How to deal with technical incompetence? 2

[bugbus]

I will start by saying that no one, including myself, is immune from making blunders or being totally clueless on certain technical topics. It’s only human and it’s totally forgivable. After all, this is the benefit of working in a team with a wide range of experience.

Unfortunately, as with probably most professions, there are always a handful of individuals that somehow make their way into technical roles who clearly don’t understand the important technical concepts and principles beyond a surface level. In the worst cases I’ve seen this border on sheer incompetence combined with big egos and an unwillingness to challenge their own understanding.

Obviously different people have different ways of looking at things, and in some cases there is latitude for interpretation. But when it comes to conflicting ideas on what are often black-and-white facts, it becomes quite frustrating. It’s even more frustrating when these individuals are at a similar or higher role/salary to you.

I’ve never known a delicate way to treat this situation. Obviously it’s important to be polite and try to understand where someone is coming from, but I also can’t pretend that all ideas and opinions on technical issues are equal. It has led to situations where I now feel the need to treat everything that certain individuals say with some degree of skepticism, and needing to scrutinise their work to a greater degree.

At its core, I think the issue comes down to poor hiring practices and managers themselves not being all that technically involved, hence why these issues are often overlooked. Is there enough emphasis during the hiring process these days on technical ability? It probably depends who you work for, but I’ve seen this as a widespread problem.

Anyway, curious to hear others’ opinions.

 

[bugbus]

Thanks everyone for the insightful responses, I took the time to read them all in detail and think about them.

I agree with the general vibe that patience is key, especially when dealing with younger engineers who shouldn't necessarily be expected to know how to do everything. I actually quite like working with more junior engineers as they are usually interested to learn new things and challenge themselves.

In my experience, the greatest frustration comes when dealing with colleagues who are at your same seniority level (or higher), who somehow can't grasp the basic concepts and principles and aren't willing to challenge their own (lack of) understanding on certain topics. I waste too much of my time having to scrutinise certain people's work and explain things over and over.

I think it all boils down to hiring practices and an unwillingness by managers to address issues of poor performance.

There was a comment earlier than not everything is black-and-white, which I agree with. But certain things are - this is just a sample of some of the issues I have run into with design engineers in senior roles:
*Insisting that only the elastic (not plastic) section capacity of a flat steel plate bent about its minor axis may be utilised at ultimate conditions. Apparently, the instant the material begins to yield, it has reached its ultimate capacity.
*Refusing to accept that the shear strength of a concrete beam only needs to be designed for the shear force located 'd' from the support (apparently this 'just seems wrong', despite many attempts to explain the reason for this rule).
*Being under the impression that lap splices must have the bars in direct contact - 'no gaps allowed'
*Somehow having the idea that single-leg fitments with 180 hooks both ends are not allowed to be used as shear reinforcement - only closed ties can be counted
*etc. etc. etc.

 

[IRstuff]

There are possibly worst things; you could be on the bleeding edge of your company's expertise and have zero peers and therefore zero means of backchecking yourself. I recall heading to a customer meeting and skimming a book on object linking and embedding, getting to the meeting and suddenly being the "expert" because I read about 2 chapters in a 10 chapter book. A highwire act with no safety net; I've yet to be called on things, but I don't know if I'm actually smart or just lucky that no else actually knows enough

TTFN (ta ta for now)
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[electricpete]

I think there are 2 parts of a job in a technical environment:

* Do good and thorough work.
* Let people know (or make people think) that you are doing good and thorough work.

The 1st is obviously more important, but some people seem to focus exclusively on the 2nd.

I think it helps immensely when supervisors and managers are technically competent to understand and evaluate the work at least on a surface level. It helps shifts everyone's focus back towards the first, where it belongs.

 

[LowLax]

Those 4 examples you gave seem like micromanagement to me. They are all conservative assumptions, no? Sure, you're probably the better engineer, but nobody is going to die from those 4 examples. I think people need some space to do their own thing.

 

[GregLocock]

I don't know if this deserves a thread, but in your experience how important is it to be self starter? And roughly what percentage of fresh grads are? And if you are lucky enough to catch one in the wild, what's the tradeoff between letting them roam free (I was very lucky, my first two jobs were very easy going there, although I still cringe with embarrassment remembering the TWO DAYS it took me to work out the 2 plane balancing equations when they were written down in one of our standard texts), and guidance?


Cheers

Greg Locock


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[bugbus]

@LowLax, as a first pass, yes I agree it's conservative and could be excused in some situations where conservatism is justified. But the project where these issues arose was to do with reviewing a proposed design by a third party. The engineer who did the review basically came to the conclusion that the structure had been severely under-designed, and never bothered to go back and review their assumptions. In other words, any conservatism on their part was not intentional, but through a complete misunderstanding of some pretty basic concepts. For example, I think any reasonable design engineer in a senior position would immediately recognise that a flat steel plate bent about its minor axis, and which has been checked only to its elastic limit, still has an additional 50% bending capacity that can be utilised. Or that by simply checking the shear capacity of a beam a small distance away from its support, the structure suddenly goes from being severely under-designed to being just OK.

This bold claim by the engineer that the structure was severely under-designed resulted in a lot wasted time and effort to go back through all the drawings and assess the structure properly, as well as a pretty confused client. Of course, in the end, the structure was fine and had been designed efficiently.

 

[phamENG]

And to bugbus' point...if I hired a third party to review a design, they told me it was bad on technical grounds, and I burnt $10,000 in time trying to find all the problems only for them to say 'oops, sorry, our guy made a mistake'...you'd better believe I'm coming for my pound of flesh.

So technical incompetence can cost money, even when it is masquerading as conservatism.

 

[LowLax]

@bugbus and phamENG, I see, yeah that's different. I was thinking of it from a coworker perspective.