Managing Other Engineers 4

[MRob909]

Hello Everyone,

I'm sure this predicament has been discussed many times on this forum, but looking for an up to date viewpoint.

In my current position (small company of < 20 staff) I find myself being responsible for the management of the engineers (~10 staff). Being an engineer myself, I'm actually finding this to be quite difficult given we have a wide variety of personalities and experience levels.

The underlying tone is that the mid to senior level engineers do not want to be managed at all and make it clear they are disgruntled over having too high a workload. Yet they do not want me to help them manage their workload - and so the cycle deepens.

Our junior staff are more than willing to be managed but they also require the most guiding/ teaching, which I am facilitating but again our mid-senior levels do not want to help out with.

I was wondering if anyone had uncovered the holy grail of managing disgruntled engineers, I have tried discussing in 1-1's and in groups but it inevitably turns into a moan and groan about the Company. I'm at a loss as to how I can help out.

My other observation is that in the post-covid era, I do wonder if the increase in online meetings is actually making our work less personable and affecting our communication lines within our Team - may be a contributing factor to the above?

Open for discussion!

 

[LittleInch]

As I think I might have said before it does sound like the company is at one of those crunch points where it needs a step change in organisation and systems.

A small firm I joined 20 yrs ago, one of the 4 founders said the hardest bit was going from 15 people to 30 people.

All the systems used up to that point - simple spreadsheets etc, just didn't work anymore and they needed to make the leap into getting people full time to do certain roles which previously they or someone was only doing part time. Trying to do all this shit AND get work in AND do some of the work is going to end in burn out or collapse.

Sounds to me like the company is stuck in that rut and doesn't know how or more importantly if it wants to dig itself out.

A real "come to Jesus" meeting is needed with the owners I think to decide are they happy as they are or are they going to make the great leap forward?

They probably don't really know what is going in in the company other than month to month P&L accounts....

Remember - More details = better answers
Also: If you get a response it's polite to respond to it.

 

[Euler07]

If you're good at bringing in business and no more incompetent than the average engineer then you should consider starting your own company. Problem solved. It's a lot easier than people imagine and you'll also make a lot more money getting 100% of the income rather than the owners taking a cut.

Other than that, I recently read the classic book "The Peter Principle". It's a quick read and really describes what you're going through.

 

[CWB1]

you need to have a very frank discussion with the two owners, as it seems they have dumped their management responsibilities onto you, and are not supporting you appropriately.

Somewhat agree. The owners dont necessarily need to actively manage staff but do need to support the manager(s) they appoint within reason. Its actually fairly common for folks within the C-suite to have a single manager or staff member beneath them, handling daily operations and gathering data for the C-suite'er to act upon. At my former consultancy we had managers reporting to a chief engineer who reported to a VP. The VP spent most of the day glad-handing clients and working on high-level strategic decisions so couldn't be involved in the day-day engineering, but needed their input. Having the chief engineer report to him also meant the VP owned both sales & engineering, so the buck stopped there and it gave him a second set of eyes on critical decisions.

 

[Christine74]

"The underlying tone is that the mid to senior level engineers do not want to be managed at all and make it clear they are disgruntled over having too high a workload. Yet they do not want me to help them manage their workload"

Since this basically describes me I feel somewhat obligated to respond. When you have an engineering firm with a large amount of work in a specialized field there is actually little (if anything) that management can do to reduce the workload. In fact in many cases the "solutions" to high workload only add to the burden. There are several reasons for this:

1) Companies are not financially incentivized to decline work, even if they are already understaffed.
2) Price's Law: In any technical field roughly 50% of the results will be achieved by the square root of the number of employees. So if the workload increase by 30%, hiring 30% more employees certainly isn't going to cut it (assuming you could even find qualified people).
3) New hires from other industries or even from the same industry but from a different employer add little value to the work process for the first several months or even years of their tenure. It takes a lot of time and effort just to bring someone up to speed to the point where you can hand off work to them without a barrage of questions/interruptions.
4) People that aren't busy usually aren't busy for a reason. In most cases shifting work from busy employees to un-busy employees is ultimately counterproductive.


