Mastodawn

I've been working full time since Jan, I worked part time the whole time I did my Master's; 1 year as a hardware test and verification engineer at an embedded systems contractor and 6 months as an embedded hardware design engineer at a medical imaging company, that I'm at full time now.

I left the contractor because they were small so had limited potential for growth and were always chasing clients.
The medical company was larger, more directly related to my master's thesis, and promised me the ability to learn and grow from skilled engineers.

But the longer I've been here, and especially now that I am full time the more it becomes clear that management is a disaster.

All the engineering is in Cleveland, all the execs are in San Francisco. The execs have no idea what is happening, set unrealistic deadline, don't do any normal project management and are getting increasingly unhappy that no one is going to hit the unrealistic and arbitrary deadline for FDA 510K submission.

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DevKitsune 🦊 🏳️‍🌈Mar 17

My boss yesterday pulled the hardware team into an unplanned meeting (that ran past 5PM) to give a talk about how as we approach the 510K submission deadline we are going to have be prepared to work 10, 15, even 22 hour days to make sure everything is done.
We don't get overtime and I don't get paid enough to give a fuck about the deadline. I didn't make the project schedule. I don't work well under extreme stress. In my entire academic career I pulled 1 "all nighter" and it was on a group project and it was hell.
I start work early, plan the steps, work diligently and efficiently while I work and stop when it's no longer productive to push through, so I can pick it up the next morning without flaming out.

If they really try to enforce this I will just leave. I have a life outside of my job, friends who I like to spend time with. Even in this economy there are listings for embedded hardware engineers in this area that fit my skill set, and the contractor I was at before would probably take me back.

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DevKitsune 🦊 🏳️‍🌈Mar 17

My BF is a mechanical engineer without a masters and he makes just as much as I do currently and gets annual raises in his contract. He is expecting about a 15/20% raise in June.
I feel like even without a master's EEs often make a few percent more than MechEs and I have the master's degree.

I'm really not being paid very generously at all, so I don't see a lot of reason to put up with bullshit treatment.

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DevKitsune 🦊 🏳️‍🌈

Over the last week or so I have reflected on this. There are some interesting "perks" to my job - my work has a lot of direct impact on the product, a product I think is a net good for the world, and there are a lot of good engineers here to learn from and who have similar frustrations to me.
This week I have gotten to, in a separate time block from a couple other much more senior engineers who got their own blocks, interview two new senior engineers we are considering hiring on a 6 month to 1 year contract to help us with FDA 510K, the fact that my boss trusts me enough to schedule me a time block during this interviews feels good, and I think interviewing candidates is a good skill to try to develop early in my career.
But also the pressure continues to ramp up and make everyone unhappy and the whole vibe at the company reminds me a lot of Soul of a New Machine.
A company that hires young engineers and uses interesting work to justify poor pay and unrealistic deadlines and unfair pressure.