<p>Darnit. DS has a reputation of being ontime and onbudget but he’s choosey in the next company that he wants to work for. We tell him to apply to companies that are seeking and later reject those that don’t match his objectives or they theirs.</p>
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I used to work for a engineering firm where if we stayed past 7pm, we’d get free dinner. However, we were consultants and I’m pretty sure this was written into our contract with the clients.</p>
<p>So far I have worked on three jobs ( 1. A very huge electrical company ( quite possibly the hugest in the world)</p>
<ol>
<li><p>A national oil pipeline company</p></li>
<li><p>A scada development company.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>All are engineer jobs ( required eit or P.Eng) and none actually made me stay past 40 hr week ever.</p>
<p>But the thing is, I don’t procrastinate so I always finish the project task ahead of schedule.</p>
<p>I am a EE by the way.</p>
<p>
I freely admit to being an east coaster, although not all of us are “like clockwork” - at my company engineers in most departments are time limited only by their specific duties and time requirements. Some engineers, especially those working in manufacturing, work very rigidly regular schedules and work overtime essentially only if there is a big problem or if too many people call off sick. The rest of us just have to make sure we attend the appropriate meetings - I know guys who come in at 5am, others who come in at noon. Plus, most of us are on a 9/80 schedule where we work a little longer M-R and get every other Friday off.</p>
<p>Oh, and outside of manufacturing and specific time obligations, no one watches you to make sure when you arrive and leave. If I have to come in late or leave early I don’t even mention it to my boss unless I see him in transit. He knows I get the work done.</p>
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At my company the only work time (that I am aware of) when food and beverages are free is for groups working proposals, as that often extends into crazy hours and weekends. They usually throw food and beverages at us, plus we get overtime… a great deal so long as you don’t do it too far often. I am excluding field work, as most companies will pay for meals and incidentals if you are traveling.</p>
<p>Regardless, I think that silicon valley is a unique work environment not matched elsewhere. We had an open meeting/QA session with the bigwigs of our company back in 2009, and someone asked if our expanding benefits were going to push towards the Google model, and they all chuckled. One of them actually said something to the effect of “no, we expect you to go home instead!”.</p>
<p>BEngineer, I think sometimes it has to do more the deadline than one’s efficiency. I worked on a case for a “big law” firm (we were the expert witness) and all parties knew from the onset that a lot of OT would be required. The same thing happened when we were working on a high profile controversial project. </p>
<p>Even if one doesn’t procrastinate, one may not get away with only working 40 hours, especially if it’s in a team environment. You depend on others and others depend on you. Sometimes the scope of work changes with no deadline extension. </p>
<p>It seems that it’s more common to work OT at smaller companies, companies involved in high-profile work, and consulting engineering firms.</p>
<p>ken, I would change “Sometimes the scope of work changes with no eadline extension,” to, “Almost always the scope of work changes with no deadline extension.” </p>
<p>Ha, we’re designing the foundation for a pre-engineered building right now. It’s kind of important to have loads from the building before you can design its foundation. But the pre-engineered building people are slow as Christmas, so we’ll get the loads at the very last second. We went ahead and did a preliminary design of the building ourselves, just to get an idea of how big the column footings needed to be. THAT sure wasn’t in our original scope or timeframe!</p>
<p>I guess I was just lucky enough to work in teams where the scheduling system is so great that I havent experience any overtime needed.</p>
<p>The projects that I have been involved so far is scheduled six or more months before due date and anything diverge away from the functional specs will be a change order and more time will be scheduled.</p>
