CAD, ECOs, and fixture tweaking that employers quietly demand. You can spend two more years grinding through finite element proofs, computational fluid dynamics, or mechatronics electives, then walk out to find that hiring managers still want someone who has already spent time in their exact industry, on their exact software, with their exact supplier list.

Graduate school can even make you less competitive. You cost more on paper, you are older, and you have not gained the shop-floor credibility or product-cycle scars that matter most. You apply to the same “entry-level” jobs you aimed at before, only now with extra debt and the faint suspicion in the recruiter’s eye that you were hiding from the market. Many companies quietly prefer to mold someone fresh out of a bachelor’s program than to retrain a graduate student who still lacks real-world exposure.

There are exceptions, of course. Niche R&D roles, certain national labs, or the HVAC design consultant who needs PE-eligible hires. But those are small islands in a vast sea of manufacturing firms, product companies, and suppliers who do not care about your extra diploma. They want ECOs closed, test plans rewritten, holes moved, and torque tables argued into compliance. Whether you have a master’s or not, the work does not change, see Reason #14. Graduate school does not bridge that gap. It just delays the moment you face it.

You invest years. You collect more debt. And you return to the same line you left, only farther back.

Reason #18: You're Paid Less Than Your Peers

The first thing you notice when you compare offer letters is that your friends in other branches of engineering make more. Electrical, chemical, computer, even civil, their starting salaries pull ahead of yours. You thought mechanical would be “the broadest,” which meant “the safest.” Instead, it meant you were slotted into the lowest-paying tier of the engineering ladder.

This is not an accident. Employers know that mechanical engineering is the most crowded degree pipeline (see Reason #1). They can choose from a glut of résumés, which keeps your wages depressed. As of May 2024, the median annual wage for mechanical engineers stood at $102,320 (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2024a) whereas Electrical engineers pulled $111,910, and electronics engineers even higher. According to Indeed, in fields like computer science, the gap widens further: mechanical engineers average $85,528, while computer scientists average $108,620.

Meanwhile, software developers, the fucking rock stars of the current economy, average $129,435 a year, with senior roles stretching well beyond that (The Sun, 2024). The difference is not subtle, and it grows as careers progress.

Day to day you will see the gap widen. Electrical engineers at your company sit in fewer meetings and cash bigger checks. Chemical engineers in process industries receive bonuses tied to output, while your role is considered overhead. Software engineers at startups you never heard of jump jobs every two years and double their salaries. You, meanwhile, chase a 3 percent raise that is eaten alive by insurance premiums. By mid-career the discrepancy is glaring. Mechanical engineers plateau while peers in other disciplines keep climbing.

You will find yourself explaining to family members why you are still stuck near the bottom of the engineering pay scale, even after years of experience. And because your title becomes your label (see Reason #15) those same relatives will assume that “engineer” means prestige and prosperity. You will correct them, awkwardly, while your cousin in software drives off in a new car.

It is not that mechanical work has no value. It is that the market has decided it is cheap. And in this field, the market always wins.

You will be an engineer, but you will not be paid like one.

References:

Indeed. (2024). Computer science vs. mechanical engineering: Choosing your career. Retrieved from https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/finding-a-job/computer-science-vs-mechanical-engineering

The Sun. (2024, April 15). Why are software developers in demand in the USA? Retrieved from https://www.the-sun.com/money/11009009/why-are-software-developers-in-demand-in-the-usa/

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2024a, April 17). Mechanical engineers. Occupational Outlook Handbook. Retrieved from https://www.bls.gov/ooh/architecture-and-engineering/mechanical-engineers.htm

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2024b, April 17). Electrical and electronics engineers. Occupational Outlook Handbook. Retrieved from https://www.bls.gov/ooh/architecture-and-engineering/electrical-and-electronics-engineers.htm

Reason #17: Professional Licensure Rarely Pays

You are told the Professional Engineer license is the brass ring, the line that separates you from the crowd. Then you look around mechanical engineering and find there is almost nowhere to use it. Civil has stamps baked into bridges and buildings. Electrical has protection and power systems that require a seal. Doctors cannot practice without a medical license, lawyers cannot practice without a bar card, accountants cannot sign audits without a CPA. Those licenses sit at the center of the work and the pay reflects it. In mechanical, most of the work lives inside product companies and factories where no one asks for a stamp. The credential mostly decorates your HR file while your day stays the same.

