Mentorship: Is it still around? 8

[ash060]

Just wanted to get other engineers' perspectives about the availability and prevalence of mentorship in the engineering profession. I can only speak for myself, but it seems that it is slowly eroding. When I first started engineering, I never really was given an real direction or advice from a senior engineer regrading the practice of engineering. Don't get me wrong I would ask questions and get answers, but it would be from various engineers in the office and it almost always seemed that I was wasting their time for asking the question. I would pick up little pieces of wisdom here and there, but I never had a mentor, a go-to person that would teach me things about the profession. I became more jaded as I got more questionable responses to my queries. For example, one day I asked my supervisor if I should design a basement wall for at-rest or active pressure and his response was "What is at-rest pressure?", after that I limited my questions and started to grow my reference library because I just stopped believing older engineers.

Besides my second job (which only lasted one year, and I learned more in that one year than any other time in my career), I have never had a mentor. From my observations at other offices, it doesn't seem that I am an outlier.

Am I just a special case or is it a real trend? What is everyone else's experience?

 

[GregLocock]

I think the word mentor has fallen out of favor, but I had an assigned mentor when i was in my first engineering job, and now, several decades later, I am the point of first contact for technical stuff for one engineer. I take that pretty seriously, his questions are my #2priority.

Cheers

Greg Locock


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[MFJewell]

I was assigned as a mentor for two new graduates that were hired at the utility I worked at 5 years ago. It was standard practice for all fresh graduate, new college hires to be assigned a mentor for the first year. I think they also did that for new hires that had less than 2 or 3 years experience.

 

[MotorCity]

I think that the young engineer has to seek out a mentor him/herself. Unfortunately, more senior engineers than not view these additional types of responsibilities as a waste of their time, time that they could be spending on their own work. After a short time, the young engineer can quickly gain a sense of those senior engineers who are willing to assist and those who are not. If a senior engineer seems unwilling, uninterested, or gives blunt responses, they are probably not a good candidate for a mentor. Go "mentor shopping" around the office.

 

[CWB1]

I've been in offices where mentors were assigned to interns but never junior engineers, however those same companies also had rotational and other formal training programs for junior engineers and senior engineers were commonly friendly enough to mentor others upon request. I was fortunate to participate in a formal development program then have two of the best possible mentors consecutively take an active interest in me. An important aspect of this IME however was that these relationships were mutually beneficial, they recognized my value not only to the company but their positions in particular so didn't mind my seemingly endless questions. Both mentors had 30+ years in engine research positions but were at the point in their careers where they were avoiding learning new software, new processes, and really wanted an occasional "go-fer." OTOH I had a modest amount of experience solid modeling and running FEA/CFD analyses so I complimented each of them and helped ease their workload. My advice for any junior engineers who want a mentor is to not only look for help, but look to help.

 

[IRstuff]

I think the OP seems to think of mentorship as apprenticeship, where the master would guide and trade the apprentice in all aspects of the trade. That worked well when the "trade" was essentially a single person job.

However, in today's design environment, it's likely that the cadre of engineers in a company all have different roles, so that no one person could actually do every job.

The fact that my manager might not know how to do my job hasn't been particularly surprising, at least to me. There are analyses that I do that only one other person has even attempted, and that applies to several other types of analyses as well.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
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[HamburgerHelper]

I am unsure of what mentoring even means. If it means having someone vested in your success, I don't know if I have ever seen that.

 

[Comcokid]

I would have to disagree with you IRstuff. After many years as an Engineer, the term "mentor" is a thing of a distant past when engineering departments also had paid-overtime, engineering sectaries, draftsmen, a technician available for every engineer, slide rules, T-squares, and a capital equipment budget. In the last couple companies I've work for, there is less and less division between software, hardware, and mechanical disciplines. I now find management (mechanical background) dictating software and hardware design, electrical engineers doing thermal design and making prototype mechanical parts on the Bridgeport mill, and mechanical engineers doing documentation and programming the CNC mill. I find the project software engineers doing analog (shudder!) design.

From my experience, the term "Mentorship" is long gone, and the term "discipline" as in Engineering Discipline is disappearing. Soon Engineering will have no no distinction between mechanical, electrical, software. Only those areas requiring a PE license might survive as a specialist. Everyone working in a "industry exemption" role will be reduced to being a generalist.

