[Bust]

Hi everybody,

My first post in this forum after I regularly look up here if I get into any sort of trouble. I am nearly finished with my mechanical engineering degree in Germany and currently I write my thesis on a CFD topic at the office of a big multinational company in Copenhagen. But even after an internship and that thesis in the industry I have the feeling that I still lack some more impressions from the "real life business".

As my entry into the "real world" is coming close I am currently looking more intense for job offers in Germany and Denmark, just to get an impression of what companies are looking for. When looking over the "market" it feels like at least 95% of all CFD related jobs are offered a large variety of engineering offices.

Here in our house, we have a big CFD department and do everything on our own. Nothing is done by consulting engineers. I personally think that I would prefer to work in a company itself and not an consulting office, mainly because I would prefer to built up steady connection to the product that I develop and because of the negative impressions that other people spread about engineering offices. Somehow it feels to me as if the image of a second-class engineer is communicated here.

However, I am not sure if I got the right picture here. Are engineering offices more the specialized competence centers as which they describe themselves or just a method to save cash by outsourcing some basic simulation tasks (e.g. in virtual testing).

I am completely aware that there is no black and white and that the situation changes from branch to branch and company to company. However, I would really enjoy to hear some of your opinions about that topic.