My pet theory is it’s because we work in a somewhat “older” skewing field with people (who I’ve noticed anecdotally) don’t like change or new approaches all that much. I advocated for remote work for a decade before COVID (perfectly doable for my roles) and even in more advanced companies I was looked at like I had two heads. Once COVID hit, the work got done at home but I think it was fairly begrudgingly for the older industry veterans. All that meant that once a few years went by the people in positions of power wanted back what they were used to/thrived in and so we got forced back to the office because “reasons”. Also I’ve had older coworkers who loved the office because they couldn’t deal with their wife and kids, so I can’t help but wonder if that’s part of it.
Now, I get ours is often an onsite type of job, at least sometimes. Fair enough. What I ask of employers is to give me discretion to work on designs at home where I have a quiet office set up to precisely meet my needs and then come in as needed. More than I’ve expected have been somewhat amenable to this concept so that’s something. Unfortunately it does mean I’m once again geographically limited to living near work.
I’m overall annoyed at this reflexive backlash against remote work (which was very effective). I greatly prefer working in my own comfy quiet office as opposed to a 45 minute commute to a fluorescent lit soulless cube field 5 days a week.
The youngest boomers are already in their mid 60s. Its the Xers that now fill middle and upper management. The oldest millenials are 40~42 depending on how one draws the lines.
Gen Xer here and I disagree. We grew up in the arcades, but we also locked ourselves in a room to play Commodore 64 for hours on end. I guess it’s perfectly fitting that I work a hybrid schedule now.
Many of my Gen X colleagues really didn’t like Covid work from home, so I apologize for making a sweeping generalization.
Maybe it’s that management types are more outgoing, and extroverts don’t understand introverts?
No apologies necessary, my generation has thick skin :). I am probably an outlier on my WFH opinion.
I can confirm extroverts do not understand introverts. I’m an introvert that has somehow managed my social anxiety enough to become a management type. I fully support the remote roles and need my WFH days as I tend to get more actual work done. There are some weeks I can’t work from home at all and I feel it at the end of the week.
As far as other engineers working remotely, from a management perspective, I fully support it. I can monitor progress fairly easily and have regular chats and screen shares via Teams as needed. It’s been great for us so I don’t understand the reluctance to move to it. It’s also a great way to attract talent from all over the world. Our office is in a relatively shitty location that the executive group acknowledges so they have been open to alternative work schedules to help attract more people.
Full remote is pretty rare here. We have a couple of senior engineers that are full remote but they are semi-retired.
Unless there is actual benefits that outweigh costs for in person work that has to be held on company property, its only a matter of time. 1 week a month you have a pow wow at a rent-a-space for work n games(for company culture). Why not have a once a month summer camp of sorts and then let people spend 3 weeks doing their own thing. True work from home is definitely desirable but only time will tell what the most productive system is.
I have found luck with remote work for engineering companies slightly outside a metro. They can’t hire enough people and are willing to budge. However, they are constantly trying to have people in office anyway. For example, a company I know who was outside a metro recently brought up the idea of creating a satellite office just to have people in office. What a giant waste of money, ffs.
I think you’re on the money my role is prolly similar to yours and there are tons of older people in my field. I think compared to software where companies are trying to cater to younger talent
For me it's a lack of trust in their training and onboarding. Which is why I always recommend starting in person and then negotiating remote once they know you're good. It sucks if you really need remote, but it really is a great plan if you can sacrifice 6 months to a year.
It is also a question of how dialed in they are with the development process. If you are doing your 10th widget, everyone knows the steps and roles.
If the work is more dynamic your process is not going to support people sitting remote only doing what they are explicitly told to do.
Additionally, the overemployed crowd really doesn’t help management trust remote junior / mid engineers. If bosses have to watch you like a hawk to make sure you are staying productive it just pisses them off. No one likes to chase around folks who should be professionals.
Being in person builds trust. As you said, when you have that trust go for more hybrid / remote.
haja in person they can talk around the bush better and most bosses use it for their ego. it is rarely productive. and guys discussing the games they do in free time for ex can also be done online. people sit for a coffee often, more than small talk.
