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.