Is anyone else bitter about work? 37

[shadow401]

I don’t know if it’s the engineering field, Corporate America, or just me but does anyone really love being an engineer anymore? Sure, it pays the bills but is anyone actually excited to show up to work in the morning?

Most of the people I work with have become cynical and are more interested in making themselves look good then completing a project. Engineers, developers, government agencies, inspectors, contractor, and sub-contractors are all on different teams and only looking out for their own interests. Even within my own company different departments try to push each other down to appear more profitable. Lazy employees get promoted over hard working employees and it feels like some fundamental rule that we learned in kindergarten about being fair and doing what’s right has been lost. I used to love the though of becoming an engineer but after 7 years of the real world, I just don’t care anymore. Am I alone?

 

[Latexman]

Bitter? No. Just got my bonus for last year. A little less than 2 months pay.

Good luck,
Latexman

 

[ajack1]

Kenat it is interesting you mention the Christmas parties etc, in a survey in the papers this week the biggest annoyance to employees was cutting back on petty things, biscuits, toilet paper etc, so that is not popular either.

If you look at managing a company in the same way as managing your own personal finances what would you do if your income suddenly dropped. Lay off the gardener or cut their hours, cut your household expenses, buy cheaper food not eat out so often etc, or carry on as before risk losing your home and going bankrupt and offer your gardener a profit share scheme?

Whilst there are always poor managerial decisions this is almost certain to happen. Let me give you an example. The company have been renting a building and the lease is coming up and there is the possibility of a big order in the pipeline. Do you go and buy premises, as currently they are cheap and interest rates are low or do you lease again?

If the economy improves and property prices increase and you get the order then the right choice is to have brought. If on the other hand you don’t get the order the economy takes a dip and property prices drop the right decision would be to lease and the extra cost of buying might sink the company.

So what is the answer? It is almost certain one of the two will happen and of course it is very easy in six months or a years time to say any fool could have predicted what would happen if you get it wrong and just say nothing if you get it right.

 

[knight185]

Regardless of the job environment, I think one's ability to control their emotions and attitude go a long way. I know people who have bad situations at their job and at home, yet their attitude is very good towards other people. But some people carry their problems and emotions on their shoulders. It all comes down to how you accept the fact that life is tough and unfair and still choose to be cheerful on a daily basis.

I am somewhere in between. Some coworkers see me as serious, yet calm and focused, and others may see me as frustrated. My problem is that even when I am calm I have a serious facial expression. I can't help it. Smiling for no reason does not come naturally. People are always shocked when I smile and laugh about something.

 

[shadow401]

You recieved a bonus equal to 2 months in engineering!! Now I feel even crappier with my usual bonus equal to 3 or 4 days pay.

 

[MikeHalloran]

Count your blessings. My bonus was a $35 gift card.

My Extra Special Bonus was being laid off in January.



Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

 

[IRstuff]

Well, our company did record business last year, so bonuses are pretty good this year.

It seems like business is definitely picking up. Traffic on the local freeway in Orange County has decidedly gotten worse in the last 4 months or so.

TTFN

FAQ731-376

 

[jenofstructures]

im bitter to my work, because a lot of non engineers entering our field because of various softwares created for engineers. Because its easy to use some employers hiring non engineers to use it and they will check if its ok.

The fact that engineers studied sooooooooo many years, its so degrading that non engineers are employed to do the job for the engineers

Poems are made by fools like me, but only God can make a tree. engineers creates wonderful buildings, but only God can creates wonderful minds

 

[GregLocock]

Talking of bitter, I just read an op ed by a business manager who sacks unhappy employees. He reckons there are some people who drag the morale of the rest down, so get rid of them.

Pretty brutal but I can see his logic.

Cheers

Greg Locock


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[Qshake]

Greg - I read the same article....with a bit of jealousy...in my company we can't hardly fire the slackers let alone unhappy people!!

I've mentioned before that in my bit of engineering world, the HR group doesn't make the decisions on hiring or wages but they most certainly muck-up the firing part.

Regards,
Qshake

Eng-Tips Forums:Real Solutions for Real Problems Really Quick.

 

[IRstuff]

We used to have this running game in a previous company that had sequential serial numbers on the paychecks. That allowed us to track the rise and fall of employment at the division. Some posted a nice Excel chart of the employment numbers, week by week. Management got wind of that and considered it to be bad for morale and got the payroll company to scramble the serial numbers on the checks.

TTFN

FAQ731-376

 

[moltenmetal]

GMcD: we realized that the key to being properly paid for engineering was not to sell engineering services, but rather to build and sell what we design.

I won't tell you about my last few bonuses- they'd just make you mad. It's the next best thing to being in business for yourself (during good times, that is!). And during slow times, we keep people- unfortunately like qshake's place we tend not to use slow times to get rid of the under-performers. That demotivaates the people who really get it- nobody likes a parasite.

