In 'my' current employment we deal with the "training" for diversity and inclusion and assorted other
feelz good stuffs that corporate America is fond of pushing lately. We are dealing with the
typical hiring issues and lack of talent candidates as well as no shows to interviews.
One of my friends owns his own specialty manufacturing company. It's not a large concern but
does well enough for him to make a good living for the family. In an email thread we were
discussing being busy and lack of help. His response was so typical of the working environment
that we are experiencing:
Irish,
Same here… my Top Engineer has decided to move on after 15 years, and I’ve been scrambling to replace him, and of course we’re very busy.
The Biden economy is making these Millennials jump ship for more money, and here in ** with (large defense contractor 1 ), (large defense contractor 2), and all their suppliers making offers I can’t meet, has made it tough…
The real problem is these young kids coming out of Engineering School are idiots, especially the women and minorities. Telling these people, they’re qualified is a joke if they haven’t taught them even the basics. But that would be OK if they didn’t come with the “know-it-all” attitude. I guess this is the result from getting trophies for just showing up.
I’m getting too old for this shit.
“X”
Coming out of college knowing nothing is not new. A friend of mine who worked on airport projects thirty years ago told me that the women engineers were the worst knowing nothing and insisting on things being done the way they said. He said that anyone else coming out of college was next in line for being useless. I had personal experience with a young fella who just graduated as an engineer telling me how to do structural welding when my years of experience told me his way was not practical. Fortunately the owner of the project I was working on pulled me aside and had told me to take off for lunch and when I came back the young doofuss would be gone and then to do the project the way it needed to be done.
ReplyDeleteMy father was a naval officer and later army. He once told me his job was signing papers and taking care of "his" Sargent, who did everything else.
DeleteYoung graduate would be well advised to consider themselves a Lt, junior grade, and listen to the Sargent's.
I can verify this. First hurtle is just getting them to respond when they apply. All they care about at that phase is "I applied to X jobs this week so I can get my dole". Then, if they do respond, getting most of them to even show up for Day #1 is the next challenge. After that most bail after either the first day (mostly paperwork) or day #2 (demonstration/show-tell day). All this at an hourly rate that even before tips or commissions is higher than some of our older, more experienced staff.
ReplyDeleteYep. The new normal.
ReplyDeleteRecall that bridge collapse at U of Florida? All wimmens diversity engineering firm. Even had an 'investigation' that proved incompetence. Nobody got fired.
Airlines are now hiring solely on diversity, not skill. You ever gonna fly again?
Look at that submersible touring the titanic (permanently). No '50-year old white guys' were allowed at the company because they 'aren't exciting'. Getting crushed to death at 2 miles down because you hired engineers based on their appearance and not talent? Now THATS exciting!!!
Some people and companies will not go down this road, they will survive, they will be successful. Many people will die. Thats a feature, not a bug.
You guys have college grads applying?!
ReplyDeleteLMFAO!
We have been hiring a steady stream of parolees who have to ride bicycles to work because they don't drivers licenses because no one else will even show up for an interview.
It doesn't help that the outfit's starting wages are in direct competition with McDonalds and it's dirty, labor intensive work at a steel processing plant two miles out of town.
One dude had been there two weeks and killed himself by OD'ing at a freaking Half Way house.
We are still waiting for someone to come pick up the little bike he left at work.
I left the quality engineer side of medical devices for regulatory compliance (I hate regulations, but they provide me a very nice income) when I got tired of trying to explain to some of the dipshit design engineers why their designs wouldn't work. Just because it looks okay in a 3d model doesn't mean it'll function, let alone be manufacturable, in reality.
ReplyDeleteThe females were the worst. Had to coddle them and coax them along to make them think the design changes were their idea.
I have a friend that retired many years ago from Pratt & Whitney. Their little pet name for these geniuses was "IROC"...
ReplyDeleteIdiot Right Out of College
I spent 30 yrs in the retail meat business. When I got started I was 17 and the expectation was that you were going to carry the load for the older guys out of respect and to earn your stripes. By the time I got out, it was like "the old guys have to carry the young guys because the new guys have one speed, no sense of urgency, no commitment to excellence and they lack the fortitude, endurance and physical conditioning to keep up with the old guys." Not to mention, I learned cutting meat in the days of carcass beef. "Meat cutters" nowdays are nothing more than steak-cutters. All they can do is slice primals and sub primals and would have no idea how to dissassemble a carcass correctly in accordance to industry standards. The last several years in the business I would about every six months casually drop the "I heard the main office wants us to go back to carcass beef to cut cost of goods" just to see the look of dread on the new guys' faces. Haha.
