Where are all the mechanical engineers?
Hey HN! I come from a mostly EECS background, but because I work for a tiny robotics startup, I've been doing a nontrivial amount of mechanical design work at my job recently. We've been hiring some really talented mechanical engineers, but I would love to meet more (and ideally hire more folks way better than me!).
It occurred to me that I have no idea if there is an equivalent to HN for mechanical engineers. Do you all have any ideas on where I could be meeting more people? Are there communities like HN with a more mech-e focused crowd?
(Context: we are working on construction robots that build solar farms, and we had a Launch HN [0] post a few months back.)
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30780455
There are always newspaper titles saying "we need more engineers", "where are all the engineers" or something similar.
To answer that. It's simple. The pay is bad.
We study for 4-5 years to get an Mech engineering degree and are promised 80K AUD+ starting salary (by many Australian universities).
The truth is you end up in debt whilst being removed from the work force for 4-5 years while studying. And you end up earning 40K AUD a year maybe a random few might earn 80K a year.
You end up in a position where you are highly trained and educated just to do CAD file translations. Surrounded by people who are not trained or educated who earn just as much or more then you.
Most Mechanical engineers (if smart) leave engineering and go to finance/software. I'd agree that the world needs more engineers to build things and make things more efficient and automated but the world wants and rewards administration and bureaucracy.
Not related to mechanical engineering, but I always wonder why there is such less discussion of real world product design. It's almost like we take stuff for granted. What type of degree would one need to develop a career designing stuff like lunch tiffin boxes or shoes or the other hundreds of myriad things we use in daily life? So many people seem obsessed with CSS and JS here.
Would love to see a HN for aviation startups.
Unfortunately most every time I see an aviation startup, it’s the same silly hot garbage. If I see one more multicopter based autonomous air taxi service, or magical supersonic transport for savage good boys pitched, I’m gonna scream.
(Context - 20+ years experience in product development engineering and new/derivative product launch at a large airframe manufacturer.)
Mechanical Engineer - loved startups - was introduced to HN by CS nerd friend - loved the community - read an article on Energy Storage problem - founded company building solution to that - have raised millions - still hang out here and love it. The communities dialogue on a lot of things outside of CS (Energy and Dynamics I have noticed) is pretty sub par though especially when mixed with a bit of excessive cocksureness. Thanks for everything.
Well I started out as a Mechanical Engineering Technology student, but definitely didn’t feel challenged mentally by my junior year, so I switched to Mechanical Engineering, which lost me a couple years of credits. Then when I was a junior in Mechanical Engineering, I realized that I was theoretically more intelligent in understanding how and why things work, but I noticed that I only looked smarter on paper and it wasn’t as much applied knowledge. Then I kinda met in the middle with a Manufacturing Engineering Technology degree where I already knew all of the physics side of things, and learned more about Automation and Robotics, and how to make things more efficiently and increasing the ROI on the project from a Business perspective. But I’ll also agree that sometimes it takes quite a bit of hunting for work that’s equitable to your knowledge and skills. In most cases, if you find some work that pays well, there’s a good chance that the work is definitely needed, but it isn’t very challenging and becomes more like doing paperwork. That’s where I’m at now where I make enough money to be above the poverty line, but all I do is regurgitate paperwork without having much input on the design of the CADs that I’m making. I feel like there isn’t an abundant amount of opportunities for work along Mechanical Engineering that entices the engineer with equitable pay for doing something that they’re passionate about and still challenges them.
Many mechanical engineers are working as coders as well because of the better pay. Two of them, mechanical engineer grads are working in my team as software developers.
We're here! Just lurking for interesting posts!
reddit.com/r/askengineers tends to be heavier in conventional engineering / industrials. IDK if they allow recruiting posts.
But I think CS people tend to be much more online, since they build the internet and all.
There's imechanica.org, I followed it more closely in my time at university but not sure what it's like more recently.
I would like to hear that you are working on construction robots to install bifacial solar fences on working farms, making them dual-use, as opposed to dedicated-use solar farms, which I consider a dead end.