I am 60 years old and have worked 35 years in electronics for many different companies. I have seen everything Dave mentioned. It is all true. Engineers laugh at Dilbert to help dull the pain of the truth. I sat through a meeting with a customer and our chief engineer. After the customer left he told me don't worry about what the customer asked for, it can't be done. So even though he knew it couldn't be done we worked on it for another year before it "dissipated".
You forgot another big one, during lean times fire all the engineers with 10 or more years of experience and hire new grads to replace them. Manager is a hero for saving a bundle in salaries gets nice bonus and jumps ship before the $hit hits the fan because all the projects are stalled, over budget and very late.
yep, right on the money! my experience too - so I left full-time engineering and became a part-time teacher filling my spare time with hobby engineering.
Yes, bad I know. The video looks terrible some times, this one seems to be particularly shocking, worst than most. New cam on the way, so hopefully this will help.
I found a lot of managers are former engineers that were not happy at being an engineer so they went the management path. And the reason they were not happy at being an engineer was because they sucked at it. So now they are sucky managers.
Have never seen you in the company I worked as a technical computer scientist. You must have been a colleague of mine. As you said, collect experts and ignore their advice... Some things will never change, worldwide.... thank you so much for this video
Mechanical engineer here. Before starting my career I was ignorant enough to think that maybe I won't run into terrible managers. Well as it turns out I've been sent through the washing machine of mismanagement just like everyone else. Worked on doomed projects, worked on projects that were progressing well but got rug-pulled, being told to push for deadlines that I knew were impossible, all that fun stuff. But the most valuable lesson I ever learned was to keep my own head on while everyone else was losing theirs.....you never want to let emotions get the better of you (and ruin your reputation) when things inevitably go pear-shaped. You're ultimately there to get paid.
sounds like my experience at State Farm as an IP design analyst for 9 years. As an internal engineer, it wasn't clients demands so much, it was fresh faced college mgmt grads and their inane ideas of what a network does, and worse, learning early how to blame the network for ALL systems problems. OK i'm getting exasperated just thinking about it. Different layers, but I feel your pain!!!!!
I worked for a company for 26 years and I was able to create my own projects and deliver them to the internal customers. My last couple years were exactly the way you described. I was given a project that was for an instrument that measured how long a piece of equipment was running. It produced data that Excel could read. I took a couple of weeks and I demoed it. My last supervisor anted an off the shelf solution that nearly got me fired and has this process kept me working to 4 years.
This concept doesn't exist only EE. I have seens at different occasions, upper management purchase (read at 6-7 figure high prices) solutions that could be developed in-house, that did or would perform better than the hig price solutions. Just because it looks good on the CIO's resume that he ok'ed a 15M$ software ERP solution, that is total crap and backward.
If you can't deal with these bull full situations, starts a succesful company on your own, don't let it go public and make sure your retain control of a majority of the equity.
11 years later and we're still fighting the same work-efficiency degrading issue: (µ)management... This video at least reassures me that I'm not the only one having these problem...
The last part about taking the money home and being happy is so incredibly true. I don't work in engineering, I have a much more "plain" job but the same sh_t applies. A boss that doesn't have a bloody clue what he's doing and workers being ignored. Oh well, at least I'm getting paid.
Doesn't help sometimes when your customer's project managers play musical chairs. It doesn't bode well when you go to meetings with the project manager of the day and you have to tell them some of the issues that are costing them millions in fines to regulatory bodies and to their customers. In the end the project got canned because the customer deemed it to be too expensive, yet they are still having to dish out millions in fines and compensation.
I was the one chosen to design a thermometer(first medical project) for a tier-1 automotive design corporate....and they just wanted to make something to start the medical department , with managers having no medical standard knowledge and instead of requirements,I had to go with assumptions.The design sustained jobs of managers,but never came back to me after first proto....
I'm assuming Dave is talking about his own country wasting 12 million dollars? Hee Hee that's a drop in the bucket compared to some of the projects we have planned here in California, USA. One is the billions of dollars to build a high speed railroad yet at the same time they are telling us there's no money to fix the highways we drive our cars on everyday!