ReplyDeleteIf China didn't think up the diversity movement in America, China is kicking itself for not thinking of the evils of diversity.
ReplyDeleteLooking at whats coming why waste your time making the rich and old richer? Many of us under 40 will never be able to retire with the cheap labor flooding the country and money thats worthless. Why kill my self when my money is taxed for the trash doing nothing? Just enough to make it by is how it goes now
ReplyDeleteZactly
DeleteBecause if you do work hard you can buy a small cabin in the woods, and go off grid and live your life--and if you are working paycheck to paycheck now its times to move someplace where you can save up ( check out Kansas). You can also start a business and work for yourself., but Working for someone else doesn't make someone else "rich" by the way. They did that - you are only involved because they offered you an opportunity to share in the riches by working for them - an opportunity you would not otherwise have. Generations have come and gone before you and in much harder conditions. Yep, in the last hundred years the old people took out loans against your future work- and that will collapse the system. Prepare for that- and you will thrive.
DeleteThis is one of the big problems with raising kids today. What do you teach them as far as how to be an adult. The system we want is work hard, save money for a rainy day, and be responsible. The system we have is take all of your money and blow it on whiskey and whores.
DeleteKids should not be saving for retirement. Sure, social security won't be there for them, but the government is going to confiscate their 401Ks and IRAs. If you buy a durable good (land, car, house, boat) the government will tax it until you realize it is theirs, not yours.
Distillers and whores need to eat too !!
DeleteWe have a half dozen brand new grads from college. I had to do a short introduction course for them on the rules and regulations in our very heavily regulated industry. They all have licenses, have passed the exams and only need hours to be cerified as power engineers. One of the kids had no idea and several others went to sleep. The attitude of the young ones is entitled and they dont seem to want to work for anything. Out of 6, 2 are redeamable.
ReplyDeleteExile1981
we're a commercial construction subcontractor and pay the guys we have very well in order to retain them. are they worth it? normally, no...in this current shitstorm, sure they are.
ReplyDeletethe stories above are all too familiar, IROC cracked me up! we just call them graduates...they read specs and not much else, their little lives revolve around SDS sheets and LEED info, when it comes to problem solving and getting shit built they are lost and depend on their scheduling software instead of real world knowledge that each subcontractors' veteran employees can offer
it's frustrating but when they finally break down& give in and ask for advice it is satisfying to help them help themselves.
Same here. I'm also in commercial construction, as a subcontractor. We call them Kids with Clipboards.
DeleteThey can read and that's it.
" I have no idea how to do your job, but my clipboard says you're doing it wrong".
And yes, the girls are the worst.
Our new engineers have a year of training and qualifications before they do much of anything on their own. A close companion section needs two years to fully qualify. And we get pretty high quality engineers out of college.
ReplyDeleteCollege doesn’t teach engineering - it teaches future engineers what to look for in and how to recognize the problems in what they do after college.
Its no so much that these people know nothing - its that they can't learn anything. They have the internet right there and they can't google basic stuff. They can't sit with a manual to read a page. I work in tech support and in the last 5-10 years the quality of the people I work with and the questions I get just keep showing higher and higher levels of incompetence...asking questions that make me question how they got this job.. yeah - I think we can all guess.
ReplyDeleteDrive a truck. Problem solved.
ReplyDeleteBecause apparently that is life's highest calling, according to others here.
ReplyDeleteOk, assholes help fix the problem with the young STEM kids. How do you do that, you ask? Well if the barrel is rotten go to the tree. (Hat tip to the Sean Connery) I instruct/mentor/support Sr Design projects at the local Engineering School. I had 8 students last academic year and have had as many as 20. They are given a project to complete and I teach them how to roll the education they have had into actually doing it right. It is a process and takes me the full year to accomplish. At the end the students are not IROC's but are the equivalent of two years of experience in engineering. Their biggest attribute is listening and asking questions.
Now a few caveats, I have had all guy, all girl and mixed gender and race. They all display typical idiosyncrasies of team dynamics. All guy teams are like working a tech frat house, all girl teams are at first tech mean girls, mixed is usually dance around the minority. Thing is I beat them mercilessly until they realize that I am not going to pass them until they get their shit together. Let's see: show them how to do it, show them where it is in there text books/regs/literature, group review the solution, rip it apart for any number of reasons, discuss why the solution is not feasible and to do it again with more thinking. Rinse, repeat etc. Eventually you can see the light bulbs go off in each kid. By graduation I've only had a few who didn't get it.
