It Always Starts with the Engineers

GM won't, however, eliminate the company cars and free gasoline for its leading executives. Don't take my word for it, however. Read this article.

I thought the FED started to tax that perk. That a company had to summit a value for the personal use of a company vehicle and the value was added to the employees salary and taxed on it. Sounds like GM is getting around it saying it is testing. Maybe the IRS needs to have a look at all the monthly reports the employees fills out on the vehicle testing. I'm sure there are many in positions that feel they don't need to.

I had to keep records on that stuff. But my business was small And I had to keep what my accountant said an arms length away from my company.

And because I was small, I had to play by the rules.

Oh, does the IRS give rewards to snitches?

Because heres where being a snitch would be a very respectable.

To be fair - it really starts with the blue collar assembly line workers. Then the engineers get it.

Not true, White collar first. Engineers at the front of that line.

Lived it myself.

milo

All I know is what I see in the news - and I remember blue collar layoffs in last November.

But it's not worth arguing about - it sucks the same no matter who you are.

Er, hello...<knock, knock, knock>...there's an economic downturn and no-one's buying any product...<knock, knock, knock>...anybody there? Hello?

Why theres someone at the door! Hi! PWSLACK.

Yes, we had heard there was an economic downturn.

And that no one's buying any product.

HMMMMmmmm

Sounds like a great time to reengineer the processes, to eliminate waste, reduce inefficiencies, Redesign the crap that noone's buying, implement new technologies, convert departmental operations to cellular flow...

You know, ENGINEERING!

Oh. forgive me! I seem to be thinking rationally like one of those (us!) disposable engineers.

Just leaving it in the hands of the finance and marketing boys is like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Reorganizing the enterprise needs a rational process basis. Thats engineering, not beans. Or else it is BS.

Say! Whats that Smell?

milo

So, what are you saying? There is a downturn? We all know that, knock, knock. But how do you fix it?

Laying off engineeer or marketing? I am with Milo on that one.

I prefer to think of it as Jimmy Carter 2.0 (not that I really prefer it, but, well...ya know).

I definitely agree (who doesn't?) that the automotive industry needs restructured. It's inefficient, expensive and it places this country in a bad position with all those peace loving middle eastern countries that want the US to burn. But to do it right, these companies need visionary leaders to be in charge, not the government or greedy CEO's.

Don't know about you all, but the layoff of engineers makes me less trustworthy of the product because we all know the engineers that got canned were the ones making more money due to their experience. Who are you going to choose to design the airbag that may catch your son or daughter some day, the neophyte with 1 year under his belt or the senior engineer who has been designing quality airbags for 15 years?

I understand that the money isn't there to pay them and the blame can go all around Washington AND Detroit but like it was stated in an earlier post, it sucks no matter how you look at it.

Milo, first off you have to remember who is DOING the layoffs. Management. Managers look at everything and everyone as either a cost center or a profit center. Engineering is a cost center. sales is a profit center. during a downturn they have been trained to cut costs and employee costs are running something like 70 cents on the dollar for engineers. And engineers have the added bonus of being non-unionized so they can be laid off without having to fund the union contract mandated severance packages and job banks and such. So management saves even more when they lay off an engineer instead of a line grunt.

I agree Rorschach. GA on that.

I'd like to believe also that most of those in Management now are Engineers who've risen to greater positions of responsibility. IMHO there's really no bias or predisposition by management to axe the Engineers first. it's a purely economic decision.

If over paid Executives keep raising the wages soon 90 % of Americans will be considered to be living in poverty.

They have raised the true Middle Class Incomes now to over $290,000 a year.

While they remove the top 10 %to 15% of wage earners to get the Middle Class Income level down to $60,000 a year prices still shoot up and people lose more each day as the value of the currency drops because so many get paid so much to do so little

Milo --

FYI:

http://www.energy.gov/news2009/7078.htm

Solindra (Fremont CA, nice town on SF bay)makes solar panels using thin film technology. They have a highly automated pilot production plant there. The DOE loan guarantee of $535M will build a full scale production plant on the same site that could probably absorb that entire group of 160 laid off manufacturing engineers from GM if the skill sets are right.

Ed Weldon

So they will fire a lot of engineers and then will design a car that nobody wants.

Engineers and consultants have always been disposable whores for those who can't do or make anything for themselves.

If these companies all treate they're suppliers like FORD do, I say they've brought all this upon themselves and, good riddens to the greedy B******S.