"oh well, what's 10 million bucks" e-fucking-xactly. Engineers have no power and no voice in most modern day business, and therefore no financing. 10 million really isn't a lot of money for any of these corporations. Hell, I can guarantee you that each of the board members of the companies who Dave is talking about were probably making 3-5 million a year, EACH. And that isn't even going into the profit resource pool that is meant specifically for expanding business. This is exactly why what can seem like a fortune in millions can be pissed away and engineers payed shit; because so many resources in the past have been spent into making the processes more "efficient". Do you know what efficiency means? More work, less pay. Therefore you lose perspective on what "a lot of money" really is, because you are seen as a necessary evil, and at best, an expendable resource. Furthermore there are so many people out there who will tell you that the pay of an engineer is great, say $100,000. Let me be the first to tell you- in the professional world, THAT. IS. NOTHING. Engineering has evolved into a farce of its original glory days and has been essentially knee-capped to the point where any new players trying to enter the arena need to sell their soul to even have a chance to make a decent living. Let me tell you, if you want to make something cool with your engineering degree, do it on your own time as a hobby. Otherwise I can tell you for a fact that if you want to do it for any pay, fun, or even RESPECT, you will get none and shoveled shit in return.
Same crap no matter where you go. I am currently struggling with a micromanager that "listens", but doesn't listen. Says he does not have the technical knowledge, but keeps telling us how to do things in technical point of view. I knew that I cannot get away from the crap that you see in the IT without changing profession, but then again maybe that solution isn't so good.
Just take home your paycheck and be happy livening in stupid high roller wast is the hard life of a design engineer to see good men and great ideas wasted so it was hard for me , politics take president over product performance and to design with a set and short life is criminal and standard procedure
I am 60 years old and have worked 35 years in electronics for many different companies. I have seen everything Dave mentioned. It is all true. Engineers laugh at Dilbert to help dull the pain of the truth. I sat through a meeting with a customer and our chief engineer. After the customer left he told me don't worry about what the customer asked for, it can't be done. So even though he knew it couldn't be done we worked on it for another year before it "dissipated".
You forgot another big one, during lean times fire all the engineers with 10 or more years of experience and hire new grads to replace them. Manager is a hero for saving a bundle in salaries gets nice bonus and jumps ship before the $hit hits the fan because all the projects are stalled, over budget and very late.
yep, right on the money! my experience too - so I left full-time engineering and became a part-time teacher filling my spare time with hobby engineering.
Yes, bad I know. The video looks terrible some times, this one seems to be particularly shocking, worst than most.
New cam on the way, so hopefully this will help.
I found a lot of managers are former engineers that were not happy at being an engineer so they went the management path. And the reason they were not happy at being an engineer was because they sucked at it. So now they are sucky managers.
Have never seen you in the company I worked as a technical computer scientist. You must have been a colleague of mine. As you said, collect experts and ignore their advice... Some things will never change, worldwide.... thank you so much for this video
Mechanical engineer here. Before starting my career I was ignorant enough to think that maybe I won't run into terrible managers. Well as it turns out I've been sent through the washing machine of mismanagement just like everyone else. Worked on doomed projects, worked on projects that were progressing well but got rug-pulled, being told to push for deadlines that I knew were impossible, all that fun stuff. But the most valuable lesson I ever learned was to keep my own head on while everyone else was losing theirs.....you never want to let emotions get the better of you (and ruin your reputation) when things inevitably go pear-shaped. You're ultimately there to get paid.
sounds like my experience at State Farm as an IP design analyst for 9 years. As an internal engineer, it wasn't clients demands so much, it was fresh faced college mgmt grads and their inane ideas of what a network does, and worse, learning early how to blame the network for ALL systems problems. OK i'm getting exasperated just thinking about it. Different layers, but I feel your pain!!!!!
Eleven years later: you just made my day, I had a laugh :)
I worked for a company for 26 years and I was able to create my own projects and deliver them to the internal customers. My last couple years were exactly the way you described. I was given a project that was for an instrument that measured how long a piece of equipment was running. It produced data that Excel could read. I took a couple of weeks and I demoed it. My last supervisor anted an off the shelf solution that nearly got me fired and has this process kept me working to 4 years.
In the light of this, I have abandoned my ultra-light paperweight and chocolate teapot projects.
This concept doesn't exist only EE. I have seens at different occasions, upper management purchase (read at 6-7 figure high prices) solutions that could be developed in-house, that did or would perform better than the hig price solutions. Just because it looks good on the CIO's resume that he ok'ed a 15M$ software ERP solution, that is total crap and backward.
If you can't deal with these bull full situations, starts a succesful company on your own, don't let it go public and make sure your retain control of a majority of the equity.