The few mechanical niches that truly demand a PE are thin, mostly HVAC and building services, pressure vessels, public sector compliance, and a small slice of consulting. That is not where most MEs are hired. In product design and manufacturing, liability sits with a senior reviewer or an outside firm, and many managers prefer that you never seal anything. You wanted leverage. You got continuing education. Meanwhile you inherit vendor-chosen parts and locked suppliers, then you move holes on drawings, call out threads, argue over a torque table, and tweak fixtures so a test barely passes.

The path does not match the payoff. You pass the FE, hunt for a PE supervisor in an industry where few exist, log the hours, pay the fees, and chase PDHs. Your reward is the same job description and the same PLM clicks. The raise, if it appears, is modest. The work does not change. You still rewrite test plans and route ECOs. You still collect signatures so CAPA can close. The license does not open new rooms, it decorates the one you are already in.

Worse, the supply is upside down. There are far more MEs with or chasing PEs than roles that require stamps, which is why you see licensed MEs applying to jobs that never mention licensure. In a crowded field, credentials become a way to feel less interchangeable, not a way to change what you do.

You hang letters after your name. The job stays the same.

Reason #16: Technicians Do the Real Work, You Do the Paperwork

Your first week on the line, a technician teaches you the machine by sound. He hears the bad bearing before you can find the panel latch. You are in clean PPE with a notebook. He is three steps ahead with a nut driver. Everyone looks at you for the decision anyway, because you are the mechanical engineer. In practice, you are one of the few white-collar people embedded in production, surrounded by folks who run the critical equipment every day. They see you as the fancylad from a hoitytoity engineering college, you see a shop that can fix problems faster than you can define them.

This is the social arrangement the job gives you. Technicians do diagnosis and real hands-on work, you route ECOs, write CAPA rationales, and get signatures. A fixture slips tolerance, a tech shims it and keeps the cell alive. You rewrite the test plan so the unit survives vibration. A vendor swaps a motor, a tech adapts the mounting in an hour, then you chase shaft fits, update the keyway, move holes on drawings, and argue over a torque table in a release meeting. When a build goes sideways, you are asked to sign off on a quick deviation, then you own the paper trail when the field return arrives.

The contempt is quiet but it is there. You are expected to tell people what to do, while they know the machine better than you do. They know it because they were trained and you were not. Sales drags you into calls as the egghead who will save the account, then forgets to give you the parts list or the histograms. Management praises your problem solving in public, then forwards every unsorted issue to you in private because the ME is the safest place to park risk. Companies hire you as a compliance wrapper around work that other people already did.

So who is the engineer here, the person who fixes the problem or the person who documents the fix after the fact?

You wear the title, they do the work, you sign the blame.

Reason #15: It Becomes Your Identity, For Better or Worse

Like it or not, mechanical engineering becomes your label. At home you are the cousin who “knows machines,” the neighbor who “understands HVAC,” the friend who can “fix anything.” At work you are the ME, the default brain on call. The degree does not sit on a shelf, it walks in first and tells people what to expect from you before you open your mouth. See Reason #3.

This plays out most clearly in social interactions at work. Sales treats you like the resident egghead who can rescue any deal, then forgets to train you on the product. You are dropped into a customer call to solve a failure you have never seen, with test data you were not given, while the people who own the relationship go quiet. Support wants instant answers because you are the engineer, yet the ticket lacks photos, serial numbers, or even the right model. Technicians roll their eyes when you hesitate, they know the machine by smell and you know the drawing. Managers praise your “problem solving” in public, then route every petty decision to you in private because it is easier to forward an email to the ME than to fix a broken process.

The same thing happens inside the engineering group. The board is chosen, the software is set, suppliers are locked. Your social role is the closer, the caretaker. You move holes on drawings, call out threads, argue over a torque table, and rewrite test plans so the unit limps through vibration. Everyone thanks the engineer, then they return to their real jobs. Credit travels up, blame sticks sideways.