One thing I've noticed in the last few cycles is that the Covid kids got screwed. They paid for an education they didn't get because you can't distance learn engineering. The labs and peer interaction is where the education happens. The kids in school in '20, '21 and early '22 didn't get that. Last year's kids was also a little remedial education in fluids, heat transfer, strength of materials, structures, dynamics/statics, material science, manufacturing processes, welding, joining and fastening. Hopefully the next crop won't be this as bad but we will see.
So if you are a retired engineer and bored with golf and honey do's then go talk to the Engineering department head and volunteer to do this. This coming year will be year 8 for me. I don't get paid but I do get a lot of satisfaction and have made a lot of young friends. As an aside, my kids are usually promoted below the bar on a regular basis. I have a bunch of project leads and few department heads amongst my grads so as they say the proof is in the pudding.
If you are a successful engineer somebody (thanks Dad and his coworkers) helped you, pay it forward.
Spin Drift
Confirming the issue at two recent engineering design/build/operate projects. And it isn't just IROC, but also those with documented '10 - 15 years of experience.' I could not figure out how they survived, then a look at the details and they had 7 'jobs' during that time and obviously never mastered any of them.
ReplyDeleteLarge employers are not helping themselves with the programs, and now the so-called professional engineering and standards organizations are aggressively taking up the flag of stupidity encouraging DEI, ESG crud. I guess they are after more dues, rather than setting standards that are important to modern civilization. I have not yet seen any corrective forces to mitigate the issue.
The whole 65 +/- 10 y.o. cadre is leaving our fairly high $ industry and it will be interesting to see what happens since it supplies fairly important commodity that comes out of the wall in homes and businesses. Common discussions include 'I'm glad I won't live long enough to see this entire thing collapse on itself.'
There are exceptions in the younger crowd, but they are rare and just as frustrated as us old timers. Typically, they bail for easier jobs with higher pay, and less stress because they are not having to cover for their contemporaries.
Hanging on....
I am retired now, but am an Electrical Engineer and was a Manager at one point. About 25 years ago I took over Managing a group of Transmission Engineers and found I had to teach them how to properly produce Engineering Documentation. I set them down and explained that they knew how to do the job, but did not know how to produce the documentation in a standard form and I would show them what I wanted. They would get the documents sent back many times until they got it right. I took about 6 months to fix them.
ReplyDeleteI later left that job as my company merged with a European company and moved my group's functions under their Europe group. One of my former Engineers met me later as he went to work for another company and thanked me as he found what I had taught him about documentation put him so far ahead of others in his new company, which he became a Manager.
Wow! The crying is epic! Hope yall retire soon, I guarantee that everything will be fine without yall!!!
ReplyDeleteWhat a dipshit. Haven't you been paying attention for the past, well, forever?
DeleteNow get your ass back on that fry machine before I have a word with your boss. GIT!
Project much?
DeleteSpoken like a true participation trophy idiot. Everything will be fine, till it all goes to shit because of entitled woke idiots. At least they can be consoled by the tears of the libtard Xer/Xim's.
Deleteused to do MRI myself. but dad ran a concrete crew for years. built all sorts of houses, factories and a lot of custom weird fireplaces for rich people. dad's idea of summer vacation was to drag my ass to work every summer after I hit 10. fun. working concrete or mixing cement or lifting goddamn 12 semi solid blocks is not a lot of fun. but it will get you in shape like nothing else will and you learn how things get done without killing yourself. and how things work and go together. anyway, when the company I was working for changed hands. they had some Engineer come in and ask a lot of questions about the machine and how did they get it on the 5th floor
ReplyDeletehe did not know that pipes can be unscrewed and put back together, or that wire connectors and be taken apart and put back together. the bad part about having common sense is dealing all of those who have none of it.
I have learned over the years to just keep my mouth shut and watch the show. dave in pa.
Your dad and mine were related apparently. I worked in my dads southwest Florida concrete construction business in my teen years and it was 130 degrees on the 5th floor slab dragging 20 foot rebars all over the place. Walking the wall with a concrete hose over my shoulders 50 feet in the air. Moving 10 pallets of blocks from here to there. Learning how things work early on helped me out the rest of my life as an architect and engineer. I still do manual labor when I need to, cause I learned how long ago.
