Need an honest answer 33

[sns777]

What do you think of women engineers? Or is it impossible to make such a generalization?

I am a female engineer, 35, married with children so I work only part time, (four days a week). I sometimes feel like I do not get the big important jobs to work on and this is frustrating, personally and professionally. Granted not getting the big jobs is probably due to me working only part time rather than me being female. But I still wonder.

Also I feel my boss doesn't like working with me. Every project I have worked on with him, he transfers the job to someone else eventually (mostly male engineers, but he did once give one job to another female engineer). What gives?

A male opinion and suggestions would be appreciated. I hope I did not offend anyone. I am just trying to figure out what to do. Or is it all in my head?

 

[whyun]

As a male engineer with a female engineer as a spouse, I can sympathize. Being part time doesn't help your situation. To make the long story short, it is all in your head. If your company compensates you and treats you fairly for the work you do for the company (compared to the full time male counterpart) then there's no problem. On the other hand, if you feel so bad, you can move on to bigger and better things and no one will stop you.

When I said it's all in your mind, you can take the exact same situation you're in and end up with two completely opposing conclusions. Either conclusion can be correct depending on your own needs.

 

[TheTick]

Most likely, you are not getting prime assignments because you are part time. In my experience, anyone not working regular hours is deemed "not fully committed", and thus not "worthy" of the best projects.

Personally, I have nothing against women in engineering. Like women in any field, they face a tough lot. I have seen excellent female engineers get shafted by their chauvinistic bosses. I have also seen incompetent female engineers exploit their status as "protected minority".

I could be the world's greatest underachiever, if I could just learn to apply myself.

http://www.EsoxRepublic.com

-SolidWorks API VB programming help

 

[weh3]

1. Perhaps your boss is good at delegating.
2. Perhaps your boss does not want to put himself in a position of working closely with a female. Regardless of professionalism, etc., there is no escaping that the gender element adds a dimension to the relationship, and it adds the responsibility of exercising self-restraint. The more external restraints, the easier self-restraint is, particularly if you are reasonably attractive. Don't say "it's not like that between us", because it is. He will never speak of it, though, and neither will you, because you are professionals.
3. Perhaps the part-time issue is too big a hurdle for him to be convinced that you are committed to the job, and that goes for anyone. I would bet there's not a swingin' D out there in Corporate America that wouldn't spend more time at home with the W & C if he could get away with it.

Regards,
William

 

[aspearin1]

You may have your manager scared. You are probably making non-traditional requests in a role riddled with tradition. His first instinct may be to say "No" to working only part-time, or any other request to leave early for child related stuff, simply because it is contrary to what he is used to. If this is such a case, he may prefer to replace you, but is not sure if the law is on your side. So perhaps he gives you some little bit of work to keep you busy and employed, but leaves him more wiggle room to manage in the traditional way he is used to.

He may also really feel like he needs you and wants you around, but because you are working part-time, he may not feel a sense of ease over your level of commitment. I've experienced this in my current position when I was "interem." I got busy work, because as far as management was concerned, they didn't know how long I would stay. You won't get a big important project if you're a flight risk.

If either or both of these scenerios are true, I say you step up and ask for primary responsibility on a bigger project. It will show motivation and dedication on your part and may give your manager the opportunity to open his mind to non-traditional work arrangements.

ChemE, M.E. EIT
"The only constant in life is change." -Bruce Lee

 

[Zapster]

Here are a few thoughts:

1 You only work part time, and as such, the important jobs of responsibility should go to those willing to make a fulltime commitment.

2 Perhaps you are not qualified for the big important jobs.

3 In some work atmospheres, having women employed is an invitation to sexual harassment suits. Some people find it easier to keep those who might be offended away instead of changing their behavior. (Not right, but I have seen this.)

4 Another problem is that a few people feel the need to provide affirmative action towards women in the workplace. As such, in jobs that are traditionally male orientated, some women are advanced for reasons other than merit. After someone has dealt with an unqualified affirmative action placed minority, they punish anyone within that minority when they deal with them. (Not right.)

