What do you do?

Picasso_sl said:

Borz what are you paying civils. I just got my PE and I'm wondering if i should be feeling around more but i feel okn making 75

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I have no idea if you just got your PE. I have only hired civil engineers who have 20-25 years of experience. It's a lot like how I got my job. I don't have an engineering degree and I run the engineering side of the business (I posted a pic in the SS thread yesterday) and work as PM. Working as a PM or project coordinator is a huge part of our engineers job, but we want people with the knowledge to look at a design from an engineering customer before we fabricate it and know what we're going to have problems with etc...There are very few people who do we what we do. Our only other real competitor in the western hemisphere is Canada and some customers require the stuff to be built in the US.

We have one mechanical engineer because we occasionaly do ASME code rated pressure vessels. He makes a bit more because he's the only one was have/need.

We currently have 4 engineers and about a dozen people support people in that department. Our 4 make from between 150k to 225k. We pay full health insurance and work 4-1/2 days a week. I'm sure most guys are making more than that with that much experience. But we've attracted those guys because the pace here is much less hectic than the petro chemical industry. Kind of guys who are looking to slow down and we don't require them to stamp anything. This little town was rated a number of times as one of the top 10 places to live, top 10 to raise kids and such stuff which I have always put in the ad which seems to be something people mention when they apply.

Our biggest issue has been drawing people here from the biggest pool. We are close to Austin and San Antonio and I live in the hill country. But our biggest pool includes the petro chemical areas like Houston and Baton Rouge. Several of them have said they're not interested because if the job doesn't work out they would have to relocate back to get a job, unlike staying at either of those locations they just go somewhere else.

Here's a pic of it on it's way to the site. This is about 20% of the total job. That's $18 million on the trailer. The only was to big to ship so it's being assembled on site. We rarely do stuff like this, most of it is large plate structures such as precipitators, bag houses, ducts, stacks, HRSG (heat recovery steam generators) and such stuff.

Iannis_sl said:

Yeah, I've never had anywhere ask me for tax returns.

I wouldn't give them to them if they did ask.

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My theory has always been we'll pay you what we think you are worth. If that doesn't work out we'll terminate you and find someone else. If that's too low for you so be it we'll keep looking.

On another site a few others have said they were asked the same thing. I guess I'm in the super minority. What I want for pay is based on how much I like the job a WHOLE lot and not on what bills I have to pay. Of course I'm single and no kids.

I took a pay cut to come here because it's someplace I wanted to live, the TX hill country plus the atmosphere is VERY relaxed. We leave at 11 on Fridays and once a month all the management goes to the shooting range 5 minutes away and shootes on the company dime. Plus I'm no longer on call 24/7 when something breaks at a chemical plant or refinery. Projects now are planned years in advance, not minutes at 2am.

BrotherWu_sl said:

You guys that are working independently or remotely, how did you get started? If you're just billing hourly from your home office and choosing when to work, how did you find the work at a decent rate? How did you search for full-time telecommuting positions? They seem to be pretty rare on LinkedIn.

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I worked at home for 15+ years. Different deal I guess. I did shop drawings and 90% of the guys who did them worked at home. I never made a sales call in that entire time. Some shops might have one guy and he basically was to send out work and everyone else worked at home. Sorry no help. Shops that needed them done called me.

So no tips on working with temp to hire? Quitting because they didn't get a permanent job after 2 weeks seems really odd/too fast to me.

Just try another one? 2 weeks is retarded, 6 months is standard for aerotek.

We've had a string of them. You work on contract thru Aerote? In the petro chemical industry they pretty much have a shit reputation. The complaints I have heard was really centered around their recruiting and the people they send for an interview, not really how they treat people working for them under contract. At leat in my little segment the end customer said their recruiters didn't really want to hear what they were looking for and instead said "They have an engineering degree, good enough".

