Do you "Stand Out"? 34

[bridgebuster]

My employer (very large AE firm) has found a new way to waste money, an HR program called "Stand Out". You answer a bunch of questions and it tells you your personality type. Then every week you get an email to "Check In" to describe what you loved and loathed about the week, how much value you brought to the company, did you have the opportunity to use your skills, did your boss interact with you (he says good morning before barricading himself in his office in order to remain oblivious to what we do, what more can I ask?). I was wondering if anyone else is subjected to this madness?

They have a link to unsubscribe but it really doesn't work.

 

[aap2]

But to answer the question, no.

God made the integers, all else is the work of man. - Leopold Kroenecker

 

[ScottyUK]

Sounds like another way covering up weak and ineffective management by disguising it as pseudo-science.

 

[OSUCivlEng]

I don't understand how you guys can put up with all this asinine garbage. Why don't you just go work somewhere else so you can escape it?

I got fed up with my previous employer about 2.5 years ago. They hired a "consultant" to help them figure out some things as they had tripled in size in a few years. The consultant organized a company survey that showed some serious discontent. Then the owners/management decided to ignore it and promptly lost about 15% of their staff, including many of their best engineers. They continued on the "consultants" advice and now post the most worthless drivel on social media. They proceed to tell you how humble they are and how much they care. How humble are you if you constantly post things about your humility? One of my former coworkers refers to the place as "the compound".

I ran across the consultant at a conference a few months ago. He proceeded to talk for almost 2 hours about how he encouraged and helped his clients engage in this kind of behavior on social media and promotional videos.

 

[LSPSCAT]

"I don't understand how you guys can put up with all this asinine garbage. Why don't you just go work somewhere else so you can escape it?"

Unfortunately these programs and ideas are pervasive in every industry and so many small companies have been bought by large conglomerates that it just keeps percolating through.

Some recent observations. Think of the simple function of a parking lot attendant at grocery stores; observe now that at some Walmart and Stop and Shop locations there are stickers on the cart return areas that show RED,YELLOW, and GREEN to indicate how full each cart return is, really? We now need stickers on cart returns in a parking lot to tell us how to do the simple job of picking up carts from the parking lot and returning them to storage inside the store? So, somehow Walmart is funding a corporate level position whose brainchild to better manage carts was to institute a visual tracking system to manage how the parking lot attendant gathers and returns carts. You can only imagine that there is probably some type of daily reporting metrics and monthly chart that gets put into some monthly report. Go to your local Autozone or O-Reilly's Autoparts, as your wait in line notice that on the ends of the parts aisles there are all sorts of daily KPI charts for reporting their metrics.

(One of my favorite quotes from an old timer on a construction project when asked by a high ranking official on what metrics where used to track projects..."Oh, we only use English units, you know, feet and inches on our tapes." That was his dead honest, straight answer, the conversation quickly changed!!)

My wife is a pharmacist and they get timed on everything, it has basically turned into a glorified McDonalds. They literally get penalized for length of consultation time, well, if someone has legitimate concerns or is failing to understand then are they suppose to just ignore them. In addition, many are older people who are just happy to have a familiar face to speak too every couple weeks.

In my own experience, rather than a company hiring some real subject matter expects to help young engineers and develop standard analysis methodologies they rather hire consultants to create spaghetti diagrams to track peoples steps with the idea that if only we had more printers and people took less frequent restroom breaks all would be well. Look at the questions on the forum, a favorite retort is to tell people to please go speak with a senior engineer. Well, guess what, many do not have senior engineers to work with or subject matter experts and that is why they are here. (A big thanks to this community of dedicated people who routinely post and answer questions; I have been a lurker for nearly 10 years and it is amazing the dedication that some have and the sound advice that is offered.) The companies are too busy hiring consultants to figure out how to improve while the worker bees wallow.

