A question for the engineers...

paflyer said:
Management, not engineers.
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I promise you, ALL of our current engineering heads are active in the engineering side of things, but obviously aren’t doing the grunt work. Every one of them started as entry-level engineers and have been with the company for at least a decade, some for two. They intimately understand the products, how they were designed and to what specifications they were engineered to. They are charged with steering the company through meeting customer demand and staying on the leading edge of product design in both use of coatings, material composition, and design. We are number one in several product categories driving close to $1B in sales where we were less than $300K only a decade ago. They are in management, but they are active in their departments and still performing “engineering work”.


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WPAFB is hiring engineers fairly regularly. Short drive from Cleveland if he wants to gone home on weekends:rolleyes:

Cheers
 
SoonerAviator said:
I promise you, ALL of our current engineering heads are active in the engineering side of things, but obviously aren’t doing the grunt work. Every one of them started as entry-level engineers and have been with the company for at least a decade, some for two. They intimately understand the products, how they were designed and to what specifications they were engineered to. They are charged with steering the company through meeting customer demand and staying on the leading edge of product design in both use of coatings, material composition, and design. We are number one in several product categories driving close to $1B in sales where we were less than $300K only a decade ago. They are in management, but they are active in their departments and still performing “engineering work”.


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But they are paid to be accountable as managers.
 
Paulie said:
I would be leery of someone that wants to stay in Cleveland.
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paflyer said:
But they are paid to be accountable as managers.
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That is pretty much the career path of every professional in America. You do grunt work, then move up to higher-level grunt work, then you manage the grunt work. Accountants, doctors, engineers, and even pilots do the same thing. Grunt work gets capped at a certain salary level, and you are then compensated as a manager in order to advance. It makes no sense to continue accelerating the pay of an engineer ad infinitum for performing the same duties.


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paflyer said:
But they are paid to be accountable as managers.
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I’m afraid you don’t understand.

A chief engineer is still an engineer, just as a chief surgeon is still a physician, even if his job is mostly directing engineers and reviewing their work. He is responsible for technical, schedule, and financial performance. He is part of technical, financial, and strategic decisions. He leads technical investigations, reviews and approves specifications and reports, makes design decisions, etc.

The same is true for a VP of engineering, an engineering department manager, a team lead, etc.

In any given year, I may be a proposal manager, a program manager, a chief engineer, lead failure investigations, create engineering training, teach junior engineers, perform analyses, review and approve designs,... This is a form of management that no one but an engineer can do.

It’s not a sharp distinction, and the roles of “engineer” and “manager” are not mutually exclusive.
 
Ken Ibold said:
I echo the comments that you need to go where the jobs are.
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Yup, I’ve worked in six states, settled down now. But if push came to shove, I’d take an engineering job on the other side of the country.
 
It took me three months to get an engineering job. I graduated in 2015. I applied to a ton of jobs and didn’t hear anything from anyone for about 2 months. Then I started getting calls for interviews. I had 4 job offers all within a week. I have an ME degree as well. Graduated with a 3.6 which I suppose it pretty good but not exceptional. But I mean hey who doesn’t love me???? Am I right??? Am I right??? I really freshen up the old engineers with my upbeat and millennial attitude :p

But one day I will be a pilot. The most noble profession of all *bows down*
 
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X3 Skier said:
WPAFB is hiring engineers fairly regularly. Short drive from Cleveland if he wants to gone home on weekends:rolleyes:

Cheers
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Ditto that. Tell him to add a resume' to USAjob.gov . He will get an offer. Remind him that the guberment starts with a low entry pay but advances pay quickly. My group with NAVAIR has added over a hundred engineers last year and has been told to add another 125 next year. Almost 100% of them will be recent grads.
 
Half Fast said:
I’m afraid you don’t understand.

A chief engineer is still an engineer, just as a chief surgeon is still a physician, even if his job is mostly directing engineers and reviewing their work. He is responsible for technical, schedule, and financial performance. He is part of technical, financial, and strategic decisions. He leads technical investigations, reviews and approves specifications and reports, makes design decisions, etc.

The same is true for a VP of engineering, an engineering department manager, a team lead, etc.

In any given year, I may be a proposal manager, a program manager, a chief engineer, lead failure investigations, create engineering training, teach junior engineers, perform analyses, review and approve designs,... This is a form of management that no one but an engineer can do.

It’s not a sharp distinction, and the roles of “engineer” and “manager” are not mutually exclusive.
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I don't understand?

Well, FYI, I've been in the field since 1981.
 
SoonerAviator said:
That is pretty much the career path of every professional in America. You do grunt work, then move up to higher-level grunt work, then you manage the grunt work. Accountants, doctors, engineers, and even pilots do the same thing. Grunt work gets capped at a certain salary level, and you are then compensated as a manager in order to advance. It makes no sense to continue accelerating the pay of an engineer ad infinitum for performing the same duties.