5 Your boss may be sexually attracted to you. One typical response is that he is keeping his distance to ensure that he is never in a position of temptation. (Not right, but I have been guilty of keeping my distance.)

Are you willing to work overtime when there are problems meeting deadlines?

 

[EddyC]

I think that your part time situation is the real driver behind the particular work circumstances that you are facing. Favoritism exists in all jobs towards and against all kinds of people for a variety of reasons. But unless you are a mind reader you can't verify these reasons. I'll offer you a statement that my accountant brother said about his female subordinates: "Women complain less and do the job rather than try to find ways of putting it off like the men do." Of course this is merely one particular situation and others do vary.

 

[waskillywabbit]

I'd give anything to work part time or even work (4) 10 hour days and have a long weekend and be able to spend more time w/ my boys. I would tend to think that because you are part time you are treated as such. Personally, I'd take being "unfulfilled" in my professional career and work part time 10 out of 10 times to spend more time w/ my family rather than vice versa. Just make sure to treat the work that you are given as of the utmost importance and I would think the more "important" assignments would follow. Excellence breeds excellence.

Good luck and perhaps when your children are older and in school (assumption) you can work full time and find more fulfillment at work and get those more important assignments. Sounds to me like you have a good deal going on at the moment as I don't personally know many engineers that can work part time and pay the bills.

Brian
Pressure Vessels and Autoclave Systems

http://www.mcabeeconstruction.com

The above comments/opinions are solely my own and not those of McAbee Construction.

 

[HgTX]

I agree with the others that if you are in fact being held back (as opposed to believing you are held back), it probably has more to do with your part-time status than your sex. However, your part-time status is a common manifestation of the "mommy track", and I wouldn't be surprised if part-timers got more respect once more of them were male.

Your situation is ringing some bells with me, though. A friend of mine who had been doing very well in the aerospace industry found herself suddenly sidelined once the baby was born. First there was the maternity leave, then there was the attempt to go part-time for a while, then there was full-time but need to leave on a moment's notice if the kid was sick, and now that the kid's not so sickly she's still sidelined. In her situation, none of the other women had children, and the men all had stay-at-home wives, so no one understood, let alone respected, the concerns of a working parent. Not that she'd trade the kid for her career at this point, but she was definitely put on the mommy track.

My advice: document everything, and find your own non-boss mentors within your workplace if you can.

If you go to the "Obstacles" forum links page:

http://www.eng-tips.com/links.cfm?pid=732

and search for "E-forums", you'll get to something that you might find useful.

Hg

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[TheTick]

I did the part-time thing as a contractor. I was working full time (50-60 hrs/week) but not full time on a single project. The different projects were for the same customer who wanted my presence on two projects in different buildings.

That was enough to skew perceptions about my commitment. There were individuals who did try to take advantage of that.

 

[epoisses]

"What do you think of female engineers?"
I met a couple who were great, I also met some who were shockingly ignorant. Just like the males.

About you not getting the big jobs, I wouldn't know to be honest. How does your performance review tie in? Any significant negative points?

 

[zdas04]

I've been on the other side of this issue three different times. In all three cases somewhere on a project the "part timer" (two women and one man) missed deadlines that were critical to the performance of the rest of the project team. On one project this happened multiple times. The project really didn't care if the problem was a sick child, sick parent, or sick dog (I kid you not), the project was just late.

My responsibility was to the project schedule, budget, and entire team so my tendancy was to make sure that the part-timer didn't get any work that was on the critical path and watched very closely to make sure that part-time delays didn't put those parts onto the critical path. Two of the part-timers resented this extra oversight, but I didn't know what else to do and still meet my commitments.

I found the whole thing to be very difficult and not condusive to a good project development. By the end of my big-company career I tried to find individual-contributer assignments for part-timers and kept them off project teams. Everyone seemed happier and the individual projects seldom missed a schedule when there was no one else to blame.

