Use and building of personal engineering toolbox for employees 9

[TidePoolJunkie]

Hi all, I'm curious how consulting business owners here feel about their employees using and building their own personal engineering toolbox.

Everyone has their toolbox to help them do their job more efficiently and to a higher degree of quality, from Excel design spreadsheets to reference/typical details of connections. Many of these have come from projects you have worked on in the past or at previous/current companies of others (or their own).

Specifically, how do you encourage your younger (or older) engineers to build this toolbox, but at the same time, protect your data/tools/drawings/details/etc from being taken from you and used elsewhere when an employee leaves your company?

Looking forward to great discord!

 

[human909]

I'm also conflicted about it in another way, which completely contradicts the point above. The open source movement for software is a wonderful thing, and I think it can apply to engineering. The free flow of information is awesome, bruh. I guess in the end, I have to weigh how much free information I want to give up versus protecting my competitive edge.

Same here. Sure, I challenged queried/challenged phamENG earlier about the desire to keep his custom tool under tight control (as oposed to freely available). But I sneakily didn't express my thoughts, I too have a desire to keep some of my tools to myself. It is human nature to be protective of our hard work.

Maybe when I retire in 10 years, I'll just give away everything, because it won't affect me anymore.

That is happening to me at the moment. I have a mentor who is retiring and handing over his tools/customers.

To the point about retiring...most of our firms are worthless. When the name on the door leaves, the company is effectively done and the new owners are starting over with, hopefully, a nice head start.

Yep. Unless there are systems, branding and culture than transcend somebody retiring then it is almost unsellable. However the nice head start is great and worth plenty for anybody who is lucky to receive.
Large companies can have this in spades. Medium sized companies can struggle if a few high quality heads leave. A sole practitioner lives off his/her good name and skills.

One clarification I want to make is that I was asking about 'toolboxes' of individual employees--not the companies 'toolbox

For many of us that line is extremely blurred. Either because we run our own company, or because we've created our personal tools within the company.

 

[ifitsmoving]

A few thoughts come to mind.
[ul]
[li]Unless you stop your employees from saving the files to their computer they're going to be able to take copies of anything you have. Even if you stop them from saving the files, you're probably not a good enough IT expert to stop them taking them some other way (copy + paste to another file?). And if you do stop them saving the files then how are they supposed to work for you? Your drafties will need to save drawings and your engineers will need to save calculations. The costs of stopping this from happening are probably higher than any benefit.[/li]
[li]Why are you concerned about employees taking your tools to another company anyway? I can understand proprietary information and data, or computer code for products etc. These will be protected by copyright / patents etc. and ultimately your lawyers.

But if it's just calculation templates that are based on industry wide standards (e.g. AS/NZS here in AUS, ACI / AISC standards in US), or standard details that are pretty much identical to the same standard details everyone else uses then one of two things applies:
[/li]
[ul]
[li]Either you're worried because they're a good engineer and will potentially be competition if they go elsewhere. If that's the case, then a) why let a good engineer go - pay them more, give them better conditions or whatever. And b) good engineers will already be building their templates, calculations etc. They probably don't want to use yours anyway, because they don't understand exactly how it works, and it's not set up to suit their preferred workflow. Most good engineers have a terrible case of "not built here" syndrome.[/li]
[li]Or they're a bad engineer. In which case your templates won't make them any harder to compete with if they leave you. And if they screw up so badly something falls down then it's very unlikely you'll get blamed through a spreadsheet from years ago that they didn't use correctly.
[/li]
[/ul]
[/ul]
Maybe it's an Australia vs US thing, or a small company vs big company thing (I've always worked in small companies), but in all the places I've worked people have actively encouraged their employees to build their toolbox of standard calculations and reference info, or at least winked and looked away while you did it ("what I didn't see you copy + paste can't hurt me"). My current director specifically tells all the new grads to build a reference library of documents, spreadsheets etc., and to take the time to understand the tools they are using and developing. Provided you give something back (help develop the company's standards in return etc.) nobody seems to mind. I can't think of a single (good) engineer I've worked with who didn't have a vast collection of spreadsheets, standard drawings and reference calculations from current and previous employers. Some of it may be legally questionable but no-one cares either, provided you're not:
[ol a]
[li]Using proprietary data, customer information, computer code for customer facing apps, internal research etc. - that's a big no-no.[/li]
[li]Using it to sell yourself or your new employer (e.g. "hire me because I have all the spreadsheets from previous employer xyz").[/li]
[li]Pretending to be someone else / some other company (that's Fraud anyway).[/li]
[/ol]

 

[Eng16080]

Realistically, most spreadsheets are just one-off, quick and dirty tools for some specific task which usually only the author knows the limitations of and how to use correctly. Most spreadsheets I've come across from others, I simply don't trust and don't use. This is even true for some of my own past spreadsheets. I also wouldn't want anybody using one of my spreadsheets because I'd be afraid they might try to use it for some edge case that wasn't accounted for.

