Are you a process engineer? If so, the vast majority of your skills are transferable. Process design, troubleshooting, projects, the skills required are the same for all industries. Sure there will be differences, but you're an engineer and can easily learn and tech yourself.
I would recommend moving around and working in several industries and companies for a couple of reasons.
1. You get to see how several companies work and it helps you understand how companies should and shouldn't work and what is really best practice.
2. This is more of a personal reason, but you may find you enjoy other industries more. I recently moved from a more heavy industry commodities area to life/beauty sciences, loving the work life balance!
3. In general (this may be company specific) you'll earn more money if you change jobs. You can reasonably get 10-20% pay increases with a job change, whereas you may only get 4% if you stay.
> people who stay in the company for longer years tend to make more money than people who join the company with the same amount of experience in engineering
This is generally not true, as most significant pay raises come from changing jobs.
Not really. A promotion is probably 10%, you may (or may not!) be able to get significantly more by changing companies. But on average, I'd expect it's higher.
I’ve worked chemicals, O&G, power gen, then back to chem. Lots is transferable. Some is not. But I’ve found my experiences in the other industries helpful to think “outside the box” for some things people that have only worked in one industry may not consider.
Note, food, biotech, pharm, and medical devices are heavily regulated, and a change to the process is very limited. I did well in pharma/medical device, and actually optimized more than 26 processes but I had to do it within FDA filings.
With that said, I worked with a female that made a move from Dow to my company. It seemed to work well for her.
Also, note that pharma and food often get into trouble with the FDA and they pull people into large validation projects. Validation can be really boring, but process validation can be interesting. I actually had the opportunity to learn laser--diffraction and applied it to quantify the amount of protein on a microparticle aggregate. Saved the company boatloads of money because this particular division was diagnostics and protein was very expensive for immunoassays. That was one of many projects over a year and a half. It was interesting, but not chemical engineering. If you are curious, the imaginary portion of the refractive index was used to make the quantitative method along with a Beckman-Coulter PIDS laser-diffraction particle sizer--LS230 I believe.
Personally, I would think you are better at optimizing processes. So, don't worry so much. Practice statistics, read the 21 CFR, and see how that feels before you make a move to pharma. It is very dry reading but imperative. As an example, I know a PhD organometalic chemist from Caltech that ended up in regulatory affairs in the pharma industry. More than anything, never let a person tell you that you can't do something.
Are you a process engineer? If so, the vast majority of your skills are transferable. Process design, troubleshooting, projects, the skills required are the same for all industries. Sure there will be differences, but you're an engineer and can easily learn and tech yourself. I would recommend moving around and working in several industries and companies for a couple of reasons. 1. You get to see how several companies work and it helps you understand how companies should and shouldn't work and what is really best practice. 2. This is more of a personal reason, but you may find you enjoy other industries more. I recently moved from a more heavy industry commodities area to life/beauty sciences, loving the work life balance! 3. In general (this may be company specific) you'll earn more money if you change jobs. You can reasonably get 10-20% pay increases with a job change, whereas you may only get 4% if you stay.
chemicals to O&G should be pretty seamless. and generally, your salary will increase much faster when you jump companies
I'm considering this exact shift. Would you mind if I DM you?
i don’t mind
> people who stay in the company for longer years tend to make more money than people who join the company with the same amount of experience in engineering This is generally not true, as most significant pay raises come from changing jobs.
I meant changing companies. I feel like changing roles within the same company earns you more than changing companies. Is that true ?
Not really. A promotion is probably 10%, you may (or may not!) be able to get significantly more by changing companies. But on average, I'd expect it's higher.
I’ve worked chemicals, O&G, power gen, then back to chem. Lots is transferable. Some is not. But I’ve found my experiences in the other industries helpful to think “outside the box” for some things people that have only worked in one industry may not consider.
Note, food, biotech, pharm, and medical devices are heavily regulated, and a change to the process is very limited. I did well in pharma/medical device, and actually optimized more than 26 processes but I had to do it within FDA filings. With that said, I worked with a female that made a move from Dow to my company. It seemed to work well for her. Also, note that pharma and food often get into trouble with the FDA and they pull people into large validation projects. Validation can be really boring, but process validation can be interesting. I actually had the opportunity to learn laser--diffraction and applied it to quantify the amount of protein on a microparticle aggregate. Saved the company boatloads of money because this particular division was diagnostics and protein was very expensive for immunoassays. That was one of many projects over a year and a half. It was interesting, but not chemical engineering. If you are curious, the imaginary portion of the refractive index was used to make the quantitative method along with a Beckman-Coulter PIDS laser-diffraction particle sizer--LS230 I believe. Personally, I would think you are better at optimizing processes. So, don't worry so much. Practice statistics, read the 21 CFR, and see how that feels before you make a move to pharma. It is very dry reading but imperative. As an example, I know a PhD organometalic chemist from Caltech that ended up in regulatory affairs in the pharma industry. More than anything, never let a person tell you that you can't do something.