Things they forgot to mention in the interview 27

[tz101]

How many have been the victim of lack of full disclosure by their organization in the interviewing process? Seems like things have gone from bad to worse in this area for me over the past couple decades. Everything from springing overly restrictive non-disclosure agreements on the day of orientation, to not telling me that seven day work weeks were the expected norm. Any tales to tell?

 

[dkjfnvfd]

Exactly why I have wondered for a long time why there is no professional union for engineers. I have worked in some union shops, where the hourly employees were protected by their union, all while the white collar staff was beat up daily and stressed for their jobs.

I think this is a problem globally. I know some French people and they make working in a profession over there sound like a true nightmare. Endless unpaid overtime and the Sword of Damocles forever over your head.

I'm in a white-collar union but I find it pretty useless. The unions for tradespeople and service staff close the plants down and block the traffic whenever they don't like something, whereas ours spends years "negotiating" on things behind closed doors that seem to go nowhere. Perhaps it's because a white-collar union includes too many people who sympathise with management or are aware of the company budget... E

Even before shift pay and danger money come into it, the tradespeople recently got put on the same pay grades as engineering.

 

[IRstuff]

Engineers working at Boeing had a union in southern California, and another in Seattle, I think. It was called Southern California Professional Engineering Assn (SCPEA), but I don't know if it still exists.

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[CWB1]

Funny, I've always found the opposite... large corps were bloated behemoths who took forever to decide what to have for lunch, whereas the small shops were nimble and people were aching to make a difference.

IME the mega-corps are all very compartmentalized/niche-focused and process-driven on the product development side. Despite incremental changes in technology, they've made the same products for decades and have documented both the design process and time needed for each step of development. I've worked for several with automated PM systems that would send email reminders of tasks to perform, and if you didnt mark that you'd begun or completed a task within X hours of that email then management was notified to resolve the situation. With the exception of radically different products and pandemics/odd shutdowns, that might allow a poorly run 2-3 year project's launch to be off 2-3 weeks from its predicted launch. When you combine an effective PM with every engineer being "pigeon-holed" into a small niche, management becomes very effective. You might only own a few parts but you're effectively an assembly line worker and expected to be very proficient at doing your small bit on projects filling your entire week plus a few hours. Its boring, but professional. OTOH small companies IME tend not to have the luxury of broad product lines. Engineers consequently work on a much wider variety of projects, development is slower, and documentation of process and development time is generally terrible. That results in nothing being efficiently done. Combined with lousy career tracks (lack of management slots) and lousy personal development opportunities (lack of research/other facilities), the professionalism and ability generally sucks. Its not nearly as stressful or as boring, but going from a fast-paced professional environment to that seems about like going from the big leagues to intramural softball. My employer now is a medium-sized (several-hundred engineers) firm that I like to think has the best characteristics of both, but I dont think I will ever work for a smaller firm again.

As to engineering unions, I know several defense companies that have white-collar unions but honestly have never looked into the matter much as they are a bit of a rarity as are unbiased opinions of them. I've known a few of their employees and opinions swing greatly both ways with few in the middle, so I'll reserve mine until I am in that position personally.

 

[tz101]

Anyone other than me that has to try answering to three "bosses" and never sure whose project takes precedence over the others?

 

[IRstuff]

Whoever approves your pay raises and gives you your performance review is your boss, by definition. Seems to me your kids probably know what to do, "But Mom said..."

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[tz101]

IRstuff, that always sounds good in theory, but it never stops others from stomping their feet and screaming. This, by the way, was forgotten to be mentioned in the interview. How convenient..

 

[IRstuff]

But, of course, interviews are like first dates; you wouldn't even know your date is capable of farting for a long while, just like you wouldn't fart in front of your date for a long while.

We once hired a hotshot designer, who was great for about 2 months; then, he started work around 10am, went to lunch around 11:30, came back around 1:30, and left for the day around 3pm. We had to fire his ass after several warnings.

Even if you only have one boss, prioritization can often be challenging; one coworker had this nice trick where he had a continually updated list of projects he was working on and would simply ask, "which of these other projects do you wish to eliminate or delay?" The manager would splutter and then go off to find a greener pasture.

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[GregLocock]

Having been overloaded like that a few times I handled it by doing project A on Monday , B on Tuesday, and so on. It takes me at least an hour to refocus on a project so I rarely switch back and forth in a day. This way I get some progress made in the week, and 9 times out of 10 come across some sort of blocker that needs to be resolved elsewhere, so I shoot off a CMA email and switch to the next project.

I agree, your boss is the one who does your appraisals. The others are 'just' customers. Oh, and customers who stamp their feet and/or scream become targets of sarcasm.



Cheers

Greg Locock


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[MikeHalloran]

For most of my 19 years at one company, I had two bosses:

1. A succession of ever-changing people from the formal bureaucracy, as I moved among projects and departments.

2. The Founder/ Chairman/ Owner and VP, who had a set of projects all his own. I was one of maybe 50 "Champions" of his worldwide. He put us in touch with each other as needed.
All resources were siphoned off from the formal bureaucracy by simple theft.
The formal bureaucracy could never figure out where the resources were going, or how partially completed projects just sort of showed up.

