Career Change from Commercial GC

[dlee56]

I left my Project Engineer role with a commercial mechanical/plumbing contractor and went to work for the state DOT as a traffic engineer. Took a pay cut for sure and some of the state employees are lazy and odd, but the stress is 80% lower, never go over 40-45 hours (drive time included), I’m working on some interesting projects that effect roads that I drive often and know, and most of the folks are really nice, cool and genuinely care about what they do. The pension also seems like a good gig, if I stick with it I could retire by 50.

It also afforded me the opportunity to move to a more rural area like I wanted (and not suffer a pay cut) because the state DOT no matter what has engineering offices all over the place, urban or rural. There’s been pros and cons but I’m way less stressed, and have way more energy for the things I really care about and like to do.

 

[Kurts86]

Anyone ever gone to work in construction insurance? Had a previous coworker go and do that. Investigate builder's risk claims. Seems like a steady 40 hour work week, decent pay and bene's. Maybe more paperwork pushing than I'd like but seems like an option.

I worked in forensic’s engineering for a while on the claims end for insurance companies for a while. It was extremely heavy on writing to say the least because every word you put down could go to court. It was like 10% site trips, 10% traveling and 80% writing.

Everyone that left that field of work did so because of the writing demands and not because of technical demands.

 

[CJohnson]

I’m not sure this is helpful, but I’ll add my $0.02. I started as a junior engineer at a large (~5,000 people) company and traveled around to get some experience in different places around the country. It was stressful. Left that job to go work for a smaller (~100 employees) company doing a different type of work still in the construction field. I worked my way from PM to VP. It was also stressful. Now, I have my own business with 10 guys doing the same type of work as my previous job. It’s stressful too at times.

My point is, I think a lot of my stress is internal and it’s because I care about my work. I don’t think it’s always a bad thing. You have to focus on what’s inside of your circle of control and let that stress motivate you to do your best work. And, at the same time, learn to let go of the things you can’t directly impact.

Best of luck to you.