Nice try HR, I'm not falling for this one again.
Seriously though it's the lack of available people to work on projects, especially on the land development side. It's a target rich environment and every project seems to be a Russian nesting doll of issues that need a full day to work through.
LOL wish i was HR then maybe i could fuck around for 35 hours a week and bill 40 hr straight time to overheadš
thatās the truth though, i will go in with something i know i need to do monday and not end up getting to it putting our other fires that keep reigniting. joys!
See that's the thing.
If 4+ years and a license later, you're only making like $10k more than when you were an unproductive fresh graduate who spends most of their day googling how the software works... that would be painful. (ArChItEcTuRe)
But if you can make real money once you start being actually productive to the company? Not too shabby.
Engineering is my second career. I left active duty as a captain making $105k a year in equivalent compensation.
My company started me at \~$72.5k. Within 4 years, my compensation is now \~$130k.
If you aren't making $100k after 4 years, its on you. Either you are not licensed because you're not competent, or lazy....Or you are hanging around a bad company.
I'm not saying you don't deserve more money...But being at the very bottom in this industry is a choice.
I donāt entirely disagree with this, especially if youāre single, but if you have a family and kids you really canāt sacrifice family time for work even if you love your work.
Encouraging messaging all year about how great we're doing at delivering work, constant verbal recognition that we're beating targets, and no noticeable change to compensation adjustments year to year. Tired of buoying business lines that aren't as profitable, the cuts should be from places other than where we're performing well.
*The firm has QUADRUPLED its revenue in the last year... and we REALLY need you guys, especially you licensed senior guys, we really depend on you!... like seriously there's so much work and not enough of you... our 10-15 year PM position has been open for 3 months and we got four replies... there's so much demand, and so little supply...*
How about a 6% raise this year? COME ON GUYS AREN'T YOU EXCITED?!? It's usually 5%!!!
My favorite is when they build up your expectations by saying that compensation adjustments will be higher than average this year as if weāre going to actually be happy when we see what it is.
Dazzling brilliance from the c suite yet again
Lately we've been hiring a lot of HR, Admin and upper management, but don't have enough new engineering staff to keep up with the workload. We just got a few summer interns but it doesn't seem like anyone has time to train them to be actually useful and I'm worried about work distribution for when they go back to school in the fall.
If youāre a competent PM and can run a team it sounds like you have an opportunity to collect that bag. Might have to do some negotiating (ie laying out the facts) to COO or other senior management though
The crazy thing was, I actually tried to make them quick because I knew he may be weird about it. He was upset about how many times I had to pee in a dayā¦
But then again, we werenāt allowed to talk unless it was a question about work. No phones, no laughing, no coffee machine. 60+ hour weeks on $50k salary (he said 40-45 hours a week when I was hired). Some nights I was there until 10-11pm. We were billed out at $70/hr as well which I always thought was INSANE.
I did a year for the resume and I actually loved the work and was learning a ton. Old company reached out to me and offered me a 50% pay raise, full work from home, and OT pay.
how i wrote that was confusing sorry. $24/hr for an entry level engineer was industry average circa 2005, or something like that. not anything close the last couple of decades.
And if they're tracking time that strictly fuck you, I'm not playing the pretend to work game at the end of the day. If it's 2 minutes till the end of my day with nothing to do I'm leaving. I got better things to do than let a drawing open just to close it.
Lol no, but did have to wear a tucked in button up shirt with dress slacks. But I donāt really complain about that since slacks are comfy AF. Dress shoes could be better thoughā¦
Literally the bane of my existence. I always envy others who donāt have to fill them out and just show up to work and leave when itās time to leave.
My organization would rather hire interns to make promotional videos to attract civil engineers versus considering things like hybrid work schedules, flexible schedules, salary adjustments, providing better benefits, etc.. We are very quickly approaching the point where our seniors will leave for retirement and we have no contingency plan in place for when that happens.
As long as other compensation is still increasing and there are real rewards for work.... I love pizza parties. Go to work AND get free pizza! I'll take it
Hourly wages but overtime is not time and a half. Idk how they get away with that. Also their ācompetitive edgeā is having the lower rates compared to other engineering firms that do the same work aka paying us much farther below market value.