 

[ash060]

It just seems that certain aspects of engineering are disappearing, mainly the "art" (it is the best term that I can think of, combination of judgement and a fundamental understanding of engineering). The "art of engineering" is a cliche term, but it is a real thing. I always believed that it was something that was developed in younger engineers by interacting with and observing senior engineers, along with their own experience. It was something that I rarely received during my career, and it was never given, it had to be requested sometimes to the point of nagging. Shouldn't senior engineers share the knowledge with the younger ones, without it being an ordeal?

I am mainly focused on the building consulting side, as I am completely unfamiliar with the industry or manufacturing side, so I have no basis what to expect in those areas perhaps it is more typical, I wouldn't know.

 

[moltenmetal]

Many businesses try to hire "experienced" technical staff, meaning that they attempt to outsource as much of their training cost as possible. They don't remember how to integrate and train junior staff because they stopped doing it in a meaningful way a long time ago.

We tried to grow that way for a while. It was a disaster, and cost us a lot of money.

We now hire young engineers as co-op students, pick the best of those and hire them full time, and then train them on the job. We never suffer from shortages or bad fit with new hires.

Mentorship isn't formal- it's in the form of technical supervision on a sliding scale based on the difficulty of the assignment and the judged competence of the candidate. And it's not just the most senior people doing this- the people who were only hired a few years ago are helping the co-op students build their skills, and so on up the experience curve. The only way one person here is "vested" in the success of the other is via our profit sharing program- and since that is significant, people are actually willing to spend some significant time and effort building the skills of the younger generation so they can be more competent at making all of us more money and happy customers who want to do repeat business with us. And since the company a) selects people who actually want to work here by the process noted above, b) pays them well and c) gives them interesting work to do, the investment has time to pay off. Turn-over is near zero, and the payoff on that investment is enormous.

Transferring the "art" of engineering to a new generation is both necessary and difficult. The division of labour between design and construction/fabrication renders it very difficult indeed. Our own company is very fortunate in that we build or at very least install what we design. There are engineers out there who have spent a whole career in "consulting", who are doing design without ever having done any meaningful construction or manufacturing supervision/management, plant operations or the like. Some of these people were hired into "consulting" fresh out of school themselves. And some such people are training a whole new generation of engineers to generate paper drawings and specifications as a product, divorced from a meaningful knowledge of how that work is applied in the real world. It's frightening frankly.

 

[Mr168]

Every attempt to promote structured mentorship that I have been privy to has come and gone faster than an overhead charge number. This has included various "leadership" type programs, one for every new owner, all of which are disbanded when the next new owner comes around.

On a less structured level, I've seen those nearing retirement unwilling to act as mentors, because they view it as training their replacements, thus jeopardizing pensions and retirement plans.

That said, I've had a handful of very good mentors - they're in it for the betterment of the profession and because they enjoy teaching, not for personal gain or loyalty to any company.

 

[IRstuff]

In most companies, mentorship would count against the bottom line, which means that you probably will not get traction for spending more than 1% of cost against what is essentially training. That would work out to 24 minutes per week allocated for training.

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[lacajun]

My first employer assigned mentors to new engineers but that was in the 80's. I don't know what they do now but the more complex the environment, the greater the need for mentoring. Hopefully they are continuing to mentor young engineers.

The profession as a whole seems to not value mentoring any more. I'm not sure why that is but I know why I have that impression.

Pamela K. Quillin, P.E.
Quillin Engineering, LLC
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[WARose]

As far as formal mentorship goes? Not any place I've worked at over the last 20 years. There is too much turnover these days....nor is there the amount of time to actually do it. At this point, it is pretty much trial and error.

Furthermore, we may have crossed a point of no return: there are fewer and fewer senior engineers who were mentored on their way up (I'm one of them)......they really wouldn't know how to do it even if asked. I was asked about that once (in a interview) and I told them to forget it because I really didn't know how.

 

[ScottyUK]

MoltenMetal,

Sounds like your company have got it right, a lesson there for many of the bigger organisations to learn from.

In my organisation we don't see much in the way of formal mentorship in the electrical field, but there's a well-established graduate program which is focussed on process engineering. It would be nice to see the scheme expand to the other engineering disciplines, but I don't think my discipline is seen as much beyond a necessary evil and a hole into which money gets poured: we're not the 'the product'.

