Not an engineer but hear it all the time. Young graduates are gradually replacing older cats that worked 25 years for a company and worked their way into the position. Just to be replaced by 25 year old engineers that have to have their hands held by the journey man for wayyyyy to long of a grace period.

I've seen some young engineers get their lunch ate by the 60+ year old execs up at One Shell Square when the young hot shot engineer walked into a meeting cocky thinking he knew what he was talking about and had zero social skills.

Some of these old cats were pioneers in the deep water off the shelf drilling and they have these young engineers that think they are hot shite walk into meetings with them just to leave with their tails between their legs. Its funny to watch.

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Posted by PPBeastMode

Member since Sep 2010

2400 posts

Posted on 4/9/14 at 2:01 am to SuperSaint

You can blame that on companies that are willing to hired new employees through job agencies. My years of experience working as a technician and restaurants provided me with social skills to work with multi-team disciplines. I still can't find a job out of college because my gpa isnt high enough. I can think of fresh ideas for my senior design while my group members with +3.0 gpa can hardly put any ideas to the project.

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Posted by Dam Guide

Member since Sep 2005

15567 posts

Posted on 4/9/14 at 6:22 am to SuperSaint

quote:
Not an engineer but hear it all the time. Young graduates are gradually replacing older cats that worked 25 years for a company and worked their way into the position. Just to be replaced by 25 year old engineers that have to have their hands held by the journey man for wayyyyy to long of a grace period.

I've seen some young engineers get their lunch ate by the 60+ year old execs up at One Shell Square when the young hot shot engineer walked into a meeting cocky thinking he knew what he was talking about and had zero social skills.

Some of these old cats were pioneers in the deep water off the shelf drilling and they have these young engineers that think they are hot shite walk into meetings with them just to leave with their tails between their legs. Its funny to watch.

I am inbetween the old and new right now. Still got a lot to learn, but can function on my own.

It's a mixture of things for why the new crop has this attitude.

1. Generational thing, the millenials don't want to work at all, the older generation doesn't want to be at home as you can see by how those fricks won't retire even though some of them are losing money by continuing to work instead of taking their old pension systems at some companies.

2. College is not the professional environment it once was, old engineers acted like engineers from day 1 in college. That attitude carried over to the workforce. Now it is sweatpants and t-shirts...

3. Old engineers built the plants and equipment. They got to learn the equipment before it was in service. Combine that with the severe lack of regulation that they had in their day, they got to tinker around and even screw up and trip something off without much consequence or blow back unless they destroyed something. Kids today don't get that same type of experience. Learning hands on is a much more stressful task, fear of failure is high.

4. Old engineers aren't the best teachers, some will even go out of their way to not help out the new crop. This goes back to the generational differences. A lot of them want to protect their turf and not help out the new guy they view as a replacement that is putting them to pasture.

There are good ones out there though, I just don't think college prepares you for the let down that is the real world very well. You go from tinkering with all sorts of cool shite to pushing paper and it sucks.