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?

 

[ash060]

It seems that alot of engineers experience the "trial by fire" approach that ehbadger received. Is that an efficient way to train younger engineers? Is it supposed to be a sink or swim environment where if you don't pick up things quick enough you are left to flounder? I have met engineers that have been working many years, but don't seem to have a well-rounded background. It was like they meandered from job to job, and never received any guidance, so never really gained the experience you would expect from a person who has been practicing engineering for so long.

 

[Careful34]

I think ash060's post is pretty accurate. I also think mentoring at most places as been replaced by "Lean", and everyone is so busy they don't have a lot of time to help, less their projects suffer. On top of that, as standard procedures change, documentation isn't kept current, or procedures are never recorded to begin with, and people leaving take the knowledge with them.

Having less experienced engineers makes more experienced engineers more critical to the company, and less likely to be laid off in hard times. Don't think this isn't a competition.

 

[IRstuff]

"t seems that alot of engineers experience the "trial by fire" approach that ehbadger received. Is that an efficient way to train younger engineers? Is it supposed to be a sink or swim environment where if you don't pick up things quick enough you are left to flounder? "

Learning by "doing" is usually the best way to learn something for the long haul. To some degree, letting you flounder, a bit, is part of the process. There's nothing worse in the learning process than for your "mentor" to swoop in to "save the day," and depriving you of the learning. That said, it's a fine line, and there's often insufficient schedule margin for newbies to properly learn on their own. Self-sufficiency is also a learned process.

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[ehbadger]

Not to toot my own horn, but I think it worked very well for me. I struggled with initiating first contact or developing my own priorities, etc and the trial by fire forced me to do just that. If someone was constantly telling me exactly what to do or I had a "Safety net" to fall in, I know I wouldn't have stepped out and been exposed to the real issues and experiences that make me better. About 1.5 years into my first job, I was moved from supporting one process of the plant to another. Vastly different technologies, chemistries, risks, costs, and exposure. Again, it was an immediate trial by fire, and I learned right quick what was needed. Now, I am transitioning roles altogether, and I am amazing myself at how I can explain what I've done and am doing to the new guy coming behind me. I feel like no matter how much I pass over to them, I am taking a LOT of knowledge and capability with me. On the other hand, I've only been in that role 4 years.. and was as green as they come when I was thrust into the flame. So I think it worked for me. Is it best for everyone? I don't necessarily think so... some people come in and just flounder about and perform the same on Week 150 as Week 6.

Interesting discussion though!

 

[HamburgerHelper]

A mentor in my opinion shouldn't be teaching but teaching someone how to teach themselves. Trial by fire is some of that but a good mentoring helps explain the whys so that new problems tackled efficiently. The worst kind of mentoring is this is how we do it so do it this way and an explanation is never given.

As for formal training and mentoring, the one company that I worked at that had bar none the best formal training and mentoring in the industry, happened to pay less than if I just took another job and put myself through some graduate program and a significant portion of the compensation was delayed stock that you became vested in at the 6 year mark. I suppose that is how they justify the training from a money point of view. If the person leaves before 6 years, they probably didn't lose that much money. That company was very academic, to the point sometimes it wasn't practical. At another company, I was thrown into things , trial by fire, and I think my practically improved immensely even though I struggled and honestly was part of a few bad projects.

The only thing about trial by fire that needs to be avoided is that if it is too much, you can cause someone to lose their swagger. There is nothing worse than seeing someone lose their swagger and fall back to cover your ass engineering. Trial by fire works if no one drowns.

 

[CWB1]

It seems that alot of engineers experience the "trial by fire" approach that ehbadger received. Is that an efficient way to train younger engineers? Is it supposed to be a sink or swim environment where if you don't pick up things quick enough you are left to flounder? I have met engineers that have been working many years, but don't seem to have a well-rounded background. It was like they meandered from job to job, and never received any guidance, so never really gained the experience you would expect from a person who has been practicing engineering for so long.

I would consider ehbadger's experience one extreme and companies that coddle their staff to the point that they end up with incompetent senior engineers the opposite extreme. Neither are good, I've been in the second organization and hope to never see either again. I'm a big fan of dithering along somewhere in between. In this case while I'm a big advocate for mentoring I also strongly believe that many engineering grads received little/no education on practical design in college, simply have no aptitude for design, or for other reasons simply are unlikely to succeed in the design office. I'll gladly help anybody willing to make the effort to build on a solid foundation but prior to that there does need to be a bit of "trial by fire" to segregate juniors who slipped through the hiring process without the basic abilities required of that position, ie for design - being able to read a print, tolerance stackups, bolted joint analyses, etc.

 

[Careful34]

The more I think about it, "trial by fire", and "sink or swim" seems more like code for lazy engineering management. For what you believe should have been learned in school, give a simple test during the interview process. For knowledge that would be unique to your company or field, and wouldn't be a common thing taught in schools, there should be documented in house practices and standard, and they should be well organized and easy to access. There should also be a documented practice, procedure, or protocol on how interdepartmental company projects will proceed, and expected deliverables and time frames for customers and vendors. A new engineer shouldn't be expected to develop these things on their own.

 

[IRstuff]

"trial by fire" is in the eye of the beholder; my son feels that way about every math class he's ever had. Does that make his default curriculum lazy management?

The point of being engineers is not to do only things that we already know how to do, but to create new things. For that, we all get trials by fire, the more the better for us to grow as engineers.

