RYAN
Is there a balance between work and free time in a STEM career?
I want to go into a STEM career, but I want to know if I will be stuck at work all day or if i will have a good balance between my work and my free time outside of work? Will I be working normal 40 hour weeks? #mechanical-engineering #chemical-engineering
4 answers
Michael Trocchia
Michael’s Answer
Do what you love and you won't notice the time spent. You can spend too much time at a STEM career, a finance career or a teaching career.
Jayavignesh Arivalagan
Jayavignesh’s Answer
Only thing I will add to Prof. Biswas' answer is that as a working professional, you will have to consciously choose work-life balance as something important to you. No company will ENSURE that you aren't working too much, especially salaried people, but some are better at managing expectations to be reasonable. I'm someone that is career oriented, so I put in some long days, but just working long hours all the time for no gain or purpose is NOT the way to get ahead and it does absolutely nothing for your work-life balance.
M. A. Rafe Biswas
M. A. Rafe’s Answer
STEM careers are quite a challenging and depends the type of projects or topics assigned to you. Most jobs are not a typical 40 hour work week for salaried positions (you may end up doing 50-60 hours a week). You need to develop strong time management skills and strong work ethic along with good teamwork and communication skills. If you can master them and apply them effectively, then you should able to manage your projects at work better and thus be able to a more balanced lifestyle in general. Finally and most importantly, make sure you work towards something you are interested and passionate about and thus even if you have to long hours occasionally, it will feel less burdensome and more fulfilling if it is part of your career goals.
Nicole Baillie
Nicole’s Answer
Thanks so much for your question! I will start by saying (echoing) some of the answers that have already been provided. It is the individual/employee who really is in control of balance between work and free time. In my case, I have been working in STEM related jobs, for technology-based companies, since I graduated with my engineering degree. As a family unit, we have children that require attention and certainly there are things that I like to do besides work :). But...as shared in other answers, I absolutely love what I do, I am learning something new every day and I am committed to doing all that I can to help teams reach their business goals.
One of the ways that I have found to improve the balance between work and free time, is in sharpening my programming skills. I have been programming for many years and it provides me with a lot of the same benefits as my clients....time. Meaning, I use my programming skills to help myself and others get to the right answers, as accurately and as quickly as possible. With the help of programming and automation, oftentimes I have additional time to do things other than work.
As for "normal 40 hour work week", I agree that when individuals enjoy what they do and are committed to doing the best they can, the time spent can be seen as more of an investment for growth than checking how long it takes to get a job done. There have been projects that I have worked on where I spend every waking moment trying to figure out how to make a tool or process better. And there have been projects that I have worked on that take much less time than expected because of good alignment on project goals, team members and project execution.
I wish you the best of luck on finding that balance you seek. It is out there for sure ;).