Sorry for that out burst, but it's a bit of a sensitive issue for me. As I once worked for a company that supplied parts to FORD (amongst other companies. But FORD'S were certainly the most ruthless). The greed of the company is quite astonishing, as they continually asked for atleast a 5% discount every year. Do we as a customer demand a discount of 5% on the RRP of they're vehicles every year? No, actually the opposite, they put prices up. They use to say we should find these savings within our manufacturing process. Fair point, but couldn't they also do that and, pass the saving onto us. No chance, as they're such a lazy company (as probably many of the others are), that they bully (by threat of 'De-sourcing') they're suppliers and, sit back and pay themselves a healthy pay rise. They would also demand that if we were able to get 'Cost Down' on any of our raw material, they would expect it to be passed onto them or be 'De-sourced'.

Anyway this had quite a negative affect in our area, as wages would be kept low (any guesses as to how much an operator in FORD gets paid for putting 4 spark plugs in an engine block? Answer a lot more than a engineer was getting paid at our company) and, with the final insult they did infact 'De-source' us and moved they're 'Sourcing' to a country with a lower labour rates. Probably something they had in the pipe line for a number of months/years and maybe with the same company (but that's a whole new thread). As about 85% of our production went to FORD, the company had no other option but to close down.

So I effect they've also 'De-sourced' a couple of hundred potential customers, who can no longer afford they're product.

Has this economic downturn be a long time coming, a sort of creeping death?

Anyway, sorry for so much negativity, but I feel that these companies need to be held accountable for they're actions throughout the world. As I feel they take so much more out, compared to what they put back in.

There's a very simple reason why the Finance and Accounts Department people are always the last to be fired: they have access to the company's financial records.

Who else would know that the top management have been embezzling corporate funds and be in a position to cover up or expose them?

Engineering first, because they can't afford new products anyway. Finance last because they are not in the car buisiness they are in the money business and as the compression on the company contiues it is more important to engineer the finances than the product.

Expect the same trail in the sand everywhere.

Whenever there is a layoff the executives should take a 50% pay cut until there is a return to prior job numbers in a profitable way or as voted on by the employees. They should answer to a board of employees for thier compensation review. Isn't it the failure of management that caused the job loss to the workers?

Actually, from my own experiences in Research, I believe the first group to be cut is the Maintenance Department followed by Research then Engineering.

Often, the reduction in maintenance results in poorer quality ==> reduced sales. Then Research is eliminated because Research generally points the finger at Management that they made a mistake in eliminating maintenance. This is followed by Engineering department personnel (for the reasons given by other posters). Marketing and Finance never get cut and Legal Departments rarely get downsized. And of course, top level management is safe. (Why is that?)

Also, in my experience, few production line personnel get downsized unless there are extreme economic hardships and the reason for that clear. Like the top-level management they are often protected by contracts. Few engineers working for producing companies have defined contracts that protect them.

"Marketing and Finance never get cut and Legal Departments rarely get downsized. And of course, top level management is safe. (Why is that?)"

they believe in autotomy.

the lizard can afford to lose its tail because it simply regrows it. as long as the head is intact, they know where to resource the people they need.

In my experience as an engineer who has both had to answer to Management, Accounting, and Sales & Marketing; and employed each of those categories, I suggest that the very nature of an engineer, relative to communication skills when engaging with any of the mentioned classifications, is to not communicate in their 'language'. On the other hand, he/she can communicate very well with his/her peers.

Sales & Marketing people often consult with engineers to gather just enough jargon and gist of the engineering aspects to then take that information and embellish it with their hand-waving and BS-spewing to make it sound like it is their idea and gain the support and affection of management at the expense of the true originator(s) of whatever it is that is being promoted.

"Bean counters' can only focus on what they view as reliable performance numbers, which could be so far from practical reality that they wouldn't know one way or the other. I once was forced to utilize an outside bean counter to evaluate the financial performance of a resurrected manufacturing facility that I was managing. We were at odds with one another from the outset and, after he had taken a few months to study cost information that was clearly imbalanced on account of inaccurate reporting from the production floor, he made the unequivocal statement to the owners that a significant portion of the production staff should be fired. Along with that statement, he suggested that he had no idea what work any of them performed nor what effect their termination would have on the production operation, but he was sure that it would save money. This is one example of what so many of us real doers are up against in the industrial marketplace - we are at the mercy of those who are able to express themselves in ways that management accepts as gospel, and acts upon accordingly.

