Companies putting you in a box. 5

[Fischstabchen]

This won't be groundbreaking or anything but it is just a comment about how companies, especially large companies tend to put people in boxes, especially at larger companies. Companies put people in these boxes, train them for these boxes, and then appraise them only for what they do inside of their box. These boxes tend to be incredibly small and well defined because people often move onto another company or box every 3-4 years. This creates an entire workforce that has been trained, promoted, and assessed for a small number of small boxes. So, instead of someone moving up that well rounded and capable of improvising, you have someone that has made a career of staying in their box and never risking making a mistake. It is like comparing jazz being played Miles Davis to an 11th grader playing off of sheet music or telling Miles Davis to quit improvising and stick to what's on the sheet. It almost feels like the intent is to manage and create an uninspired, disposable, mediocre, and replacable workforce.

 

[Kwan]

I was in a meeting with engineers, production, and quality. There were many suggestions of methods to solve the particular problem that was the subject of the meeting. The quality manager shot down every suggestion. Someone then said, "Ed, you need to think outside of the box". Ed replied, "I am the box".

 

[IRstuff]

That's unfortunate; I was part of a corporate "tiger team" investigating a massive yield failure once and while everyone was busily trying to "fix" the process, no one was looking at root causes.

It turned out to hinge on a technical paper published 15 years earlier that stated that the process was very sensitive to temperature, which no one in the tiger team was looking at, and it turned out that some "clever" process engineer had changed the process temperature to save money on replacing the quartz reaction tubes, which resulted very bad material quality. However, it wasn't until this one particular chip was run in the process that it became an obvious yield hit.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

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[dik]

Not my experience with HR... they have far too great an influence on items they know nothing about, IMHO.

Rather than think climate change and the corona virus as science, think of it as the wrath of God. Feel any better?

-Dik

 

[CWB1]

From both an educational and quality standpoint I'd argue that engineers should be focused into fairly small niches for 2-5 year stints, simply bc that is the time necessary to become competent in any given niche and how humans learn. In school we learn theory then practice applying it, an hour of lecture and two hours of homework being the usual standard before moving on to the next topic. To become licensed, engineers work in a given small niche four years (fits that 2-5 eh?), get signoff, take a test, and can work within our limited experience. Nobody worth their salt considers another competent after five mins spent solving one problem nor even after a few months solving quite a few of the same.

JMO but I find the notion that small firms offer "broad" experience rather comically absurd, as I do the thought that large firms "box you in." Most small firms dont have dink for facilities or deep expertise (aka experience) internally. They usually don't have budget for many modern engineering tools, a dedicated research dept, and rarely practice process-driven engineering or have much for quality standards otherwise. The joke that they can design anything but nothing well is often true. Dont mistake broad high-level design for engineering, much less broad engineering experience bc there's a big difference in making standard parts function for low-volume products and engineering an optimized part for 1M+. A bit of design routing a COTS hose is a helluva lot easier than engineering new hose stock and custom fittings. Large companies IME place a lot of value on broad experience and push employees in that direction. They usually have rotational development programs for juniors that place them in a design role, a manufacturing role, and a customer support, business development, or other engineering role for a few months each. To climb the ladder into management you typically need a broad background, having worked successfully in the foundry, in customer service, done an overseas tour, been in a "business" role, etc as well as been in product development and faced the long-term consequences of your decisions. At many small companies its common for managers to be only a few steps from the desk they started in. To each their own opinion, but my usual bit of advice for juniors is to spend 5-10 at a big company to learn proper engineering and gain experience with modern technology then try a small company for work-life balance, cultural, or other personal reasons.

As to an "uninspired, disposable, mediocre, and replacable workforce," I have met quite a few engineers who fancied themselves artists or other creative geniuses. None had ever worked in a dedicated research dept nor realized how process-driven those depts tend to be until I shared my experiences.

 

[geotechguy1]

CWB1, perhaps this true for mechanical engineering but I have not found it to be true in geotechnical / civil engineering.

 

[dik]

He's here, in the trench, with me, but the box isn't moving... If he's there, I'm pretty sure he's dead... I don't want to open that 'can cat of worms', for fear of future reprisals/repercussions or unintended consequences.

Rather than think climate change and the corona virus as science, think of it as the wrath of God. Feel any better?

-Dik

 

[MacGyverS2000]

CWB1, perhaps this true for mechanical engineering but I have not found it to be true in geotechnical / civil engineering.

I have also found CWB1's viewpoint to not be true of electrical engineering... the smaller companies provide a wide range of experience, forcing me to research a lot of varied subjects to design a product or resolve issues. And the large companies do tend to "box you in" from a skillset standpoint, with very little desire to help expand your knowledge base in other areas.

Dan - Owner

http://www.Hi-TecDesigns.com

 

[phamENG]

They usually don't have budget for many modern engineering tools, a dedicated research dept, and rarely practice process-driven engineering or have much for quality standards otherwise.

While I'm with geotechguy1 for the most part, this statement by CWB1 rings quite true with my experience. While I don't need much of a dedicated research department for structural engineering (there are a handful of small specialty firms that do it for niche markets, but for the general building industry it's not the way things are done), budgets for the best software and analysis tools are rarely there, and QA can be a struggle while understaffed and dealing with unrealistic deadlines - whether imposed by the client or internally. For most of my work the advanced software may be nice but isn't necessary...the QA on the other hand is vital and it's lower priority status at a lot of small firms have degraded the profession broadly.

 

[TheTick]

Even Miles Davis knew there was a time and place for playing in The Box. That's actually most of the time if it's not your turn to solo.