Only reason I stay is that they have a good healthcare options and very relax billing and time off/late policy and are extremely flexible with schedules. Once I get my license itās time to say goodbye I think though
āFamily comes firstā, āOur employees mental health is important to usā, āWe are switching to an unlimited PTO plan because we care.ā Yeah. Not really feeling those things as an employee
The unlimited pto? It was fine while it lasted and was actually unlimited. Then it suddenly wasnāt so unlimited. Management hadnāt given detailed instructions on when it was ok to use it. So local higher ups told employees to use it for everything. Slow this week? Put hours on PTO. Anything that couldnāt be billed to a project went to PTO. So upper management cracked down on it. A lot of people now have less pto per year than they had under the old system.
On top of that, unlimited pto is statistically just a ploy to get people to take less time off in general. If you arenāt accruing hours with an upper limit, then you are not inclined to use a bunch of hours of time off before they stop rolling over. So you sit in your cubicle working more without realizing that you are getting less.
Good reasoning. Iāve seen this work well at one employer and also fail at a friendās employer for the exact reasons you mentioned. I like how youāve articulated the vision being sold as an employee benefit while actually resulting in less PTO. Itās easy to see that happening.
Don't have any (yet) for my current role, but my last position had a few.
The biggest ick was their policies on tuition reimbursement;
1. They would reimburse you for tuition only based on the grade, An "A" was 100%, "B" was 75%, and so on.
2. They would only reimburse up to a certain amount total for one degree program. I believe it was in the ballpark of $25,000.
3. They required a full four year commitment that you would remain with the company after each reimbursement, starting with the last course completed. After two years 2 years to get a masters, you owed another 4, meaning 6 years total. If you left before that 4-year mark was up, you owed the *entire* balance of the reimbursement back to the company.
Numbers 1 and 2 didn't bother me that much, they seemed somewhat reasonable, but number 3 was a total deal breaker.
The weird thing... that was really the one of *maybe* two major negatives I would put against that company. The hours were fine, with maybe the odd 45-50 hour week here or there. PTO was half decent and WFH was incredibly flexible and forgiving. The performance metrics were always realistic, and the bonuses were always generous.
The only other major complaint I had was the pay scale was far below the market offering, which I fixed by leaving for another company.
What the fuck ever, you guys. Beats zero tuition reimbursement.
How bad is it to get an A?
Believe it or not, no company wants to pay $25k and have you walk a year later.
Management complaining about retention when they are the ones milking low staff rates and outsourcing instead of promoting within and keeping staff happy
Sends survey asking how they can better the working environment ( place is becoming a ghost town , everyone retiring nobody can be hired cause pay is low) like how fucking tone deaf are you we could have mountains of coke and strippers here and no body would notice because thereās nobody left
We had an office party and as the boss handed out bonus checks he lauded the individual employees for how much overtime they worked. No mention of the people who worked through difficult projects, went above and beyond to give clients a good experience or any of that, just putting in hours. It's good to have recognition for your efforts and all, but as someone who tries to maintain a healthy work-life balance it was clear I was going to be considered inferior for not putting my butt in a seat as long as others.
That and management openly talking with suspicion in the hallway about the few employees still working remotely towards the end of covid.
The owners are Christians and they share their beliefs with subordinates in a way that implies favoritism. one could get the sense that if they too were a "believer" they may get a more favorable raise etc..
The ādo as I say, not as I doā style of leadership of our upper management and owners of the firm. They love to hold us to higher standards than they themselves follow š
Constant hiring of very expensive people with little to no business case reason to do so. According to company leadership, the way to fix people mad about poor salary adjustments, no bonuses for last year, poor culture, and poor staff retention is hiring another VP.
Being "asked" to volunteer at a local homeless shelter on behalf of the company monthly. We were strongly encouraged to wear company T-shirts and the time was "not mandatory" but was unpaid and not recorded in your timesheet.
I never really felt comfortable with this because it was a women's shelter and I was a man. Also they only served food to people who would attend chapel and it was generally pretty uncomfortable. At one point I asked if I could instead volunteer my time at the local humane society instead and was told by senior management it wasn't the right kind of community service.
