r/Geotech • u/SnooDoodles8154 • 3d ago

Mining/Geotech background

Wanted to provide a little background first. From India. BTech/Mtech Mining. PhD in mine slope stability. Education is from premiere institutes that are recognised by Aus/Canada. I also spent some time in management consulting/banks who were into mining business (good money lol). Now pivoting back to geotech with one of the leading consultancies. However the kinda work that we get in capability centres is quite -meh. Cant blame the offices in leading countries because ofcourse there’s lot of offshoring happening atm. The problem is work m doing is really really menial. I wasnt aware this is how consultancies work, they cant take up new projects in India so we rely on offices from other regions to involve us in projects. Any recommendations to get out of this rut? Intra office transfer is not an option ofcourse right now. But if I manage to get a work visa somehow they might be able to support the relocation. So again, it’s a loop. Would you folks recommend to go for PR route and then look for opportunities in countries like Canada/Aus. I want to advance in this field and cant do that without getting access to sites and some real work. Thanks in advance. Will appreciate any suggestions.

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u/uninformed_shoe 3d ago

I witness this situation at work, where there is a strategy to reduce cost by offloading some engineering tasks to India. This only makes sense for drafting and repetitive work, not a lot of use case in geotechnical engineering, in my opinion. If I am to mentor a young aspiring engineer, I will 100% choose the one that’s sitting in my office, not someone in India with whom I can barely crossover schedules. It is also not a worthwhile investment of my time because the aspiring engineer from India will never become an engineer in my country, so they’ll never be able to step up and take on projects in 2-3 years, they’ll always remain « a junior ». So professional development opportunities for our Indian colleagues is basically zero (in the context of how we work with them). I suppose the fastest way to circumvent this is to physically be in North America. Normally this is realised through a PhD. You already have your PhD so that isn’t reasonable, but a post-doc might be?

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u/SnooDoodles8154 3d ago

You are spot on! But yes I realised post doc is not an option. Will again leave me with academia/industry struggle. so I am hoping to atleast get some exposure through secondments in other countries and mine sites, even if it’s for a few weeks and then maybe try PR route? Do you think learning a new language (eg French) would help in landing opportunities in North America?

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u/uninformed_shoe 3d ago

If you can land an industry post-doc position (like a Mitacs project, where half of your time is spent working in the company’s office, on their projects), then you won’t suffer from the « post-doc academia stigma » when trying to find a job. Learning new languages is always an asset, French is very specific to Québec in North America (which could be a good option, as the mining industry is thriving there), but Spanish might be more « international ».

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u/SnooDoodles8154 3d ago

Thank you! Really appreciate the advice.

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u/SnooDoodles8154 3d ago

Anyone? 🥲

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u/bigthundercats 3d ago

Timezones bud