Need Reality Check 7

[cadengnr]

I did 2D and 3D CAD for the government and small businesses, and thought I was pretty good at this stuff until joining my current outfit, which models and makes aircraft spare parts off old manual drawings. As I thought I was getting better, I began feeling underpaid, as I have two degrees and am getting only $18 an hour just to get my foot in the door. Right now I'm not up to complaining, though, seeing as someone on the shop floor just used my output to make 13 rivet holes instead of 14 with 13 equal spaces.

People aren't making a super-big deal of it; but I don't feel the family circus I've joined represents reality. We've got one job that's a year behind and no-one doing OT to get it out the door. Early on I found I'd mislabeled some parts I thought were identical but went on different sides of a helo; QC didn't catch it, neither did my "mentor" before they got shipped. So I pulled the file on them, notified QC and copied the boss; he didn't give a *, and in fact was annoyed we'd bothered him with it at all.

I used to do flight test engineering, where it's easier to look for someone else's mistakes. But in that world, mistakes that get through cost-big time; I feel no less about what I do now, even though we don't do flight-critical parts. I told people today, if the assemblies we're working on were supposed to be interchangeable, someone ought to be hollerin' because we'd have two pieces of costly junk on our hands.

You folks out there with certs' and who've worked for the big boys, I'd like to know if you think I'm being unreasonable with self-expectations.

 

[bridgebuster]

Sad to say but quality isn't what it used to be.

I remember when the practice was "done by" and checked by."

Now I see a lot of things go out unchecked because there's no budget left because someone felt the need to run 478 computer models for the design of a simple span beam. Then, there is the false belief that "QC" is there to find all the errors. Wrong.

Where I work, the big thing is the so-called "independent set of eyes", which results in a false sense of security. This independent reviewer is usually some high-priced hack who needs billable hours and whose "review" is worth S--T.

 

[KENAT]

The situation you're in isn't uncommon sadly.

I'm part of a team that got brought into a company to try and improve the documentation, introduce Industry drawing standards, drawing checking etc and it's an up hill battle.

Just when we think we're making ground something will come up and it feels like we're back to square one.

I applaud you for having standards and wanting to stick to them, sadly there seem too many people in Engineering that don't feel the same. I just hope none of them are in safety critical areas but I know they must be.

 

[livingston]

We have similar issues where I work. Nobody cares anymore and when you express concern, they think you are just 'rocking the boat'. For my experience it seems that the new kids on the block tend to want to get things right and those that have been there forever just want to get it done. Sad but true.

 

[pwtomlin]

This thread makes me think of some of the rules from Conduct Expected, by William Lareau. It was recommended by someone else on here (can't recall the name) and it does a good job of explaining why a lot of companies are this way.

 

[swivel63]

i really wish i would see someone create an actual computer model for a freakin simple span beam.

we have great draftsmen at my current firm who catch all the mistakes and even question the completely logical designs. that's good, because it keeps you on your toes.

unfortunately, there are ton of companies who are more about "output and profit" than churning out quality work.

 

[cadengnr]

Perhaps I'm hard on myself, but I'm glad there are some of you out there who still value the customer, besides that lone soul on CSPAN whistle-blowing over the Coast Guard's new boats. His answer to "why": he couldn't sleep with himself, sending people out on "deep water" craft that can't be properly qualled. No one in his entire ex-mega-chain would stand with him.

Bridgebuster's concern about oversimulation brings to mind a recent Air & Space article on wind tunnels. Some fruitcakes in Scandinavia went totally CFD with their biz jet design. Result: transonic stall, one dead pilot. Hard to imagine in this day and age, or maybe not.

As to why things get like this: in our case, our owner know nothing about the industry, just counts the beans. Thus he doesn't realize his VP relishes jerking workers and clients around rather than taking stock of mistakes and seeking help before moving forward. VP says it's the last job he'll get at his age - which he's safe to say, seeing he's got the bucks to buy horses and take family vacations to Mexico, Panama, and Costa Rica. What a life!

 

[JStephen]

Cad- I can't offer any insight into your particular company. But I know there can be a culture shock when moving from industry to industry, or in different parts of the same industry.

When you start looking at it, any item that is engineered could always be engineered some more. There is simply no end to the amount of analysis or testing that COULD be done. And what IS done is usually limited in some way by customer requirements, by law, by company policy, etc.

You might compare your house to, say, the space shuttle or a nuclear power plant. Compared to them, your house is woefully and totally subpar and inadequate. But if the same degree of care went into your house that went into a nuke plant or the shuttle, you simply couldn't afford it.

Even work that is more or less identical in nature can be vastly different depending on who does it. If the Corps of Engineers contract for an outhouse, you're going to have a spec book 3" thick to go with it. Someone coming out of that culture is probably going to feel that normal commercial or municipal construction is underdone.

