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.

 

[Guest262653]

@jari001
Wasn't that P&IDs thing a great missed opportunity to apply some programming to automate your dogwork tasks? Try to engineer your way out of any stupid work people throw at you. Be lazy. Engineer.

 

[jari001]

@avscorreia
If I wasn't in pharma, that's exactly what I would have done. I did that once before and I was told that I was breaking corporate security procedures doing that (since I wasn't in IT or automation, I can't be trusted with high level computer skills). My next job isn't in pharma so I'll have to break out the Python and C family again .

 

[Guest262653]

Man, that is broken... Glad I chose structural and geotechnical. Best of luck!

 

[bridgebuster]

@jari001 – you sound like someone with a good attitude and work ethic. Perhaps I’m wrong, but it sounds like you’re generalizing your situation with how things are everywhere.

I won’t deny that there are senior people collecting a paycheck but look like they’re on the job “retired” and of course there are projects where some of the staff are “charity cases” – gotta keep them busy somehow.

There’s another reality: When you’re putting plans together there are drawings that are boring and tedious to develop but they must be done. Often these are things that require less than half a brain, so we give it to the cheapest person.

A few years ago, I had a project for reconstructing a mile-long viaduct; the construction staging was very complex. Not one of the three junior engineers on the project were willing to take on the deck reinforcement drawings. It would have been a good learning opportunity for them. I ended up doing it myself, including 40 sheets of barlists.

Way, way back, I worked for a small bridge firm and no task was beneath anyone. It was a different mindset and work ethic.

 

[rotw]

There is something in one sentence above which does not sound entirely right....
Often these are things that require less than half a brain qualified people, so we give it to the cheapest person them.

 

[bridgebuster]

@rotw - I'm not a politically correct person.

 

[rotw]

between the bottom line I am pointing to and politics there is still some room... I suppose

 

[DVWE]

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.

Good luck with that. Your best bet is to start your own firm and run it your way.

 

[CWB1]

Good luck with that. Your best bet is to start your own firm and run it your way.

Depending on the field and niche that may be nearly impossible. In the construction niches (CE/SE) that may be easily accomplished before the engineer is 30. In others like aerospace and automotive most would be wasting their time to attempt that prior to 50 as they simply don't have the experience to be considered a reputable expert.

jari is correct IMHO in that younger folks today are very willing to jump ship if fed nonsense, not compensated properly, or otherwise mistreated. Unlike previous generations, there aren't many pensions left in industry to drive blind loyalty and going elsewhere commonly gains a promotion and pay raise. I told my previous employer that I either needed a clear path up the compensation ladder or I needed to be learning and growing as a professional, when it became evident that we had two different opinions of those matters I left Friday and reported elsewhere Monday.

 

[DVWE]

CWB1. I agree with your post.

More to my point, though, is that "the perfect company" does not exist. Unless you work for yourself and make up all the rules, you best learn to deal with insecure people and the fact that you will not get anything you want.

 

[CWB1]

Ahhh....gotcha now, thanks for the clarification.

 

[jari001]

With regards to giving the easier work to the cheapest labor, I get that. But the short term output of an engineer is not their only output. If this engineer is to advance through the ranks and become truly valuable, they need to be given opportunities to learn needed skills. Facilitating this growth might require easy work to be given to more expensive labor on occasion, and I think that is okay. The mentality that bridgebuser recalls about the small bridge firm is not found in medium and large companies anymore, and I don't think we're going to revert to that. But people at all levels should be able to do that easier work and if you benefited from such a structure in your earlier years, then I would hope you would be a willing participant in the structure that made you successful.

@bridgebuster
I am generalizing because so many of my friends, industry colleagues and peers, classmates, and younger students have the same or worse experiences. I'm not a special case of some great mind not getting his fair shake, I'm an engineer who is able to work as an engineer (thankfully) and is trying to become a good one. I think this ethos is not lost with millennials, but at some point you do the cost/benefit analysis and see things just aren't going to work out at a certain place. There is a decay in the understanding that the bulk of engineers that are required for the companies to keep churning need to be consciously developed to some degree.

Did anyone try to irrefutably understand why the younger engineers didn't step up for that work? Was the work not properly described so they would understand that it was a learning opportunity? Did they think they weren't up to the challenge? If that work would have been a good learning opportunity, then a little work upfront by a leader at the company to get a junior member involved would have easily paid dividends in the future; we are forgetting to do that work IMO.

