nailed it! great article! this happens most to engineers...
nailed it! great article! this happens most to engineers...
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nailed it! great article! this happens most to engineers...
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nailed it! great article! this happens most to engineers...nailed it! great article! this happens most to engineers...(OP)
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RE: nailed it! great article! this happens most to engineers...
RE: nailed it! great article! this happens most to engineers...
http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1996-02-05/
- Steve
RE: nailed it! great article! this happens most to engineers...
David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering
Law is the common force organized to act as an obstacle of injustice Frédéric Bastiat
RE: nailed it! great article! this happens most to engineers...
I've been a manager, and I had a range of competencies in my group and had to deal with both high and low performers. And I was glad that the self-starters were able to do their jobs with little or no direct supervision. But I also recognized that not everyone could be left to themselves to succeed or fail. The article never touched on this, but I suspect that in many situations, the so-called "underperformers" are often new hires or people with less experience than their co-workers and therefore it's only reasonable that managers and supervisors will have to spend more time with them as they develop and gain the skills necessary to become an “A” player. That's just reality. Now don't get me wrong, I know that there may always be chronic "underperformers" in any large organization, that's just the rule of large numbers, but to assume that this can be somehow 'solved' is a bit naive at best. It's just the way thing are but as a manager, and again I was given this 'opportunity' once, if there ever is a need to let someone go, for whatever reason, if you're the person responsible for making that call, then use this to mitigate YOUR situation.
John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:
To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
RE: nailed it! great article! this happens most to engineers...
I think if the high performers had better presentation skills they may be more recognized fr their above average achievements.
"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." L. da Vinci
- Gian
RE: nailed it! great article! this happens most to engineers...
RE: nailed it! great article! this happens most to engineers...
"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." L. da Vinci
- Gian
RE: nailed it! great article! this happens most to engineers...
The problem I see in this article, and in other articles just like this article, is that it is premised on the notion that there are low-performers or non-performers in every company. That is simply not true. That would be tantamount to saying - analagously or metaphorically - that the second or third liners who go to the NBA all star game or the Pro Bowl are comparative non-performers relative to the starters. What I have seen is that there are bar-setters in every place I have worked, and often the bar is set high enough that it becomes an unrealistic expectation that everyone can clear it. The people who can't aren't bad people, they're just "in tough".
I train agility dogs in my spare time. When I see an otherwise great dog struggle at, say, a 26" jump height, when I know that it has the potential to be effective at that height, then like every other reasonable trainer out there, I lower the jumps to 22" or 16" for a while until both the execution and more importantly the confidence is restored in the dog. I reward the performance of the less difficult objective and build back up to the more difficult one. That is what trainers do.
In a sense, I suppose that is what this article says, along with - also analogously - sometimes even the best dog is going to knock bars and garner course faults. It happens. What concerns me is the subconscious propensity that we all have to label those with less talent or less drive or both as "non-performers". I find it healthy to remember that, at some point, we all were good enough to get an engineering degree and - more to the point - get hired as an engineer. Some measure of talent is there in all of us. It just takes a good trainer to find it and cultivate it.
RE: nailed it! great article! this happens most to engineers...
The rest of it, regarding how the best people always end up with the crappiest assignments on jobs already messed up by others, is probably true enough to be the norm rather than the exception. I have spent the last two decades of my career trying to escape from being sucked into that vortex, but for me, it appears that there is no escape, and never will be.
I recently made some strategic career moves in an effort to escape from just being "the mechanical guy who can do everything including run projects". I have always hated being that guy. It has meant, for me, that I get the sh*t that nobody else wants to do, or that I end up being "the goalie", the last guy who needs to save the game because there is no other avenue to turn to for assistance. The trouble is, by the time they put me in the game, there are five minutes left to play and the team is already down 6-0. We might end up only losing 7-5, but I get credit for the loss. I dont lose many games that I start...
