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?

 

[moltenmetal]

Japher, you've said it very well indeed!

SNORGY- a jar of maple syrup I could have used! In previous employ at one place I received a potted poinsettia each year at Christmas (the 4 year old's idea of what constituted a proper "thank you"- see the "worst boss" thread). What the @#)* did they think a young engineer was going to do with a fricking poinsettia? Eat it and put myself out of my misery, perhaps?

My first Christmas bonus here was an advance on a bonus I was not yet entitled to (I hadn't put in the first full year yet). My expectations were low- perhaps a cheque just barely worth the trip to the bank to bother cashing it. Turns out it was more money, besides salary plus OT and bennies, than I'd received in total in my entire career to that point. No card needed, thanks!

They say that money doesn't motivate, but those who say that miss the point. Sure, money ALONE doesn't motivate- 5% more pay doesn't correpond to 5% more profit generated per employee. But the respect that money implies, when properly conveyed, surely CAN and DOES motivate.

My intent here is not to brag- merely to point out what's possible, if you find the right place. Too many of us put up with sh*t because we think that sh*t's the only thing on the menu!

 

[npcannon]

I can’t pretend that I’ve been in need of hardship pay, but I’ve certainly had my soul sucked out by some previous jobs. I did sign up for some silly things, 1 year straight working 6/10’s and rounds on the 7th day in Antarctica with no time off, but that was right out of college and I would do that again in a heartbeat, a real life defining experience brought to you by a Mechanical Engineering degree.

Later, as a field engineer I was almost never home and at one point worked almost every day for a month, I had scheduled time home taken by linking trips together, and we had no comp or overtime policy, I got paid a straight salary. Eventually I had to request weekends off. One time when a trip home was re-booked to go to lovely Greenville, Mississippi I jokingly told the boss “There better be rockies tickets on my desk when I get home”. There weren’t, but honestly I think that would have been enough. They gave me an “above and beyond award” for working so hard but it didn’t even come with like a $30 gift card to Applebee’s or something. Not ONE TIME did the boss say “Nate, you’ve been busting your butt, take the afternoon off.” The morale increase from little things like this is huge. A small gift card, a ½ day off, a rockies game, help a ton, if only for a short period of time. If hard work isn’t backed up with money or time off though, people will only stay so long. When it came time for bonuses and raises and I got crapped on I split for oil and gas. They tried to match when I left but that’s almost more insulting, little dinky raise and no bonus but now that I leave you guys can find the cash? Yeah right.

Wow, I guess I am a little bitter. Overall I feel that engineering has given me opportunities most people would never have. I’ve gotten to see some interesting places around the world and every corner of America on company dime. I’ve met people from all walks of life and I think overall I’ve picked up a lot of random information. Often times I encounter some facilities issue in O&G that I worked with back right out of college in a power plant, and I get a warm fuzzy. Thanks engineering!
-Nate

 

[SLTA]

So here's a question. Think back to why you first, way back, became interested in engineering. What made you love it? Why did you want to do that and not something else? How can you bring that memory and passion back into what you do today, or what new job can you find that encompasses those reasons?

I have been reminding myself of my motivation repeatedly as my husband puts our babies to bed, plays with them all weekend, takes them to daycare in the morning, all so I can study for the blasted PE (20 days!). Why do I care? What makes all this misery worth it? For me, it's because I'm going to use my PE and my job to help people have a safe place to live. I'm going to make the world a better place. Perhaps a bit starry-eyed, but that's what keeps me studying even when I really don't want to.

 

[msquared48]

If I was any more bitter about the work, I would be living on a diet of Quince...

Mike McCann
MMC Engineering
Motto: KISS
Motivation: Don't ask

 

[knight185]

I'd have to say that reading some of the negative stories on this forum makes me feel pretty fortunate. Last year I got a pay cut. By the end of the year my normal salary was restored and we got back-pay from the lost salary. Based on last year's earnings, I got a bonus that was equal to 5% of my salary. Soon after that I got a very good performance review and received a salary increase. Overall, my salary today is 28% more than what it was when I started with the company 4 years ago. I have also had the pleasure of working with supervisors and managers who are not afraid to give compliments and praise. The good performance ratings and the salary increases add credibility to the praise.

 

[IRstuff]

Bonus ham only once? That's not bad. One year, the former Yugoslavia couldn't afford to pay cash for a plane they bought from McDonnell Douglas, so they bartered hams for the plane. We got hams for every major holiday for about 2 years.

The current job, just past the 15th anniversary, is probably the best group of people I've ever worked with. Not so much that any particular person is that much better, just that the group, more or less, is all going in the same direction at the same time, which is pretty usual for a lot of companies. The GM knows the business, plays conservative, and knows that he hired us to do the job, and let's us do it.

TTFN

FAQ731-376

 

[KENAT]

Can I just check, do you all think Engineering is the only career/job that sees some of this behavior?

Based on conversations with lots of folks over time it seems that companies in all kinds of sectors - including some govt agencies etc, have at least some of the issues listed above.

So, once again, while there may be some trends etc. to a great extent I think, much of this is the specific job/employer, not the career/profession.

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[TDAA]

KENAT, I am sure there is the same bitterness in other professions, but not to the degree there is in engineering. Personally, I blame the way “professionalism” is viewed for engineering.

This board has many examples of people using professionalism to explain why you should work 60 hours a week, accept what you get for salary, do everything for the company you possible can, suck it up if you don’t like your boring work (or another situation) or get a new job, etc. That is a pretty sweet picture that I am sure would make every bright student want to join into the engineering workforce, with the thought that you will be able to live comfortably (but not “rich”).

