anonfrustrated
Aerospace
I accepted a job offer not knowing a lot about the company I would be working for (secrecy of company), because the company of my choice didn't respond as soon as they said they would. Right before starting, the company of my choice called me for an in-person interview, but I had already accepted the alternative (they said to call back if anything came up). I was enthusiastic about the job though, being very closely related to my #1 choice.
I've been working there for a few months now, and it is my only experience in the field (though I have held several engineering internships before). It was soon that I realized many things were wrong with where I worked:
1- I was told that they hadn't fired anyone in the department. This is so untrue it's not funny.
2- There is NO QC on anything, even though we are designing and building things with the consequences of failure being death/serious injury. The only QC I have seen has been by drafters on drawings, but there is no process for checking design calcs, and things are frequently built before calculations or drawings are made.
3- No traceability on parts. There have been several instances of material being mislabeled as something else with different engineering qualities. Things are not built to drawing and nobody knows until the engineer that designed the product or some other engineer goes out and actually looks at the things and sees obvious mistakes.
4- Severe micromanagement by the boss's boss. One of them signs off on a drawing. Two weeks later after the part is built the other comes along and says that he wants a design change because of inadequacies of the design (even though no calculations were made by the criticizing management). An argument ensues that lasts hours with only guesswork and fumbling without numbers. In other cases, engineered parts are simply removed from designs because they look ugly, with no other justification or even asking the engineer if it will affect the intended use of the product, or its safety.
5- Severe apathy by everyone (this everyone is not an exaggeration for my department), even immediate managers. If you complain that some people are doing something excessively dangerous/stupid, they just comment on how they can't believe it and do absolutely nothing.
6- People with decades of experience in a specific area are treated as incompetent by managers, who believe they can design complex systems themselves without doing any engineering.
I could go on. The point is this place is as close to insane as I've experienced/heard of. I'd like to get back in touch with my #1 choice. My only concern is it will be damaging to my career, or it will somehow get out to my current employer that I am job hunting and I will get canned (they have fired for less). Most of the time I try to do damage control to make sure that nobody is going to get killed or hurt on designs that aren't mine (they were made by people who quit for some/all of the above reasons), without being seen as rocking the boat. In fact, management complained when it was pointed out that certain potentially dangerous things were wrong. They weren't complaining about the error, they complained that it was pointed out.
Is bailing ASAP the best option here?
I've been working there for a few months now, and it is my only experience in the field (though I have held several engineering internships before). It was soon that I realized many things were wrong with where I worked:
1- I was told that they hadn't fired anyone in the department. This is so untrue it's not funny.
2- There is NO QC on anything, even though we are designing and building things with the consequences of failure being death/serious injury. The only QC I have seen has been by drafters on drawings, but there is no process for checking design calcs, and things are frequently built before calculations or drawings are made.
3- No traceability on parts. There have been several instances of material being mislabeled as something else with different engineering qualities. Things are not built to drawing and nobody knows until the engineer that designed the product or some other engineer goes out and actually looks at the things and sees obvious mistakes.
4- Severe micromanagement by the boss's boss. One of them signs off on a drawing. Two weeks later after the part is built the other comes along and says that he wants a design change because of inadequacies of the design (even though no calculations were made by the criticizing management). An argument ensues that lasts hours with only guesswork and fumbling without numbers. In other cases, engineered parts are simply removed from designs because they look ugly, with no other justification or even asking the engineer if it will affect the intended use of the product, or its safety.
5- Severe apathy by everyone (this everyone is not an exaggeration for my department), even immediate managers. If you complain that some people are doing something excessively dangerous/stupid, they just comment on how they can't believe it and do absolutely nothing.
6- People with decades of experience in a specific area are treated as incompetent by managers, who believe they can design complex systems themselves without doing any engineering.
I could go on. The point is this place is as close to insane as I've experienced/heard of. I'd like to get back in touch with my #1 choice. My only concern is it will be damaging to my career, or it will somehow get out to my current employer that I am job hunting and I will get canned (they have fired for less). Most of the time I try to do damage control to make sure that nobody is going to get killed or hurt on designs that aren't mine (they were made by people who quit for some/all of the above reasons), without being seen as rocking the boat. In fact, management complained when it was pointed out that certain potentially dangerous things were wrong. They weren't complaining about the error, they complained that it was pointed out.
Is bailing ASAP the best option here?
lease see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.