I left Project Engineering because I was sick and tired of taking the cr*p from the Client. I moved into a pure mechanical engineering role (up to and including department lead) so I could focus on the technical aspects of the work. But no matter what I did, my employer(s) would not allow me to develop beyond what I was, and I always got called into that dreaded meeting with management, the one where they would say, "We need you to step in and take over because...nobody else comes to mind..." and Presto! There I was, running another half-finished, mostly messed-up project. A couple of moves later, I said to heck with this "mechanical engineering" nonsense; I'll join the Process group - with the full endorsement of all concerned. Well, at least it *was* - until it came to pass that a project got into trouble. This time, I had to step in and replace all of the Project Engineer, the Mechanical Engineer and lead the Process Engineering effort. I finally out and out resigned when then people involved for whom I was now placed in charge over told *me* that *I* needed to become a team player and "do a better job". The company management sat idly by and did nothing while I worked all my weekends and nights redrawing all the P&IDs and reworking the entire process from front to back, coming in on Mondays to lead all the meetings and HAZOP and face the music from a now disgruntled Client over the cost over-runs that I inherited. So, one meeting, I had enough; after 14 years, I got up from a conference room table, declared that I had had enough, typed a two line resignation and was out of the building for good inside of four minutes. This all happened less than a year after I had been formally recognized as the best employee in the company.
Human Resources took the official stance that *I* was the problem, and that the company was well-rid of me.
Fast forward to today - a little over a year later. Now a Senior Manager in a small firm. One would think I have finally clawed my way out of that cess-filled vortex. So, I have spent the first two months trying to gain - earn - the respect of those good and talented people in my charge, largely by helping them out with their day to day work and getting into the trenches with them when required. Along comes a Client who - wrongly - has an issue with one of our employees. I write one simple email memo backing up a design decision and - guess what? The Client wants our employee - an excellent employee and engineer - out and me in as the Project Engineer to finish the job. And there you have it - one award, one large performance bonus, two promotions and two companies later, and I am now sucked right back down to where I was, and where I have always been, and where I feel I am condemned to always remain: running or finishing projects.
Apparently, *that* is my reward.
My career is in a dreadful, out of control, spiraling tailspin and no amount of "performance" at my end has helped me to date.
So yes, as the article states, it takes its toll. It has pretty much destroyed me, or so it feels at this moment in time.
But I do know how to train a dog.
RE: nailed it! great article! this happens most to engineers...
While there's obviously desires on the part of senior engineers to just do the work correctly from the get-go, that's a personal selfish attitude that only benefits the senior engineer until they retire. But what happens after they retire, or leave; isn't the company now burdened with junior engineers that have no experience, and no senior engineers to help things out? As employees, it's easy to gripe about our own self-interests, but we do get paid well to also serve the interests of the company, and these must be balanced against our own interests. Most of the time, they all align, and the choices are easy. But for a company to be successful and grow in the long term, the number of experienced engineers must increase over time, which means that junior engineers must be given the hard tasks to train them or break them. By "break, I simply mean that not every person that graduates with an engineering degree is necessarily cut out to do certain things, but the sooner the company can identify them and place them in an optimum position for both them and the company, the better things are going to be all around.
TTFN

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RE: nailed it! great article! this happens most to engineers...
A couple of times in my career, the high maintenance underperformers who required babysitting, investigating, cajoling and extra documentation were the managers I worked under! Unfortunately, the one skill they did have was presentation, so the management above them remained clueless to the extent of the problem, and could never figure out why there was a continuous turn-over of engineers in the department.
RE: nailed it! great article! this happens most to engineers...
RE: nailed it! great article! this happens most to engineers...
70% do just enough to keep their job
and 15% do nothing, they actually harm the company by their presence alone.
Find the top 15% in your company and do everything to keep them.
Find the low 15% and fire them immediately, production will increase just by getting rid of them - without replacing them.
RE: nailed it! great article! this happens most to engineers...
Maybe the lack of targeted development is part of a strategy of some managers - you have someone in a place where he/she is highly useful, don't let them move someplace else?