 

[Fischstabchen]

CWB1,

I have certainty seen new engineers that wanted to be artist or thought much of themselves. I am not talking about that even though it is an issue sometimes. Those aren't bad engineers a lot of times but they just need someone to sit-down with them or side projects. A lot of what I am talking about is fresh grad jobs that have no runway or people recruiting experienced people into jobs only to find out there was no runway or you have to wait 5 to 10 years for your turn and they just didn't want to train anyone and then are clueless when that person starts looking for new jobs in the company after a year.

 

[IRstuff]

Hah! Speaking of runways, McDonnell Douglas used to go out and hire a bunch of new grads and the randomly assign them to various departments; we once got a CS major assigned to our semiconductor group. We couldn't figure out what to do with them, so we swapped for an EE; ironically, the first task we assigned our EE was to write a test program for the semiconductor test chip.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

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[TheTick]

Lose your spoon, spend a night in the box.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqhyIIZt87A

 

[electricpete]

I just stumbled onto this thread, didnt' read all the coments. Regarding op...

Google famously had 20% time. You have normal assigned responsibilities / boss 80% of the time. The other 20% you could choose to work on almost whatever company project you wanted (almost).

Google is worth what... $0.5T?
Something tells me those guys at google had a few good ideas along the way!


=====================================
(2B)+(2B)' ?

 

[Fischstabchen]

electricpete,

For google, I believe it works because they are encourage people to go outside of their box and the sunk cost for losing 20% of an employee's time (I don't think this is a 20% lost because happy employees are much more productive) is likely made up with greater employee retention. I don't think that model though works in a lot of other industries were the cost associated with a project less labor and more fixed cost like equipment. There are a lot of fields where "play" is cost prohibitive.

 

[CWB1]

A lot of what I am talking about is fresh grad jobs that have no runway or people recruiting experienced people into jobs only to find out there was no runway or you have to wait 5 to 10 years for your turn and they just didn't want to train anyone and then are clueless when that person starts looking for new jobs in the company after a year.

You're still confusing small and large companies IME. Large companies usually have a flow chart defining steps in the business/management path/ladder and another for the technical path/ladder. Moreover, there's a helluva lot more job opportunities in a company with 20k employees vs another with only 20, and usually a much wider variety as well. Good luck getting promoted or even moving laterally in many small offices where the other six engineers are all close to your age and unlikely to move or retire anytime soon. Training is also night and day between the two. Much like software licenses, large companies usually buy training in bulk annual purchases with licenses/training being free after XXX seats so taking advantage of opportunities as schedules allow is encouraged. Its not uncommon today for the business folks to take a CAD course for hobby fun or engineers to take finance or programming/web/IT courses - BTDT. With the better availability of training you'll also see the broader bits of engineering education that small companies forget, usually a minimum of a couple days of ethics, legal, and process (lean & agile) training are required for engineers annually in addition to the usual technical and HR training. There's also all manner of informal training opportunities at large companies because you have a larger volume and greater variety of projects plus unlimited access to technical journals and massive internal-research libraries, as well as simply having more people on a given team/dept to mentor you. At my first employer it was common for juniors to be voluntold to attend several new-supplier sales pitches and DFMEA reviews every week to learn how parts are made and how they fail.

 

[MacGyverS2000]

Google famously had 20% time. You have normal assigned responsibilities / boss 80% of the time. The other 20% you could choose to work on almost whatever company project you wanted (almost).

Google is worth what... $0.5T?
Something tells me those guys at google had a few good ideas along the way!

This also has the side effect of people working more than 40 hours... voluntarily. Google still ends up with ~40 hours/week of work, but employees are putting in that 20% on their own time and don't notice it. It's a great idea... for Google.

I'm not suggesting it's bad for the employees, as they get access to Google equipment (like their electronics lab), but it is heavily skewed towards benefitting Google.

Dan - Owner

http://www.Hi-TecDesigns.com

 

[TheTick]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffrOovd741s

Denis Leary - Happiness Comes in Small Doses
17 seconds. NSFW--Profanity.

 

[glass99]

@CWB1 - I appreciate the spirited defense of traditional OEM style engineering - it's the Henry Ford approach of a heavy lift of men materials and management all for the singular goal of a sophisticated mass produced product. I think all engineers admire that model to some extent. But what about Kelly Johnson at Skunkworks? We admire that too - the small group of bad asses freed from the constraints of bureaucratic pencil necks telling us engineers what to do. Johnson only had ~20 engineers and very little contact with the rest of Lockheed, but the SR-71 flew higher and faster than any plane before or since. Even the first iterations of the Model T at Ford were built by small teams.

 

[dik]

forgot all about Johnson... a rare engineer, thanks...

Rather than think climate change and the corona virus as science, think of it as the wrath of God. Feel any better?

-Dik

 

[CWB1]

Purportedly that's a common myth about Kelly. He didn't have 20-30 engineers design the entire aircraft, he had 20-30 Lockheed engineers at a time rotating through his dept in addition to dozens of suppliers, trades, and govt oversight contributing. They did just as some do today - eat the elephant a few design goals at a time, rotating tech specialists through as-needed. The challenge larger than project management for him was the info compartmentalization needed to maintain security. Personally I prefer the more traditional approach, create a concept with a small team then throw an army at it to finish developing everything in parallel.

Regardless, its all relative and exceptions do occur. A 100 engineer company is huge to the one-man show but tiny compared to a Fortune listed megacorp, and that small 100 engineer company can do some pretty complex projects with small contributions from a lot of specialized folks yet not have dink for growth/educational opportunities. I've also known a few big companies with very limited employee opportunities bc they outsourced most/all of design, testing, or even manufacturing. Having regretted working on a few supercars I'd also wonder about the Blackbird. Quite often performance doesn't correlate to durability nor even quality, only a PITA.