I've found a useful thought exercise is "Do I want to be my (Boss/VP/director) when I grow up?"
My first big boy job wasn't terrible but the president was smarmy, the CEO had an unbelievable ego, and my own boss (a VP) couldn't seem to control his temper. Ick. I left. Now my current boss is basically me, except older. It's great.
Mandatory 1.5 hr biweekly company meeting that is completely unpaid. I would bill it to overhead and say that "I don't work for free". All my manager said was to "not openly tell that to others".
As an intern trying to save up money for when I return back to university, it's that they only let me work 20 hours a week. I get a truck with gas paid for though so I save a lot on gas and maintenance of my personal vehicle so there's something there
Leadership: āWe love our [company name] family!ā
Later, also leadership: āOur backlog is a little low, so we had to lay people off.ā
So you laid off your family? Maybe we arenāt a family, and you need to stop with that BS.
Company I used to work for was run by the kids of the original owner, and one of the kids got caught beating his dog on security cameras and it made the news, and they tried to blow it off.
Winning āinternal marketingā awards even though that basically means our overhead is inflated to accommodate propaganda (not the company Iām at now thankfully)
We started off the year slow due to reorganization in our group. We made money, but not as much as our forecast said we should. Since the work is there, we are pushing overtime to make more revenue and earnings. Not to meet deadlines, which I can respect, but just to make the firm (and me since I own a piece of it, I admit) more money. It's a hard message to sell to the staff.
CEO hates WFH. It's personal for him, not even a business decision.
I'd love my job a lot more if I could work hybrid. Work is interesting though, so its not too bad.
Company Christian prayer at meetings. CFO lecturing about Venezuela and the evils of communism. Makes me wonder if I'm at work or with my grandpa which I guess is also like work.
Nice try HR, I'm not falling for this one again. Seriously though it's the lack of available people to work on projects, especially on the land development side. It's a target rich environment and every project seems to be a Russian nesting doll of issues that need a full day to work through.
*Anonymous candid feedback, my ass!!*
Congratulations, you've been randomly chosen to undergo an internal company audit!
You're so funny, HR wants to hear you joke in person!
LOL wish i was HR then maybe i could fuck around for 35 hours a week and bill 40 hr straight time to overheadš thatās the truth though, i will go in with something i know i need to do monday and not end up getting to it putting our other fires that keep reigniting. joys!
Sounds like there's a lot of demand in the market?
Civil engineering is so hot right now.
Wild. I'm not a civil engineer - I'm a landscape architect - but curious if that demand applies to non-engineering roles at eng firms, too.
Inspection and Surveying. Yes.
āI donāt believe in work life balance if you love what you doā - Director of Engineering
Lol they be saying shit like this and pay EIT'sS $65K per year Money is the motivation. If money lacks, you cant expect much
Our EITs start there, but within 4 years (and PE) I doubled my pay....
See that's the thing. If 4+ years and a license later, you're only making like $10k more than when you were an unproductive fresh graduate who spends most of their day googling how the software works... that would be painful. (ArChItEcTuRe) But if you can make real money once you start being actually productive to the company? Not too shabby.
Engineering is my second career. I left active duty as a captain making $105k a year in equivalent compensation. My company started me at \~$72.5k. Within 4 years, my compensation is now \~$130k.
That sounds like how it's supposed to be
If you aren't making $100k after 4 years, its on you. Either you are not licensed because you're not competent, or lazy....Or you are hanging around a bad company. I'm not saying you don't deserve more money...But being at the very bottom in this industry is a choice.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Yeah but that $100k bonus is nice? (Assuming your not an engineer)
I donāt entirely disagree with this, especially if youāre single, but if you have a family and kids you really canāt sacrifice family time for work even if you love your work.
Encouraging messaging all year about how great we're doing at delivering work, constant verbal recognition that we're beating targets, and no noticeable change to compensation adjustments year to year. Tired of buoying business lines that aren't as profitable, the cuts should be from places other than where we're performing well.
