What makes an engineer change jobs?

[rwcardinal]

Yes. I will work for you on the weekends .

If you are serious, let's talk via PM.

 

[rwcardinal]

Sometimes it’s not the firm but the clients… (condescending /abusive to contractors, overly overly picky, distrustful….)

Seriously. We rank our clients. The old adage 80% of your problems comes from 20% of your clients is true. We definitely target certain clients and attempt to move it about that magical line. That bad 20% make things rough for everyone.

 

[Tiger15]

@rwcardinal, @jean15paul_PE has a good point. You mentioned earlier about how to post some of the perks about your benefits or how to communicate them in a job ad. Having a perks section in your "why work for us" website link or social media may be a good avenue. The 3-6 year market is a hard place to find talent. Most engineers I know work into an accrued PTO schedule which grows the longer your with them, and at 6yrs it's hard to go backwards. 1-3yrs and they're usually green and in job shop mode anyway. It sounds like you may be busy enough to justify the more experienced crowd, ie higher wage for higher charge rate... same overhead and markup.

That something that definitely should be negotiable when changing jobs. Some people don't realize that you can negotiate on way more than salary, like PTO accrual rate or starting with a PTO bank.

 

[Tiger15]

@Supe @jean15paul_PE @pbrme All great points on PTO. It's something I've always done with my staff, but I've never advertised it as an incentive.

I actually started off with the trendy...No specific PTO, take what you need to live a healthy and balanced life...but I found that there were people that leaned towards abusing it, then there were people that leaned towards not taking enough because they didn't have clear bounds to work within. So we set a standard and continually remind my staff to talk to me privately if they need some wiggle room. It's worked well from there.

At a previous job we had a fixed amount of "vacation" but unlimited "lost time". Vacation = I just want to take time off. Lost time = there's a reason I can't be at work (sick, appointments, etc).
Lost time was tracked and if you took too much it would come up in your performance reviews. Management would also like to see you offset your lost time with unpaid OT (which was also tracked).

I actually don't like that system. It was way too bureaucratic and actually led to some bad practices by some bad managers (not approving lost time, negative reviews for legitimate lost time like being sick, etc). But it did prevent abuse by employees.

So ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[bwin12]

Interesting thread, one question that I had- are you getting people in for interviews and they are not accepting? Or is the issue getting an interview set up?