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Experience, and the judgement and skills that come from that, are not worth additional comp unless you take on "management" duties?

You must be HR... ;)
 
paflyer said:
Experience, and the judgement and skills that come from that, are not worth additional comp unless you take on "management" duties?

You must be HR... ;)
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Experience is great, it keeps one from repeating past mistakes. At some point, the years of experience result in diminishing returns, no? Unless you expand on that skill set with the inclusion of additional education, certification, or management capabilities, there’s no reason to jump a senior engineer from $100K to $200K. We can argue about how much it would cost the company monetarily to fix mistakes that a 10-yr engineer has made that a 15-yr wouldn’t have made, but it gets pretty hard to draw that line.


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paflyer said:
Experience, and the judgement and skills that come from that, are not worth additional comp unless you take on "management" duties?

You must be HR... ;)
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I used to work for a company that had a true dual career path. When I left I was in the same pay scale as a 2nd level manager, which meant I made more than my boss. Which was more than fair, he was overpaid (in this engineer's opinion :) ).

Now, I saw no evidence of a true dual career path at Intel. Even high ranking engineers were expected to manage people. That's asking a lot, engineering and managing people are two entirely different worlds (and skill sets).
 
I'm always amazed at how short engineers sell themselves. If you can get a bachelor's degree in engineering you have all the aptitude you need to run a company, to analyze financial reports and make strategic decisions. In fact, after you gain experience in a company you are probably in a position to make better decisions than the "business" experts.
 
paflyer said:
That's pretty depressing to someone who's been practicing for decades.
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Well, quit practicing and get 'er done. Honestly if you are comfortable, which it sounds like you are, what's to complain about? My son wants to make money and get ahead, I retired young, he wants to beat that, I hope he does.
 
PaulS said:
I'm always amazed at how short engineers sell themselves. If you can get a bachelor's degree in engineering you have all the aptitude you need to run a company, to analyze financial reports and make strategic decisions. In fact, after you gain experience in a company you are probably in a position to make better decisions than the "business" experts.
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And sometimes, they start their own consulting firms....
 
SoonerAviator said:
Experience is great, it keeps one from repeating past mistakes. At some point, the years of experience result in diminishing returns, no? Unless you expand on that skill set with the inclusion of additional education, certification, or management capabilities, there’s no reason to jump a senior engineer from $100K to $200K. We can argue about how much it would cost the company monetarily to fix mistakes that a 10-yr engineer has made that a 15-yr wouldn’t have made, but it gets pretty hard to draw that line.


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Ah, I just knew you are HR!! :p
 
PaulS said:
I'm always amazed at how short engineers sell themselves. If you can get a bachelor's degree in engineering you have all the aptitude you need to run a company, to analyze financial reports and make strategic decisions. In fact, after you gain experience in a company you are probably in a position to make better decisions than the "business" experts.
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Most engineers are lousy at self promotion and tend to downplay their contributions.
 
Sac Arrow said:
And sometimes, they start their own consulting firms....
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Sometimes they do. ;)

But I checked out "Upwork.com" the other day; talk about selling short. Most of these guys are willing to work for peanuts. Drags down the rest of us.
 
paflyer said:
Most engineers are lousy at self promotion and tend to downplay their contributions.
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If so, it’s our own fault. Anyone who can learn dif eq’s and thermodynamics can learn to manage his own career if he’s serious about it. It ain’t rocket science, and much of what we do is.
 
paflyer said:
Ah, I just knew you are HR!! :p
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I’m in finance/accounting. I’d rather you teach and cultivate clones of yourself (a highly experienced engineer) rather than having just one of you doing all of the work. Diversified workforce, level-loading workload, expanded capacity and all that. It’s much better for the bottom line. ;) I don’t run an engineering company, I run a manufacturing company, lol.


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Get a tome of Dilbert cartoons, and read EVERY ONE OF THEM because THEY ARE ALL TRUE. I finally escaped engineering after experiencing sufficient doses of Dilbertism to where I just couldn't take it anymore. My condolences to your newly minted ME. Remember, engineers that flunk out go into accounting. Then when they get the acct degree, they proceed to get an MBA....and then they actually do the BA part....and then the engineers end up sucking up to the flunked out engineers for their raises, and all their project budgets and cost analysis gets second-guessed by that flunked out engineer who got the MBA. Enjoy that....I never did. Now I do my own BA with my own B. Read DIlbert about who gets promoted.
 
J4000 said:
....and then the engineers end up sucking up to the flunked out engineers for their raises, and all their project budgets and cost analysis gets second-guessed by that flunked out engineer who got the MBA.
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I'm sure that's true some places, especially at commercial firms.