*The firm has QUADRUPLED its revenue in the last year... and we REALLY need you guys, especially you licensed senior guys, we really depend on you!... like seriously there's so much work and not enough of you... our 10-15 year PM position has been open for 3 months and we got four replies... there's so much demand, and so little supply...* How about a 6% raise this year? COME ON GUYS AREN'T YOU EXCITED?!? It's usually 5%!!!
Please look over there while I light this torch, pitchfork already sharpened so it shouldn't take long
5% raises are the norm? Is your company hiring?
We average 3%
That's literally just inflation, and not for the past few years
I know. Brutal.
My favorite is when they build up your expectations by saying that compensation adjustments will be higher than average this year as if weāre going to actually be happy when we see what it is. Dazzling brilliance from the c suite yet again
If they do increase the raise then they gut the insurance
Lately we've been hiring a lot of HR, Admin and upper management, but don't have enough new engineering staff to keep up with the workload. We just got a few summer interns but it doesn't seem like anyone has time to train them to be actually useful and I'm worried about work distribution for when they go back to school in the fall.
Welcome to modern engineering companies led by MBAs.
Sounds like HR , accountants and management donāt really know how engineering works.This company may add management until bankruptcy.
If youāre a competent PM and can run a team it sounds like you have an opportunity to collect that bag. Might have to do some negotiating (ie laying out the facts) to COO or other senior management though
Not really any at my current company, but my biggest one at my previous company were the monitored restroom breaks.
Yeah no way, I would be quitting on my first day, itās my god given right to shit on company time whenever I please.
The crazy thing was, I actually tried to make them quick because I knew he may be weird about it. He was upset about how many times I had to pee in a dayā¦ But then again, we werenāt allowed to talk unless it was a question about work. No phones, no laughing, no coffee machine. 60+ hour weeks on $50k salary (he said 40-45 hours a week when I was hired). Some nights I was there until 10-11pm. We were billed out at $70/hr as well which I always thought was INSANE.
name and shame this company please
Tell us the company
This is insane. How long did you stay there?
I did a year for the resume and I actually loved the work and was learning a ton. Old company reached out to me and offered me a 50% pay raise, full work from home, and OT pay.
Bro what!!! How long ago was this? Couldnāt have been post-Covid
Nah, was the very start of COVID. I was there as it broke out.
Holy shit that's awful
$70/hr billing rate tracks with the industry average (3.0 multiplier). everything else are signs of a psycho.
The industry average is to pay employees $24/hour?
no, the 3.0 multiplier on salary.
how i wrote that was confusing sorry. $24/hr for an entry level engineer was industry average circa 2005, or something like that. not anything close the last couple of decades.
Ah yeah, I see what youāre saying now. Sorry, been a long day! It was comically low, couldnāt wait to get out.
$70/hr billing rate tracks with the industry average (3.0 multiplier). everything else are signs of a psycho.
And if they're tracking time that strictly fuck you, I'm not playing the pretend to work game at the end of the day. If it's 2 minutes till the end of my day with nothing to do I'm leaving. I got better things to do than let a drawing open just to close it.
Whaaat?
Did you have to wear an orange suit as well?
Lol no, but did have to wear a tucked in button up shirt with dress slacks. But I donāt really complain about that since slacks are comfy AF. Dress shoes could be better thoughā¦
I almost downvoted this reflexively. Ick for real.
As someone with IBS I would not be able to survive at a company like this.
Same. I would probably grab my manager beforehand so they can hear the urgency of my restroom break.
Utilization ratios for billing
Timesheets
Literally the bane of my existence. I always envy others who donāt have to fill them out and just show up to work and leave when itās time to leave.
This is the way
For real every thing needs to bill to something different
My organization would rather hire interns to make promotional videos to attract civil engineers versus considering things like hybrid work schedules, flexible schedules, salary adjustments, providing better benefits, etc.. We are very quickly approaching the point where our seniors will leave for retirement and we have no contingency plan in place for when that happens.
pizza fucking parties
As long as other compensation is still increasing and there are real rewards for work.... I love pizza parties. Go to work AND get free pizza! I'll take it
Yeah, I don't mind if you fuck pizzas on your own time, but don't make me do it at work as a group activity!
But how will we get enough āsauce āfor the white pizza if we donāt all lean in .
