Good evening everyone:
I work for a small firm that does architecture and engineering. Out of the twelve people there, I am the sole staff engineer besides my employer. Everyone else is an architect, including the employer who is an architect and engineer. All I have is a EIT license and have done steel design mostly at this job using software. So far, no one has checked my work. Is this common? I do over design my work and do try the best I can to account for everything. My employer is not around much because he is constantly out going to meetings for jobs. I already designed a building that now has to be redesigned because of things I did not see. Luckly, the owner of the job got another engineer to look at the work and found many flaws in my design which was due to my lack of experience but I feel that the owner would have gotten a better product if someone had looked at it to see if it made sense. My employer who has more experience than I do, barely never looks at my work. He left it up to me and an architect to figure almost everything out. One other thing is that, the first year I worked there, I really worked hard because I knew I did not know much. I knew alot about nothing like I always say. Toward the end of the year, I did not receive a raise. I think it was because some of my projects were not done on time but it was difficult getting alot of work done in short periods of time. Last year I skipped alot of holidays, did alot of overtime without getting paid for the extra time I put in, and came in on Saturdays and Sundays to try to get work done faster. Is this common in building design firms? I feel like I am being handed a large amount responsibility yet I dont know enough and penalize for not knowing. It takes longer time for me to do things when you dont know how to do it and I put in the time to learn but I feel frustrated. I dont want to put extra time anymore because I am not going to get paid for it and if something is handed in late, I am not going to see anything for my efforts. This is a money issue but the only reason why it is is because I want to go back to school to get a master degree in structural engineering and I know currently I dont make enough to go back. Has anyone had experience similar to this when trying as a young engineer?
Kmat
I work for a small firm that does architecture and engineering. Out of the twelve people there, I am the sole staff engineer besides my employer. Everyone else is an architect, including the employer who is an architect and engineer. All I have is a EIT license and have done steel design mostly at this job using software. So far, no one has checked my work. Is this common? I do over design my work and do try the best I can to account for everything. My employer is not around much because he is constantly out going to meetings for jobs. I already designed a building that now has to be redesigned because of things I did not see. Luckly, the owner of the job got another engineer to look at the work and found many flaws in my design which was due to my lack of experience but I feel that the owner would have gotten a better product if someone had looked at it to see if it made sense. My employer who has more experience than I do, barely never looks at my work. He left it up to me and an architect to figure almost everything out. One other thing is that, the first year I worked there, I really worked hard because I knew I did not know much. I knew alot about nothing like I always say. Toward the end of the year, I did not receive a raise. I think it was because some of my projects were not done on time but it was difficult getting alot of work done in short periods of time. Last year I skipped alot of holidays, did alot of overtime without getting paid for the extra time I put in, and came in on Saturdays and Sundays to try to get work done faster. Is this common in building design firms? I feel like I am being handed a large amount responsibility yet I dont know enough and penalize for not knowing. It takes longer time for me to do things when you dont know how to do it and I put in the time to learn but I feel frustrated. I dont want to put extra time anymore because I am not going to get paid for it and if something is handed in late, I am not going to see anything for my efforts. This is a money issue but the only reason why it is is because I want to go back to school to get a master degree in structural engineering and I know currently I dont make enough to go back. Has anyone had experience similar to this when trying as a young engineer?
Kmat
