General rant - early career burnout 13

[bugbus]

Lately I have been pretty disheartened with my job. I'm a structural engineer with around 6-7 years of experience, and now am finding myself with an ever-increasing amount of responsibility and juggling an ever-growing workload. Work/life balance is a thing of the past. Weekend work is basically a given for me these days. During busy periods, it is not uncommon for me to have to work multiple weekends in a row without a break just to meet project deadlines. Recently, I worked 26 days straight (i.e., 4 standard work weeks and 3 weekends in between). Of course, the reward for all this extra effort seems to be just more work and responsibility. It does not feel sustainable at all. It also does not help when direct managers have a similar workload and seem to view it as a point of pride - hard to complain about workload and work/life balance when it is just the culture at the company.

At the same time, there are others who put in the minimum required effort and consistently underperform, and simply fly under the radar. Rather than deal with this directly, the workload simply gets shifted to others. The workload is so unfairly apportioned in my company that while I am working back-to-back weekends, there are others who are given just 1-2 days' billable work per week.

I also don't believe the situation is better anywhere else. I switched jobs a few years ago and found the new job to be even worse, so eventually decided to go back to the previous job.

The other part of my rant is just about the nature of the work itself. I got into engineering in the first place because I like solving challenging, technical problems and finding creative solutions to these. I was probably a little naive about what an engineering career actually involved when I first started out. These days, I would say that easily 80-90% of my time and mental effort is spent on basically everything other than the core 'engineering' part of my job. Endless meetings, business development/writing proposals, reports, managing (very demanding) clients, invoicing/billing, project management, dealing with bureaucracy, ever-changing project requirements, huge coordination effort with other disciplines/consultants/contractors. None of that stuff is really enjoyable or rewarding to me. When the opportunity arises for some interesting technical work to be done, it is often just handed off to more junior staff with lower billing rates.

When I look at the toll this job takes on me, and the amount of effort and time I've invested to get to where I am in my career, and the sheer responsibility involved, the reward just doesn't stack up. E.g., being a tradesperson with a similar amount of experience pays practically the same as an engineer, at least where I live.

I'm sure my situation is not unique. I've seen other similar posts on this forum. Just curious about how people have dealt with this kind of thing in the past.

 

[dik]

At your peril... look at what happened to Weinstein...

-----*****-----
So strange to see the singularity approaching while the entire planet is rapidly turning into a hellscape. -John Coates

-Dik

 

[geotechguy1]

ha-ha

The power sits with management and their delegated liars (HR) - so HR would be the Weinstein in that case

 

[BulbTheBuilder]

I had to google "what happened to Weinstein" but on a more serious note I am glad I chanced upon this post! I learned a lot, started implementing some, and I feel so much better

 

[dik]

Are you sure you are kidding... it seems to be pretty common in jurisdictions I've worked in.

-----*****-----
So strange to see the singularity approaching while the entire planet is rapidly turning into a hellscape. -John Coates

-Dik

 

[JLNJ]

You have received some great advice in this thread. Eng-tips is a great resource. Now my two cents.

First - be brutally honest with yourself. Are you really doing twice as much as the person next to you? Or are you taking 50 hours to do what should be done in 40? I don't get paid overtime and have figured out how to get my work done in a 40-45 hour week. My employer gives me rave reviews.

If you are convinced that you are a top performer, make a list of what you do in a day, or week. Place emphasis on what you do to help other people do THEIR jobs. Also emphasize things like how you nip problems in the bud before they become big issues (especially where you are looking out for another discipline to make all our jobs easier). For example, before you spend a week designing a fire wall, maybe you pushed back on the architect and all they needed was a fire separation barrier. You saved your time, the project budget, and the client's money.

I gave a list like this to my boss one day. I think it surprised him how much time I spend training junior staff and helping others (even those in other departments) do their jobs better to make the whole project run more smoothly. Catching issues and correcting course at the start is worth 10x the value of a month of overtime to pound a square peg into a round hole.

Hopefully, some direct conversations with your employer will bear fruit. Be your own advocate, but don't be snotty, or passive-aggressive, or threatening. Harboring resentment is no way to go through a career.

 

[geotechguy1]

I mean, JLNJ - don't threaten violence or anything, but you sort of need to be able to hold the implicit threat of resignation to get anywhere.

Many employers take a strategy of trying to make people comfortable or getting you to a position where they don't feel like you'll leave either because you can't or because it's difficult.

 

[BulbTheBuilder]

Honesty is the best policy.. don't know if always.

Are you really doing twice as much as the person next to you?

Yes, the engineering task distribution is skewed. A few doing engineering and number doing politics (apparently, it is common in big firms). Also, we are currently understaffed and have lots of projects. A new grad we hired recently mentioned to me he was told not to work less than 45-49 hours.

Having a direct conservation hasn't led to anything fruitful. Is it either I am not communicating properly or because I am at the bottom of the food chain, but it often comes across like I'm nagging. I have been told I am not the only person working over 50 hours so I shouldn't think I am the only person doing overtime.

Nonetheless, certain suggestions like

So "I would love to do this, however xxx has told me to complete this by Friday. If you (yyy) want to discuss that with him or her (xxx) then please do, but otherwise it will need to wait until Monday...

Has made life better.

Working for 10hr/day [max] has also been good. I get to enjoy some free time in the evening and relax. There's a lot more but in all I think adaptability and resilience also help. I am junior staff, so I also see this as an opportunity to ramp up my technical skills. The downside is stress affects productivity (It amazes how stupidly I think when tired but later come and be like "oh, why on earth did I think that").

but don't be snotty, or passive-aggressive, or threatening. Harboring resentment is no way to go through a career

Being calm and positive feels good and helps a lot. I know the stress and headache that comes with harboring resentment....peace is what I seek

 

[Eng16080]

Having a direct conservation hasn't led to anything fruitful.

Not surprising! In general, most employers will do whatever they consider the minimum to keep a good employee from leaving. Unless they believe (either correctly or not) that you might leave, your negotiating power is basically zero. In your case, either:
[ol 1]
[li]they don't think there's any threat of you leaving, or [/li]
[li]they don't care if you leave (although this seems unlikely based on your post).[/li]
[/ol]

geotechguy1 said the same sort of thing:

you sort of need to be able to hold the implicit threat of resignation to get anywhere.

Yeah, you might as well get that tattooed on your face.

Until there's any perceived risk/downside for them, nothing meaningful will happen, guaranteed! Walk in there with another job offer. At that point, if they consider you valuable, you'll really see their wheels start to spin.

 

[geotechguy1]

You may be able to do it without going as far as the job offer. I've had success merely by hint dropping like asking my manager if they know anyone in management at our competitor firms x and y.

On the flip side, if they don't like you / want to get rid of you it can backfire as they will see it as a way to usher you out the door.

 

[IRstuff]

Should always have a Plan B, i.e., a safe place to land, in this case.

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

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