Due to my inability to ignore bad processes and my wanting to get paid more, over the last couple years I've been moving from a 100% design role to a part-design, part staffing manager. I now assign fellow designers in my engineering sub-department to the projects our company is hired for. I have very little input in what projects we take on, but from my position I can read their budgets and expected hours for various client submissions, I then take this info and try to balance the work between my coworkers. In the past 6 months we've been completely overwhelmed with work, too many hours of work to do for our team. Thankfully, our project managers and clients have had project deadlines slip but the projections always show a ton of work upcoming and many coworkers are working unpaid overtime. I've been advocating for hiring more designers, and in the last month have become very explicit in voicing this need, but, I think, worry about economic recession has kept management from posting a job opportunity online.
Does anyone have an idea or opinion that can help me? Am I selling out by leaving my design only role?
I am considering looking for a new job, I'm very in demand as there are few electrical engineers in my field. I'm also considering applying to grad schools in Europe, cheaper and more relevant to my specific goals, but my undergrad GPA was pretty bad. I worry that I'm running from my life though, and I could have an opportunity here to positively change my firm's culture?
Under capitalism someone has to be the manager. It might as well be you. You aren't doing any good for anyone by not taking the management job
Wouldn't that also be necessary under communism? Weren't factories given targets, and weren't there bureaucrats assigning and verifying those targets, and assigning tasks to workers and so on? In my mind it's hard to imagine not having managers in an industrial society
There were some important differences in the ussr, especially around firing practices. Hell, there still are. My understanding is that Russia still has a lot of labor protections unheard of in the us.
One of the main issues with managers under capitalism is hiring and firing power. It's literally the power to kill those who are insufficiently profitable. In theory, at least, that power doesn't exist in a socialist society - everyone's needs are met, employment is a right and society constructs systems to ensure that everyone who can work is connected with useful work within their abilities. Workplace democracy also changes the situation a great deal. My understanding is that in many parts of the ussr management power was far from absolute or unilateral. While there may not have been actual strikes labor still had a great deal of power and management had to be considerate of that if they wanted things to run smoothly.
There's also a difference between managers and supervisors. If you don't have the power to fire people or cut their pay you're probably not a manager in the sense that the word is used when discussing labor struggle. Being a supervisor and directing work within a team or shop is fine. Even an ideal non-hierarchical group will often find benefit in having a chosen person working in a leadership role to coordinate the actions of the group and facilitate communication and cooperation.
This is a big thing. There's a change in dynamic because a worker has no incentive to stay at a workplace beyond being productive there and enjoying it, therefore you'd only 'fire' people who were less useful than nobody at all.
Yeah but the relation between manager and staff would be so different that they would be very different positions. For example there is no reason under communism managers should not be elected
As someone who went from engineer-on-the-ground to some degree of management, my moral position is 'eh'. Just as there is no ethical consumption under Capitalism, so am I unsure if there's any ethical production within it either.
If you have some freedom and think you can do relative 'good' from your position for other workers, grand. This was the position I found myself in - Getting promoted to manager meant I could tell my team to take leave and do the jobs they want, while telling upper management to piss off.
If the job is soul-sucking, maybe you are a slave driver by any other name, and you think the world would be better by making that job one-person-worth harder to fill, then leave.
You're definitely mired in the nonsense already, given your first paragraph. I don't know about you, but I found getting stuck in that nonsense to be extremely stressful and why I eventually left because I very honestly would've become a drug addict to cope.
Just as there is no ethical consumption under Capitalism, so am I unsure if there’s any ethical production within it either.
I think that means that there is no consumption without enabling labor exploitation. The moral right to eat food and live indoors is still there under capitalism. And there is a moral difference between making medicine and making bombs
between making medicine and making bombs
Sure, but if we take Germany for example when there was high unemployment people without a job were forced to apply to weapon manufacturers, too, or get cut their unemployment/social money. Of course not all are in that situation and it wasn't done to all, but plenty I know were forced to work for super markets, fast food chains, clean up at night, do "security"/securitas/pinkerton night watch at air ports and company facilities, do janitorial work for business consultant companies, for coca cola or for evil property managing companies, or microsoft, google etc.