David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering

http://www.muleshoe-eng.com

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The harder I work, the luckier I seem

 

[EngJW]

You can offset the part-time issue by being organized and focused and get the same amount of work done that the full time employees do. I can tell you for sure that there are people who put in 10 or 12 hours a day but they don't do a half days worth of work.

 

[HVAC68]

1. Well, like everybody else has put, the part-time situation doesn't help.

2. You said you are 35 - so, probably, you must have been working for the last 10 to 14 years or so, depending on when you started. Have you always been treated like this ? Have you worked under only one boss throughout your career ? If yes, you can't rule out a possibility of an individual's likes and dislikes coming into picture. If you were treated like this throughout your career under different bosses, then, it's time you had a look at yourself - do a self-analysis, get peer-analysis done.

HVAC68

 

[MikeHalloran]

I've worked with two excellent engineers who happened to be female...

... and one grossly underqualified nightmare of a female who bullied her way into choice assignments by making veiled threats about discrimination and/or harassment. She was so aggressively defensive that managers wouldn't relieve her, even after she screwed up, big time, lots of times. They eventually put her in a manager job, where she pissed away needed resources conducting colossally stupid experiments and filling her office with notebooks of irreproducible useless data proving ... nothing. A wall of notebooks stuffed full of incomprehensible data sure looks impressive to your average board member.

The technical staff seemed to share the same opinion of her engineering ability, but they were not dumb enough to go up against her, or to get involved with her little operation if they could possibly help it.

She was and remains so fluorescently incompetent and so clearly impossible to get rid of, that she may have poisoned the well for you, no matter where you are, no matter how good you are.

;--

Okay, I'm not an unbiased source. One of the first jobs she bullied her way into had been mine. She screwed that up too, and never got blamed for it.

Later, I had a run-in with an Administrative ASSistant, who filed a complaint about me with HR, for politely asking her to stop flooding the company e-mail system with breathless pre- announcements of an upcoming memo, cc'd to 2000+ people who had lots of things to do besides read content- free communications.

;--

Before the EEOC existed, I treated females as equals, and got along just fine. Okay, so far as _I_ know.

Now, they probably think I'm mean and cold, because I don't even speak to them unless I absolutely have to. Maybe a grunt for 'hello', and I'll return a greeting, but striking up a conversation or giving a compliment is now a Career Decision, and I've made enough of those.

I wouldn't hire you on a bet. No offense is intended, and it has nothing to do with you, personally. You did ask for an honest answer.








Mike Halloran
NOT speaking for
DeAngelo Marine Exhaust Inc.
Ft. Lauderdale, FL, USA

 

[ScottyUK]

gabbott,

I many of the views noted above: I've worked with a number of female engineers, and some have been brilliant, and some have been utterly useless. One ex-colleague turned down an award for best female engineer because she said it devalued her because she would have still won it if all her male colleagues had been included. She was right too. I won't dwell on the bad ones, but I've worked with male engineers with similar levels of inability so it is by no means a male / female thing.

How big is your employer? Some company HR departments need to meet some arbitrary target for M / F ratio. In doing so, people don't always end up in the role best for them and the best person doesn't always get the job. Smaller companies can't afford 'extras' just to make HR happy.

The part-time thing is definitely against you, but I think you are making the best choice by spending time with your family while they are young. I admire your committment to be able to juggle both roles; I'm not sure I could.

If you aren't getting the big high-profile jobs, don't imagine that your work isn't important. I've spent much of the last six years dealing with oddball projects, resolving problems that others have played about with and failed to sort out, and generally finding my desk is where the awkward stuff ends up. I've come to enjoy it, although I've resented it too at times. There's a certain pleasure in solving a complex problem which all your colleagues walked away from. Don't imagine that you aren't valued because you aren't in the limelight all the time. The other work is still important, and if you are in the limelight all the time, all your mistakes are highlighted as well as the successes. It is a double-edged sword. In your position you have a great chance to learn and when the opportunity comes to go full-time when the kids go to college you'll have a lot of experience. Hang on in there.



----------------------------------

If we learn from our mistakes,
I'm getting a great education!

