Reason #46: Too Late to Leave

You always assumed you could switch course if mechanical engineering didn’t pan out. Now, with a decade under your belt, that exit looks impossibly far away. The idea of changing careers drifts through your mind on tired Friday evenings, only to be dismissed by Monday morning reality. Once in a while you even glance at job postings in other fields, project management, tech sales, then close the tab. You have too many years in this game and too much on the line to start over from scratch.

By now your experience is both your greatest asset and your biggest trap. You’ve specialized in a narrow industry niche and a specific CAD platform, the kind of know-how that doesn’t neatly translate to other fields. Prospective employers outside of mechanical engineering don’t see ten years of problem-solving; they see a mid-career rookie. Even within your company, you watch newer fields and roles sprout up that value skills you never had the time to learn. You’re a veteran in mechanical, but an outsider everywhere else (see Reason #3).

Financially, you’re caught between a rock and a hard place. The salary you earn as an experienced ME isn’t life-changing, but it’s higher than what you’d likely make starting fresh somewhere else. That modest house, the healthcare, the kids’ braces, they all lean on this paycheck. So, you keep telling yourself it’s not so bad. You trade ambition for stability because the mortgage doesn’t care that you’re bored. Golden handcuffs would imply luxury; yours are made of plain steel (see Reason #18).

You don’t just feel boxed in by money. You’re boxed in by how mechanical engineering defined your identity. You built your entire early adulthood around this title: the coursework, the late labs, the pride your family felt when you said “engineer” (see Reason #15). And now that title limits you more than it helps. It’s what’s on your résumé. It’s what HR filters see. You can change jobs. But changing fields means abandoning the only label you’ve ever been paid for.

It doesn’t help that many of your peers have already jumped ship. Some went into software, some got MBAs and moved into “strategy” roles (see Reason #28). They leveraged the analytical skills from ME and found doors open that would likely shut in your face today. You stayed behind, insisting mechanical engineering was your passion. Now it feels more like inertia. The field isn’t pushing you forward, but it won’t let you go either.

In the end, the only thing harder than starting a career in mechanical engineering is ending it. You don’t stay because it’s rewarding: you stay because it’s all you know.