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.

 

[GregLocock]

Given Australia, I'm not even sure you can sign away your right to paid overtime, might be worth checking that out. My contract says I can be asked to work unpaid overtime 'from time to time'. Never in 30 years!

https://www.fairwork.gov.au/employm...-of-work/when-overtime-applies#overtime-above

It sounds as if you may have an issue with the time between shifts rule, which is a state based requirement, and can include travel time.

Cheers

Greg Locock


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

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

 

[CWB1]

Sounds like a crap employer. My standard response to those issues stateside is to treat it like an engineering problem.

1. Read relevant literature. Read the professional societies' salary surveys (assuming Oz has them). Search the web to find salaries at famous employers, and understand salary differences region-region. Dont trust local mentors/colleagues opinions.
2. Gather data/test. Apply nationwide or even internationally to see what employers are willing to offer. Unless you tell coworkers, applying only costs time. Worst case, you lose a few evenings effort and discover that your current salary is on the higher end. Best case, you get a few great offers and discover that your current salary sucks by comparison.
3. Compare results. Everything in life has trade-offs. Even if you have no interest in moving, make a list of pros/cons for each of your best job prospects to compare against the current one. Salary. Cost of living. Ease of job-hopping. Lifestyle - is the climate, topography, etc better/worse for your hobbies or enjoyment? Family - is a different area better for raising kids? Are you only staying local for parents who will pass in a few years (many including my parents made that mistake), leaving you alone and miserable? Write it all down so you can visually compare and make smart, if difficult decisions.
4. Make a decision. Even if you stay at your current employer, you can choose to either say nothing or demand the boss give you a raise based on offers/research. If you choose to leave, decide where/when.

My concerns about the OP, apologies in advance for the candor.
1. Mediocre salary. A few specialty trades can indeed earn more than an engineer. A tradesman working a crapload of OT can also earn more than an engineer. Most tradesmen tho earn significantly less than engineers.
2. Unpaid OT. Stateside engineers earning OT is uncommon, but its also not difficult to find.
3. Excessive OT. Your schedule should be driven largely by the workload that you've signed up for on a project plan, weeks or months in advance. If your schedule is overloaded or constantly in-flux then you need to improve your planning.
4. Given 1&2, I wouldnt be surprised if there were other aspects of your income and benefits that sucked.
5. Duties. At only 6-7 years most outsiders would still consider you a junior engineer but at your office, you're in a quasi-PM role that should be left for seniors with double your experience. You should be learning that role now, but your primary focus should be gaining engineering experience. Your position suggests that your employer is either short on experienced staff or doing very basic work. In either case, you're prob not in a role that will develop you into a good engineer.
6. Normalizing crap employers' behavior and not taking ownership of personal choices. If you choose a crap job bc it allows you to be happy otherwise great, but dont allow the job to affect your happiness. OTOH, if you're entirely miserable then make a change. Own your decisions fully and realize that your decisions control your life, not fate or other nonsense. Oz isnt Nazi Germany 1944, you have the freedom to leave tomorrow and there's always more money, better hours, etc to be found. Personally, I've been in the top 10% of US engineering salaries since college and regularly get offers for 50%+ more (in areas I dislike). Owning my decisions fully, having confidence that I'm making intelligent choices, realizing that setbacks will happen but can be overcome, and recognizing that there is a LOT of opportunity in this world brings me joy and helps me push forward in life. From the original post I'm concerned that you're doing the opposite, and its contributing to the misery of your current employment.

Best of luck regardless, and much respect for asking for help.

 

[AZPete]

CWB1,

For reference/calibration, what's your perception of the current top 10% of US salaries, and what kinds of fields have historically (in your experience) dangled 50% bumps?