At our place, almost all of our upper management comes from the engineering ranks and are still top-flight engineers. The career path for pure bean-counters is quite limited. And engineers who aren't highly skilled won't last long, let alone move up the ladder. Most times they're never hired in the first place; we're pretty selective. The number of our executives that I don't respect for their technical ability can be counted on one finger.
 
Half Fast said:
That’s true at our place. Lots of top engineers doing over 200 with salary and bonus. Toss in stock options, 401k matching, and a benefits package and it’s enough to squeak by if you scrimp and mind the pennies....
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...and carefully avoid getting sucked into airplane ownership. ;):D
 
J4000 said:
Get a tome of Dilbert cartoons, and read EVERY ONE OF THEM because THEY ARE ALL TRUE. I finally escaped engineering after experiencing sufficient doses of Dilbertism to where I just couldn't take it anymore. My condolences to your newly minted ME. Remember, engineers that flunk out go into accounting. Then when they get the acct degree, they proceed to get an MBA....and then they actually do the BA part....and then the engineers end up sucking up to the flunked out engineers for their raises, and all their project budgets and cost analysis gets second-guessed by that flunked out engineer who got the MBA. Enjoy that....I never did. Now I do my own BA with my own B. Read DIlbert about who gets promoted.
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I started out working for one of the Big Oil companies, and that place was Dilbert writ large. We used to hang the most applicable cartoons on the bulletin board and pass them around at the start of team meetings. One team I was on we paired up all the senior management with the most appropriate Dilbert character. And inserted the slide in a project update presentation to them. Some of those pairings were unbelievably close.
As Jimmy Buffett said, if we couldn't laugh we would all go insane.

But it was a great place to learn coming out of college, and that company had the size and resources to invest in top class technical and commercial training of its engineers and geoscientists. The oil and gas industry is run by engineers and geologists, not MBAs, investment bankers or accountants. Most of the best technical people I worked with moved on and build their own companies, instead of going back for a biz degree. I started my fourth company in mid-2016...retirement just doesn't suit me.
 
I have a lot of respect for engineers having worked in tandem with them on many projects. One of the best was at Northrup Grumman on the X-47B prototype. He was self aware enough to thank me when I caught a couple of mistakes in the engineering. He agreed with me that many of the fresh out of school types needed to be knocked down a peg for thinking they knew it all.
Something that is a bad trend is there are no longer floor engineers to consult when doing something that is non routine. At gulfstream the engineers were locked away and you needed to know the secret knock to get through the door. Gulfstream also had some insufferable youngsters. One full of himself one was so proud of being on the team that designed the rack that held the coffee maker.
When Gulfstream designed the 650 the aerodynamic engineers were brought in from outside. They left when the aerodynamic work was done.
Some of the best at Braniff work let us come up with a non routine repair, do a stress analysis and draw it up from there.
Never met a engineer with more than 20 years that was a *******, generally a humble lot.
To me in aviation engineers deserve all the praise, not the guy that drives the airplane.
 
steingar said:
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My nephew has not scored an engineering job in eight months since he graduated with an engineering degree. Should I be worried, and if so how much?
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Q1: Should you be worried?

A1. Are you responsible in any way for your nephew’s current situation? If so, yes, you should be worried. If not, no.

Q2: Is it an issue if your nephew hasn’t landed a job according to his education.

A2. Only if your nephew desires to work in a field relevant to his education.

Q3. What should I (you) do about it?

A3. Has the nephew asked your advice?

Q4. What is the real, underlying issue here? Are you, the family, and the he nephew all having open and honest conversations about this?


Anecdote: my daughter is a new school teacher. Her education is in elementary education. She recently advised us that she will only stay in this field long enough to obtain forgiveness for her federal loans.

I LOST my mind over this. Something about being responsible for the promises one makes. Then, I realized it’s not really my choice. The promise we mad to her was that we would help her afford college. We did our part. She did her part. The choices she makes in her life are hers to to make and the consequences are hers to deal with.

One of the toughest things I’ve had to accept is that what I value (keeping your word) is not what my daughter values.

When it comes to student loan debt. Not when it comes to who she is as a person.
 
Did 15 years of “pure” engineering, 15 years as a chief engineer on a few major aircraft developments and 15 years as a consultant. Enjoyed everyone of them, especially the consultant part getting easy money for telling people what I used to tell them for “free”. In between, picked up a MSME and MS Management and learned different useful things from both.

If you don’t enjoy what your doing, don’t do it. Life’s too short to waste time doing stupid stuff. There’s always a place for a technical person who’s good at what they do, even if it’s making buggy whips.

Cheers
 
On the consulting side, there are two tracks. One is pure engineering, and the other is business development and company management. The guys (and girls) on the latter track pull down bigger salaries than those on the former. By a wide margin.
 
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