<p>Hmm. This thread is kinda discouraging, and encouraging at the same time. I’m not going into engineering based solely on the money (although I’d like 70k+). I really enjoy science, physics, and computer science. I want a job that will pay enough, have security, and be intellectually satisfying (ie, i think i would go brain dead stocking store shelves for the rest of my life). Working conditions is one of the most important things to me. I’m okay with working a lot of hours some weeks. It’s natural that some weeks will be worse than others. But I really don’t want to do anything like 50+ hours a week, every week regularly. You guys say some jobs do offer 40 hours, some require much, much more. And this issue is probably the only one keeping me from pursuing engineering. I guess this is just something that I’d have to experience for myself, and see what the future holds. But, just to ease my mind, what other career options are available to somebody with an engineering degree? Besides being an engineer at a firm… What other careers/paths do you think I should look into? Right now, engineering, or studying it at least, seems really interesting to me. But I may need a “fall-back” career in case I found that engineering just isn’t for me. Oh, and thanks for the replies!</p>
<p>Engineering can lead to lots of other positions, but tragically, most of the ones people think of require MORE time, not less - patent law, program management, finance, etc. Still, don’t panic about the workload - if you look for it, you CAN find a position with the right work-life balance for you.</p>
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</p>
<p>In SV, people often do stay really late. But the same people often come in significantly later than 8am. The joke is that some people eventually end up working 8 to 5 – 8pm to 5am. More seriously, “rush hour” on the roads lasts until 10am in the morning and 7pm in the evening.</p>
<p>“In SV, people often do stay really late. But the same people often come in significantly later than 8am”</p>
<p>This is true, especially with software engineers. They seem to come in between 10am-noon and work until whenever. I’m generalizing of course, but it’s a common theme. Engineers (all salaried workers really) typically don’t have set hours, come and leave when you want as long as the job gets done. Determined by peer pressure and management expectations more than anything else. Even if you can get the job done in 8hrs, its usually un-wise politically to only be there for 8. Perception is important at some places.</p>
<p>At my last job my boss had no life. Not married, no kids, he worked all the time, like 7:30am - 9pm, every day, came in every Saturday for 4-6 hours. He expected everyone who worked for him to keep similar hours, didn’t expect people to match his hours, but close. He asked me several times why I wasn’t coming in on Saturdays more often. Because I have a life! is what I was thinking. This is an exception however, most don’t require that much time. The hours you are expected to work depend a lot on your boss. Look out for any boss who has no family and is married to his/her job.</p>
<p>And yes, rush hour here is a wide range could be 5am - 10am lunch time can be heavy, then 3pm - 7pm. Depends on the freeway, direction of travel, etc. You see different types of workers at different hours. Technicians, assembly workers, construction workers tend to work early 6am-2:30pm kind of thing. Professionals, engineers, managers tend to have later hours. People who commute long distances keep different hours than locals, etc.</p>
<p>
The only people in my company regularly working like this (that I am aware of) are those at the VP level. They get WELL paid for doing so, but I know a recent straw poll of those indicating interest in management positions indicated that most did NOT want to become VP’s almost entirely because of the schedule.</p>
<p>Joe,</p>
<p>Perhaps the best way to think about engineering is that an engineer is a professional, like a doctor or a lawyer. If someone is sick, the doctor doesn’t ask how many hours he’s got to work. And if someone is on trial for his life or freedom, the lawyer isn’t thinking about how many hours he’s got to put in. Or at least he shouldn’t be. Doctors, lawyers and engineers aren’t clock-punchers; they are the people whom others put their trust in to make things happen. It’s understood that the doctor, the lawyer and the engineer (i.e. professionals, among which there are others, I’m just using these as an example) operate at a different level than the ordinary worker. During the Apollo 13 mission, the engineers weren’t wondering how many hours they would need to put in that week.</p>
<p>This isn’t to say that doctors, lawyers and engineers always work tons of hours. I’ve been working professionally as an engineer for 20 years, and I’ve generally worked about 45 hours per week over that time (usually 9 hours per day, not including lunch - which might be very short!) But there have been times when I’ve worked up to 75 hours/week at a critical time in a project, just like a lawyer might work 75 hours/week at a crucial time during a case. Engineers who are not willing to do that are, in my opinion, not professional and, in my experience, don’t get very far in their careers. The point is that it is not so much how many hours you put in, but whether an employer can count on you to take personal responsibility in seeing projects to success. If an employer gets the sense that you are that kind of guy, he’s not going to be concerned about how many hours you are working.</p>