it is better to go broke by not doing a job

Everything is tough these days
d0n1wag - Sun, Jan 29, 2017 - 09:57 PM 

I'm a Mechanical Engineer and worked in Aerospace on military and commercial aircraft and space systems. 

I watched as health care and the pension plans of these companies were systematically dismantled from the late 80s to present and where one engineer does the work of what it used to take many engineers to do due to technology. 

I've watched the Pig Men at the top piling up their Pig Piles while those doing the work suffered never ending financial harm by paper cuts. It made me bitter towards the end of my career to see the selfishness and greed at the top where the most deceitful, immoral and lyingest bunch of scum became rich beyond your wildest dreams by awarding themselves all the productivity gains over the years, raiding pension funds and cutting benefits. 

Everything is tough these days
Carbatom - Mon, Jan 30, 2017 - 01:13 AM 
Yes I'm a prof. Mech.Eng as well and I've seen the exact same thing. Computerization has now made it possible for guys like me to design complex equipment by myself within weeks or days whereas not so long ago a room full of engineers and drafters working for months would have been required. That is certainly a testament to how powerful the software and the hardware has become, assuming you know how to use it. Even now as I type this rambling missive, this machine is working on a nonlinear analysis of a highway going cryogenic trailer bumper undergoing crash impact forces. Not so long ago I couldn't type this response, have 8 web tabs open, and listen to a podcast while running a complex nonlinear FEA all at the same time...and all on an 8 year old 6 core Intel I7, which is now an old chip. 

And yes I have become thoroughly disgusted with what's happening to the engineering profession. I have watched my peers drop their pants just to get a job on high risk prototypes, and they all lose money on these projects. I have even gone so far to call up my engineering competitors and ask them if they've been taking stupid pills, as their bids will end up being below cost and won't even pay the rent. But like the true boyscouts they are, they scoff at my admonishments and imperiously proclaim that charging $2k for engineering a 20ton coil tubing reel is 'fair'. Of course it's not fair, it's entirely stupid and all it's doing is wiping out the engineering business. That coil tubing reel for well workover operations will be used and abused by the workover crews, there is high risk for a liability period of 10 years and it will be expected to perform tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars of workover business. The mind boggles. 

It's almost like engineers treat money as being below them, and that asking a fair price is undignified. The end result is that they end up being run over roughshod by the financial types who make the business deals, and then expect the technical staff to stay up day and night to make the technical deliverables happen. The financial wizards of course pay the engineers and drafters a nominal middle class wage, but pay themselves millions of dollars a year. As usual, 1/3-1/2 of these deals are money losers but nonetheless the financial wizards get away with millions in pay and bonuses even if the company is going under. 

When things do go south on these various projects then it is the engineer's responsibility to get it back on track and everyone had better get back to work twice as hard during the week and 3x as much on the weekend, lest they find themselves at the business end of a pink slip. 

I had found for my former employers (from years ago) many engineering jobs which also turned into multi-million dollar machining jobs. But they didn't give me a bonus for this success; instead they bonused the machine shop staff and didn't give the engineering division anything even though we found the business and got the manufacturing sale! I left immediately after this all washed out, and now that company is bankrupt. 

It is amazing how things have gotten so mixed up in our society. Entertainers and Youtube presenters make untold millions of dollars, while the guys who engineer the stadiums and the fiber optic networks face impoverished retirements if any retirement at all. It is all so backward that I hardly know where to begin anymore. 

As for myself, I'm the president of a small engineering company and I have to regularly talk about costs and risks with my clients everyday. Since I have an innate ability to come up with profitable ideas, I have been able to get around basic invoicing on some projects and get into royalty payments for my ideas. I don't think most if not all of my competition has been able to do this, they are all stuck in some kind of effete world where money is a crass thing and that they should all hold their teacups with their pinky fingers outstretched. I say bullshit to all that, they can have their egotistic ideas on what they think engineering is but for myself, I get into the trenches and crawl through miles of mud to get a job done. I have found that delivering results that work in the real world of grime, blood sweat and tears is what delivers a paycheque. I think my peers have forgotten this and have jumped on the modern progressive belief system where the manly aspects of engineering are to be eschewed and dismissed. (meanwhile, there are still few women in engineering and most leave it for other professions) 

Well that mangina belief system is exactly the undoing of my competition in a lot of cases, and despite their pandering politically correct behaviours the public now holds them in ever lower levels of respect - and they stand their scratching their heads wondering why their effete political correctness is steering them into the poorhouse. The public now expects everything to be provided by engineers at low cost, maximum safety, and available 24x7x365 at the snap of a finger. Unfortunately the advent of the computer and powerful software has done a great deal to build up this expectation, but the guy behind the computer still has to know what he's doing and that only comes with decades of hard core experience in the field and the office. 

It's the long time professional guys who are now in their 40s and 50s that are getting pounded financially and in their careers if they dare voice their opinions, and they are often canned because many corporations think they can pay the recently graduated millennial 1/4 of the wage for what they think is the same job. As things stand, this cannot last much longer and I have noticed that things are starting to swirl around the toilet bowl. I have done some recent inspections on recently built equipment and much of it needs to be re-designed. Oil companies are being forced to bring the old stuff out of retirement -or keep it running- because the new equipment is so expensive for something that is halfway decent that they can't afford it. 

Recently there have been some high profile failures where people have lost their lives in our province due to shortcuts taken on engineering jobs - but so far I wonder if anything has been learned from all this. People have to understand that it costs real money to design and build something, and that if they try to take shortcuts then they'll end up paying 2x or more just to fix a non-injury accident. 

I myself follow this business practice - 'it is better to go broke by not doing a job than by doing it and still going broke' - and it's corollary - 'a bad deal never turns into a good deal'.