Title is Senior Engineering Tech. I get to run the maintenance dept. of a chocolate factory.
Originally trained as an old school Instrument Tech/Electrical Engineer and served an apprenticeship in a quarry full of antique machinery. I was heavily involved in projects to upgrade the site and got quite handy with the automation side of the job. Moved into the food industry with the promise of lots of automation work and not having to work in the freezing cold in winter, but now my office is a 30 year old portakabin with single glazing and a boss that turns the heaters off after I leave which equals 3 DegC when I arrive in the morning.
The role I do given the small team, means I have a full day every day with both office based tasks (procurement, admin etc…) and site based, especially given my specialisms seem to be quite rare (and either difficult to learn or I am a crap teacher) and in high demand. I’m also highly involved in Reliability, although we outsource our monitoring – so I’m more of a gateway between service provider and site.
All the while I seem to be stuck somewhere below a glass ceiling and having made myself indispensable in my current role.
I do keep looking at moving into a different field, but having been here for 8 years and being reasonably well remunerated it’s tough to make a jump.