Outside the office the label keeps working. Relatives bring you lawn equipment. A neighbor asks you to “take a quick look” at a rattling furnace. You explain that engineering is not repair work, and the explanation does not land. Strangers are impressed, people near the work are relieved to hand you their mess. As you learned in Reason #1, a crowded market makes labels do more sorting and less listening, so the social shortcut hardens into your job description.

Try to pivot and the same dynamics show up. You talk about adaptability, they hear mechanical. You ask for ownership, they send you a markup file. Do they want your judgment, or just a mascot that makes the deck look technical?

Either way, the label stays while the person gets smaller.

Reason #14: You're a Custodian, Not an Innovator

Mechanical engineering sells a picture of sketchbooks, prototypes, and breakthroughs. What it delivers is quieter. The core decisions are made somewhere else, then you are invited in to make them fit. By the time you show up, the motor frame is fixed, the impeller diameter is set, the heat exchanger vendor is chosen, and the pipe schedule is locked. You inherit an assembly that needs bolt patterns shifted, thread callouts corrected, clearance cuts added, and a torque table that nobody agrees on. You will spend a week arguing about a gasket while the thing you are gasketing was designed without you.

Even when the company’s business is the product, the interesting work sits upstream with a small group you rarely see. Everyone else tends the margins. You will size fittings on the heat exchanger rather than design the heat exchanger. You will route a cable bundle around a bracket that arrived from a meeting you did not attend. You will write the change order that fixes the label that failed a compliance rule you learned about yesterday.

Packaging becomes the job. You will pick fasteners, juggle IP ratings and cost targets, and make sure the box survives vibration, water, heat, and legal. When a test fails, you will own the calendar and the paperwork, not the authority to fix the part that failed. When production calls, you will redesign for assembly until it feels like the original concept was approved by rumor.

The innovations that used to be mechanical moved elsewhere. Climate work tilts to chemical and civil. The energy transition celebrates electrical. Aerospace headlines belong to guidance and software. Robotics and AI reward code and compute. Mechanical shows up afterward to fasten the battery, quiet the plastic, and keep the fan from wobbling, see Reason 7. The work matters, yes, but it is not where the credit or the prestige lives.

The pipeline stays swollen, so roles get thin. Employers learn they do not need a theorist to move a hole pattern or clean up GD&T. They need someone who will keep the drawings current and the fixtures passable. That is why technician titles expand while engineer sounds more like permission to update the model, see Reason 1 and Reason 10.

If you pictured yourself shaping new machines, prepare to live in the margins of other people’s machines. You will make it fit, you will make it pass, and you will hand it off. Someone else will make the announcement. You will make the slide.

Reason #13: No Guild, No Protection

Degreed Engineers brag about ABET accreditation, then wonder why nothing about their jobs feels protected. ABET audits syllabi, not careers. It inspects capstone rubrics and faculty CVs. It does not police titles in industry, it does not limit program seats, it does not lobby to restrict who does mechanical work inside corporations. Medicine and law fuse accreditation to licensure and scope of practice, so the pipeline narrows on purpose. Engineering hands you an accredited diploma, then sends you into a market that treats you like a replaceable cost.

The problem is bigger than campus. ABET accredits far beyond the United States. That includes massive producer countries where graduating classes dwarf the output of American programs. Your “gold seal” is not a moat, it is a universal stamp that expands the pool everywhere, then invites everyone to the same party. Managers chase lower costs, and your bargaining power sinks.

ABET also accredits non-engineering programs, including mechanical engineering technology at the bachelor and associate levels, often inside the very same institutions that confer mechanical engineering degrees. Employers blur the distinction because their needs are practical: prints, GD&T, ERP, testing, schedule. The technician looks useful on day one. You can guess who gets hired when a team is trying to hit a deadline, see Reason 10.

The result is predictable. Universities keep growing enrollment, because tuition is revenue and accreditation signals legitimacy. Employers avoid training, then demand experience. Entry-level requires three to five years doing the job already, see Reason 12. Wages flatten under a permanent surplus of candidates. When supply rises, your leverage falls, and no guild shows up to say otherwise.