If you do open source software and contribute to the Kernel there is a good chance your stuff will be used by weapons manufacturers since some people defended the freedom to use "free" software for that goal.
I think that we ought to ensure that our comrades can stay afloat in capitalism first and foremost and try to not so much with sentiment try to shun and shame people from working for companies that pay well in positions that pay well (as even then most are still part of the working class if we are honest), but more try to have collective action and specific campaigns again specific jobs and companies. I know in my affinity groups most that did shame people I know for working for "bad orgs", like the military when they were drafted, were liberals and had family backing in terms of money.
That said middle managers can if they are organized with us be an asset, but their role and function often makes them opponents in terms of good working conditions or social and material gains.
I'm not saying that someone is immoral for choosing it as opposed to poverty or starvation I am saying that if given options making weapons is less moral than other options. There are degrees of morality
Sure, but I think degrees of morality often lead to problems and moral decision making overload. You don't have to make moral decisions to be my comrade, but we will have as organizations try to figure out what is important for us to work, to sustain and uplift each other.
The nonsense is exhausting. I like working the problem of project assignment, it's a fun puzzle, but it's ruined by the human toll each decision leads to.
The bosses aren't hiring more people because every person they don't hire pads their paychecks and performance metrics. They have the understanding that you are still delivering, so they don't need to hire anyone else. Also unpaid overtime is a symptom of following their bullshit. Unless you are in a personally precarious position, I think it's any leftist manager's duty to ensure the people you manage get their overtime, take their vacation, and so on.
If you want that hire, you're going to need to let things start breaking rather than leaning in your employees and defrauding them of their wages. And you're going to need to play a ton more office politics, which at the end of the day is really just making the higher ups like you and think you know what you're doing. This means taking credit for a bunch of stuff, hyping up your team, and never being self-deprecating.
Yes, I agree. While I don't directly manage anyone, I've been telling my coworkers to stop working overtime. They haven't been listening. It's hard in engineering to form any solidarity as the individualist culture is strong.
Ah, I figured you could assign work in your position. It sounds kinda like you don't actually have that power if folks can just ignore your request to not work OT. I assume there's another manager to whom they report and that's who they want to please?
I have a weird role, I assign the work, but I don't manage the work, I'm not a supervisor. So I'm basically just making sure that me and my coworkers are all equally loaded with work to do.
And yeah, each project has its own manager that is pushing the designers to get work done. The way I approach my projects is that if I'm asked to do more work than I can do in a regular-time week I push back immediately and avoid having to work overtime. The other designers tend to react with putting their heads down and sacrificing their personal time... for nothing! Ideological programming...
Ah yeah that's pretty odd. What is your take on why those managers aren't assigning the work given that they can more or less dictate individuals taking on OT? Plausible deniability? It seems like a bad situation that you might be aware of this issue and others don't want to know/don't want to hear it, but you also can't fix it.
The manager who did this task before I did is nearing retirement and doesn't have the computer skills to keep an excel sheet of the all the projects updated regularly. Also I approached my firm with an outside job offer which they matched on pay and benefits, but with the expectation that I take on the assignment work with an associated title change.
It's not nefarious, it's more instituonal malaisw. Most firms in my industry, other than the very largest, are run by aging boomers with no plans to retire and no investment in younger generations of workers through their careers. As they now reach the end of their careers, I'm part of a generation of young engineers who are taking over these middle management roles with a very outdated template to improve upon.
I've automated most of the assignment work in the past year.
Don't worry what anyone says here, do what you have to do. Some of these people have rich parents or never held a job before.
I personally will never hop into a supervision role, too much work and stress. In my work place, work culture is fixed to forever be incompetent, lazy or stupid. But that's also fine, fuck this job and everyone in my workplace, I don't care if it runs well. Also, all your coworkers are engineers 4/5 times theyre chuds fuck them.
Also sometimes its like this, if you dont take a good paying job that is evil, someone else will it might as well be you instead.
Most of the engineering team is reactionary but luckily the analytical skills needed for the job does allow more ideological flexibility than the traditional conservative. They are receptive to some empirical evidence.
