An 18-year veteran of the trade — who climbed the ladder from toolmaking, through NC programming, and into Manufacturing Engineering at a large aerospace corporation — posts a quiet, honest question: what comes next when you've already "made it"? He spends his days walking the shop floor advising and troubleshooting, but the products, the machines, the people, and the corporate politics have all become a grind. Stepping down isn't financially viable. So where does a senior manufacturing engineer go from here?

The comment thread is the real treasure. It's a candid look at the mid-career crossroads that almost every skilled tradesperson eventually hits, and the responses come from people who've actually walked through it:

• Applications Engineering at tooling vendors (Sandvik, Iscar, Kennametal) or machine builders (Haas, DMG, Mazak) — you get variety, travel, and you're paid to solve interesting problems on someone else's machines.
• Field Service / FAE roles — high pay, but the road life burns people out.
• Independent contracting / consulting — leveraging deep process knowledge for shops that can't afford a full-time ME.
• Sales engineering — surprisingly lucrative for someone who can actually read a print and talk to machinists in their language.
• Starting your own shop — the dream path, and the most cautionary tales.
• Lateral moves into adjacent industries — medical, defense, or semiconductor work, where the pace and problems feel new again.

What makes this post educational isn't a specific technique — it's the rare, unvarnished look at career arcs in a trade where most online content is about feeds, speeds, and tool wear. Several commenters point out that "boredom" at 18 years in is often a signal that you've stopped being challenged, not that you're in the wrong field. Others gently push back: corporate burnout is real, and chasing variety into a worse paying job is a common trap.

One particularly useful thread of advice: before jumping ship, audit what you actually miss. Is it hands-on work? Autonomy? Smaller teams? Different problems? The answer determines whether your next step is a vendor role, a smaller job shop, or a sabbatical.