Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice? 6

[CivilTom]

I have my first career.. I was told it would consist of engineer tasks but I haven't done anything engineer related yet. I am pretty much a cad zombie drafting telecom towers all day. I am however paid like an engineer, if I put some overtime every week I am scheduled to earn over 65k. Should I be content? Or look for some real engineer work even if it means ill make 10k less?

 

[kylesito]

2 months? Geez...give it some time. I barely knew how to find the water cooler at 2 months in my first job. Give them some time to see your skills and stay diligent in what you are being given. You are way to green to be worrying about the type of responsibility you will get at this point. I have found that it normally takes 6 months to get where people feel comfortable about your skills and are willing to give you more responsibility.

PE, SE
Eastern United States

"If a builder builds a house for someone, and does not construct it properly, and the house which he built falls in and kills its owner, then that builder shall be put to death!"
~Code of Hammurabi

 

[KENAT]

You've only been working 2 months and are already complaining about mainly doing CAD work.

Hmm, either the non exempt world really is different or you need to just suck it up and get some time under your belt.

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[cvg]

you are in a real engineer position. It's called entry level or alternatively peon. no amount of degrees or job hopping will change that. in 6 - 12 months you step onto the second rung of the ladder which is commonly called green horn. After two years, you might achieve to the position of junior engineer. Eventually you will reach the position of engineer. You might be able to take an exam and get registered at that point. At which point you can look for a higher paying, more lucrative position.

 

[Latexman]

Are you CADing because times are tough, or is this SOP for your company?

Good luck,
Latexman

 

[GregLocock]

These were some of my entry level job tasks:

Walking around the entire factory site counting trailers (we didn't know how many we had)

Collating absenteeism from the assembly lines into a weekly report for managers

Manning the wages counter after yet another stuff up (all hands on deck)

Photocopying engineer's reports for them

and yes Virginia, those did count towards my experience as an engineer.

So I think actually designing stuff as an entry level job is pretty damn cool in comparison.


Cheers

Greg Locock


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[francesca]

As a professional engineer, I would say sit tight and draft for your life if you want career fulfillment. Your project managers need to get to know you and know that you will do what they ask, efficiently, and responsively. A little bit of dedication to a menial task goes a really long way to building the trust of the licensed engineers. Once you have that trust, you will be given more complex tasks. Without that trust, you will get nothing but more drafting. $65k is very good for a new grad. .

 

[CivilTom]

Francesca and Greg, I completely understand I am "green" and therefore wouldnt be suprised if I even took out the garabage every friday. The problem is, there isnt much of an engineering role here. It is telecom after all. How many of you engineers dont really do engineering work, but are still well off?

 

[KENAT]

Me - though I'm in exempt, in a niche industry...

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[MiketheEngineer]

You have only been there 2 MONTHS -- Give me a break ---you want some whine with that cheese. Get a life ... You got a good paying job and god forbid - you might learn something. Hang in there and call in a year!!

 

[IRstuff]

I foresee your future resume consisting of job hopping. Either that or you need to really get calibrated. Engineering is NOT doing one particular thing ALL the time. It's a process that consists of a series of event and activities that lead from conception to final product. In telecom, it may take years before a project completes and a product is actually issued. Only certain phases of the project might actually entail lots of detailed engineering, while other phases involve cranking drawings, and even other phases involve late nights debugging.

TTFN
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[IRstuff]

Also, ability, speed, enthusiasm, etc., all factor into what assignments you get.

The fact that you are bored and appear bored may well factor into someone giving a plum engineering assignment to someone else.

TTFN
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[tygerdawg]

Been there, done that, sympathize. First job was sitting at an aerospace company drafting board. Mind-numbingly boring. and affected my behavior in negative ways (started spontaneously insulting my friends). Was learning manual drafting techniques to 0.01 inch tolerance, hated every minute of it because is was NOT what I wanted to do and knew CAD would replace that skill. I quit after 8 months.

"Work" is not like "school", where you have definitive, short term activities with conclusive results. "Work" is more long term marathon-type stuff, vague, frustrating, and you learn to live for & seek out the thrill tasks. And develop hobbies and circles of friends in order to have a creative outlet and maintain your sanity.

Learn what you can, master it if possible. Make you desires known to the managers (politely, diplomatically, non-threateningly....they rarely teach that in school). If the tasks you are learning to master now, and the perceived future direction with you are presented, don't align with your "career goals" (if you have any at all), then do what you can and work to move on. It is absolutely imperative that you maintain a positive image of your character for folks to remember after you depart. Part of the graduation process is to explore and determine what it is that will get you up early in the morning. If you find that, you stop working for a living and start playing for a living. And it's damn sweet if God allows you that Grace and lets it happen to you. Let me tell you: it's a glorious day when that happens.