 

[SolderingGunslinger]

Down through the years, I have hired several well qualified engineers who happen to be female. I also have hired male engineers, gay engineers bisexual engineers and one transgender engineer. Rob went on vacation and came back Bobbie (not the real names), talk about a tough time at the office.

Considering the my specialty, I have always been up front with all of my prospective employees. I point out that we often work with a crude boorish bunch of roughnecks, rednecks and hicks, if they arfe easily embarrassed by the type of language or behaviour which one can expect from, oh for instance a tower erection crew, they really don't want to work for me.

One of my best Civil engineers was part time. Her husband worked as an EE for an area government contractor. My wife loves kids, so I made sure she had my wife's cell number and in the rare occasion when she was needed NOW at a site, "Aunt Chriss" would show up in a company 4X4 and take care of the kids while mom took the truck to the site.

All of that said, Just because I ran my operation in that manner (come to think of it, I don't work for them any more :-D ) doesn't mean that is the norm. Part time employees often don't get an even break, however telecommuting is becomming more common. Try talking to your boss and let him know that you would be interested in working your regular schedule on the site or in the office, but you would also like to fill in the remainder of the 40-hour week telecommuting. You may need to have High Speed installed, but with a good VPN client, you can get much of the at-the-desk work done from your desk at home.

I remain,

The Old Soldering Gunslinger

 

[EngJW]

Speaking as an old timer that I thought I never would become, when I was a kid the guys who worked on cars, built model airplanes, and took things apart went on to become engineers. A typical engineer had a lot of mechanical feel for things. Girls were never encouraged to do these things so there were few female engineers up until recent times.

Today engineering has become little more than project management. You have to be a good computer jockey and know how to present schedules and budgets. I don't think there is any difference between male and female in this regard. If anything, women might be better at it.

 

[sns777]

Thanks for all of your great and honest responses. I think it mainly is a result of the part time situation and I just need to be an adult about it and accept that I have made my choice to work part time and accept the consequences. I also should keep a postive attitude and treat all projects as important. (Come to think of it a lot of people have built successful small businesses out of doing something that no one else wanted to do and do it well. A local (and well off) garbage collection company comes to mind.)

Incidentally my neighbor (father of two young children) just started with a new employer and made the comment that he would rather take a half hour lunch (rather than a full hour) and leave a haf hour early to pick up his kids, help with dinner, etc. but he said his boss is "old school" and likes "face time" so he was not able to do it. It seem that females are not the only ones who want flexibility for family/home issues.

Another possibiltiy in my situation could be that my boss (PE), who has the same years of experience as me, may feel more comfortable delegating and/or working with "green horn" enineers than me, who is also a PE.

Regarding the comments about my abilities, I know I have some weak points which I am trying to work on. Two that I can think of are I tend to work a little slow due to trying to be a perfectionist and I can come off as timid, which I know is really bad in business. I am working on these.

In another two years or less, I plan to go back to full time work. I will take your suggestions to "step up to the plate" and ask for more responsibility and hopefully will get it. Currently we are extremely busy and I feel pressure to work more.

 

[HgTX]

Mike--

On the one hand, I understand about poisoning the well, and I greatly resent those who set a bad example. On the other hand, there's not much better to say about those who allow themselves to be poisoned.

I've had a couple of managers who were male and completely undermined their underlings, including me, and I've had two extremely incompetent male co-workers who simply could not be fired. I've also seen male managers, especially those large of stature, bully their colleagues. On the other hand, I've never had a female manager mistreat me, and have only had one incompetent female co-worker (a secretary; much less of a problem than an incompetent engineer). Based on your example, I've decided to avoid men as much as possible, and given the choice I wouldn't hire one.

And did I mention that one of the extremely incompetent co-workers who could not be fired was a person of color? Best to avoid "those people" as well; they'll just paralyze you by screaming racism at every turn, won't they? If that sounds like a bad thing to say, think about what it means to say the same thing about women.

Thanks for the helpful advice.

Hg

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