Deleteone nasty summer was spent building basements. oh joy ! working 12 to 15 feet deep in a hole with no wind/breeze or anything. just the damn sun baking your ass for 9-10 hours. set up for the footer , dig it out with a backhoe ,clean up with a square point shovel. pour the concrete- easy part. then move damn 12 semi solid
Deletecinder blocks. it was not until much later did I realize what he did for me. but at the time, I was sure he was trying like mad to kill me off. when I went into the army, I was in better shape than the DI's where in.
I forgot about the damn rebar shit. one time I had to move 2 pallets of Portland cement. they weigh 94 pounds per bag. at least that was in the shade. dave in pa.
I stopped being "The Old Guy" about 5 years ago, what I did was highly technical (Network Engineering and support) and all of the guys I worked with were sharp - but we were the exception because the Company did not even want to talk to you until you had 15 years of experience with networks, computers, routing architecture, and basic troubleshooting skills. Applicants went before a three-man team of The Really Smart ones, then interviewed with a manager, then was shoved into a class where you REALLY learned what our product could do!
ReplyDeleteI thought I knew Networks before, after 1 year on the job I really knew Networks.
WE were the experts that Companies called when things weren't working right or at all. WE were expected to know our snot and were considered the Experts - it was fun to point out to Universities, Banks, even Governments, that their networks were crap.
Sometimes The Local Idiot Engineer would call us for the most obvious things they screwed up, sometimes it was pretty subtle and we had to get down in the weeds (tcpdumps) to see what was going wrong. Some customers were a joy to work with, others were the typical "I know Bill Gates" types. Ya pays yer yearly Support Fee and ya takes yer chances!
Sooooo glad I don't have to work there any more, a management change took place three years before I left and I could smell the smoke before I retired. Doggone glad I did, too - I would have been fired for not putting up with the "Diversity Is Strength" crapola that was rearing its ugly head. DIE would have been my demise. And, it's DIE, not DEI.
Self employed so, other than the fact that my boss is a giant asshole, life's good. :) I'll admit the bids are slightly outsized if I find you're "woke". Funny how those retards love to pay more for services they're simply not intelligent nor industrious enough to take on themselves. Laugh all the way to the bank, too.
ReplyDeleteI had a rather INSPIRING relationship with a new Engineer!! Way back in 1969 I was the Head Lifeguard (17 yrs old) at a swimming pool at a Mill Village. The Mill had hired a new Engineering graduate and was putting him into training. The was an old guy who was in charge of all the maintenance on the mill houses and facilities. He was also in charge of the new guy. We had an issue with a toilet that was terribly clogged due to an idiot thinking it was funny to put a few rolls of toilet paper in and then flush! Then the idiot crawled UNDER each toile stall and locked all the doors! SOMEONE had a BAD case of the squirts and managed to climb OVER the door of a stall while "leaking" all the way. The old guy told the new guy "see, this is the kind of crap you'll have to deal with when you have a helper - it's not a fun job to put a helper to work cleaning up crap like this. You know, it hurts me but it's going to help you! "! That new guy got it all cleaned, unclogged the toilet, and asked me if there was anything else he could do for us. He went on to become a VERY successful engineer and was always one of the most humble and well respected people I've ever met! I can just imagine how quickly a new guy/gal today would "it's not my job" that!!
ReplyDeleteAfter reading through all the comments above, I think I recognize a theme that seems to be lacking in today's grads. When I graduated H.S. and got my first real job, Dad told me "now your real education begins". When I left home on enlistment day Dad told me to "keep my eyes and ears open and my mouth shut and I just might learn a thing or two". Seems like from what I've gleaned from all of the comments, no one gets those messages these days, thus the attitude that these newly hatched engineers know it all.
ReplyDeleteWhen each of my sons graduated college, I gave them the same messages. Both are very successful ten or more years later. One is an electro-mechanical engineer who works for a company that designs and builds giant, high pressure, high reliability fluid pumps used in all sorts of industries. The other one is network engineer who works for a state government managing several hundred domains serving thousands of that government's employees.
Nemo
I have no sympathy for all of you asshole business owners. Back when the housing/ financial markets collapsed in 2009, people had to beg on their knees for a 20 hr/week, minimum wage job. Full time and benefits were unheard of. People learned how to work for themselves; under the table; or not at all. The economy finally really started getting better around 2019; only to have COVID throw everybody out of work again.
ReplyDeleteEligible Gen X, Z, whatever workers are shell shocked; and are tired of the bullshit. You employer assholes are finally reaping the Karma of your 10 years of selfish greed. The free market works. Pay enough damn money; and you can have whatever type of employee that you desire. If your business model relies on people working for peanuts, then you probably shouldn't be in business... Period...