If ABET behaved like a guild, it would tie accreditation to workforce outcomes, limit the pipeline where demand is weak, and enforce scope of practice in the private sector. It does none of that. It checks whether your heat transfer class had measurable learning outcomes, then it walks away. You are left to compete with everyone who has that same stamp, including graduates produced at a scale your market cannot absorb, see Reason 1.

Mechanical engineering feels “open.” In practice, it is unprotected. Your credential certifies that your program existed. It does not certify that your job will.

Reason #12: Entry-Level Requires Experience You Do Not Have

“Entry-level” in mechanical engineering means three to five years of doing the job already. You learn this the week after you graduate. Hiring managers are allergic to training, so experience becomes the real credential, not your degree and not your curiosity.

Postings ask for your exact niche, your exact software, and your exact industry. If you ran fatigue on rotating machinery, they want fatigue on rotating machinery. If you laid out HVAC, they want HVAC. Anything else is treated as irrelevant. As hard as it is to build a specialization in this field, see Reason 8, the cruel part is that you must already have it to walk through the door.

Where are you supposed to get that experience. Internships, you were told. Then you discover the punchline: the internships that matter are scarce, padded with make-work, or handed to students with three prior rotations, See Reason 5. The bridge that was supposed to carry you from class to work is missing, and you find out only after you jump.

So you aim lower. “Junior” roles quietly demand senior output. Contract work ends the moment you become useful. A recruiter suggests graduate school as a substitute for experience, and you consider it, even though more letters rarely open the door that a single year on the job would open in an afternoon.

By the time you finally collect the experience that entry-level demanded, you realize you trained yourself on your own time and your own dime. The industry did not invest in you, it filtered you. That is the real function of “entry-level” in mechanical engineering.

Reason #11: Your Specialization Dictates Where You Live

As hard as establishing a specialization in mechanical engineering is, see Reason 8, another challenge that comes up is how that specialization quietly chooses your address. The first real job gives you a niche. After that, the niche gives you a handful of ZIP codes.

If you build your experience around airframe fatigue, you will look at Seattle or Wichita. If your résumé reads pipeline stress analysis, you will study Houston apartment prices and learn the Beltway by accident. If you do NVH on trucks, you will orbit Detroit and its satellites. Marine work lives on the coasts. You do not decide where to live. Your project list does.

This would be tolerable if it stopped at work. It does not. Your partner’s career, your parents’ health, your kids’ school district, your hometown friendships: they all become secondary to the employer that needs your exact sub-specialty in the one region that still funds it. You can want Denver or Raleigh or anywhere with mountains and decent coffee. The postings do not care. They ask for five years in your precise corner of the field and they expect you to show up where that corner exists.

The longer you stay in your niche, the fewer doors open outside of it. You become experienced, which means you are hired to repeat yourself. Switching cities often means switching industries, and switching industries often means starting over. Many mechanical engineers eventually solve the problem by leaving mechanical engineering, see Reason #28.

Mechanical engineering is marketed as flexibility. In practice, it behaves like a cluster map. You move to where the cluster lives, or you stop being an ME. The breadth that was supposed to free you ends up confining you to a few shrinking places on the map.

Reason #10: The Technician Learns What You Actually Need

As a mechanical engineering student, you slog through four to six years of coursework (see Reason #2). By your third year you are knee-deep in your third calculus-based physics class, your second chemistry class, and your fourth advanced analytical geometry course. Every semester is another round of abstract theory and endless problem sets, all under the promise that this suffering will someday make you an “engineer.”

Meanwhile, the people in mechanical engineering technology (MET) programs are living in a different world. In their two-year associate’s programs they are studying fluid power, PLC and industrial controls analysis, project management, and professional preparation. In other words, they are learning the actual tools and practices that industry expects.

And here’s the dagger: many of these programs are ABET-accredited too. That means their graduates hold the same “seal of quality” you spent years earning, only they got it faster, cheaper, and with more practical training. Employers know it. Which is why most employers, secretly and not-so-secretly, actually prefer technicians for the kinds of tasks and projects that dominate day-to-day engineering work.