Not sure how this happened but I am mid-career and was unfortunately exposed to this type of stuff since graduation. I struck out on my own and have been going strong for nearly 5 years, so there is hope I think it is more difficult to escape than some may think.

 

[bridgebuster]

LSPSCAT raises some good points. From a societal standpoint, there's been a trend over the past few years for employers and government institutions to take it upon themselves to become our mother, father, big sister, and best friend. This notion gives rise to all sorts of foolishness such as Standout, SMART goals, Wellness, Coloring books at work to relieve stress, etc. I'm sure I'm not the only one who is bombarded with wellness emails and phone calls about how much fun it is to eat nine servings of fruits and vegetables each day.

Another thing I've seen in engineering over the past 20 years is that junior engineers (probably not a PC term) should only do work that is challenging, interesting, and FUN! Sure, we all like work that is challenging. After all, how will you Standout? However, as the saying goes, "into every life a little rain must fall". What I mean is that on every project there's a lot of dog work - bar lists, pedestal elevations, quantities. I find that a lot of younger people are loathe to do this or simply can't, because it's not FUN.

Recently, I reviewed plans for a small project. I gave the young geniuses my comments on their drawings. A week later when I came back from vacation I saw that progress plans were submitted and they ignored my comments. The drawings are convoluted, difficult to follow, and generally unbuildable. I had to review what was submitted and had more comments. The person finalizing the drawings said he'll look over my comments and decide if they'll be incorporated. He had a few questions and told me many of my concerns were unnecessary. My response: If you think your right ignore what I said. The contractor can always send an RFI.

 

[SandCounter]

If an employer wants to boost productivity, there is no substitute for

1. Giving clear direction.
2. Trusting your employee to do the job they were tasked to do.
3. Staying out of the way.

Low stress and professional satisfaction comes from being able to go home at the end of the day knowing that you accomplished what you were tasked to do efficiently, effectively, and creatively.

If an employer has to ask the employee how much value they brought to the company and if they have the opportunity to use their skills, management is not doing their job.

I used to count sand. Now I don't count at all.

 

[jari001]

@bridgebuster
As a junior engineer (unsure how this term would cause consternation for anyone that is new to engineering), I have some push back on the "only wanting to do fun work" comment. When you join an organization as a junior engineer, the expectation from the younger employee is that they will be given opportunities to earn more responsibilities, and therefore higher status and pay. What I mean by this are assignments to projects where the intention is for you to be meaningfully involved with something new; you do some/most of the dog work but also work on something that is challenging. If you are successful in managing this load, you get more opportunities, rinse and repeat for a few years and you have a competent engineer that can be a key single contributor/leader on a project. If all you're given is the dog work, no words as to how the dog work helps the project (let alone your personal development), AND you have to become a hermit in your office to do extra work to get ahead, then you should EXPECT junior engineers to grumble. There's also a paradigm shift that younger people will not automatically defer to more experienced people. So, bridgebuster, if you didn't explain to this "young genius" why your comments were critical as a way to negate their youthful arrogance, how could any other outcome occur?

A closely related idea is "putting in your time", my cohort and I mostly reject this notion; we do however appreciate that there are some skills that require years to obtain and you, on an individual level, need to put in the time to practice. But if the culture of the company is for someone to sit and do dog work until someone throws them a bone to see how the act, they're not going to keep millennials. Do the experiment and give them a challenge, if they fail, assess the next steps (anything from additional training to termination) but if they succeed tell them that and try not to forget it.

 

[GregLocock]

Big belly laugh. That attitude will ensure that I have the option of part time work until they chuck me in a coffin. Thanks. By the way, if you can't figure out how to turn dog work into bones and instead have to be hand fed the bones, you needn't worry about dog work or bones for long.

Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376

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[jari001]

@GregLocock
It will be interesting to see if the pressure of the status quo will be enough to overwhelm the pressure of the culture shift. I will say though, I think you are making an assumption that the environment and circumstances that allows an individual to convert "dog work" to bones is a pervasive, pre-existing condition; an individuals success is almost never the result of just their actions alone. I do not think this is the case, because the point I was trying to make was that the work junior engineers grumble about is the kind that isn't a blessing in disguise. As an example, I would find it very satisfying to create a complete set of P&IDs from scratch or do the field review for an entire train and update the drawings for even a simple process but if you ask me to to re-create ~400 P&IDs in 3 weeks (after dithering around for my computer access for 4 days) to match a new corporate template, I'm not going to go home feeling accomplished in anything and I don't know who would. But sweating my butt off in the heat to trace lines and see the equipment, triple checking a colleague's calculations to make sure they trust me with their work in the future, contemplating diagram layout to ensure ease of use, researching alternative methods to analyze data, this is the "dog work" that I would ask for because anyone worth their salt would see it for the blessing in disguise that it is.

Just another thought, what about our current work culture setup makes it acceptable to pay a contractor 2x to 5x the going rate (perhaps you will command even more!) of newer, internal staff to do work they haven't done before that the contractor would find to be old hat? If you don't give people the chance to prove themselves, and yes I use the word "give" purposefully, then how will your teams mature and grow?

P.S. I hope you won't be chucked into a coffin, but rather, gently placed by the mortician and their staff. Seems a much more fitting end for someone that literally died from all the contract work they got.

 

[zdas04]

jari001,
I'm one of those old guys who demand and get outrageous hourly rates. You know what? When some new guy comes up and listens to a conversation between me and the construction crew or the rig crew etc. I go far out of my way to include them in the discussion, answer their questions, and try to help them understand the reasoning behind my instructions. When the crew moves off I am careful to hang around a few minutes to allow the new guy to ask any questions that he or she may not have been comfortable asking in front of the crew.

On the other hand if the new guy(s) are all sitting in their vehicles with the AC blasting and the music blaring I am not going to go tap on the window. I did a job a couple of years ago where we had 5 interns/early career engineers at the job site. Five of them. They all congregated under a shade tree and either napped or played games on their phones. I didn't go over there and suggest that they were skipping a learning experience. Finally one left the herd and came to participate. She turned out to be a good hand. The other 4 not so much.

What I'm trying to say is that no one is going to "give" you anything (and I also use that word purposefully). They may create subtle opportunities for you to further yourself, or you many need to do that all on your own. If what the project needs is you to change the template on 400 drawings, do it. Not as a mindless automaton, but as an Engineer. There will be a few of those 400 drawings that have bone-headed mistakes in them. Find those mistakes, ask your boss if they are right or not. Make sure that you learn the names of the sub-systems and how they interrelate, learn the terminology unique to your company. In other words, mindless dog work can either be mindless dog work or it can be a chance to improve your value to the company. The guys that treat every assignment as a learning experience get interesting assignments far faster than someone who waits to be "given" an interesting assignment.

[bold]David Simpson, PE[/bold]
MuleShoe Engineering

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual. Galileo Galilei, Italian Physicist

 

[jari001]

@bridgebuster - Sorry for this thread detour! Perhaps ironically, I've never been subject to such behavior modification/tracking initiatives. If my work isn't up to snuff, the company cuts my contract! That's motivation enough for me.

@zdas04

I agree with the individual behaviors you and bridgebuster identify as critical for success but we don't seem yo agree on the importance of circumstance (timing and prevailing culture) to realize the benefits of those behaviors

With respect to those engineers that hid in the shade and other such things, they weren't doing ANY work, let alone dog work, so I don't see their behavior as relevant; lazy is lazy.

When you give your time and experience to the younger engineers, you have become someone else's outside intervention that helps them succeed; the environment that recognizes that learning takes time and effort from the learner and a teacher figure, perhaps to the small detriment of a project timeline or a person's work day, had to be given. It's also why they would be remiss in saying they became good engineers solely through their own work (i.e. success doesn't happen in a vacuum).