 

[NorthCivil]

@CWB1
From my general understanding,
people in general in Australia are very well paid, compared to the rest of the developed world.
tradesmen in Australia are very handsomely paid, compared to the rest of the developed world.
engineers in Australia, are not all that well paid, compared to the rest of the developed world.

looking at Oz from NZ, it doesnt look like the salaries are much if at all higher than here in NZ, for engineers.
though ive heard tons of tales of builders moving to Oz and 2x or even 3x'ing their pay.
I dont know why engineering in australia isnt that well paid. maybe some of the aussie engineers could chime in.

 

[geotechguy1]

Northcivil - most people I know going from NZ to Aus have gotten 15-30% bumps in total comp engineering wise. Until recently cities like Brisbane and Melbourne also offered a much better value proposition in terms of cost of living although I think that has evened out to some extent. There has also been alot of wage inflation in NZ over the last ~5 years which may not hold up, if the new gov doesn't start spending I wouldn't be surprised to see an industry wide wage drop of 20-30% opening that gap up with Aus to 50-60%.

 

[Stick.]

The company will take as much as you give. You have to be the one to say no.

Pick an amount of time you're willing to work in a week/month and stick to it. If the work can't be done in that time, then it's on the company to either pay you proper overtime or hire more staff. You're not responsible for your company being understaffed or mismanaged, so don't act like you are by working unpaid or underpaid overtime.

 

[CWB1]

what's your perception of the current top 10% of US salaries, and what kinds of fields have historically (in your experience) dangled 50% bumps?

Median top 10% of all US engineering disciplines on bls.gov was ~$150k last year. The various societies' salary surveys IME tend to be a bit higher but I rarely read pubs outside ASME or SAE and consider them anecdotally.

The reason the offered increases were large is my having to relocate from the US midwest to either central/Southern California, Asia, or the MiddleEast. They're unrelated to field/niche. I've held a few unique roles and am told my background/resume is better than most but I'm simply a generalist design ME, not highly specialized compared to many colleagues.

 

[JohnRBaker]

I worked for two companies in my 49+ year engineering career, and only retired because it was time (I was almost 69-years old), which was eight-years ago.

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without

 

[dik]

It would be nice to see what the median salary is.

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

-Dik

 

[geotechguy1]

Another thing I learned is basically you have to act like your own personal HR department.

You know how HR gets paid to protect the interests of the business / management, and say whatever needs to be said? They'll tell you that you can be honest to them with a disarming smile; they'll say 'we just can't offer more than a 3% raise right now, the business just isn't doing well enough and budgets have been allocated' with a warm convincing smile, they'll say that if you just take on this really challenging underbudget assignment and do lots of work for free that they can consider giving you the work you actually want in 2 or 3 years. They'll offer a fresh PE from another firm a 20% raise to entice them to join, but tell you that even though you have PE you just haven't shown enough to earn a raise so you need to put in the work as a PE for another 2 or 3 years? They'll say the most valuable experience is construction qa/qc when they need staff to do that, then make the people who volunteered for that redundant during a large recession and tell them qa/qc experience is worthless they have to keep designers.

Well, it's all bullshit. They lie to get what they want / increase profits / protect management etc. Employees do not owe their employer any more than the honesty and respect they are given - HR and management lie to you, lie to them. Tell them how much you love working for them an you think firm xyz is the best firm in the world and you want to stay your whole career while you apply for new jobs. Tell them how strenuos and challenging your current tasks are and how you need 16 hours to do something you can do in 1 hour. If you've automated something or found a way to make a task that takes 80 hours take 2 hours, unless you're absolutely certain you can pitch it and get a big raise / all the credit, hide it and keep it to yourself, and keep charging the 80 hours. Round every task up to the nearest hour or two hours. Fuck em.

 

[dik]

Be direct with HR, but do not lie to them.

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

-Dik

 

[human909]

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.

As soon as the original poster said this I was almost certain he/she was another local OZ engineer. While there may be some different work and salary dynamics in the Australian market, largely most comments here have been bang on good advice.

bugbus you are being taken for a ride by your employer. You need to step up and make it stop or move elsewhere. As others have correctly pointed out the Australia has good employment laws and working overtime without extra pay or time in lieu shouldn't be normalised. Sure I still do it, but I make sure I get my pound of flesh in return buy time in lieu or similar.