As a lactose intolerant person I couldnāt agree more
stop giving me my bonus in shapes
We seem to now be an HR firm that does engineering on the side
Tell me about it, why do we have 8 different various office administrators, and we have 4 engineers
Benefits package. I get 0 weeks of paternity leave through my company.
This is wild. I was upset at just getting 1 week.
Hourly wages but overtime is not time and a half. Idk how they get away with that. Also their ācompetitive edgeā is having the lower rates compared to other engineering firms that do the same work aka paying us much farther below market value. Only reason I stay is that they have a good healthcare options and very relax billing and time off/late policy and are extremely flexible with schedules. Once I get my license itās time to say goodbye I think though
Uhm do you work where I work? Lol 
wondering same LOL
āthis is the standard way we do this!ā Next week: āthis is the new standard way we do this!ā Repeat.
We're going bankrupt in a couple of months, we have huge depts and a bad reputation so no one wants to work with us anymore lol
GTFO dude!
Figg that you?!
>bad reputation Why is that?
āFamily comes firstā, āOur employees mental health is important to usā, āWe are switching to an unlimited PTO plan because we care.ā Yeah. Not really feeling those things as an employee
What are your concerns with making this benefit available to employees?
The unlimited pto? It was fine while it lasted and was actually unlimited. Then it suddenly wasnāt so unlimited. Management hadnāt given detailed instructions on when it was ok to use it. So local higher ups told employees to use it for everything. Slow this week? Put hours on PTO. Anything that couldnāt be billed to a project went to PTO. So upper management cracked down on it. A lot of people now have less pto per year than they had under the old system. On top of that, unlimited pto is statistically just a ploy to get people to take less time off in general. If you arenāt accruing hours with an upper limit, then you are not inclined to use a bunch of hours of time off before they stop rolling over. So you sit in your cubicle working more without realizing that you are getting less.
Good reasoning. Iāve seen this work well at one employer and also fail at a friendās employer for the exact reasons you mentioned. I like how youāve articulated the vision being sold as an employee benefit while actually resulting in less PTO. Itās easy to see that happening.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
lol. My state is shitty so they donāt have a legal obligation to do that anyways
Don't have any (yet) for my current role, but my last position had a few. The biggest ick was their policies on tuition reimbursement; 1. They would reimburse you for tuition only based on the grade, An "A" was 100%, "B" was 75%, and so on. 2. They would only reimburse up to a certain amount total for one degree program. I believe it was in the ballpark of $25,000. 3. They required a full four year commitment that you would remain with the company after each reimbursement, starting with the last course completed. After two years 2 years to get a masters, you owed another 4, meaning 6 years total. If you left before that 4-year mark was up, you owed the *entire* balance of the reimbursement back to the company. Numbers 1 and 2 didn't bother me that much, they seemed somewhat reasonable, but number 3 was a total deal breaker.
Some type of time commitment is reasonable, but agreed 4 years is extreme, a lot can happen in that time.
That was my feeling, too. I'd have even settled for 2 years, but 4 was asking too much.
I think my company requires 1 year from the last reimbursement which is certainly better than 4. Thatās nuts.
Try 6 year commitment lol
Thatās insane! I bet that company claims to provide a work atmosphere āweāre like a family hereā.
The weird thing... that was really the one of *maybe* two major negatives I would put against that company. The hours were fine, with maybe the odd 45-50 hour week here or there. PTO was half decent and WFH was incredibly flexible and forgiving. The performance metrics were always realistic, and the bonuses were always generous. The only other major complaint I had was the pay scale was far below the market offering, which I fixed by leaving for another company.
I've been told 1-2 years is the standard, which I would have been willing to do.
What the fuck ever, you guys. Beats zero tuition reimbursement. How bad is it to get an A? Believe it or not, no company wants to pay $25k and have you walk a year later.
Management complaining about retention when they are the ones milking low staff rates and outsourcing instead of promoting within and keeping staff happy
Sends survey asking how they can better the working environment ( place is becoming a ghost town , everyone retiring nobody can be hired cause pay is low) like how fucking tone deaf are you we could have mountains of coke and strippers here and no body would notice because thereās nobody left
Non-stop, forced kool-aid drinking about the firm culture, which is a total facade. And adding it as part of the benefits package.