I say all this, not to justify what your company is doing (which I can't very well evaluate) but to point out that going from a big company to a small one, or up or downscale in the world of technology, is going to bring some changes, that are not necessarily associated with subpar work when compared to other similar companies.

 

[SWComposites]

cadengnr - its time for you to look for a new job. You are grossly underpaid, and you work for unethical idiots. Two prime reasons to look elsewhere, right now. There's far better places out there. Best of luck.

 

[bridgebuster]

"i really wish i would see someone create an actual computer model for a freakin simple span beam."

Swivel63 - you've never been to my office.

 

[swivel63]

a simple span beam? like pin - pin? i mean, i used computers as well.....but the time it would take to do something like that.....such is life i guess.

 

[cadengnr]

Thank you all: esp. SWComposites. Although I enjoy the essence of what I do, the where has to change. The wheels are in motion as I write.

 

[ajack1]

I know this goes against the grain on here and many will disagree but, is the reason you earn what you earn because that is what you are worth to the company?

It is a fact that things are checked less than they used to be, but if a company has spent many thousands of their hard earned cash on hardware, modelling software, FEA software should they not expect better results than someone with a board, a pencil and a log book?

There seems to be complaints in equal quantities on here that complain let the engineers do their jobs and stop interfering and no one checks my work or tells me what to do, can you have it both ways?

Whilst more can always be done to improve quality it comes at a cost, as JStepen says in his excellent post to the point where it is too expensive, to produce the best product in the world that no one buys is not good business.

Whilst things are checked less that they used to be I know the car I drive is safer, more economical, cleaner, has more extras than the one I drove ten years ago, why is that?

As for the I emailed my boss and he was annoyed, is it not possible that he might have something more important to deal with, how far do you go, email him to tell him there is no paper in the toilet? Whilst we are on the subject why should he not have enough money to own a horse and take holidays abroad, if he is nearing retirement the chances are he has taken huge personal risks and worked the sort of hours most people would not dream of to get where he is.

 

[ScottyUK]

ajack1,

I like your opening thought. In my industry sector (power generation and transmission) our worth to the company and to our competitors is what is driving up the salaries of the engineers. We are worth more because there are fewer of us and our skills are in increasingly short supply. Our worth is in our scarcity.

I wish someone would check my work more often. Some is checked but not as often as I would like. Much of it there is no one on site who can check it thoroughly because I'm the company specialist in certain areas and if I make a mistake in the detail then it tends to slip through. If we had more and better educated engineering staff then that would not be the case but our manning level is pretty stretched. I suspect we are not unusual in that regard.

I agree with your analysis of what a good boss might reasonably expect to have to show for his efforts, but I have trouble reconciling that with a VP displaying the characteristics cadengr mentioned. Bosses who display those characteristics usually end up in bankruptcy court or working for an outfit like Enron.


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Sometimes I only open my mouth to swap feet...

 

[GregLocock]

Cars are checked more thoroughly than they used to be.

If we just think about crash, in our lifetimes we've gone from no crash testing at all, to (initially) quasi static analysis and lots of prototype teste, to the point now where crash testing is probably 10% of the development task. The number of physical tests may have dropped off slightly, but that is because the variability can be established in FEA.

Similarly other aspects of cars are tested according to an ever growing stack of requirements. It is rare for a test to be dropped, unless it is directly superceded, even when the original logic for the test is forgotten.

Cheers

Greg Locock

Please see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.

 

[GregLocock]

Here's a link to the Air and Space article

http://www.airspacemag.com/issues/2007/february-march/model_behavior.php

Cheers

Greg Locock

Please see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.

 

[ajack1]

Greg I do not doubt that more analysis is run on things but are those figures checked more than they used to be? I will bow to your superior knowledge on this.

Scotty I do not know the VP in question and he may be a “bad un” but the chances are every day he has to make decisions like how do I solve the problem that this project is running one year over, if I pay overtime the company will go bust if I do not I will lose the respect of my client? This is causing me a major problem with cash flow, I cannot afford to fund the next project, how do I overcome that? I have all these new laws coming in how do I implement them? I know if I do not implement new systems, practices and equipment a few years down the line we will lose our competitive edge, but if I do it now the company will go bust, how do I solve this problem?

On top of this of course he has the day to day running of the company to contend with, if you then got an email from an employee saying I named a part wrong and I am not happy about it how would you react? To paraphrase the OP who is jerking who about?

 

[GregLocock]

Ah, I see. No, the calculations aren't checked in detail with any great rigour (maybe exaggerating) - but because each stage of the development is back-checked against previous results, and against correlation tests, the design itself is checked more thoroughly.

In essence we build a prototype to check the calculations - to my mind that is probably the major difference in attitude between exempt and code-following industries.



Cheers

Greg Locock

Please see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.