Those tasks don’t look anything like your homework sets. They’re not thermodynamics derivations or finite element proofs. They are tolerance stack-ups, geometric dimensioning and tolerancing, reading weld symbols, picking the right bolts and torque specs, and logging everything into ERP software so the next poor soul can trace it later. These are the things you’ll be thrown into cold on your first job, while the technician who came out of a two-year program has already been doing them for years.

If you’re an experienced engineer reading this, you might be fuming right now, remembering how you had to teach yourself GD&T or ladder logic at work while the technician next to you calmly adjusted a PID controller and clocked out on time. You brought the equations, they brought the credibility.

Mechanical engineers are supposed to have the prestige. But technicians have the preparation. And when it comes to getting hired and delivering results, preparation wins every time.

Reason #9: You Will Spend More Time in PowerPoint Than in Design

If you went into mechanical engineering because you imagined yourself sketching machines, building prototypes, and watching your ideas turn into reality, prepare to be disappointed. Your real job is PowerPoint.

The modern mechanical engineer is a project liaison, not an inventor. You will spend your days formatting slides for design reviews, writing emails to “align stakeholders,” and updating status trackers. The fraction of time spent on actual design is tiny, and even that design is usually about minor tweaks: a tolerance here, a bracket there, a material substitution for cost savings.

And here’s the kicker: the presentations matter more than the work itself. Managers and executives will never understand your analysis, but they will absolutely judge your slide deck. You will be told to “make it cleaner” or “add a bullet about risk mitigation.” You will learn to obsess more about fonts, margins, and color coding than about equations or mechanics.

This is not a minor nuisance. It is the job. The engineers who move up are the ones who can “communicate value to leadership,” which is code for make pretty PowerPoints. The ones who cling to technical depth get sidelined. The dirty secret of mechanical engineering is that most of your effort goes into non-technical labor that any mid-level manager could do.

By the time you realize this, you will laugh bitterly at the hours you once spent learning thermodynamics or machine design. You were trained for equations, but you were hired for slides.

Reason #8: Broadness Is a Liability

Mechanical engineering is advertised as the broadest degree. The pitch is that you can work in any industry, doing anything, because “everything is mechanical.” What they don’t tell you is that broadness is a trap. Employers don’t want someone who can do a little bit of everything. They want someone who has already done their very specific thing.

If your first job happens to be finite element analysis in ANSYS Mechanical, running vibration and fatigue loads on rotating equipment for the oil and gas industry, you had better hope your second job also involves ANSYS, vibration and fatigue, and rotating machinery in a heavy industrial setting. If instead the next opening is in Abaqus, analyzing thermal stresses on aerospace composites, your years of “experience” suddenly mean nothing. You are starting over as if you were fresh out of school.

Every career guide will tell you the same thing: the fastest way to advance in pay and seniority is to establish a specialization, to carve out a niche that makes you indispensable. Electrical engineers can spend an entire career mastering high-voltage systems or microchips. Chemical engineers can move from petroleum refining to pharmaceuticals with their process expertise intact. Software engineers who know Ruby on Rails, Python, or JavaScript frameworks can take that skill set to startups, Fortune 500s, finance firms, or tech giants. Their experience compounds.

Mechanical engineers? They fight to explain how their last job using SolidWorks on an HVAC duct system qualifies them to use CATIA on an aircraft bracket. The supposed broadness of their degree means their experience doesn’t transfer neatly, and every career move looks like a reinvention.

This is the bitter reality: broadness means disposability. It makes you look unfocused, even when you are trying to specialize. It forces you to restart with every career move. The “generalist” pitch is a lie. In the real world, the specialists win.

Reason #7: Innovation Is Happening Elsewhere

Mechanical engineering once drove the world forward. The steam engine, the automobile, the jet turbine, and the refrigerator were all mechanical marvels. But those breakthroughs are ancient history now. The mechanical age has already come and gone, and today’s breakthroughs are happening everywhere else.

Climate change? That is chemical and civil. Chemical engineers are designing carbon capture systems and synthetic fuels while civil engineers are rebuilding cities for floods, fires, and storms. The energy transition? Electrical engineers are redesigning power grids and building the batteries and drivetrains that dominate the headlines. Aerospace engineers are perfecting drones, reusable rockets, and hypersonic jets. Software and computer engineers are writing the code that runs robotics and AI.

