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Much of my family are in chemical engineering, petroleum engineering, and similar engineering fields, and from what I can tell just about the opposite is true.
by _delirium 13y ago
Much of my family are in chemical engineering, petroleum engineering, and similar engineering fields, and from what I can tell just about the opposite is true. The companies would much rather hire someone back out of retirement as a consultant at 3x their previous salary, than train up someone younger. They'll hire someone younger, but seemingly as a last resort. This seems most true in a few specific fields (e.g. metallurgy specialists), but also true for more common things like process engineers.
- vonmoltke 13y agoFrom my interactions with the O&G industry, primarily upstream, there is growing concern that the knowledge base is too old and that they are not getting enough young professionals into the pipeline to cover for the engineers who will, in the next 10 - 15 years, simply be too old to work. It is one of the big goals of the Society of Petroleum Engineers right now, and has quite a bit of support from Halliburton and Chevron.
- el_fuser 13y agoMy SO is a licensed engineer and there's little or no ageism there... Just as you report, they're valued even more as they age, even if they remain a line engineer.