Furthermore, new people need to be given assignments that have learning potential, one doesn't create such opportunities within an organization out of the blue and not every opportunity has some nugget in it. So once again, the fact the new person was sent out with you, when you alone could have accomplished what needed to be done, is the type of opportunity that needs to be given and recognized as a behavior critical for long term success (of company and employee). If the individual that is meant to learn does not capitalize on this, they will surely suffer for it in the long term (if not the short term as well). In contrast, let's take my drawing anecdote. Since I was not empowered to raise questions to senior staff to address possible mistakes, of what value was my "reviewing it as an engineer"? Unanswered questions are not learning aides. Ideally, conscious review is the default behavior of an engineer, but in this case I might as well have been a batch script. I feel bad for that company because others I worked with will have to clean up those mistakes at a worse time that I could have corrected months before. Maybe I should have demanded the time and effort of my superiors, but sometimes one picks their battles unwisely.

 

[zdas04]

Furthermore, new people need to be given assignments that have learning potential, one doesn't create such opportunities within an organization out of the blue and not every opportunity has some nugget in it

All I can say is NONSENSE. Simple Poppycock. Every opportunity has some nugget in it, and it is incumbent on someone wanting to learn to find it and capitalize on it. Things are no different today than they were 40 years ago when I started. Some of the new hires made a point of putting themselves in the position of growing and some didn't. By year 10 most of the ones that needed to be "given assignments ..." were gone. And rightly so.

Since I was not empowered to raise questions to senior staff to address possible mistakes, of what value was my "reviewing it as an engineer"?

Again Poppycock. If you act as a drone, you will be seen as a drone. Period. When I've assigned similar tasks to young engineers I was using those assignments to assess their initiative and sense of ownership. At the end of the project I would ask myself "is the new person someone I would give tasks that require initiative and critical thinking to?" If they just treated the task as a batch program (without actually writing the batch program instead of droning through it), then I wouldn't be too anxious to test their creativity. EVERY SINGLE THING YOU DO REFLECTS ON WHAT YOU MIGHT BE ASKED TO DO. Take a drone job and do it like a drone--get drone assignments. Take a drone job and add something to it--get creative assignments.

You are working hard to justify an untenable position. You were not the victim in the 400 drawing scenario, you were the architect of your own demise. You missed an opportunity to shine because you were overwhelmed by an outrageous schedule. Managers often provide outrageous schedules simply to see how you stand up to the pressure. I think you have failed that particular hydrotest.

No one ever takes career advice either solicited or unsolicited, but I'll offer some. Treat every assignment as an opportunity to shine and never ever bitch about an assignment to your peers (it will get back to your boss). If you have to work 60 hours a week, too many weekends, and too many all nighters then SUCK IT UP BUTTERCUP. Don't whine about the "dog work". Don't complain about your boss. Don't complain about your salary. Don't complain about promotions not coming fast enough. Don't complain. If you find where you are working to be intolerable, look inside yourself--nearly always the problem is your reaction to a scenario, not the scenario itself. If you find that you have never learned to control your reactions, then quietly start looking for another job. That is the adult choice: (1) make the best of where you are; or (2) go elsewhere. If you are waiting for your participation trophy, you'll be waiting a while.

[bold]David Simpson, PE[/bold]
MuleShoe Engineering

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual. Galileo Galilei, Italian Physicist

 

[GregLocock]

Boring war story. We had a front suspension that used press fit hub units (effectively a steel barrel), into an aluminium spindle. Sometimes some cars would emit a graunching noise when braking, and one of our cluey mechanics found that is he sprayed enough WD40 around the noise went away for a bit. For reasons that are lost in mists of time I was asked to look at it. Typical limits and fits job, check tolerances, check installation forces, recommend tighter fit, dog job done. No. I wrote a paper explaining exactly how to establish the correct fit for that system, what the real problem was, and why it was trickier with aluminium rather than steel (brake heat obviously being a significant issue) and how thick the material in the spindle had to be to work properly. That took a couple of days longer than just the dog work approach, but it was fun (I like deep dives) and useful. So I turned a dog job into a bone.