Mechanical engineers? They design the brackets that hold the battery in place. They make sure the plastic casing does not rattle and the cooling fan does not wobble. The work is necessary, yes, but it is not where the excitement or prestige lives.

The cruel irony is that mechanical engineering still markets itself as “the broadest” discipline, a foundation for innovation. In reality, broadness means irrelevance when the core problems have already been solved. We can already move fluids, rotate shafts, and compress gases. Humanity does not need another redesign of the centrifugal pump.

For many of us who studied mechanical engineering, this is a bitter realization to admit. We went in believing we would shape the future. Instead, we discovered that the future was being built somewhere else, and our role was reduced to fastening, packaging, and supporting the real work.

If you are looking to shape the future, you will not find it in mechanical engineering. The profession clings to its past glories while the real breakthroughs belong to others. What is left for MEs is maintenance, packaging, and support. Everyone else gets to innovate.

Reason #6: Your Colleagues Are Your Competitors

One of the loneliest truths about mechanical engineering is that your classmates are not your allies. They are your direct competition. You might spend four years, or longer (see Reason #2), sitting side by side in lecture halls, burning midnight oil on the same problem sets, or cramming together for dynamics. But the moment you graduate, every one of them is gunning for the exact same handful of jobs that you are.

Mechanical engineering doesn’t offer a booming new industry that can absorb fresh graduates the way computer science or biomedical engineering can. The field is stagnant, oversaturated, and geographically narrow. This means that every position at a manufacturing plant, automotive supplier, or HVAC contractor attracts dozens if not hundreds of applicants, many of them your old classmates. If you thought you were building a network, what you were really doing was collecting a list of competitors.

And because the field is already oversaturated (see Reason #1: The field is oversaturated), the competition is even nastier. You are not only competing with your classmates, you are competing with every other graduate from the last five years who never landed a real engineering job in the first place. Many of them are still floating around, desperate to claw their way into the same narrow pipelines of work.

Inside companies, the same culture repeats itself. MEs fight over scraps of promotion opportunities and cling to “ownership” of minor projects. You’ll quickly learn that mechanical engineers are replaceable. Management knows there are plenty more just like you waiting outside the door, and so do your colleagues. The result is a culture of quiet hostility. Don’t expect camaraderie, don’t expect mentorship, and don’t expect loyalty. Expect turf wars over who gets to update drawings on a bracket assembly or who gets to give the next PowerPoint presentation.

In other words, you are not joining a community. You are joining a crowded waiting room where everyone is hoping the other guy doesn’t get called in first. And when they are, you’ll be left smiling through clenched teeth, pretending you’re happy for them while quietly updating your résumé.

Reason #5: Internships That Don’t Exist

If you are studying mechanical engineering, you will quickly be told that internships are essential. Employers demand “experience” for entry-level jobs, and the only way to get it, you are told, is through internships or co-ops. The problem is that for mechanical engineers, those internships are either vanishing, worthless, or impossible to land.

Companies have cut back on ME internships while expanding them in software and electrical, where students feed directly into projects executives care about. The handful of positions that remain often look nothing like engineering. They are glorified technician roles, focused on testing, data entry, or validation reports. Some are unpaid. The competition is absurd. One student bragged about securing a summer spot after sending 30 applications, only to be reminded by a peer that “most people have to put in far more applications. Hundreds, even. We had more than 50 applications for one intern slot for a mechanical role” (Reddit user, 2025).

Meanwhile, students in electrical and chemical engineering sometimes get hired before they graduate. One hiring manager admitted that he routinely interviewed seniors and made them offers on the spot, lining them up for full-time work as soon as their capstone projects ended (Reddit user, 2025). For mechanical engineers, nothing of the sort exists. Instead, students graduate with résumés that look barren compared to their peers. Even chemical engineers, who face a smaller job market, at least graduate into industries where the pipeline occasionally functions. A discouraged graduate summed it up bluntly: “I’ve applied to around 60 positions… I am discouraged… for every position I apply to, there are probably around 50 applicants” (gfd43tg, 2016).