I really don't keep up with salary for people outside my scope of work, but you would think $23/hour would be good for starting salary for someone to do document control. They would get a good raise after they are hire permanent because we would shift what we pay the temp company to them.

The last lady left and went to work for HEB because it was a permanent posistion right off. OK then.

I got hired direct but typically my company always hires through aerotek because the 6 month trial. We do gas compression/transmission so you'd think they'd be similar. I have heard complaint but only about specific recruiters

Borzak_sl said:

In a semi related thread I've hired a few civil engineers and one of them said something suprising. He said I was the only interview (apparently he had gone thru a number of recruiters) who didn't want proof of his salary for his last 3 jobs? Is that common now? I really don't care, the company doesn't care. We hire based on what we think you are worth to the company, not based on how much you owe in debt etc...If you don't live up to that pay we find someone else. Just an odd deal or common?

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Never, I don't care what you got paid, it really does not effect my offer.

Borzak_sl said:

We've had a string of them. You work on contract thru Aerote? In the petro chemical industry they pretty much have a shit reputation. The complaints I have heard was really centered around their recruiting and the people they send for an interview, not really how they treat people working for them under contract. At leat in my little segment the end customer said their recruiters didn't really want to hear what they were looking for and instead said "They have an engineering degree, good enough".

I really don't keep up with salary for people outside my scope of work, but you would think $23/hour would be good for starting salary for someone to do document control. They would get a good raise after they are hire permanent because we would shift what we pay the temp company to them.

The last lady left and went to work for HEB because it was a permanent posistion right off. OK then.

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Damn, hire my wife, and I'll promise you she won't leave! (joking, as we can't relocate, but dang, that seems like a TON for a paper pusher only?)

Borzak_sl said:

Anyone have experience with hiring temp to hire personel? I've had a tough time with it. I know for the posistion we are paying an above average wage and it requires nothing more than a high school degree with a little bit of something between the ears. We pay 70% of healthcare cost for people in that pay range and we work 4-1/2 days a week so they get off before noon on Fridays. Not a bad job at all for basically making large format copies, moving a few files from folder to folder as part of document control etc...

The last one we hired lasted two weeks and she quit because she didn't get a full time hire offer in those two weeks. Seriously? She mentioned to me she could be terminated at any time as temp staff. I didn't make any friends when I told her she could be fired at any time as a regular employee as well.

In a semi related thread I've hired a few civil engineers and one of them said something suprising. He said I was the only interview (apparently he had gone thru a number of recruiters) who didn't want proof of his salary for his last 3 jobs? Is that common now? I really don't care, the company doesn't care. We hire based on what we think you are worth to the company, not based on how much you owe in debt etc...If you don't live up to that pay we find someone else. Just an odd deal or common?

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Used to do a lot of temp to hire. I went through ~400 temps in one year. The quality of folks you get are hit or miss. Sometimes you can find some gems, most of the time you get slackers. We're moving to a recruiter model where we pay a flat fee per hire.

We've tried direct hire in the past. People who are able to do the job feel it's below them even when we give them an above average pay. We had a a woman who was working out but soon she said that the work was "below" her. It's not mega intensive. We get revisions that come in over night. They move them to the correct folder and move the ones that were revised into another folder. Plot 6 copies a few times a week for the shop. Answer the phone ever so often, every person in the office has a regular phone and a VOIP phone and most have a company provided cell phone. Since we don't deal with the public we get maybe 2-3 phone calls a day thru the main line.

I looked into it today. When we did direct hire we paid $27.50/hour to start and this is not exactly the most expensive part of the world to live. This posistion is the only temp to hire we have. We only have 35 people in the office. We do direct hire in the shop of 100 at this location and direct hire at the other shop of 140, but that's a totally different ball game. Those guys have to pass a long line of test. Depending on the customer they have to do a background check, a drug test, a physical including hearing test and pass a variety of welding test etc...Something you really don't want to go thru the hassle and expense for a temp to hire.

As it is now one of the other project managers or project coordinators takes an hour out of their day to do it.