It was a grand adventure.





Mike Halloran
Corinth, NY, USA

 

[phamENG]

At my last job, I absolutely had 3 bosses. All three of them sat in and contributed to my reviews. All three of them lead production meetings. All three of them had equal control of payroll. All three of them had their own priorities. The joys of a small business partnership.

On the plus side, they each had their own strengths as engineers and in business, so I had an opportunity to learn a pretty wide range of stuff from them. But it sure was dizzying at times...

 

[mfgenggear]

tz101 (Mechanical)
(OP)
18 Jun 20 15:07
Anyone other than me that has to try answering to three "bosses" and never sure whose project takes precedence over the others?

Yes many times and it caused many conflicts, beware when one boss gives you instructions with out consulting the other two.
I smarten up real fast and CC all of them.

even now I have more than three boss in my business and it never ends.

 

[LittleInch]

Not quite the same thing but a recent project had 3 equal partnerships in the overall development. One was supposed to be the "lead" on this bit of the design which was in concept phase.

Didn't work out like that with large differences in approach between the partners and us/me stick in the middle.

I nicknamed it project Cerberus. Look it up.



Remember - More details = better answers
Also: If you get a response it's polite to respond to it.

 

[emorrison]

Worked for the same company right out of college for almost 10 years. Small company with lots of learning/growth opportunity and once that stopped I moved on to something new. Half a dozen small companies later and a couple of large Fortune 500 companies, which btw were the worst places I've worked thus far in terms of development and opportunity (almost 30 yeas)... I've come to the conclusion that, short of trying to figure your boss out right from the hiring process, you should probably just give it a year. All things reveal themselves with a bit of time and you get a better idea what you're in for after that first review, if not before then.

Some people are looking for a company to retire from, others just want to learn and grow. If you can find both, great; they don't have to be mutually exclusive but more oft than not, you'll have to figure out what you're willing to put up with in staying with a company or, simply move on.

 

[SteelPE]

Or how about:

What I was going to say was, now you are aware that our Board of Directors has been indicted, myself included, and we're prohibited from doing business until the investigation is completed. So obviously, we would have no use for you.

 

[geotechguy1]

The typical one that I've encountered is employers lie about the job they're actually hiring for. Typically this is consulting firms using vague job postings and lofty advertising about their firm to deceive you into accepting a normal salary, then after a week or two you find out that you get put on some large shitty project that they won (and the timing of wining it conveniently lines up with your hiring timeline) - either a crappy job they underbid, or a remote field engineer role on a construction job without a commensurate salary. Granted this is sometimes just the way things are but, I think I'm at the point where the next employer that does this to me I'm just going to walk out.

 

[moltenmetal]

I learned early. First job out of school- at a start-up, a few years old. Was offered pay too low to live on in Toronto. I told them that- they sweetened it by 4%. I accepted. 3 days later I turned down 13% more money from somebody else- a major firm which was just a little too slow off the mark in making me an offer- I'm a man of my word and a deal's a deal. I went off for a month in Europe, came back, put first and last month's rent down on an apartment and still had $32 to my name...went in a week ahead of my start date to meet my boss. He said, "Hi- nice to meet you! Your pay's been cut by 5%". When I complained, he said he'd taken a 10% paycut so I could take 5. I started work making 18% less than I could have been making if I'd been less than a man of my word, i.e. like my new boss was. Welcome to the profession of engineering...

I was very fortunate that I got life lessons early, and learned from them. Life lessons hurt, and cost, much more later in life...

 

[CWB1]

Anyone other than me that has to try answering to three "bosses" and never sure whose project takes precedence over the others?

Sounds like an issue between your supervisor and the PM office, both of whom should know your workload almost better than you. JMO but one of the hallmarks of a great company is how well they manage. The less I need to see a supervisor or PM the better the organization and the less time wasted on non-engineering details. My favorite past employer had their system set up so well that most months I saw my supervisor and a PM exactly once each outside of each project's monthly management review. My least favorite past employer was so poorly organized that my supervisor assigned new tasks almost daily.

 

[TED7]

I worked at an engineering consultant's once. I understood what field of engineering I was going in to, and what work I would be doing. What I didn't realise was that 90% of it would be on a secondment to another company, where I had already interviewed, and decided that I didn't want to work there.

I ended up essentially working there, just on different terms and conditions

 

[Sparweb]

The unions for tradespeople and service staff close the plants down and block the traffic whenever they don't like something, whereas ours spends years "negotiating" on things behind closed doors that seem to go nowhere. Perhaps it's because a white-collar union includes too many people who sympathise with management or are aware of the company budget...

No, more like the white-collars were hoping to sit in the other chair within 5 years. Couldn't offend their future peers too much. On the other hand, the tradespeople knew they had no hope of joining management, so they wouldn't hedge their bets.

http://www.sparweb.ca

 

[IRstuff]

There was never much collaboration between SCPEA and the trade unionists.

The pay laws and structures in the US automatically puts the trades and white collars on opposite sides, even though less than 10% of the white collars will actually move up into the upper echelons.

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