For the average company (which might not be the people here), I don't think these company assets are the pot of gold that people think they are. The amount of time and testing required to develop a high quality spreadsheet or other software is, in my opinion, so great that it doesn't realistically happen under normal work conditions.

Sure, if a company spent months or years developing a tool that's a real game changer, by all means protect it, but most of these tools aren't that and likely wouldn't justify the effort that would go into the needed security to protect them.

 

[Just Some Nerd]

I find it odd to encourage new engineers to create their own spreadsheets for everything. While I've found it valuable for developing my own knowledge when creating a few of my own that don't suit typical scenarios, it seems to me a needless risk of mistakes not having company verified sheets for the more typical stuff. It's trivial to accidentally make a small typo and have that error be passed on through multiple projects.

An unrelated opinion but I also don't consider simple spreadsheets the kind of thing one can claim strict ownership over. As ttrpg fans learned in a recent controversy, methods themselves aren't copyrightable, moreso their expression that is, so the line is pretty blurry for me at what point. If someone wanted to make a sheet to do the same task you have a sheet for and it (unsurprisingly) happens to end up being basically the same spreadsheet, we can't really claim that we own the process in the spreadsheet when it's very clearly not a unique thing we created. I think what really irks some of us is the time we put into the spreadsheet as that represents a fairly obvious cost that someone had to eat while others get to piggyback off it.

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Why yes, I do in fact have no idea what I'm talking about

 

[ifitsmoving]

Just Some Nerd (sorry, new at this and don't know how to refer to a previous user): By "encourage the grads to make their own toolbox" I didn't mean that the directors here encourage them to create spreadsheets from scratch for every possible problem. I agree with you that this is a quick way to end up with problems. What I meant is that they, and the rest of the more experienced engineers here encourage them to take spreadsheets, calculations, standard details, other reference material etc. that they find useful and start building a library to be more productive. Some of the spreadsheets they may build themselves and get verified as part of a project, but most will be "tried and tested" spreadsheets that have been used for years by other engineers, or for the most common calculations they will be spreadsheets we maintain internally with appropriate verification. And we certainly encourage them to understand them, not just "monkey see, monkey do", and to give back with updates when they identify problems or improvements.

And I definitely agree with you that ownership over spreadsheets based on common knowledge (e.g. industry wide standards) is very blurry when everyone's spreadsheets end up looking similar and doing similar things.

 

[milkshakelake]

And I definitely agree with you that ownership over spreadsheets based on common knowledge (e.g. industry wide standards) is very blurry when everyone's spreadsheets end up looking similar and doing similar things.

If someone wanted to make a sheet to do the same task you have a sheet for and it (unsurprisingly) happens to end up being basically the same spreadsheet, we can't really claim that we own the process in the spreadsheet when it's very clearly not a unique thing we created.

Though the vast majority aren't, I think there are some spreadsheets that companies have that are truly unique to their company. It might use the same engineering principles, but they have some non-trivial thing that makes it better than other ones, which could represent tons of time and money. For example, there's a shear wall spreadsheet made by a company in my area that was stolen, and basically everyone uses it now. It's a truly remarkable piece of software with a ton of code, and works better than stuff people pay for. I personally don't use it because it's such a complex beast that I don't know its limitations, but it did give away some market advantage from the creator company when it was passed around like candy. There's no way to detect that it has been used, because the end result is just a shear wall schedule. It just doesn't sit right with me.

Besides spreadsheets, what about having a toolbox of standard details? That's also company property with competitive edge to me. But I'd be hypocritical to say that I've never used anyone's details, so that might be more "fair game." It reminds me of Italy, where it's standard practice to bribe officials to get approval. You couldn't operate without doing that. So it becomes ethically okay to do so.

 

[LOTE]

If LOTE is around, how did you tackle this issue?

I did have my contractors sign a non-disclosure agreement and contractor agreement. However, the non-disclosure is basically unenforceable and more of a scare tactic. I require that they have a login to view and upload project files (more for IT security), and I generally keep what I would consider "proprietary" off the project folders. What I consider "proprietary", or things that I don't want to leak out, are unfinished and unlocked spreadsheets (the things that someone could do damage with if they tried to design something with it without the eye of someone with 10+ years of experience vetting it). I give my drafter and engineering assistant full access to all my CAD files and templates without much hesitation.