I think the reality, for most engineers, is not exactly what was portrayed by counselors or professors. Yes, there are a quite a few people on this site that have found a good career path, with plenty of excitement in the daily work they do. Others have found that their position is filled with generally lack-luster projects, and a poor work environment. This is not always due to the employee, but also some to the companies who may not want to be a part of the next big thing because it is scary. Yes, I know – those people should move on. Of course, they should be “forced” to stick it out for at least a year so they look stable. Personally, I chose the greener grass in life, but feel the grass is dying on the work front. Like I said, I will work on that when positions become available.

I do not think that doctors would feel the same resentments. Sure, the work may get repetitive, but the client usually isn’t yelling that they need the prescription right now, and they get to set their own hours and schedule their work load, and where overtime is needed, you share it through an on-call system. Not only do they get the responsibility of being professional, but they seem to get the respect of being professional.

 

[KENAT]

Ha ha TDAA, you obviously haven't known as many doctors as I have. There are points during some of their careers they would have killed for only a 60 hour week as I recall.

Setting there own hours, patients not yelling... ?

You've been watching too many shows about Plastic Surgeons and the like.

Some Doctors do very nicely for a big chunk of their career, but then so do some Engineers.

While on average they probably do get paid a bit more than Engineers there is variation.

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[IRstuff]

"I do not think that doctors would feel the same resentments. Sure, the work may get repetitive, but the client usually isn't yelling that they need the prescription right now, and they get to set their own hours and schedule their work load, and where overtime is needed, you share it through an on-call system. Not only do they get the responsibility of being professional, but they seem to get the respect of being professional."

Really? My wife was threatened with a lawsuit because she refused to sign off on a handicap license plate for an obviously non-handicapped patient. Other patients simply want to use her like a drug ATM. She's got whiny patients that save up day's worth of problems for a 15-minute appointment. She'd working a minimum of 3 hrs at home doing charts, and her management just tells her to suck it up. The management fires doctors at will; she thought maybe she would share the same fate as her predecessor, who was fired without cause after a year, or a colleague who was fired after 6 yrs, ostensibly for complaining about the junk charting software that their management is enamored with.

Again, this demonstrates that what appears to be green grass on the other side of the fence is often blades of plastic painted green.

TTFN

FAQ731-376

 

[TDAA]

Well, you guys have the bad side of medicine and the good side of engineering then. In my family, they are definitely switched.

 

[IRstuff]

Sorry to hear that. It may be something to do with what part of the country you live in. There's a glut of family practice doctors in Southern California, so much that their wages are depressed by as much as 60% from some other states.

TTFN

FAQ731-376

 

[TDAA]

We are spread around, somewhat. My only family working in Southern California is in the tint business. He has done well.

Location is key. I liked engineering better on the east coast than in CO. I like living in CO, however, and am trying to find the right place to work. Now, I just enjoy my downtime way more than I used to making the best of what I can.

 

[IRstuff]

There's no doubt that location can alter one's perceptions about one's circumstances. I grew up in a city what was probably 300 days a year of overcast skies.

TTFN

FAQ731-376

 

[moltenmetal]

TDAA: as Tom Waits say in one of his songs, “The dog won’t bite if you beat him with a bone”. That’s the way I’ve seen “professionalism” used too often in our business- as a means to compel employee engineers to accept working conditions that no self-respecting tradesman would put up with.

Too many of us are willing to stand neck-deep in sh*t based on some quaint notion of professionalism, if posts to this “corporate survival” section of Eng-Tips are any indication of the prevailing attitude in our “profession”.

If we don’t value our OWN services properly, nobody will. And we’ll have nobody to blame but ourselves for it.

I think TDAA has excessively romanticized medicine, just like the rest of society (and many engineers) seem to excessively romanticize engineering. But what’s the key difference between a medical graduate and an engineering graduate? Per the last Council of Ontario Universities post-grad survey I saw, the average graduate of ANY medical program, from nursing to veterinary, was 99%+ likely to be employed two years after graduation. The engineering grads were 20% LESS likely than the AVERAGE university grad- average of all programs including such stellar job performers as journalism and fine arts- to be employed two years post grad. Most of the other professions limit access to their profession to at least approximate market demand, and hence have a HOPE of negotiating compensation which somewhat matches the value their services represent to society, or how hard the job is on the people doing it. We don’t even try- in fact we actively RECRUIT people to join our ranks- and we reap the consequences of that very questionable decision.

 

[Overvoltage]

Also, don't even get me started about the lack of protection of the term "engineer". If you're going to call yourself "Dr", then you had better be an MD or have a PhD of some sort. However, we have garbagemen calling themselves "sanitation engineers". Until you end abuses like that you're also going to have a hard time getting "respect" for the profession of engineering

 

[ewh]

I think that subject has already been beat to death.

"Good to know you got shoes to wear when you find the floor." - [small]Robert Hunter[/small]

 

[IRstuff]

Nonesense, my wife just had a landscape engineer patient who was also a "doctor."

He "fixed" his broken ankle with some leftover concrete for a cast and sewed up a gash with some copper wire. How hard can it be? Aside from fixing the infection and chiseling away the cast to do an x-ray....

TTFN

FAQ731-376

 

[KENAT]

And how.

As to professionalism being abused I agree, I think I posted about it some time back.

thread732-196326

It does seem somewhat ingrained here at eng-tips, especially the US folks.

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[moltenmetal]

Thanks for the thread, KENAT, it was a delightful read!