[Otter74]

The designing-door-release-mechanisms sorts of comments are not off the mark - it is not always like that in the auto industry, but it is very easy to find yourself in that kind of track, where your sphere of focus is very tight.

I got my BSME from Georgia Tech and moved to Detroit to go to art school to study car design. I eventually suffered a sort of life-burnout because of too many years in school and CCS was a hell of a lot more intense than GT was, and started working as an engineer (took me years to be OK with being only an engineer), doing Shainin Red X work for GM. When I left Detroit I had been at Chrysler for several years, initially doing very dry quality work and quickly moving to vehicle evaluation / problem-solving work that was fun and fulfilling. However, I was always contract, which made it almost impossible for me to move into the kind of work I really wanted to do (studio engineering & related work) or even advance very easily in the kind of work I was already doing. Then I got laid off with a pile of other people at the end of 2007, got a job in Chicago where my girlfriend was, and moved. I think it is possible to find work you'd enjoy, with variety, etc. in that industry but you have to be careful where you start and be very focused on what you want and your longer-term goal, because it is easy to, per the above, find yourself as something like a release engineer for some minor component and that's all you ever look at. I think you'd be better off in R&D or testing and development positions, which if nothing else offer more variety and more interesting work - something with a higher-level focus.

This isn't the most well-formed response, but I wanted to get something out while it was in my head.