Careers and Chemical Engineers
Planning for the Future of Work After COVID-19
The year 2020 was vastly disruptive to the economy, the job market, and especially students and recent graduates. Without even mentioning the tense day oil futures traded below zero, Chemical Engineers, in particular, have doubtlessly been surprised by an unpredictable year: internships canceled, employees laid off, investments postponed, and companies bankrupt. The zeitgeist is disheartened, and the outlook is cloudy.
A Year That Made Us Reflect
Chemical Engineers have been privileged to make it so long without challenges to basic assumptions about the security of the profession. In the past, workers and companies in traditional chemical engineering fields, such as petrochemicals and allied chemicals, have been able to shield themselves from the volatility of the petroleum industry by shifting operations downstream during hard times.
Other industries have not been so lucky. Aerospace and oil exploration are notorious for boom and bust cycles, and dozens of other fields, from accounting to marketing, fear obsolescence due to automation and artificial intelligence.
Chemical Engineering retains a relatively rosy 4% employment growth rate projection from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, however, the once guaranteed notion of a stable and handsomely rewarded career has been called into question by the pandemic. Chemical Engineers may wonder what the future holds. The events of 2020 accelerated many trends, but they also provide insights and opportunities for the future.
How to Predict the Future
Chemical Engineers can plan for the future by conceptualizing and responding to risks — adverse events, technological disruptions, and macro-trends — in their field and job roles. Indeed, this task is already a tough, billion-dollar enterprise conducted by consultancies, academics, and think tanks, which serve leaders who want to plan for the future of work. Predicting the future is impossible, but pairing general principles with domain knowledge can help yield good guesses.
Individuals can generate insights by considering two key principles. On one hand, technological development determines investment, growth, and prosperity. Those who create new technology will not be surprised or surpassed by it. On the other hand, proximity to the flow of raw materials through a plant, or society, stake a greater claim to the value added to those materials.
The fact that Nike, a shoemaker, surpassed Exxon, an oil producer and refiner, in terms of market capitalization this year demonstrates the extent to which technology and product innovation increases value along the supply chain.
Trends: The Money-Maker For Companies — And You
Some specific trends affecting industries that employ Chemical Engineers are commoditization, sustainability, and global competition. These have each been accelerated by the pandemic. Experience and domain knowledge, beyond the broad examples presented here, can help further improve understanding of how these trends manifest in different industries.
Commoditization is the gradual process of a product losing its competitive advantage, such that only price distinguishes it from others. For chemicals, prices fall as the chemistry becomes better established. This results in advantages to large companies and opportunities for acquisitions, which distribute fixed costs in ways small companies cannot.
Commoditization also affects specialized products like integrated circuits. As Moore’s law (the exponential growth of the number of transistors that can be fit onto a silicon chip) breaks down, the value added to chips have shifted from manufacturing to computer architecture and software. This trend explains the dramatic investment and payoffs in those fields during the past decade.
Sustainability is another trend accelerated by the events of 2020. Volatility in energy markets and risks surrounding climate change make it hard to imagine it not being important in the future. Improving sustainability incorporates the benefits of technological development. This may include the creation of new materials for energy storage that have yet to be defined, new catalysts to make mature chemical processes more efficient, and new computational and optimization methods to boost yields.
Global competition is a consequence of these trends. In response, businesses make strategic decisions that have implications on individuals’ careers. For example, as refining companies in Southeast Asia boosted production, commoditizing those products, companies invested heavily in ethane crackers along the American Gulf Coast. The objective was to upgrade natural gas to more valuable chemicals, and was a boon for engineers in the region.
Innovation is another response to competition. Regardless of whether a company produces raw materials or licenses technology, it will be more resilient if it habitually finds new ways to keep its edge instead of relying on a rising tide in the market. Recent partnerships between oil majors and cloud computing companies demonstrate a key collaboration to stay ahead of competition.
How You Can Stay Ahead
Chemical Engineers can secure lucrative careers by applying to their activities the broad principles and specific trends that have been discussed. Stay on the cutting edge! Show willingness to learn. Innovate, because employers will demand it and investors won’t tolerate stagnation!
Is that anachronistic Excel spreadsheet really going to be the official database five years from now? Try learning Python or SQL. Is your process perfect and never going to change? Consider a Lean Six Sigma certification or an advanced degree. Is a career change in your future, perhaps to follow the value chain or new technology? Look for translational skills between fields. Specialized companies rely on internal training, therefore demonstrating capacity to learn is essential. For example, standard lean production methods are equally relevant in chemicals and semiconductors.
Lastly, keep up to date with relevant industry news. Understanding developments in your field and the broader trends influencing them will help you select new skills, identify promising enterprises, and plan strategically for your future.
The Future is Bright
The story so far sounds challenging. How should we react to uncertainty? Chemical Engineering is a highly respected and highly specialized field. It is important and necessary too. These traits ensure Chemical Engineers will be in demand far into the future.
Humankind will always need to understand the natural world and how to make use of it, however, fortune is biased towards innovation. Plants won’t be run by AI tomorrow. Nor will therapeutic molecules, the genetic code, green catalysts, or sustainable materials suddenly be understood. But, the incremental steps along the way provide abundant opportunity.
If what you imagine the future will look like is different from the present, then you should actively work to achieve that future, or someone else will. Greater uncertainty leads to greater reward. With a bit of forward-thinking strategy and personal initiative, Chemical Engineers will continue to look forward to long and prosperous careers.
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