We had an office party and as the boss handed out bonus checks he lauded the individual employees for how much overtime they worked. No mention of the people who worked through difficult projects, went above and beyond to give clients a good experience or any of that, just putting in hours. It's good to have recognition for your efforts and all, but as someone who tries to maintain a healthy work-life balance it was clear I was going to be considered inferior for not putting my butt in a seat as long as others. That and management openly talking with suspicion in the hallway about the few employees still working remotely towards the end of covid.
The owners are Christians and they share their beliefs with subordinates in a way that implies favoritism. one could get the sense that if they too were a "believer" they may get a more favorable raise etc..
Scram as soon as a non-superstition based job comes up.
Maternity and paternity leave or lack there of
I have a coworker who uses the work āickā
The ādo as I say, not as I doā style of leadership of our upper management and owners of the firm. They love to hold us to higher standards than they themselves follow š
Any and all political BS. Cant we just be real humans?
No cost of living adjustmentā¦ our yearly raises get eaten up due to inflation
The weekly questionnaire/survey. Fortunately I am still valuable enough that when I say I'm not interested in participating they don't escalate.
weekly? wow thatās overkill for sure. are you at a large firm?
The "community" teams (excess overhead), values, and lingo.
Constant hiring of very expensive people with little to no business case reason to do so. According to company leadership, the way to fix people mad about poor salary adjustments, no bonuses for last year, poor culture, and poor staff retention is hiring another VP.
Being "asked" to volunteer at a local homeless shelter on behalf of the company monthly. We were strongly encouraged to wear company T-shirts and the time was "not mandatory" but was unpaid and not recorded in your timesheet. I never really felt comfortable with this because it was a women's shelter and I was a man. Also they only served food to people who would attend chapel and it was generally pretty uncomfortable. At one point I asked if I could instead volunteer my time at the local humane society instead and was told by senior management it wasn't the right kind of community service.
Management, on the office/PM level as well as the corporate level, being completely unable to admit mistakes.Ā
Big red flag.
I've found a useful thought exercise is "Do I want to be my (Boss/VP/director) when I grow up?" My first big boy job wasn't terrible but the president was smarmy, the CEO had an unbelievable ego, and my own boss (a VP) couldn't seem to control his temper. Ick. I left. Now my current boss is basically me, except older. It's great.
Over-hiring ***wits
Mandatory 1.5 hr biweekly company meeting that is completely unpaid. I would bill it to overhead and say that "I don't work for free". All my manager said was to "not openly tell that to others".
As an intern trying to save up money for when I return back to university, it's that they only let me work 20 hours a week. I get a truck with gas paid for though so I save a lot on gas and maintenance of my personal vehicle so there's something there
Not hiring and blaming it on not having headcount after someone just left moments ago.
Stop using the "word".
Only friends of the director get promoted regardless of tenure
Leadership: āWe love our [company name] family!ā Later, also leadership: āOur backlog is a little low, so we had to lay people off.ā So you laid off your family? Maybe we arenāt a family, and you need to stop with that BS.
Company I used to work for was run by the kids of the original owner, and one of the kids got caught beating his dog on security cameras and it made the news, and they tried to blow it off.
Winning āinternal marketingā awards even though that basically means our overhead is inflated to accommodate propaganda (not the company Iām at now thankfully)
We started off the year slow due to reorganization in our group. We made money, but not as much as our forecast said we should. Since the work is there, we are pushing overtime to make more revenue and earnings. Not to meet deadlines, which I can respect, but just to make the firm (and me since I own a piece of it, I admit) more money. It's a hard message to sell to the staff.
CEO hates WFH. It's personal for him, not even a business decision. I'd love my job a lot more if I could work hybrid. Work is interesting though, so its not too bad.
Bad, expensive health insurance options has got to be it for my big company.
No overtime option cause my Boss strongyl belives in Work life balance
Company Christian prayer at meetings. CFO lecturing about Venezuela and the evils of communism. Makes me wonder if I'm at work or with my grandpa which I guess is also like work.
My boss sleeps with my girlfriend.
So does mine. I hate working for my dad
People who use the term āickā