I got out of the rat race two years back and opened up my own business. Doing extremely well and I have no employees (don't want them).
a)
ReplyDeleteTelevisionprogramming.
During the 1970s, CHICO AND THE MAN was popular.
The character of 'Chico' had a catch-phrase:
* "Not my job!"...
... and the studio audience laughed and laughed.
.
I saw it from the opposite end of the spectrum:
* everything is my job.
If I am only a customer instead of working there, it's my job.
If am merely walking by but not a customer, it's my job.
.
b)
1989, a pal noticed I never take a day off, so she bought us a four-day cruise from San Pedro in south California to Ensenada in Baja, and back.
Drove me up a wall... everyplace I looked, the staff was slackers.
Whites were doing just enough, filipino folks were extremely busy looking busy.
.
Fortunately (I guess), the cruise population was high-functional jews.
I say 'fortunate', because with all those jews, management kept the 'schwartzs' below decks.
.
Our circular meal table was, other than us, all jew, all the time.
One old jew mentioned:
* "There are so many jews on this boat, if they all went to the back of the boat, the front of the boat would come out of the water!"
.
As always, Baja was great.
Hard-working people.
Not engineering, but definitely needed highly skilled and motivated.
ReplyDeleteI ran a Special Forces Weather Unit, and one of my most frustrating tasks was Recruiting (we were authorized 18 and the most we ever had on board was 16).
The really sad part was that I went to all of the school events and without fail ALL of the students did not have any of the basic requirements, even the Honor grads had very little understanding of science, NO weather skills, occasionally you could find one with math skills, but try to get any of them to point out on a globe where they were standing at that moment, and it would result in silence.
I found more candidates from home school kids than any public school.
But then again, I only had a pool of six million to fish in...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCuYg9I5NTg
It's so bad even Mexicans won't work.
ReplyDeleteWhen the old white guys are gone this gender confused pussified motard half baked potato shit show will melt down.
I hope I still have some teeth for the popcorn.
Leftisim has ruined America.
FJB
In my field diesel mechanic we are under assault by the screaming green meanies wanting us gone.
ReplyDeleteThe new engines are more efficient, more powerful, less polluting, and more delicate for the exact same reason. The computer control systems monitor just about everything inside the engine. This makes it easier to custom tune for your desired result, but also more venerable to the same gremlins.
As far as the younger generation I'm not seeing them come into my field. Nobody seems to want to get their hands and other parts of the body dirty. I am 58, and plan on retiring in 2 years. I act as an informal trainer at my shop, and will share all of my knowledge with the new hires because the quicker I get them up to speed the quicker I can start sharing the load and burden with them. The older mechanica who trained me went out with manual fuel injection, and non DPF tractors. The mechanics I work with are more if a technician and not a parts hanger. The computer controls will tell you where the fault is, and makes diagnostics easier if you know how to use the data they provide.
Unfortunately the mainstream message is we are dinosaurs powered by dead dinosaur juice and we will be extinct in 7 years.
Sorry the technology to use all electric in the US as an over the road transport does not exist today. The range is too limited for interstate use, but in a local application it might be useable. I have a contract that bought electric transfer units or yard pushers. They still keep my diesel unit because of he recharge time on the electric units. They are up one shift and charging for the next shift. This means they would need 2 shifts with of pushers to do the job on all electric. One running one charging. That is an enormous outlay on cash and capital for not a large return.
If I am rambling, take into account the coffee hasn't kicked in yet.
I was trained in at the change of technologies in forestry. There was the nascent start of GIS systems and GPS, but you had to FTP your waypoints to Duluth so the Coast Guard could correct the positions and FTP them back so it wasn't very useful in real-time.
ReplyDeleteNow the graduates from almost every program are retarded if you take their batteries away. I had "Environmental Science" graduates ask me what a clinometer was when I was measuring a slope to determine if erosion control measures should be used on a forest road. When told you can measure the tree height with one as well, he was surprised.
The reliance on digital devices will be the end of this iteration of civilization.
Until recently I designed IT systems for large corporations. I cannot stand the environment and refuse to put up with the stupidity. I walked. Others in my specialized field are walking away as well losing a lot of knowledge and experience. The people getting into the field are frighteningly unaware. I'll leave it at that and echo many of the observations of others in the comments.
ReplyDeleteStarted my own small business making real things you can touch and people use. Keeps me occupied so I do not die of boredom.