• Question: Do you have to travel a lot for work?

    Asked by Bee to Adam, Eloise, Iona, Jarrod, Yip on 16 Jun 2016.
    • Photo: Jarrod Hart

      Jarrod Hart answered on 16 Jun 2016:


      I don’t ‘have to’ – I choose to! I could have become a hairdresser 😉

      Of course, some jobs need flexibility and you might not always want to travel when you need to travel (I have missed some of my kids’ birthdays which is really annoying).

      I travel quite a lot, more than most engineers (I am writing this from California and I will be in Mexico next week) – perhaps on average 2 trips a month, some a few days, some a few weeks – I have projects right now in Korea, Chile, Spain, California and Mexico.

      Not sure why I live in Cornwall!

      On the other hand, when I am at home, I work from home – I have an office in my house and can sit with my cats and have lunch with my wife!

    • Photo: Man Hang Yip

      Man Hang Yip answered on 17 Jun 2016:


      Not really. Every couple of months, I do travel to all the warehouses across the country. Last time I did it in 1 week. From London to Scotland then to the North East of England, East Anglia, back to the middle of England, and then to Wales and back to London.

    • Photo: Iona Strawson

      Iona Strawson answered on 17 Jun 2016:


      I have done a reasonable amount of travel but its voluntary.

      One of my roles is working with our manufacturing sites in China and Brazil so that involves travel when they are bringing out new machines. It’s only once or twice a year and it’s great fun.

    • Photo: Eloise Taysom

      Eloise Taysom answered on 20 Jun 2016:


      I really enjoy travelling (especially when I don’t have to pay for it ;)) but I don’t have to do it. In academia you write papers and you can submit them to conferences around the world, then, if you get accepted, you can go and present your paper. I partly choose conferences based on where they are haha. I’ve been to New York and Paris. I’m going to Canada soon, which I’m pretty excited about.

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