This dynamic feeds directly into oversaturation (see Reason #1: The field is oversaturated). Without internships, most mechanical engineering graduates are locked out of the “entry-level” jobs that demand three years of experience on day one. Employers know it, and they use it to thin the herd. Mechanical engineering internships are supposed to be a bridge between the classroom and the job. In reality, the bridge is missing, and most students only realize it when they are already falling.

References

gfd43tg. (2016, June 28). How can a recent chemical engineering graduate secure an entry-level job? Physics Forums. https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/how-can-a-recent-chemical-engineering-graduate-secure-an-entry-level-job.858813/

Reddit user. (2025, February 14). Finally got an internship for summer 2025 after applying to 30–40 places [Online forum post]. Reddit. https://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalEngineering/comments/1hl0snv/finally_got_an_internship_for_summer_2025_after/

Reddit user. (2025, May 3). Hiring before graduation [Online forum post]. Reddit. https://www.reddit.com/r/ElectricalEngineering/comments/1co5lf8/hiring_before_graduation/

Reason #4: The Default Degree

 Ask a group of first-year engineering students why they chose mechanical engineering and the answers start to sound suspiciously alike. “I wasn’t sure what I wanted.” “It seemed the most general.” “It kept my options open.” In other words, mechanical engineering is often not a calling, but the default.

This reputation as the “undecided engineer’s major” feeds directly into the oversupply problem (see Reason #1: The field is oversaturated). When tens of thousands of students who could not decide between civil, electrical, or computer engineering all funnel into mechanical, the result is a massive surplus of graduates competing for the same limited pool of jobs. You are not part of an elite guild; you are part of the most crowded line in the job market.

The irony is that the supposed flexibility of mechanical engineering rarely materializes in practice. Employers do not look at your degree and imagine limitless potential; they look at your résumé and see another candidate in an endless stack. The “broad foundation” pitch you heard as a freshman turns into a liability when recruiters assume your skills are unfocused. Worse still, if you take an extra year or two to finish the program (see Reason #2: The four-year degree that takes five or six), you end up graduating later and hungrier into an already glutted market.

Choosing mechanical engineering by default often means you never chose it at all. And employers know it. They can sense the difference between someone who picked a discipline out of passion and someone who fell into it because it was the safest box to check. Mechanical engineers pay the price for that indecision with weak prestige, saturated markets, and degrees that promise far more flexibility than they ever deliver.

References

American Society for Engineering Education. (2023). Engineering and engineering technology by the numbers. Retrieved from https://ira.asee.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Engineering-Engineering-Technology-By-the-Numbers-2023-27-October-2024.pdf

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2024, April 17). Mechanical engineers. Occupational Outlook Handbook. Retrieved from https://www.bls.gov/ooh/architecture-and-engineering/mechanical-engineers.htm

Reddit user mechanicalthrow. (2022). “I picked ME because it seemed the most general.” r/EngineeringStudents. Retrieved from https://www.reddit.com/r/EngineeringStudents/

Reason #3: Prestige among strangers, pity among engineers

Tell a stranger you’re a mechanical engineer and you’ll get the familiar reaction: eyes widen, heads nod, someone says, “Wow, you must be smart.” At grocery store lines and family reunions, people imagine rockets or robots and assume you are wealthy or ingenious.

Inside the profession, however, the myth collapses. Among other engineers, mechanical engineering is a fallback, not a flex. One early-career ME summed it up: “write documentation; fix CAD; explain why something is late; write email” (u/wtbengdeg, 2025). That is not glory work, it is office drudgery dressed up with a title.

This is the inverse hierarchy of prestige: the farther you are from actual engineering, the more impressed people are with your degree. Your aunt thinks you are Tony Stark. Your coworkers know you are a glorified drawing updater.

Most mechanical engineers do not design rockets or build the next big thing. They tweak CAD models, chase BOMs, wrangle vendors, and sit through endless meetings. The “creative genius” image lives only in glossy brochures. The daily reality is summed up by one Reddit engineer: “Write documentation, fix CAD” (u/wtbengdeg, 2025).

Respect in this field is not tied to your diploma. It is tied to whether your company logo is recognizable, whether your name is anywhere near real innovation, and whether your role can be simplified into a TED Talk. Most MEs live behind the curtain, not on the stage. You are not building tomorrow. You are updating a drawing that goes from Rev E to Rev F.