@DVWE
It's not about finding a fantasy land, it's about working with people willing to put in the work to improve themselves and, by extension, make the working experience a better one. A manager is in the position to affect other people's lives based on objective and subject evaluations. I want to know that the person I am working for and trying to make look good accepts themselves and is willing to improve themselves when the it's called for. I mean, this ethos would have been expected of these same people before they became managers (as it is expected of me, now)...why do they believe this behavior should stop once they get a certain type of promotion?

 

[IRstuff]

jari001,

I think that you'll find sufficient blame to go around; most managers are where they are because they got promoted from actual engineering work, and therefore, have little to no education or training to be a manager. Their seeming inability to train and mentor young workers is nothing new; what has exacerbated the problem is that middle management was severely shrunk in the last several recessions, so in a larger company, a manager might be responsible for dozens of engineers, making it highly likely that the manager doesn't really see every engineer every day and have intimate knowledge of what they're doing and whether they even need help. And that's assuming the manager is that self-aware that they recognize that they even need to do something to make their charges better.

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg

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[HamburgerHelper]

IRstuff,

I think that someone being technical can obfuscate the necessity to manage people. Anyone coming in with a poorer technical background has to manage people to be successful. Someone with a technical might still cling to what made them successful before.

 

[epoisses_]

to hobby horses

 

[jari001]

@IRstuff
Human endeavors cause mistakes and what people should be focusing on is devising and executing potential solutions. So whatever mistakes have been made, we should recognize them as such and work towards fixing them.

I don't expect people to transform overnight into managerial geniuses or mind readers, but when a manager that gets critical feedback from those you manage, that should spark some introspection. If it's impossible to setup a communication scheme that allows one to have a better picture of what their employees are doing (which I am skeptical about), then they have to rely on, and encourage, after the fact feedback about your performance. If as a manager, one isn't willing to do the work that gets you the feedback to improve and understand your mistakes, I certainly am not inclined to work for such a person - it's only a matter of time before that bites me too.


Maybe older managers should use some millennial attitude and complain they aren't given reasonable direction and resources to realize the company's vision and complain their good ideas keep getting overlooked. But I think they also fear they work for insecure people that are more concerned with having it a certain way rather than the right way.

 

[IRstuff]

"So whatever mistakes have been made, we should recognize them as such and work towards fixing them."

These are very noble goals, but as POTUS vividly demonstrates, not all, if any, adults have an emotional maturity beyond age 8. The process you describe requires a certain level of self-awareness and mindfulness. The fact that mindfulness is a relatively new term goes to show that humans are rather intractable when it comes to self-improvement. And, that assumes that the person in question isn't on the severe end of the psychopathic spectrum.

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg

faq731-376 forum1529 Entire Forum list

http://www.eng-tips.com/forumlist.cfm

 

[UniCO2]

Attitude is the most important part of the job, I can teach/mentor anyone with average engineering intelligence. If you think you are special I don't have the time. Even if you are one in a million, there are still hundreds out there just like you. Once you realize how little you actually know, then you are ready...I feel like yoda now.
Also - keep job hopping - see how that works out for you in the long run.

 

[bridgebuster]

Amen!

@jari001 - I somewhat agree with your sentiments. I'm all for giving people opportunities. In 1999, there was an intern working for me - one semester away from graduation - this guy was brilliant. My group was working on a steel building design and he was running with the ball. He didn't have a good grasp of steel details but I took care of that part. I was so impressed with him that I made my boss offer him a full-time position before he went back to school. However, there's this pervasive attitude today - it's mostly among senior staff/management - that kids coming out of school today are geniuses, after all, they know something about CADD and they pick up quickly on software packages. Since they're geniuses, they can't do any menial work; everything has to be challenging, exciting, and fun! As a result, management embraces stupidity like "Stand Out".

Two recent examples I observed: Someone just out of school was assigned to layout a few miles of railroad, why not he knew CADD; that didn't last long. Then someone thought another recent graduate could plan the erection of a 150' section of steel bridge over a very active railroad. When I was asked for my opinion I said, "sure every kid with six months experience is an expert on steel erection". I was met with a lot of criticism.

There's also a lot of hypocrisy in the party line of "challenging work." About 5 years I ago I wanted to give a junior engineer some detailing for the apron of a culvert. The department manager said to me "that's too hard for her." Meanwhile, she graduated from one of the best schools in the US. Maybe that was his way of telling me "you can't give that to her because it isn't FUN".

 

[bridgebuster]

You really Stand Out!