From my general understanding,
people in general in Australia are very well paid, compared to the rest of the developed world.
tradesmen in Australia are very handsomely paid, compared to the rest of the developed world.
engineers in Australia, are not all that well paid, compared to the rest of the developed world.

I dont know why engineering in australia isnt that well paid. maybe some of the aussie engineers could chime in.

The first is because of good labour laws. The second is because of a lack of supply as boomers wanted their kids to go into 'white collar jobs', plenty of construction and excessively strong and corrupt construction unions. The third is because we don't actually do that much engineering beyond mining and construction. Though I have a feeling that there is a growing lack of structural engineers. Most structural engineers I meet are nearing retirement age.

@bugbus
You are welcome to contact me. I'm a structural engineer and I have too much work across various states and I'm having to knock back clients. I am well compensated for my time. Maybe we could have a preliminary discussion that could lead to other opportunities.

I have mail address that is my eng-tips username and is @ the mailing address of most popular email and search engine company.

It would be nice to see what the median salary is.

Around AUD$110-$130k ($130-$170k with benefits)
[USD$74-$87 (USD$87-$114k]
Source: ATTACHED

https://files.engineering.com/getfi...Engineers_Employment__Remuneration_Report.pdf

 

[dik]

Thanks... It's pretty comprehensive.

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

-Dik

 

[Eng16080]

OP, I was in a similar situation, well not nearly as bad as yours. The post near the top by LittleInch really sums up the employer/employee dynamic perfectly, and I think all companies operate in this manner to varying degrees.

This is more of a long term goal, but becoming financially independent is one of the most important things you can do. Try to buildup savings to the point that you don't have your back against the wall financially. Eventually, find a way to make passive income through investments, rental properties, etc. Ultimately, get to the point that you don't need your job. When that happens, your negotiating power increases significantly.

Stop working weekends, then stop working over 40 hours or whatever your sustainable limit is. Get a separate cell phone for work only and turn it off when you're not there. It sounds like you're highly valued at the company, so I doubt anything will happen when you start to work less. You're probably getting at least 2 to 3 times more work done than others and they know that. As LittleInch mentioned they will push you to your limit. To them, there's no downside to giving you ever increasing work.

You likely don't understand your own value. When I quit my job, the same company offered significantly more for me to come back. Of course, I could have never negotiated such a salary increase while I was still working there.

 

[Enhineyero]

OP welcome to the world of Consulting Engineering, where undercutting our competitors is our favorite past time. Kidding.

I think everyone gave good advice here, was in the same position a few years ago. Tried to negotiate but company got so greedy, guess they got used to things going their way and didnt have choice but to say "no" and resigned.

I dont know why engineering in australia isnt that well paid. maybe some of the aussie engineers could chime in.

I attribute this to lack of community within the engineering consulting industry. To be fair, many of the large engineering organisation has lost its way (just look at EA), they are more interested in political agendas than the interest of the engineering community. Other smaller organisations are barely alive due to very low member participation.

 

[GregLocock]

"I dont know why engineering in australia isnt that well paid"

Compared to whom? between my income and my wife's less than spectacular pay as a supervisor in local government aged care our income put us in the top 5% taxable household incomes.

Cheers

Greg Locock


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

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

 

[geotechguy1]

As far as I can tell Australian engineering salaries are #2 in the western world behind the USA. Grads in Australia can make what an engineer with ~10 years experience in the UK makes as far as I can tell - and the latter will be held to an almost absurdly high standard.

 

[phamENG]

Worth noting that the OP is a structural engineer. Here in the states, we tend to be pretty low on the ladder compared to other specialties.

 

[dik]

Same in Canada...

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

-Dik

 

[geotechguy1]

Dik, HR people are professional liars. Fuck em.