I'm going to put an ad online and one in the paper (go ahead and laugh most of good hires have been from the paper and that includes PM's) and see what the cat drags in this time.

Apparently it's a little better now than it was last year sinc ethe nearby fracking boom has shut down. We lost a lot of shop workers, and a few of the office ladies left when their husband started making 2x as much over night. I'm sure they are all looking for a new job now.

Call the position a document control specialist for increased pride

Man, that sucks.

I'm a firm believer that there is no such thing as a small job.

But it does kind of sound like she was saying, "This shit is BORING." And I am a firm believer that there are very many jobs indeed which are fucking boring. You can find the right personality type for it though. They exist.

Picasso_sl said:

Call the position a document control specialist for increased pride

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The title is document control.

We'll see what shakes out this week. It's not demanding but we can't having PC's and PM's and 2 Vp's filling in to get the job done every day.

Iannis_sl said:

Man, that sucks.

I'm a firm believer that there is no such thing as a small job.

But it does kind of sound like she was saying, "This shit is BORING." And I am a firm believer that there are very many jobs indeed which are fucking boring. You can find the right personality type for it though. They exist.

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Apparently before I got here and it falling into my department a lady quit after a few months and told the other VP (who was over that department at the time) that she didn't have enough people to talk to. JFC. I like it that way. Everyone has their own office. The only people on this whole side of the office is myself and 2 PM's. All the accounting type people work on the opposite side of the building and everyone has their own office. No cubicles or nothing here.

Job pays $57k a year if we do a direct hire with 100% health insuance and 4-1/2 days a week with no overtime EVER. I know what everyone in the company makes minus the president and 2 other VP's (one I do). If we go much higher we're getting close to the bottom of the rung fill in PM who was laid off when the economy went bad and he went out of the country and now is back. He is "OK" but he doesn't get a big workload which is on purpose.

Economy is booming here now and they/we are starting to see some bleed over from the tech industry in Austin. The company put me up in an apartment when I first moved here and I had the only truck. The car next to my assigned deal was a new Ferrari and a few spots down was a Maserati. 10 years ago this town was 750 people.

Oh well I'll look into it more next week after I get my nights and days turned around.

First world problems. We have a real nice HR lady that is really on the ball but she turned it over to me because she was tired of hiring them so she asked me to take care of it lol. I hate to push more on her because she does HR for the entire company (135 here, 140ish at the other shop) and a lot of those guys come and go. Plus she's safety coordinator for the shop etc...She's a big enough part of the company she also gets use of the company plane like the VP's do and when the owner comes to town she goes to lunch with us. So really don't need to start shit with her lol.

Maybe I'll put up a giant billboard. We have one at the shop and in town that says "Now hiring welders and fitters". Maybe one that says "Now hiring document control specialist". I'd be afraid to see what came in tho with no clue what that was.

The lady that left to go to HEB (a grocery store) I asked if she had a job lined up in the office there since they have a giant office in San Antonio and she said no, just a job in a store. JFC.

I never had this much trouble when I owned the company.

We're also in the process of shutting our office in Phoenix down and moving it to TX. All the important people got buyout offers since they were all 62 or older. But there's a couple of document control people there as well that will not get an offer. So I can expect more of it soon. One of the reasons besides we are shutting down besides the obvious of workers age and cost is two of the women working there miss on average of a day a week so maybe it's not limited to this location. Grrr more shit coming.

It's been pretty amazing to me how much some people miss and don't get fired. The tummy hurts or sick kid and I'm working from home card gets played a ton. I'm starting to think women are sick about 90% of their life, though.

Another option may be to contact someone out through an engineering/consultant company. I know we've rented out people to transmission companies for long term secretarial work... one woman was set up for like 2 days a week at this one place for years..it would have been strange to me.

We just had hired a secretary here and i think her name is Tammy. Never hire anyone named Tammy is probably a good rule of thumb.