Oh and I won't be working my way into the grave, I only work 3 days a week.

Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376

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[bridgebuster]

@jari001 - you're not detouring the thread. This is really about how times have changed. I hope you don't think I'm arbitrarily attacking junior engineers; I'm not - I used to be one myself. However, when I started back in the 70's, your job was to learn how to put a set of plans together and learn how to write a letter. You did what you were told; you worked hard; asked questions; showed respect to your peers; showed interest in the project. Perhaps some older guy would take you under his wing and guide you along.

Giving dog work to a JE isn't some hazing ritual. It comes down to experience and cost.

 

[CWB1]

JME but I believe everything needs done in moderation, though I do lean heavily toward giving junior engineers and interns more challenges than mindless busywork. That being said, I started at one extreme as a junior engineer and have seen colleagues at the other. Personally I began being figuratively tossed into the deep end of the pool with an unprecedented (IME) amount of mostly engineering responsibility as one of the few design engineers in an OEM's long-term technology research department. Like most research roles I wasn't encumbered by mountains of process but challenged to work and learn whatever necessary to get the job done in an extremely fast-paced high-stress environment, consequently my knowledge and skills quickly equaled many of the most-senior engineers as did position, income, and contributions to the bottom line. OTOH I have known several colleagues spend the first 3-5 years of their career doing nothing but pushing process, checking prints, and other low/non-technical drivel as their engineering team's go-fer. Had they been given some real technical responsibility they'd have grown to be pretty good engineers, forced to "put in their time" first and accept a gap between learning in college and the application of that education, theyve struggled to become half-decent with anything technical and are largely still junior engineers.

To be fair, I suppose much of this depends on how you define challenging, interesting, and fun. Personally I consider the engineering portion to be all of those, the non-technical process quite the opposite.

 

[lacajun]

Where is SNORGY and his clever, concise, sarcastic MBA observations? This is the perfect subject for him! Stand Out...

If the P&IDs need to be updated, someone has to do it. If they assigned it to you and your attitude was poor, they'll get it. You can gain a reputation for being "too good" for certain kinds of work. That leads to more of that "kind" of work.

P&IDs are the most important set of drawings for a plant. They are the basis for everything else. If you update 400 of them, you'll know those drawings and the plant much better than you could imagine at the outset.

Industry used to be different but even in my almost 30 years, plant life has changed. Orientation used to be years in length, with time taken by older engineers to mentor, in depth, young engineers. Young engineers were given opportunities to work across all areas of the plant to determine what they liked best and to understand how things work. It was gradually whittled down to 6 months. By the time my group was hired, orientation was down to two weeks and much of what had been done was no longer done. No time. Waste of money per management. That's why SNORGY's input here would be priceless.

Pamela K. Quillin, P.E.
Quillin Engineering, LLC
NSPE-CO, Central Chapter

 

[bowlingdanish]

Fascinating discussion.

On the HR guff, I agree it's bull. I haven't been exposed to that level of crap but even what I am required to do 'development reviews' etc. I just tick the boxes without thinking and move on. Development is shown through delivering work, not filling out forms.

On the more interesting topic of shifting millennial attitudes vs. seasoned veterans, I agree somewhat with both sides. I'm also a 'junior' engineer (4/5 yrs) in the context of a bridgebuster or zdas, but I believe the entire concept of 'tasks' and 'giving' is a completely moot point.

Everything comes down to attitude - and it goes both way. If the junior engineer has the right attitude and is willing to work hard to take responsibility, but the senior engineer has an archaic attitude of 'doing their time no matter the output', then there is no path for progression other than the path that already exists in the senior engineers mind - THIS I do not agree with. And do not deny there are people with this attitude - it is completely a reflection of their own personal experience.