Then life tends to happen to you, spouses, deaths, other life changing events, & your priorities change. Then all you want is some job security and to go home at the end of the day, sit in the Lazy-Boy, drink a beer, and yell at the TV.

TygerDawg
Blue Technik LLC
Virtuoso Robotics Engineering

http://www.bluetechnik.com

 

[mechengdude]

Dawg - a star for you last paragraph.

 

[TheTick]

My first job out of college was as a contract drafter-designer. I told my employer clearly that my goal was to do this work to make up for lack of internship experience (due to military obligations) and move up to engineering as soon as possible. They responded by making me an engineer six months later at the end of my contract.

Will it go this way for you? Who can tell. Still, it is up to you to manage your career direction. No one else will.

Meanwhile, two months is nothing in work terms, barely long enough to hold your breath. Practice patience, STFU, watch, and LEARN.

 

[spongebob007]

Since you asked, I will offer my view. It has been my experience that an awful lot of engineering jobs aren't really engineering work. In many companies you are a glorifed drafter, drawing checker, or spreadsheet jockey. I work in the defense industry and in my line of work where projects tend to be large, complicated, and multi-year, there are whole groups of engineers (some of them very senior and well paid) who do nothing more than manage databases of project requirements. They don't design anything, they don't calculate anything, they just create databases and then during the project lifecycle they verify that the requirements have been met. Personally I would get more satisfaction from watching paint dry. I know senior Quality Engineers who spend their day writing procedures. In many companies a project engineer basically is in charge of project budget and schedule and interfacing with the customer.

Unless you work in R&D or work for a large enough company where you can specialize in something, say structural engineering, your days can largely be filled with tasks that are mind-numbingly dull, puncutuated by some occasional real engineering.

I personally don't see job hopping as a bad thing, especially early in your career. I look at those who look down on job hopping as being old fashioned. But with that being said, having a few jobs that you only worked a few months at probably is pusihing it to the extreme. Even if you hate your current job, I would stick it out for at least a year. Get some experience under your belt and see if things improve. If the handwriting is on the wall, then it is time to jump ship. Changing jobs gives you an opportunity to experience different things. I have been at both extremes from my first internship where the engineering department consisted of my boss and myself, to mega-corporations where I was one of hundreds, if not thousands of engineers. I hated the extremes and discovered that I was happy at medium sized companies where I had the opportunity to be a big fish in a little pond, but at the same time there was interesting work, opportunity to specialize, and room for advancement.

 

[KM]

Two months--you're still in "orientation" phase. You're drafting; that's technical. Do it with your eyes open and your brain switched on and learn, learn, learn. You have the benefit of seeing the end result of more senior engineers' designs: clever details, standard details, unusual solutions to problems. Check in with some of them and ask questions to learn even more: e.g. I see you did such-and-such in this situation and thus-and-so in another situation. How can I, as a young developing engineer, tell if the situation merits such-and-such or thus-and-so for a solution? That sort of thing.

 

[KENAT]

By the way, quite a few 'famous' engineers started out in the 'drawing office' or similar. For instance:

R. J. Mitchell of Spitfire fame.

Sydney Camm of Hurricane, Hunter & Harrier fame.

Henry Folland responsible for the Gladiator & Gnat amongst others.

Geoffrey de Havilland Mosquito etc.

Now you can argue it was a different industry in different time & place etc. but still. If starting 'on the board' was good enough for them then I'm hesitant to suggest most of us are too good for it.

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[kylesito]

Job hopping might be old fashioned to a degree but it's the old fashioned guys who are doing the hiring usually so be careful.

Doing what you love is important but so is showing some kind of reliability for a time period to a company. No one wants to hire someone who they are worried is going to get bored in 3 months and quit. It's not worth the cost to train them.

My opinion is to stick it out and learn to draft. It's not the worst skill to have in any engineering field. When a good opportunity does present itself, go for it, but don't run away after 2 months because it's not fun or you will be changing jobs every 2 months for a long time.

If it was fun all the time, they wouldn't call it work!

PE, SE
Eastern United States

"If a builder builds a house for someone, and does not construct it properly, and the house which he built falls in and kills its owner, then that builder shall be put to death!"
~Code of Hammurabi

 

[CivilTom]

Wow this thread grew quite a bit. For those of you saying I'm whining, I'm really not. I'm just inexperienced and getting to know the real world of engineering. The company I work for looks like it needs some young structural guys and project managers. I'll talk To my supervisor about how I can earn these positions. just out of curiosity ( I know you know nothing about this company) would you recommend a masters and focus on structural, or MBA and work for that management position? And if there really is no future for me here ill stick it out.. I'm bound to learn something.

 

[KENAT]

Do you want to be an engineer or a manager? MBA is heading seriously in the management direction.

There are other degree choices too.

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