I have no fucking clue what you're even talking about but your entire post sounds like management bullshit speak so I'd say you're in too deep.
ok whatever sure.
Anyway this english text is perfectly understandable
Find an argument that will resonate with your bosses as to why they should hire more designers. Could be that they have talent to retain and clearly with more work piling up people are going to start leaving if they have to do unpaid overtime more and more often. Clearly if business is booming and your team is only still the same size, at some point you won't be able to accept more projects. If they want to get these future projects instead of the competition then they need to start planning now and hire more people. Or they can keep piling up work on your team and people will start finding better opportunities (the opportunities exist rn in the job market, they're not "stuck" with your company), and that will be a disaster. Imagine doing twice the work with half the team.
Talk to them in terms of budgets, profits and expenses it's the only thing they know lol
Collect what your team thinks and has to say (anonymously) and present it higher up.
Ultimately, it doesn't matter. We live in an inherently unstable, unsustainable system. All jobs you can or could take will likely contribute or exacerbate that situation, outside of explicitly 'green' jobs, most of which also do not solve those problems because they are intimately aligned with consumption and business cycles and imperialism that is outside of your direct control. If China can't solve it, neither can you Western man (I am assuming).
Management allows you to be in a situation where you can potentially protect your guys from the dipshittery of upper and c-suite management. Many times that will not be possible and at that point you can make the choice to talk or walk (you should always keep a resume out anyways).
Moving away from design work is not selling out as long as you remember that your most important job as middle management is eating shit so that way your guys don't have to, not keeping it sliding down-hill. Alot of dumb middle management guys get enamoured by the glitz and pedigree of C-suite people and forget that they are completely disconnected morons who, if they can find their ass with both hands, are ultimately playing a completely different game from you that doesn't involve actually producing product. Never fucking forget that.
That being said, because of that separate game you will never have enough time or guys. Fight like hell for it, but it will never be given to you. MBAs are specifically taught that you have to be struggling otherwise you aren't 'efficient'. Absolute dog-brain thinking, but that's why they get paid, to strangle you and think they are doing you a favor.
unionize now or you will be thrown to the wolves when they decide to cut back. manager types are always the first to go
I fear engineering will be one of the last groups to unionize in the west. We are trained to be individualist "free thinkers".
Also engineers will always be paid well in the U.S. and in short supply because the highest correlation with success at mathematics is home stability, which is most correlated with income. For normal people, math takes time, patience, and practice because it is not a skill you use everyday. Until we decide to actually start funding the everyday lives of people to encourage stability, we will never see a large number of engineers, which ironically enough protects their place in the employment hierarchy.
Engineers unionize all the time, it's just that their unions are generally reactionary and do not show solidarity with others.
Your job is ultimately to be the one directly abusing the workers so they manage to produce enough without hiring more.
To be clear, I'm not calling you a shithead boss anything. I'm just explaining that actually doing the things (hiring more workers, not running them ragged, ensuring they're healthy and have time to themselves) needed to have a comfortable, well-functioning workplace is something your bosses absolutely want to avoid and part of the reason you're there is to help them avoid that.
Its the catch-22 of it all. You need more money to pay for things, the only way to do this is to climb the ladder, you get into higher paying positions but the price is that you are now responsible but still have no real power. It sucks.
I don't know what your relationship with your team is so trust may or may not be an issue. But you could just ask them what they want to do. You can let them know that the work isn't going to let up and the load is just going to continue getting worse and worse (assuming I understood your assessment of the situation from the post) and very gently, very quietly, nudge them all into looking for work elsewhere. You do the same while also trying your best to keep upper management content enough to not pay too much attention to what you and the rest of the team are up to. If things work out, everybody just slips away pretty quickly into jobs once they've been secured and wash your hands of that situation.
Its not going to work out that smoothly, so thinking through ways to support the teammates that don't find work as quickly/easily as others is going to be a must.
You're not a sell out, you're doing your best in an impossible to win situation. :rat-salute-2:
Thank you, I will start having these conversations with my coworkers. They don't understand their collective power.