But as others have hinted at, I don't care if my contractors (or future employees) want to take every document and spreadsheet I have ever given them and try to start their own company with it. Heck, I would offer to coach them and give them additional resources to help them get started. And that is because my business is built off of me, not my CAD templates or spreadsheets. I think any fear that they would actually become your competitor gives your contractor/employee WAY too much credit. Very few have the mindset to start their own business, and those that aren't ethical enough to not steal "company secrets" are not going to make it on their own anyway. I am also in such a niche that is built on relationships that someone trying to replicate what I have done after only working for me would be almost impossible. My contractors do not have insight to all the other things that make my business run outside of CAD, Excel, and a couple computer programs.

I think my biggest risk is if my spreadsheets and CAD templates got sent directly to my or my clients' large competitors. Not that they would use those resources (they are large, slow moving companies very set in their ways), but that they would use my spreadsheet/templates to find deficiencies that they could use their big legal budgets to attempt to shutdown me or my clients.

When I left my last company, I made a point NOT to take any of their proprietary spreadsheets or CAD files, even if I authored them. I did take more "open source" resources (like lap splice calculator spreadsheet, for instance), and several PDF's of calculations. I didn't want there to ever be grounds for my former employer to come after me, which they would do in a heartbeat if they say one of their spreadsheet outputs in a calculation package.

 

[milkshakelake]

I didn't want there to ever be grounds for my former employer to come after me

I figured out my own solution to that. I did grab a bunch of details from a former employer (no calculations; I felt like that was crossing the line). But I also sent a few clients their way, and random gifts/thank you cards. So even if things get hairy one day, there's a bit of goodwill. That wouldn't work with another former employer that happens to be a large, litigious company, so I simply don't use any of their stuff.

 

[NorthCivil]

I'll be brutally honest.

As i've migrated from employer to employer over the years, every time i left an employer I did take with me a USB stick full of all the project files for projects I had lead.(including calculation spreadsheets, drawings, etc).

I always jumped offices to an employer that was doing something a bit different (through my years as an employee, i never jumped from one office to another that did the same thing. I was always jumping companies looking for different experience to develop myself, rather than chasing 5k pay bumps)

I always wanted to start my own company, right from before I even started engineering school. I will admit I had a bit of mal intent, to use those spreadsheets to work with when i started my company.

But by the time i started my own company, all those spreadsheets were old. For some of them, standards had been updated. for others, i hadnt used them in so long I needed to re-learn the material. And others, I felt could be vastly improved, the best way to do so was to build a new spreadsheet from the ground up. I find the best way to re-learn the material is to build new spreadsheets. I had lots of time on my hands, when i first hung my own shingle, so I built all new spreadsheets from scratch.

The only place i used my old files from old companies was for project examples to include in my portfolio when applying for professional registration.

TL;DR, your spreadsheets probably arent as useful/valuable outside of your office as you think they are.

 

[jerseyshore]

A few years ago at my previous office we had a new employee. First day on the job they asked a lot of questions, seemed eager to learn what we did. Made copies of some plans, sample calcs, resources, etc. After they left that first day, we realized they had taken the giant book of typical details home with them. Never heard from them again. Applied for and got a job with the sole intention to steal as much stuff in one day as possible.

Always thought it was so odd because it wasn't a specialty office. Just general mid to small building structural firm. None of the details or calcs were very special.

For me if you can just Google "typical wall footing detail" and find a million nearly identical details, I don't think you can worry about your exact detail floating around. Now if you work in a specialty or niche field and the stuff you have is proprietary because of a certain system or product, that's something I would try to keep a much tighter grip on.

 

[wrantler]

My sheets are really not that good. And from my experience others find it hard to figure them out.

I think as engineers the hardest part of our job is risk management. You cant get that from a spreadsheet. Anyone can make spreadsheets that crunch the capacity numbers from code equations. Capacity design is easy. Structural analysis is an art form and you also cant learn that from a spreadsheet.

 

[lexpatrie]

Pham, if you get bored trying to chase the genealogy of various firms, the way to get it is through a company-information website like, say, open corporates. I haven't done similar where I am, but I've gotten close enough to see the data is there and could be traced. If you can find the firm principles at firms that closed, those guys show up elsewhere, like in names of successor companies have the names of the dudes listed as officers at company A. It's probably best to work from a known defunct firm and work forward in the time-line.

 

[NorthCivil]

@jerseyshore

that is insane! would this fellow not expect to be seen around town? generally industries are small enough that everyone is only a degree or two of separation to anyone else in the industry

 

[wrantler]

I'm with @northcivil. Lets find this man and break his legs to show him a lesson.

 

[milkshakelake]

@jerseyshore That story is insane. Nothing to add to the discussion; it's just bewildering.