 

[ScottyUK]

Hi ajack1,

If the VP or owner was solving those problems then yes, he might be worth the money. In this case he seems to have failed to solve them - a project running a year behind schedule?? - and that makes him a net drain on the company instead of a net contributor. As a VP it is a miracle he is still employed; as an owner, well maybe he is in the wrong business.


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Sometimes I only open my mouth to swap feet...

 

[cadengnr]

Response from thread starter to ajack1:

Precisely why I get paid $18 per hour:

The medical condition that stopped my DOD career mandates part-time hours, and knowingly slims the pickins'. Once I got my A.S. in CAD to go with my B.S., a my friendly former colleague subcontracted me at $30/hour. The VP and program manager who hired me on only cared about my performance; but the P who wouldn't trust them saw me as a potential liability, even though I went from SolidWorks to Inventor in under a week and handed him my completed work on the way out his door (done twice because his people kept "jerking me around" in his words). State Rehab then advised me to take whatever to get a foot back in the door and wait a year before looking for a raise. So, with that great confidence bust, I settled on the next offer, especially on seeing the differences in interpreting prints from the fifties on microfiche that are barely readable.

And having quickly got comfy with it - a few mistakes or not - I've been kicking myself ever since, especially since what I did for the last dork was far easier. The first thing my current boss told me on the phone BEFORE ever seeing me or my quals was, "You are out of your league," some stuff about how his own failed entrepreneurship, and some garbage about forming a second shift. That marked him as an arrogant, butt-kissing liar; but so was/is Donald Trump. So with all the red flags, I bit the bullet and swallowed, especially since temp agencies were offering me $2 less.

Your argument about my worth to this fellow is actually correct. I can take a few machinist's insults; but it's quite another thing when a boss who admits to knowing nothing about your job knows nothing about your capabilities either, like he never really read your resume. As this bozo took pleasure in "e-du-cat-ing" me on helping his wife order sheet stock, he told me if I didn't get it down, I'd NEVER have an engineering job, "not to scare you, but with me or anyone else!" I've refrained more than once from telling him about multi-million-dollar project I ordered parts for, helped design, and managed with DOD 'til this body had had enough.

His other engineers are actually techs, but they've been around: one worked on the SR-71, and another actually graduated airframe/powerplant school with the boss. Still, they take similar crap, save for the MasterCAM guru, probably because my boss thinks CNC is "easier" for him to relate to. Never mind that he never misses a chance to say he's just an old-fashioned guy who hates e-mail for all kinds of reasons. Computers, save for his vacation pictures, are a necessary evil (his son who runs the shop floor doesn't even own one); thus, so are the engineers who use them. We model something, he changes the plan and deviates from print a week or two later, and we change the models to redo the drawings. The schedule slides, so he tells us he's going to hire another guy just to do pencil sketches. ("I'll get you a pencil with an eraser on it!") Someone tell me how to export a pencil sketch as a DXF for laser cutting.

Where I disagree with you, ajack1, is in giving him the benefit of the doubt for the decisions he has to make, though I'd rather agree. Interestingly, after this bully with a history of manhandling and outbursts - including giving me a good whack once - tried make me his $18/hour project manager, I had a nice sit-down in his office. Two words still ring in my ears from all his offensive self-defense: "BULL----" and "BALLS." The latter as in, "You're given A,B,D,E, but no C - what do you do? [cheshire grin] Do you have the BALLS to make these kinds of decisions?" And I told him that for much of my government time I indeed had "the BALLS" under similarly difficult circumstances; he has never bothered to ask doing what. (I did get an apology for hitting me; and even that was said in the most demeaning way.)

And BTW, regarding those mismarked parts, I discussed it with QC in person, and copied the boss an e-mail for QC and the customer, only because he wouldn't be in the next day for me to discuss my mistake to his face. I work to keep him from getting blindsided from someone else, and he complains no one "signed" the printout, though no other engineer there has my initials. No BALLS - whatever.

He may have well put in his OT as a foreman before joining and taking over this company with his BALLS and saving it from bankruptcy; supposedly, he hadn't vacationed for a year while his crane project fell a year behind and the company moved. Well heck, I obviously should have taken more vacation from Uncle Sam, but my heart's not bleeding for him. Yes, he puts in a solid 40 hours from 5 to 3 with short Fridays; then he with $80K/year and his wife with whatever are gonzo. No, it's not a lot for running a company of 50-odd people; which probably says a couple of things.

Anyway, since his son doesn't work Mondays, the shop is headless one day a week; on Fridays, no one answers the phone after 10, as his daughter instructed me. There effectively is no one above, nor below him to help run the show. (The new assistant, like the pencil-CAD guy, my own phone, and my own key to the building has yet to show up.) I've never heard of this with someone who runs his "own" business, let alone his "own" government project, who's not of retirement age with his butt on the line. If your ship is headed the wrong way, you normally either have to change course, or borrow/hire the resources to help you do so.

I think I've said about enough for tonight.