This happens in the Private Sector as well. I work for a manufacturing company with 6+ facilities (two major, third major greenfield in design and 3 minor facilities) We have 3 engineers for the whole company. We mostly just manage the contracted engineering firms. It sucks for me as a "junior" Senior Project Engineer because I rarely get a chance to learn what my contractors are doing, too busy managing them and coordinating. Naturally, in order to be a better PM I need to know their skills at least at a 500' level. Hard to learn to code PLCs when I'm too busy managing 5 PLC programmers on a project for a month or two, then moving onto something else that might not even have a PLC involved.
Early on in my career, a manager of mine told me about his first few years on the job after being hired by Ontario Hydro (at that time the integrated generation and transmission utility for all of Ontario) in the late 1960s. The first two years was pure training and basically an extension of your engineering degree except specifically applied to the typical problems and practices of the power utility.
Of course, in those days a utility job came with a generous pension, a seniority-based career track and an expectation that you would likely retire there, so anything invested in a young employee was just investing in the company itself.
Large engineering employers no longer feel the same social compact with the profession to train young engineers and make experts out of them. Not only do they not set aside time for employees to learn, there often aren't any seniors around for them to learn from because the company hasn't bothered to create a meaningful career track for engineers. It's promotion up to management or stagnation at entry-level pay. With little meaningful prospect of advancement in their technical career and no pension 'golden handcuffs', there's no incentive for employees to stick around. Once they become experienced, they split for the contractor they used to manage, creating a vicious cycle that drains the utility company of talent.
anything invested in a young employee was just investing in the company itself.
We often discuss the modern lack of perks you listed, but we rarely discuss this consequence.
I recently left a tech company and was surprised when engineering management showed no interest in learning why I had left. It makes sense not to worry about -me-, but why not worry about the workers who haven't left?
I concluded that since places assume you will leave within 3 years (I was at 3.5), they dont really concern themselves with trying to counter that and consider it normal, which becomes a self-prophecy.
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"Now we have become 'leaner' and pared down"
This happens in the Private Sector as well. I work for a manufacturing company with 6+ facilities (two major, third major greenfield in design and 3 minor facilities) We have 3 engineers for the whole company. We mostly just manage the contracted engineering firms. It sucks for me as a "junior" Senior Project Engineer because I rarely get a chance to learn what my contractors are doing, too busy managing them and coordinating. Naturally, in order to be a better PM I need to know their skills at least at a 500' level. Hard to learn to code PLCs when I'm too busy managing 5 PLC programmers on a project for a month or two, then moving onto something else that might not even have a PLC involved.
Early on in my career, a manager of mine told me about his first few years on the job after being hired by Ontario Hydro (at that time the integrated generation and transmission utility for all of Ontario) in the late 1960s. The first two years was pure training and basically an extension of your engineering degree except specifically applied to the typical problems and practices of the power utility.
Of course, in those days a utility job came with a generous pension, a seniority-based career track and an expectation that you would likely retire there, so anything invested in a young employee was just investing in the company itself.
Large engineering employers no longer feel the same social compact with the profession to train young engineers and make experts out of them. Not only do they not set aside time for employees to learn, there often aren't any seniors around for them to learn from because the company hasn't bothered to create a meaningful career track for engineers. It's promotion up to management or stagnation at entry-level pay. With little meaningful prospect of advancement in their technical career and no pension 'golden handcuffs', there's no incentive for employees to stick around. Once they become experienced, they split for the contractor they used to manage, creating a vicious cycle that drains the utility company of talent.
We often discuss the modern lack of perks you listed, but we rarely discuss this consequence.
I recently left a tech company and was surprised when engineering management showed no interest in learning why I had left. It makes sense not to worry about -me-, but why not worry about the workers who haven't left?
I concluded that since places assume you will leave within 3 years (I was at 3.5), they dont really concern themselves with trying to counter that and consider it normal, which becomes a self-prophecy.