The Prestige Ladder:

• Layperson: “Wow, you must be a genius.”
• Engineering student: “Nice, ME is a solid choice.”
• Civil engineer: “So what do you actually design?”
• Electrical engineer: “Mechanical is useful, just not very scalable.”
• Software engineer: “Wait, you still use AutoCAD?”
• ME with 10+ years: hands you a drink and sighs

References

u/wtbengdeg. (2025, April). write documentation; fix CAD; explain why something is late; write email. Reddit. Retrieved from https://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalEngineering/comments/1k45td6/mechanical_engineers_what_do_you_actually_do_at/

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2024, April 17). Architecture and engineering occupations. Occupational Outlook Handbook. Retrieved from https://www.bls.gov/ooh/architecture-and-engineering/home.htm

National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics. (2023). Science and engineering indicators: Engineering workforce data. National Science Foundation. Retrieved from https://ncses.nsf.gov/indicators

Reason #2: The Four-Year Degree That Takes Five (or Six)

Universities love to market mechanical engineering as a “four-year program.” In reality, almost no one makes it out on time. Only about 22 percent of STEM students graduate in four years (Malcom, 2016). Engineering-specific graduation rates are even worse: barely a third finish in four years, while six-year rates hover near 60 percent (American Society for Engineering Education, 2017).

Compared to non-STEM majors, engineers are far more likely to find themselves stuck in school long after the glossy brochures say you’ll be done. Mechanical engineering is one of the worst offenders. Rigid course sequencing means a single failed or dropped class such as Thermodynamics, Fluid Mechanics, or Dynamics can set you back an entire year, since these prerequisite-heavy courses are usually offered only once annually. ABET accreditation locks the curriculum into a rigid checklist, leaving little flexibility to swap electives or shuffle schedules, see Reason #4.

The slip often starts even earlier. The 100 and 200 level math, physics, and chemistry sequences gate everything that comes after. Precalculus feeds Calculus I, which feeds Calculus II, which feeds Physics I and II. Trigonometry sits behind Calc I at many schools. General chemistry may require an elementary chemistry course first. These are taken in order, not in parallel, and they are easy to stumble. One placement, one drop, or one C that forces a retake cascade into an extra semester before you even reach the core ME courses.

The result is a degree that drags on and on, while the “hands-on innovation” promised in recruiting brochures rarely appears until capstone projects, if at all. National Center for Education Statistics data confirm the bigger picture: only 44 percent of students at public universities graduate in four years, and engineering majors are even worse (NCES, 2023). Students themselves acknowledge the grind. One Reddit commenter described engineering as “five years, minimum… if you finish faster, you are above the norm” (u/laz1b01, 2024). Another put it bluntly: “It typically took about five years to earn a bachelor’s in mechanical engineering” (CareerVillage contributor, 2023).

The outcome is grim but predictable. You bleed away extra tuition, rack up additional debt, and lose a year or two of earnings before even hitting the job market. When you finally graduate, the market is already oversaturated. You spent the extra time and money just to arrive later at the back of the same line.

References

American Society for Engineering Education. (2017). Engineering by the numbers: Four-year vs six-year graduation rates (Benchmark 2.1 & 3). Retrieved from https://ira.asee.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/2017-Engineering-by-the-Numbers-3.pdf

Malcom, S. (2016). Only 22 percent of STEM students graduate in four years. National Academies Press. Retrieved from https://nap.nationalacademies.org/read/21836/chapter/6

National Center for Education Statistics. (2023). Undergraduate retention and graduation rates. U.S. Department of Education. Retrieved from https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/ctr

Reddit user laz1b01. (2024). The average for engineering is 5 yrs (so if you finish faster, you are above the norm). r/EngineeringStudents. Retrieved from https://www.reddit.com/r/EngineeringStudents/comments/tdig7o/is_it_common_to_take_56_years_to_graduate/

CareerVillage contributor. (2023). It typically took about five years to earn a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering. Retrieved from https://www.careervillage.org/questions/115619/how-long-did-it-take-you-to-get-your-bachelors-degree