It doesn't make everyone happy- there's still plenty of hard work and lots of stress. What it does generate is a reason to cooperate.

 

[Twoballcane]

The last few post reminds me of "beatings will continue until moral improves" LOL

Tobalcane
"If you avoid failure, you also avoid success."

 

[KENAT]

Ajack, maybe I'm non standard in finding some of the 'little stuff' somewhat patronizing - or maybe it's the way I've seen it done. Either way, I'd hope an acceptable Christmas (or winter festival for teh PC crowd) gathering for a site of 200-250 people could be done for a lot less than $50k, that was my point.

I don't think I said, and didn't mean to imply, that there isn't a time or place for lay-offs.

However, in at least some cases it seems these are the first choice when in some circumstances it seems other ideas such as reduced weeks, pay cuts with something like a promise of increased profit sharing if a profit is made and the like might be worth considering. For instance, maybe change the gardener to once monthly instead of weekly if the cost/benefit works out.

Of course, depending how contracts, especially union contracts, are written and local tax/accounting laws/rules then maybe things like this are too much effort and laying off folks is just easier for HR.

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[IRstuff]

When to pull the trigger on layoffs is a highly subjective decision, and every general manager will have his own threshold of pain. Moreover, every company's prospects and ongoing business is dfferent. A company with strong backlog and positive outlook for future business will have a different take on layoffs than a company who can barely make each week's payroll.

TTFN

FAQ731-376

 

[mauricestoker]

You mean "bonus" is actually only one word? Now I'm bitter.

 

[ajack1]

Kenat, sorry I did not mean to imply that 50k was a petty amount, just that in a survey last week cutting back on “petty” things was number one on the list of what people dislike most, personally it would be well down my list, compared to saving jobs Christmas parties, inferior biscuits etc are petty in my mind.

I totally agree with you about pay cuts short working weeks etc being preferable to redundancy but if you look on this site many others do not feel this way. From a company point of view even that has failings, in the UK it is illegal to force a pay cut on anyone so you also have to offer redundancy. You can be fairly sure that the best people who would find it easier to find another job would take the redundancy and the ones staying on would not be the ones you would choose necessarily.

The reason so many managerial decisions seem stupid is they are only based on someone’s best guess as to what will happen in the future. To use your example earlier when they laid of workers with the possibility of a big order. Do you lay off 25% of your staff now and if you get the order realise you were wrong or keep everyone on for a couple more months and then not get the order and lay off 75% of your staff and have the company in an even worse position?

Of course you could say that predicting the future is what being a manager is all about but if I could think I would be making millions on the stock market rather than trying to keep my head above water.

 

[GMcD]

MoltenMetal - I'd love to be able to get off the sell-out of engineering services in the Bulding Design and construction industry, but in our world, all we sell is professional time and drawings for building systems. And every building is Model #1, Serial #1, so there is very little repetitive design, other than standard details. The only thing that can discriminate one consulting engineer from another is fee (price) and the assumption on the part of Clients/Develpers/Architects is that we are all obliged to maintain the same level of quality in the documents, and provide whatever hours it takes to deal with the changes that others beyond our control make.

We try to have very strict wording in the fee letters to account for, and trigger additional services fees when there is scope creep, but it is very tough to try to collect on that, and because of the abundance of other Consultants out there, the Client will go to the next guy who didn't try to get additional fees.

 

[KENAT]

ajack, I didn't mean to suggest that managers should also be fall proof mediums. The example I gave of a large order in the imediate future was a real example, not hypothetical. The order was a near certainty pending some final testing, it wasn't even just a 75% liklihood or something, very low risk of it not coming through. Oh, and the company had a good chunk in the bank as I understood it.

I also appreciate your point about local employment laws, I'd only partly addressed this mentioning contracts etc. Actually, what you said happened to some extent back in the UK, they offered voluntary redundancies and some really good folks took them, leaving some of the less good.

I appreciate it's a difficult situation, and in fairness our management did make some attempts at making it a bit more bearable at the last few rounds of lay-offs & cuts last year. The pay cut was graduated, a bit like income tax, low earners saw no cut, above a certain threshold the % cut increased for every few thousand you earned. Also senior management took larger cuts, and there were some share options given out at some point. However, there was a sense of too little to late about some of it given they started lay-offs in late 2006.

At the end of the day, as you effectively say, you can't keep every one happy all the time. However, maybe the best managers manage to make less people miserable most of the time.

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[Tunalover]

I'm pretty happy as engineer but must admit that I sometimes resent watching guys with business degrees getting jobs in Marketing and Sales then seeing how they get offices rather than sharing cubicles like the engineers. Those guys also make better money then the engineers. It was the engineers who in college were slaving over mechanics of materials on Friday night while the business majors were out having drinks!



Tunalover

 

[KENAT]

"It was the engineers who in college were slaving over mechanics of materials on Friday night "

You went to the wrong school;-).

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