 

[moltenmetal]

Thanks ScottyUK- there's still plenty to b*tch about in this company- lots of room for further improvement, or perhaps more realistically, lots of attempting to hold the line against sliding further into groupthink as we grow, and lots of work defending against the uncritical aping of what other companies do as if the mere fact that others are doing something were evidence of some kind of "best practice"...But I consider setting up and running our co-op program for engineers as the single most valuable thing I've done for my company in my 21 years here. My projects have made the company a fair bit of money and I've got a fairly long list of happy customers too, but we'd be screwed- and likely half the size we are now- if I hadn't set up the co-op system, or if the rest of the organization hadn't jumped on board once I'd shown them how successful it could be.

 

[Terratek]

I have at least three mentors (all in different levels of authority above me in the company). By now in my career, I am as strong as each of them in certain areas (dare I say even possibly, slightly stronger in certain things?), but each of them have at least one or more things that are still above and beyond my experience and strength. So, even if I might be slightly stronger than one mentor in one area, a different mentor has plenty more to offer than me. I have had other mentors in the past which today I rarely ask for advice and sometimes they even ask me. There has never been a formality. I just grew to realize that this guy/gal I've been asking questions of all these years must be a mentor!

 

[MrHershey]

We try to do what moltenmetal's company does. We're of course always on the look out for "experienced" engineers, but have to be real careful to dig qualitatively into that experience. A lot of the time, they've got the years, but not the "experience", if that makes sense. They'll be 5-10 years out of school but still have the chops of someone who is like 2-5 years out of school (or, god forbid, earlier). Perhaps we just have high standards or have gotten real lucky with the people who stick around that long. At least anecdotally, I feel we've had more luck with people with no experience than we have with people with a few years' experience. Seems like we have to train both groups about the same, but one is a clean slate and doesn't think they deserve the salary of someone who has been out of school for a couple years.

For us the mentorship is not part of a formal program. Personally, I prefer it that way. Unless it's opt-in for senior staff, I feel like formal programs tend to force people into mentorship who either aren't cut out for it, don't want to do it, or both. And then when a young person is assigned a mentor they feel that's their formal mentor and they really shouldn't go elsewhere. Not like cheating on a spouse but more like going outside the chain of command. Doing it more informally allows the people who are really interested and invested in being mentors to shoulder that burden and the people who aren't don't have to. Also leaves young engineers multiple avenues for mentorship in case their normal go-to is out of the office or busy or whatever. Important part for management is for them to be aware of what's going on and make sure that the informal mentors are not being penalized for spending their time mentoring/teaching when the time comes for bonuses/raises/profit sharing. Billable hours may be lower and projects may not come in at or below the targeted hours, but that mentoring and training time is critical to the future health of the company.

Also can't be afraid to lose young engineers and avoid the training costs just because they might leave. Having untrained engineers stick around is a much worse outcome for the company than having well-trained engineers leave.

 

[moltenmetal]

MrHershey: our experience matches yours. Our mentorship program isn't 1:1 and isn't formal- we try to get the junior engs to work with all the senior engs at an early point in their career, so they see a bunch of different work styles and can select a hybrid that matches their own abilities and aptitudes. And from experience, we prefer the blank slate to the one which has had some ridiculous sh*t etched into it at an early, impressionable stage...fixing that is pretty nigh impossible. Regrettably, working with junior engs isn't an "opt in" thing here- by necessity, and some of our senior engs are either not interested in mentorship or are terrible at it or both. So it goes- at least that provides the junior engs with hands-on experience in dealing with difficult people!

Most companies fail to hire young people out of a fear they'll leave, rather than failing to train the young people they actually hire. And they work hard to poach young people trained by others. Fair enough- it keeps us honest. We have to pay well and offer the young engs interesting work. Of course if you're in a cut-throat low margin business, you're screwed- you can't attract competent experienced talent nor can you afford to train fresh grads- but thanks to an oversupplied market, even places like that seem to be able to find staff rather than doing what they should do- close up shop.

 

[ehbadger]

No formal mentoring or training for me when I hired in out of school. Very much got the "trial by fire" approach.
Half the battle was figuring out who was the right person to even ask the question to. Most people/ other engineers we always very helpful, but I had to initiate everything and learn from trial and error who to talk to about what.

AFAIK there is still no mentoring or even formal job training. Everything I learned was through asking various co-workers. There is a co-op rotational program that I think helps prepare some potential new hires better, but overall there is no formal job training or anything outside of the generic site-specific safety overviews.