New hire - keeping billable hours? 3

[JD6221]

Me: young EIT, ~2 years experience in civil-construction firm (did mostly drafting and calc prep/QA&QC)

Starting at a new company, transportation engineering. Word of mouth from previous employees is that the greatest challenge is "keeping busy", especially for the newer engineers, because everyone is "competing for jobs". I figure this means ultimately that billable hours --> should the employee be kept on payroll?

I don't yet know the company culture/learning environment for young engineers here, but does anyone have tips/strategies for someone in my position to... learn/do my work well while possibly being in an environment where projects are in short supply?

 

[MrHershey]

Spend time outside of work on professional development and learning.

Have never understood using % billable to gauge employee usefulness or worth. It may be useful as a guide to see who is busy and who isn't, but it's a really dumb way to measure who is useful and who is not and actively encourages people to drag their feet and take longer than they need to finish tasks.

For example:
Employee A
30 billable hours/week on 3 projects
2 hours spent on professional development
4 hours spent on marketing/business development
4 hours spent on IT/operations
75% billable

Employee B
40 billable hours/week on 3 projects
100% billable

Assuming they're both producing similar quality work on similar sized jobs and finishing them in similar times, is there anyone who would argue that Employee B is more useful to the company than Employee A? Why would someone who takes 40 hours to do a given amount of billable work be worth more than someone who only takes 30 and can spend the remaining 10 on other things?

 

[MintJulep]

Because there either 10 are overhead.

 

[moltenmetal]

OK, I'll bite.

In a reimbursable hourly work environment, employee B wins hands down, even if employee A gets the same amount of work done in 30 hours that employee B does in 40. Clients may appreciate employee A more, if they notice- but chances are, if both employees are junior, clients won't notice.

In a fixed price or salaried nonbillable work environment, employee A wins if they get the same amount of work done on projects in 30 hours as B does in 40, and yet contribute to the productivity of the office, winning new business etc.

It all depends on how your employer is compensated for your time spent on billable vs overhead work.

If each hour spent on project work between A and B is spent equally productively, which one wins? The answer is simple: what does the boss expect from the employee? To be 100% billable and to leave the overhead tasks entirely to others, or do they expect each person to contribute to the overhead tasks as best they can? In the reimbursable work environment that I worked in, it was employee C that they really wanted- they worked 40 hours on projects AND 10 hours on the nonbillable stuff, all for the same salary...

Here's my opinion about that: it is unethical to compell uncompensated overtime from employees, and unethical to donate it consistently too. Doing so de-values the services of your colleagues. It's also a bad strategy to work without compensation, in the hope that someone notices and compensates you with a promotion etc. They probably won't notice, or won't care, or won't follow through for you anyway. Better to keep your volunteerism for deserving causes, rather than volunteering for for-profit enterprises in my opinion. Doing the extra work for a bonus, shares, time in lieu or overtime pay? No problem- fill yer boots.

 

[GregLocock]

If I worked in a billable hours company, I'd be B. A is 'doing the right thing', keeping the sinking ship afloat, but B is generating more revenue in what he is paid to do.

Cheers

Greg Locock


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[TheTick]

I got advice, but not the kind I’d want on public record with my name on it.

 

[CWB1]

As a manager I'd be more concerned that both employees were putting in minimal effort at only 40 hours than the breakdown of those hours (within reason of course).

As the employee I'd be concerned in this economy if the employer is short on work. That being said, some companies still carry spare engineers during slow times to avoid being understaffed in good times. One thing I would NOT do is play office politics or otherwise participate in any shenanigans to get projects. Working in automotive I've seen more than my share of cutthroat, nasty bs and want no part of that misery. I pride myself on taking the moral high road and remaining ethical even when POS managers encourage otherwise. The engineering community is truly a small one and folks have long memories for those who've screwed them in the past, what may seem necessary to keep your current position will bite you when trying for the next.

 

[rotw]

OP on the other hand...do not overthink this ...just control what you can control.
"I' m going to lay this brick as perfectly as a brick can be laid. You do that every single day. And soon you have a wall.". Will Smith.

 

[JedClampett]

First of all, it's not your fault that you don't have enough work. The powers that hired you should of thought of that.
But realistically, if you're billing less than your costing, they're not going to lay off the guy who hired you. Sometimes you need to "round up" to stay billable. It's a dirty little secret, but most employees, including your clients, end up doing it. It's usually early in your career (unfortunately, when things are more black and white), when you and your employers are getting into the swing of things. Pretty soon, you'll have more billable work than you know what to do with.

