How useful is it in your experience to take additional university classes in order to find a new job for an engineer trying to find a job in a different field? Any better suggestions of what worked best for you?
Thank you so much.
8 replies (most recent on top)
Taking classes won't hurt and it may help. Some of that you need to do to keep up with technology.
If you take courses, make sure you get Seagate to pay for it too. That's the best way to go IMO if they still do that? Get full pay, take a course or two at night from evening masters programs around all on Seagate's dime. Then, after a few years after the company has paid out thousands in education benefit to you they either have to bump you up or you can leave. Be prepared to stay up will midnight every night doing homework though.
Although 'learn to code' was meant derisively, it's not a bad suggestion.
I got hit in last summer's IT layoff. I took a contract job out of blind panic about a month later and it actually worked out for me as a FTE job at about 3% below my Seagate salary in mid-December. There are a bunch of people that are still looking and a bunch that were able to find either contract or FTE work.
It's what you can do to make your skills portable to a new employer. The disk drive industry has shrunk to the point your circle of direct employable places is pretty small without that.
It depends on how disc drive specific your job is. A good certification, if qualified would be PMP or CAPM. There is also the data analytics bent you can add to your qualifications like the Citizen Data Scientist program they run internally.
I'm not sure what re-running over old engineering ground would do for you
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Plumbing job? Unfortunately people who are working at Seagate are not eligible for even work at Walmart. Once they get laid off they have to claim 401k
Learn to code
You mean get into real estate? Or plumbing? Or be a doctor? All this while still running the meter at seagate I suppose.