-Christine

 

[IRstuff]

Not trying to dump on you, Christine, but those are sentiments I might have had a while ago, but those are what need to be overcome in order to get the organization to move forward and be more productive, overall. If we don't break out of those 4 bullet points, it becomes impossible for the company to grow and impossible for those of us in the square root to get any sort of work-life balance. Ultimately, if we can't get on the bandwagon, we become part of the problem. Are all those others really knuckleheads, or is it simply that we've failed to mentor them and show them the ropes? And if they are truly knuckleheads, who was the knucklehead that hired them?

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

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[phamENG]

Christine: I disagree with number 1. While it makes sense on the surface, good management knows that taking too much work will bog down the process, cause burn out, lower quality, and harm the firm's reputation. So in the short term, sure, but anyone not short sighted can see that the bottom line can indeed be higher in the long run if certain projects are turned down.

Turnover and training are expensive. Rebuilding a reputation takes a lot longer than losing one. And losing clients can kill a firm.

 

[271828]

The underlying tone is that the mid to senior level engineers do not want to be managed at all and make it clear they are disgruntled over having too high a workload. Yet they do not want me to help them manage their workload - and so the cycle deepens.

Zooming way back to the beginning of the thread, this sentence reveals what is going on at this company. There is a culture of blame and not accepting ownership and responsibility.

When someone above says "the problem is people downstream from me" that's the dead giveaway. I'd bet a three-digit sum of money that the two owners are doing the same thing. Not accepting ownership/responsibility is contagious. Reading between the lines, I bet the senior engineers blame people upstream for poorly allocating resources, for giving them poor junior engineers and drafters, etc.

The following three books explain this stuff in detail. They're in a VERY short list of books I've read that I would call life changing. I wish I would've had that knowledge in my 20s and 30s. Looking back, I'm horrified at my own thought processes from that time.

All three are highly recommended. If you want to cut to the chase, then the third book is extremely quick and efficient, and has most of the info.

https://www.amazon.com/Extreme-Ownership-U-S-Navy-SEALs/dp/1250067057

https://www.amazon.com/The-Dichotom...=dichotomy+of+leadership,stripbooks,75&sr=1-1

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07THC92J...Q35TQVA8HX8W0YFCC39N&ref_=adblp13nvvxx_0_0_ti

 

[CWB1]

I wouldn't be quick to vilify the owners or OP about culture. Small companies often have very limited labor budgets and small local hiring pools to choose from. The owners could be tolerating lousy staff attitudes bc their only alternative is to have less staff. That's a very difficult situation to be in, which is why I prefer large companies with high standards.

Reality is also that even companies with great cultures usually have a few odd senior staff members that need to be walked out. I've dealt with my share of seniors with lousy attitudes and worse justifications bc they were trying to protect their position or coast for years into retirement. If they're not disruptive and contributing to a specialty niche then they may be worth tolerating, otherwise they need to go elsewhere.

 

[Klitor]

Are you able to refuse work owners bring on (pass it to some subs/associates)?
If quality is an issue you 100% have too much work going on. Id hit the beake pedal a bit (loss of profit) until quality/attitude is sorted for the greater good going foreward

If you cant do that, Im affraid it aint lookin good

Edit: i worked in "your" company and ran, now managing 11 in much better setup

 

[MRob909]

Thanks all for the replies - it seems this theme is not unique to our firm and there are numerous underlying issues here which should be addressed. All very good points and certainly worth exploring.

To be proactive, I've dissected what I believe to be the key areas for our firm and I've scheduled a meeting with the Owners to discuss in more detail.

If anything productive comes from it - I'll update this thread to keep you all abreast.

Thanks again.

 

[LittleInch]

"If anything productive comes from it",

Also if anything NOT productive....

Remember - More details = better answers
Also: If you get a response it's polite to respond to it.