Similarly, if the senior engineer does not have a predefined notion of progress and is adaptive to individuals and how they perform, yet the junior engineer shows no desire to progress or take responsibility, then the dog work will continue.

I have always looked for ways to learn in what I do and often take responsibility when not asked to do so. This has caused me a number of conflicts with more senior staff, but at the end of the day companies value delivering projects and client satisfaction, and objective managers see this. It's my career, I have no desire to follow the path someone else thinks I should follow.

 

[GregLocock]

Who should have done the 400 P&IDs? If it within the capability of the junior engineer then why expect the senior engineer to do them?

Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376

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[CWB1]

I would expect the team working on that particular project to divide the grunt labor and the good stuff in a reasonable manner and get the job done together. If the junior engineers need to work late and are struggling bc the seniors are shoveling off tasks to enjoy low workload then those seniors need to be reprimanded and/or unemployed quickly. The more common situation I encounter is that older engineers shovel things off on juniors and interns bc they dont want to learn the software, many times their ability ends at opening a model and rotating it around.

 

[jari001]

It seems I was unclear in describing my example about literally reformatting documents - I got the P&IDs, was told to change font style, font style, corporate symbology, swap the axis labeling, convert file type, render, and so on. In this process, if I had reviewed the diagrams for actual accuracy as zdas04 admonishes me that I should have, I would have taken longer than the time provided to me. So to prevent this, I could have worked more hours and billed them to the project (and risk having worked for free when the hours get rejected) or simply do the drone work. The critical thing, that I can't stress enough, was that in my circumstance system owners would not and did not provide feedback on redlines and questions. How do I know this? Because OF COURSE I looked at them "as an engineer" (this is default behavior, is it not?) and found questionable things and when my questions don't get answered after the umpteenth time, I get the hint. The lack of the feedback mechanism removes any learning potential, because even if I worked for free and redlined all the drawings, I would never know what I did right or wrong. So zdas04, when you say you give these types of tasks to new people, I hope you are (and it seems in your nature that you would be) there to acknowledge what was done correctly and incorrectly. This critical difference in the scenario zdas04 posits and the example I relate is the difference between dog work that's just dog work, and dog work that is a blessing in disguise. But we should realize that this learning requires time and effort from the teacher and student, and if they aren't given the right environment that values learning and training then it won't happen. Ultimately, that company victimized itself, not me. Their people are going to have to go through paperwork hell to correct the mistakes they weren't ready to help me correct when it was the right time to do it.

From my POV, I was expected to be a drone and got drone work. And somehow if I rinse and repeat this I'll be an engineer worth something someday? My spidey-sense is tingling...

I WANT new people to be fire tested with honest challenges and pull their weight with dog work, not just one or the other since neither of those options are seemingly fair. No one that isn't already lazy is going to bat an eye at a GOOD stress test. But I'm not in a hurry to lose sleep over a BAD stress test.

I don't think this experience is unique to myself, to millenials, or any other working group age, or engineering as a whole...I guess millennials are just the ones finally ready to stop comporting to work cultures and behaviors simply out of a sense of propriety and complain when things don't seem right. And when an older person isn't willing to "suck it up" and accept critical feedback and responsibility about their performance as a manger or leader and start bad blood, we'll job hop (more than any other professional working generation) until we find a group that doesn't have such insecure people, or join a different industry, or basically anything that we want. That's reality as I see it.

In my circumstance, I believe each system owner (i.e. a senior engineer) and their respective team should have done this work and not someone from a completely different team pulled in to put a body on something. Why? Because they should have intrinsic motivation to do it right the first time if they HAVE to do it; it's their baby at the end of the day, so whatever corners you cut will cut you back. If within a team, there is a skill gap and one or two people have to do it all, then it's a mark of a properly functioning team that work gets redistributed or re-prioritized. But since the work had to be done, and I don't begrudge that fact, system owners should have been available to answer questions and provide feedback, not just let someone dangle in the wind IMO.