11 years later and we're still fighting the same work-efficiency degrading issue: (µ)management...
This video at least reassures me that I'm not the only one having these problem...
You're describing my company, and we're in food products manufacturing. It's a universal trait of all corporations.
It's like a malignant cancer isn't it I have seen so many places turn to shit because of this.
The last part about taking the money home and being happy is so incredibly true. I don't work in engineering, I have a much more "plain" job but the same sh_t applies. A boss that doesn't have a bloody clue what he's doing and workers being ignored. Oh well, at least I'm getting paid.
Doesn't help sometimes when your customer's project managers play musical chairs. It doesn't bode well when you go to meetings with the project manager of the day and you have to tell them some of the issues that are costing them millions in fines to regulatory bodies and to their customers. In the end the project got canned because the customer deemed it to be too expensive, yet they are still having to dish out millions in fines and compensation.
I was the one chosen to design a thermometer(first medical project) for a tier-1 automotive design corporate....and they just wanted to make something to start the medical department , with managers having no medical standard knowledge and instead of requirements,I had to go with assumptions.The design sustained jobs of managers,but never came back to me after first proto....
wow as an ME just a few years into my career nice to hear I'm not alone with "missed market" projects
Hearing this and reading all these comments... makes me very happy that I don't have these issues. =3
"Always run the project in a state of crisis"
I can't stop laughing!
Watching all of them.
Thanks.
5:03 ... this was so funny, and so recognisable.
I'm assuming Dave is talking about his own country wasting 12 million dollars? Hee Hee that's a drop in the bucket compared to some of the projects we have planned here in California, USA. One is the billions of dollars to build a high speed railroad yet at the same time they are telling us there's no money to fix the highways we drive our cars on everyday!
And now it's cancelled and Trump want's his money back, lmao
Railroad is the future of transportation. Especially due to the climate crisis.
its wierd to see a video in my recomended that is one decade old :D
"oh well, what's 10 million bucks"
e-fucking-xactly. Engineers have no power and no voice in most modern day business, and therefore no financing. 10 million really isn't a lot of money for any of these corporations. Hell, I can guarantee you that each of the board members of the companies who Dave is talking about were probably making 3-5 million a year, EACH. And that isn't even going into the profit resource pool that is meant specifically for expanding business. This is exactly why what can seem like a fortune in millions can be pissed away and engineers payed shit; because so many resources in the past have been spent into making the processes more "efficient". Do you know what efficiency means? More work, less pay. Therefore you lose perspective on what "a lot of money" really is, because you are seen as a necessary evil, and at best, an expendable resource.
Furthermore there are so many people out there who will tell you that the pay of an engineer is great, say $100,000. Let me be the first to tell you- in the professional world, THAT. IS. NOTHING. Engineering has evolved into a farce of its original glory days and has been essentially knee-capped to the point where any new players trying to enter the arena need to sell their soul to even have a chance to make a decent living. Let me tell you, if you want to make something cool with your engineering degree, do it on your own time as a hobby. Otherwise I can tell you for a fact that if you want to do it for any pay, fun, or even RESPECT, you will get none and shoveled shit in return.
The parallels to software are staggering.
I'd like to speak to some greybeards in machining, see if the stories are the same there.
Same crap no matter where you go. I am currently struggling with a micromanager that "listens", but doesn't listen. Says he does not have the technical knowledge, but keeps telling us how to do things in technical point of view. I knew that I cannot get away from the crap that you see in the IT without changing profession, but then again maybe that solution isn't so good.
Hehehe, thats being an engineer.
I am very familiar with this crap... white collars always win without question...
#3 describes the government to a tee.
You should see if you can take these good ideas and produce them on your own.
the company will be quick to sue him and get all the profit.
Sadly sculptors are mistaken for masons....
Universities are run like that now, when business schools bloat & expand engineering faculties go down the pan...
Smart AAA battery for vibrators. My happy dead prj
Basically, Dr Murphy rules again!
I couldn't stop the damn laughing XD
Just take home your paycheck and be happy livening in stupid high roller wast is the hard life of a design engineer to see good men and great ideas wasted so it was hard for me , politics take president over product performance and to design with a set and short life is criminal and standard procedure
É luto no planeta inteiro amigo, você esta discutindo comigo política, Eletrônica ou filosofia ? Tudo bem ? Avisa eles, é luto em escala planetária
My goodness! So good