 

[HamburgerHelper]

MrHershey,

Some projects are time and materials and not fixed bid. On big projects, the project has to get done but the money is made on young cheap employees with great margins, not expensive old productive employees. Lying about hours billed is a big no on so this is how the customer gets bilked without anyone breaking any rules, blatantly. There are so many inefficiencies on really big projects that it would be near impossible for a customer to figure out they were getting bilked and just as impossible to find a competing firm that has enough staff to do a project of that size who won't do the same.

Large EPCs run the complete opposite as Kelly Johnson ran Skunkworks Instead, of a viciously small but extremely competent and productive staff, you have a bloated mess that depends heavily on the few good employees.


------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself.f.

 

[TheTick]

Chip Kelly?

 

[Sparweb]

Clarence (Kelly) Johnson?

STF

 

[HamburgerHelper]

I meant Kelly Johnson.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself.f.

 

[Sparweb]

@JD6221,
I find I don't have enough skill at deception to make up or tweak my hours without risking awkward answers if I'm asked about them, so I just stick to the facts.
What I change is how I do things...
During times where my billable hours are lacking (<80%) then I find things to fix. Call it "breaking down obstacles" to my productivity, and that of others... talk up the good it will do when everyone does get really busy. Invest time in the team's resources that will make our work faster and more efficient in the future. You can let your manager know you are doing this, and if at all possible get them excited/supportive of what you are doing. I get more socially involved but not in chit-chat.
During times when all I'm doing is working on billable projects (>90%) I just keep my head down and my keyboard/mouse clicking.
When I'm still putting in lots of hours on a project whose hours are running over budget, that's when my productivity talk in the past pays off. I have something I accomplished in the past that I can point to and say "if I hadn't done "X", this would take "Y" hours longer. Strikes fear in the hearts of project managers.

STF

 

[berkshire]

I seem to remember some years ago General dynamics got caught padding hours, and signs appeared everywhere on the premises saying " Mischarging is a crime.". However that never seemed to filter down to the managers. Who when asked what you were going to put the hours for some project that did not have enough hours in the day, would give you a number for some project that you knew darned well had not started yet.
B.E.

You are judged not by what you know, but by what you can do.

 

[coloeng]

The last consulting firm I worked for we were required to work our regular 40 hour week and then put in 10 hours per week billable overtime. The client was charged for the overtime, but we weren't compensated for it.

 

[moltenmetal]

coloeng: whoever compelled that from you would have been in clear violation of the local code of ethics for professional engineers here in Ontario. Compelling uncompensated overtime is just as much theft as padding hours to a client. The fact that the extra hours were billed to clients just makes it a clearer violation. Even compelling uncompensated overtime to cover overhead tasks not billable as such to clients is a violation of the code of ethics in my opinion.

The gray area comes in when there are forms of compensation other than pay for the hours worked. You are free as an employee to select whatever meaningful form of compensation for that mandatory extra time that you find valuable- time in lieu that you can actually take, a bonus, shares or options etc. are all just as good as pay. But if the compensation is nothing more than keeping your position, that's unacceptable. An employer can ask, for a short term situation, and an employee can voluntarily give that extra time to compensate the employer for some learning or just to help out- but it can't be continuous.

 

[TheTick]

Management typically has a bad habit of managing poorly. It really isn't your job to find clients or assign workloads. If you need to "compete" for billable hours, management is failing, not you. Best course of action is to find someplace better.

I've never had to pad my hours. In all but the worst of times, there's always been plenty of work to do. Project leaders and clients are competing for my time, not the other way around. Do good work and more work will find you.

I've had this ideal backfire once or twice. One manager would give me heavier problems that required longer times to solve, and then railed me for not serving as many single client tasks. Some forget the incalculable value of a client's goodwill. But, overall, overperformance was appreciated far more than not.

 

[coloeng]

moltenmetal: I agree and I left shortly after they instituted that policy.

 

[GregLocock]

Sorry to keep banging on about Mr Hershey's post but he is plain wrong.

For example:
Employee A
30 billable hours/week on 3 projects
2 hours spent on professional development
4 hours spent on marketing/business development
4 hours spent on IT/operations
75% billable

Employee B
40 billable hours/week on 3 projects
100% billable

So, if we assume A and B are paid the same, say $70ph, and are working on a contract at $300 p/h

A directly costs $2800 per wk, as does B. A brings $9000 in to the company. B brings $12000 per week. I didn't mean it to work out that way but B's working on the job at hand actually pays his own wages with the 10 hours a week he doesn't spend doing professional development, some of which should be in his own time, screwing up other people's computers, or his managers job. Admittedly B's company will need to hire real IT people and business development people.



Cheers

Greg Locock


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