RE: nailed it! great article! this happens most to engineers...
http://search.dilbert.com/search?w=to+base+salarie...
cry22: you've described the matrix of employees. On one axis you have smart and stupid, and on the other, hard-working and lazy. Smart and hardworking is of course what you want- they might generate 10x their salary in profit. Smart and lazy is OK too- they may generate only 3x but they're still making you money. Lazy and stupid is tolerable, or at least not an urgent problem- they only cost you 1x salary. But hard-working and stupid can take the whole company down- they need to be found and removed immediately.
Key failures of management include tolerating incompetence merely to avoid the unpleasantness of firing someone, and paying based on something arbitrary like age or years of service rather than performance. Tolerating incompetence sends a very clear message to the high performers, as does pay non-commensurate with performance. What you do for the top performers themselves is one thing, but what you do with the lower performers matters a great deal to the high performers as well.
RE: nailed it! great article! this happens most to engineers...
John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:
To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
RE: nailed it! great article! this happens most to engineers...
RE: nailed it! great article! this happens most to engineers...
RE: nailed it! great article! this happens most to engineers...
RE: nailed it! great article! this happens most to engineers...
RE: nailed it! great article! this happens most to engineers...
RE: nailed it! great article! this happens most to engineers...
In fact, when doing my doctorate in grad school I had a colleague who was also in grad school. He was (and still is) a very intelligent person. However, I have seen him fall well short in many areas due to laziness. As a result, much of his progress was hindered.
"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." L. da Vinci
- Gian
RE: nailed it! great article! this happens most to engineers...
"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." L. da Vinci
- Gian
RE: nailed it! great article! this happens most to engineers...
Underperform is just inexperience and no one is their to check progress, so the project just runs into the ditch. This is mainly a manager who just thinks that the underperformer should be given a sink or swin experience.
Over acheiving is after above with some years doing it right and trying to better communicate with other disiplines around you. I have been told the saying, i dont have to watch you at all. But this also gets you in trouble because you get in the bad habit of not telling managers if a project is not on target, you just deal with it.
RE: nailed it! great article! this happens most to engineers...
RE: nailed it! great article! this happens most to engineers...
David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering
Law is the common force organized to act as an obstacle of injustice Frédéric Bastiat
RE: nailed it! great article! this happens most to engineers...
RE: nailed it! great article! this happens most to engineers...
I believe this is a great trait to have.
"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." L. da Vinci
- Gian
RE: nailed it! great article! this happens most to engineers...
"Art without engineering is dreaming; Engineering without art is calculating."
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RE: nailed it! great article! this happens most to engineers...
RE: nailed it! great article! this happens most to engineers...
It all depends on what you mean by 'lazy', obviously.
RE: nailed it! great article! this happens most to engineers...
My dad would walk everywhere, at a great clip, and did so until he was in his early '90s. When I asked him why he didn't get a bicycle for the longer trips he made routinely as a young man, he said that riding a bike to him was "walking like hell to give your @ss a ride"...So people may vary greatly in their opinion of what is drudgery and what isn't!
RE: nailed it! great article! this happens most to engineers...
Dang, that hurts.
RE: nailed it! great article! this happens most to engineers...
"Never stand when you can sit. Never walk when you can ride."
John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:
To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
RE: nailed it! great article! this happens most to engineers...
That's not lazy. That's intelligence.
RE: nailed it! great article! this happens most to engineers...
RE: nailed it! great article! this happens most to engineers...
"Only very lazy men could have done so much in so short a time."
John Steinbeck in Sweet Thursday.
RE: nailed it! great article! this happens most to engineers...
Kind of careens between not remotely matching my experience and just being outright fantasy.
Then again, I'm crabby as hell having just had a project condensed from what was originally meant to be a 6-8 month project into an 8-9 week project plus significant added scope.
Maybe this means I'm the high performer that gets the $hit.
What is Engineering anyway: FAQ1088-1484: In layman terms, what is "engineering"?
RE: nailed it! great article! this happens most to engineers...
I've spent over 25 years working as an engineer for aerospace companies. And one thing I've noted during that time is that the best engineers are generally less likely to become managers.
RE: nailed it! great article! this happens most to engineers...
John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:
To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.