Engineers…help me out with this please?
I am dating an engineer. He is a control systems engineer and is currently working on a project. He literally works from like 8:30 am to sometimes 10:30pm and at least one day on the weekend. Are these normal hours to work in this field or am I getting the runaround with the “I have to work late” excuse?
Serious question and would like serious answers please.
Thank you!! 
I’m an engineer (systems architecture) with over 25 years experience. It is ABSOLUTELY possible. However, this should be a peaks-and-valleys kind of thing… in other words there will be crunch times where he will have to practically live with the project and other times when he’s just twiddling his thumbs. What you have to watch out for is the “habit” developing of just being at work all the time — I know some people (men AND women) that come in to work on pretty much the same schedule all the time regardless of how much work there is… they basically don’t know what to do with themselves when they have idle time to be at home.
If you are still wanting to be with an engineer after the above discouraging revelations, TALK to him, get interested in how things are going with his project(s), and more importantly find out what the long term schedule looks like so that you know when it is time to encourage him to plan for some concentrated “you time” and when just to be supportive. Also it doesn’t hurt to make it so there’s something to come home to that might be more interesting than the current challenges at work Good luck!
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