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[Sparweb]

I have been the beneficiary of good mentorship many times in my career. I've been looking for ways to "pay it back", and the management support is there, but the opportunity is not available. My office hasn't hired a new person (except a manager) since I was hired 5 years ago. I have made gestures to help a number of junior engineers in the same company, but at another office in another city however it's not gained much traction. You can't "phone in" the mentorship.

Many years ago, I did have an opportunity to mentor a summer student. Mixed results. That summer I was traveling a lot; away from the office often. The student was left on his own to struggle many times before I could come back and steer him back on track. I was able to expose him to CAD in a real design environment, some practical analysis tasks, and introduce him to basic safety and efficient work practices in our prototype shop. I also realized that I didn't always have good reference materials ready for him to refer to when doing something I assigned him to do. Just handing him a copy of a textbook he'd never seen before, like Bruhn or Peery, didn't help. Lastly, we had very different personalities, and my learning style (hence my teaching style) was nothing like his.

For mentorship to succeed, the mentor and mentee should have compatible personalities.


STF

 

[Careful34]

Create new things, but not how to schedule a manufacturing trials in a company that already has a procedure. That procedure should be communicated to new hires and followed by all departments. Likewise, if the company has establish calculations they want to be used, the new hire should be informed instead trying to develop his own theories that would require expensive experimentation to confirm. Even down to "We have a scale of the precision you need on the other side of the building, you don't need to buy a new one." kind of thing. There's unique information in every company that employees need to know, and it should be the responsibility of a manager to have a method in place to communicate it to new hires. "Trial by fire" and "sink or swim" are clearly not well defined here.

 

[lacajun]

SparWeb, in talking with local universities, one common need is mentoring of the students. Many at the Freshman and Sophomore levels struggle to determine what branch of engineering interests them most. You may want to check this opportunity out through your local technical chapter or chapter of NSPE.

Careful34, I agree that internal standards, processes (business and manufacturing), resources, etc. need to be provided to new hires. There are a lot of technical aspects that are only gained through manufacturing and/or designing certain manufacturing processes. I've match projects fail because the engineering firm had no experience in the chemical industry. Costly mistake, which made the Corporation decide to always use engineering firms with experience in what that plant makes. But, IRstuff makes a good point about our ability to create new things.

Pamela K. Quillin, P.E.
Quillin Engineering, LLC
NSPE-CO, Central Chapter
Dinner program:

http://nspe-co.org/events.php

 

[Careful34]

Yes, I agreed with that.

 

[IRstuff]

I got a gander at my son's first homework assignment after the midterm; it basically assigned 7 of the questions from the midterm as homework problems. This suggests that the class did pretty miserably on these problems on the midterm, and in my view, represents an epic teaching failure.

It seems to me that one of the major subjects missing from school curriculum is teaching people to teach. Now, it may be that many, if not most, go through life without actually having to teach for a living, but most, if not all, do wind up having to teach something to someone at some point in their lives, and it would seem to be beneficial if everyone got a 2-unit seminar class in teaching. Certainly, my kid's professor could have benefited from a teaching class, because he basically sucks at it, and it's making this freshman class a misery to take. This instructor's approach appears to be in the "sink or swim" category, which may work for some that can figure out enough to go find the relevant material to learn on the internet, but for many others, it's many hours of struggling through material that was claimed to not need ANY math prerequisites, other than was was needed to get into this engineering school.

So, it would seem that most, if not all, apprentices from the Middle Ages, got some form of teaching, for better or worse, which they could pass on in teaching their own apprentices. In my own experience, I pretty much suck at teaching as we;;; vacant stares looking back at me, hoping for insights that I might impart to them, aren't being helped by the fact that I think the problem I'm discussing is rather trivial, and I can't even begin to understand what or why they don't understand.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
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[controlnovice]

We have an official mentor program at work...but I've never seen it used.

Problem is in this industry, most of us travel, so the mentor nor mentoree are never in the office at the same time.

Another issue is we are spread very thin. So neither the mentor nor mentoree have time to teach or learn. Although the mentorees are learning by fire....

______________________________________________________________________________
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[GregLocock]

My 'mentoree' is in China. I am sitting in the Australian bush watching Kookaburras. If you can't figure out how to communicate effectively with someone 8000 km away then you won't have a job for long.

Cheers

Greg Locock


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[Sparweb]

Lacajun,
Good advice but the local university would laugh me off with my humble pedigree. More chance with the provincial professional organizations.
Unfortunately, one won't accept me as a member so I can't see them accepting me as a mentor.
I expect the other (to which I am a member) would have no idea how to match me with a mentee candidate, but I guess there's no harm trying.

STF

 

[Careful]

I know I'm on a tear now, but thinking more about the whole "Trial by fire" thing, it's just bad all around. What responsible company would allow a New unvetted employee to make any kind of serious decision without oversight?

"Oops! Our released product doesn't work right!"
"Who designed it?"
"The new guy we know nothing about."
"Did anyone check his work?"
"No, we were giving him a Trial by Fire, and seeing if he'd Sink or Swim."

Who would think this is acceptable?

 

[ash060]

Probably this guy.

 

[CWB1]

What responsible company allows any employee to make significant decisions without another's review? Senior engineers screw up just as juniors do, and the mistakes are just as costly.

 

[Careful]

"Senior engineers screw up just as juniors do"

Hmmm, I would hope that would not be the case. Whole point of being a Senior engineer is you've made mistakes that learnt from them, I thought.