Certainly there are many fine examples of management that is truly keyed in to the real nature of their operations and who understand what advice to act upon and what to discard. These are the folks whose success stories we read about in industry publications and they are typically very team-oriented and understand the great value of having a talented staff of doers rather than toadies. I sincerely sympathize with all true value-adding employees who are currently suffering from this pervasive malady in the industrial marketplace. Let's all hope and pray that it improves soon and with vigor.

Better develop yourself on multi face, you will never be woried.

One problem that I have observed is that when an engineer gets promoted to a management position they seem to lose any sense of their engineering/scientific background and just join in with the Management, Sales, Marketing and Financial people. It has been rare indeed to come across an engineer in upper level management that holds onto his/her background ethics.

Heh, now our moron in chief is saying he will mandate a new CAFE 27.3mpg for the 2011 model year. Typical know-nothing politician. Shoot the horse he's riding and then whip it to make it go faster.

How exactly does he figure he's going to mandate higher CAFE standards when all the engineers that will be required to design those vehicles are kicking cans? What will end up happening is that those vehicles will be designed in China by Chinese engineers and built in China by Chinese labor, and shipped to the us on Chinese ships crewed by Chinese sailors.

Way to go moron!

I usually try to be positive in these discussions; but I feel the need to be bitterly cynical.

You engineers think you're something special. HA!! You're cannon fodder just like the kid down on the production floor with a couple of exceptions. You got born with a head that could understand calculus and, unlike that kid who knows where he stands, you live under this silly delusion that you are a "professional" with some equivalence to the management club members.

Eight o'clock in another long evening and you are providing your usual free labor fueled by a dollar candy bar out of a vending machine and a cup of stale "free" coffee. Meanwhile everyone on the production floor earned their overtime pay at "time and a half" today.

Ahhhh..... But you are an exempt professional. You do not have to suffer the indignity of punching a time clock. You want to be like the managers. You are considered to be an "exempt" employee. Do you know what exempt means? EXEMPT FROM GETTING PAID FOR OVERTIME!!

Why aren't you screaming at your legislators to correct this unfair practice? Why aren't all the thousands of engineers joining together to speak as one voice? Why are your professional organizations more interested in selling publications or hosting "rubber chicken" dinners with gray haired speakers droning on about how great their company is?

Yuk! A union? Collective bargaining? That is so beneath our dignity and contrary to our sense of individuality!! That's something only the Liberals do..........

You are basically in a situation where the company can extort free labor out of you anytime they want. Oh, they love the idea that you don't punch a time clock. How about that cute little note on your time card that says something like "do not enter any number greater than 8 for each day's hours". You may work for free; but there is no formal record of that. Perfect.

When you work for free and when you willingly allow your employer to make a large part of your work be tasks that can be done by people that do not have your qualifications and pay scale you are discounting your own value. Small wonder that you find yourself on the layoff list.

Another factor that is important to the more experienced (and older) engineer is the reality of physical limitations as well as "street smart" wisdom that comes with age. Management can get a lot more hours with a lot less motivational effort out of the young engineers especially if there is a steady supply of them coming through the door either from universities or H1B's. And like it or not computer and internet technology is making it a lot easier to bring a young engineer up to a satisfactory productivity level in a short time.

Engineers need to become more important to their employers rather than just being another general labor category. We need to rein in the H1B program so it covers only the few truly brilliant and skilled professionals that simply have no available equivalent in the USA. We need to force the universities to substantially raise the standards of the BS level curriculum so they concentrate on graduating fewer and higher quality students primarily for postgraduate study. There should be a vast increase in the BS in Engineering Technology category that deemphasizes advanced mathematics in favor of engineering technology skills and practical business skills. Within that there would be a program like a Bachelors in Technical Enterprise Administration would be tailored for high achiever students seeking careers in high tech management with fast career tracks. This would be the candidate pool for large corporation management tracks that are today wasting a lot of otherwise productive engineering resources.

Ed Weldon

Ed Weldon,

And thats whats separates engineers from the rest.

Start thinking like accountants, attorneys and managers and find other. After 8-10 hours, leave work and keep it there.

No more waking up in the dead of night, Like a bolt of lighting and in a light sweat, thinking that reinforcement support bar is too light, it should have been 2 3/4" instead of 1 1/2". run the dam calculations. And put a hold on it First thing in the morning, 1st shift starts at 5:45. And have it corrected, by the time the office is open.

Good thing my mind doesing stop thinking (working) even while at rest, That could have fail 6 months down the road. Some one could have been hurt from my, Yes My project. Let the rest sleep.

So tell me what is a good engineer, Good for himself, or good at what he does best.

Or both, He just pays a higher price, others are not willing or can not pay.

phoenix911