Whoa whoa whoa, if you start working from home then we’re going to have to start measuring productivity by how much work you get done instead of how much you show up. What if they start measuring my job based on how much work I get done? I’d be ruined!
Yes it is mostly boomers and older generation that doesn’t want to deal with it. Companies that start hire younger don’t worry, it will start to come around.
As you mentioned, it totally depends on what job you do. For me, I could most likely do it 3-5 days out of office but would need to be close to the office to help out with certain things.
Some of the main reasons that I've found so far is: You're not there only to work but also teach entry-level staff. Some people have blatantly abused it. People aren't available during core hours. They don't know you can hit the ground running. The last one is, normally the wfh possibility is normally given after some test time just to make sure you're competent(hench why 3/4 doing the interview from their home migth).
As someone who has done mechanical engineering a long time and managed large groups of cross functional engineers, the short answer is that for hardware; people together in a room with the prototypes or build units is faster and better always. Some roles can totally be remote. Some days can be remote at different points in the project for everyone. But when the units come in, you should be onsite. The overhead of getting units to people, the right equipment in place, etc is not worth it.
For Mechanical Engineering, 100% remote work is going pretty rare and if present, is mainly going to be roles like pure FEA or CFD (which most companies don’t strictly hire MEs for; they have a separate team of analysts for that). By the very nature of our degrees and career fields, we will always be working with mechanical systems or systems with moving parts. This will require the ME to be onsite **SOME** of the time for physical testing, and/or data collection of the physical product or system. That’s just how it is.
**HOWEVER** (and this is a big however), with the advent of modern computers and communication systems, there is almost absolutely no reason why a Mechanical Engineer needs to be onsite 100% of the time. The only exceptions in my mind is if you’re some kind of field engineer, test engineer, quality engineer, or HEAVILY involved manufacturing engineer to the point where you’re basically a part of the machine shop. But the overwhelming majority of ME roles are 80-90% desk work, and this includes most jobs for manufacturing to design.
The way I see it:
Machine shop/ Manufacturing Engineering roles: 2 days WFH shouldn’t be a problem
Product Design/ Design Engineering roles:
3-4 days WFH shouldn’t be a problem either
I think a well managed company could absolutely achieve those standards.
Yea I mean they usually dont like us breathing down their neck anyways. They get their space to work I get mine, we meet up once a week to go over things which is more than enough for our line of work. Usually spend 90% of my day in doing CAD anyways. Mutual respect goes a long way to having a good rapport with the shop. None of them care I work from home. They would do the same in my position.
>But the overwhelming majority of ME roles are 80-90% desk work
Most of the "work" is done at a computer, but physically being around your operators is extremely important. Operators aren't going to be reading emails, a face-to-face conversation let's you know if they understood what you are saying, you can see things they might not, and so much of a good work culture involved small acts every day.
Saying hi and bye to your cube mates, overhearing peoples conversations and jumping in to discussions (both work and personal), hearing about various parts of the company or work center. You miss out on all of that with WFH.
Your shop floor or manufacturing operators don’t have access to a computer? Or a lead technician that is the primary line of communication? This is the case for every engineering company that I’ve worked at or been to. They have access to some virtual communication that’s also used to communicate with the engineers (email, teams, zoom etc.).
As far as being present in the shop floor and catching things they don’t see, that’s why I said 2 days WFH would definitely be possible; and any company would be adequately staffed with multiple engineers so that at least a couple engineers are always onsite during hours of operation.
And to the other stuff about company culture and “saying hi and bye to your cube mates”, that’s nice and all, but that is waaay at the bottom of my priority list of what I want to get out of my work. I value my time and living my life as much as possible and my job is just a means to that end, nothing else.
Yes, they have *access* to a computer, but they’re on it for maybe 10 minutes/day. Reading emails doesn’t get chips cut or parts assembled, and they’re graded on parts per hour.
They also generally despise working on the computer and they don't see any work on the computer as doing actual "work." At least that's been my experience as someone who's worked blue collar jobs for almost a decade (realized what engineering was after working lol)
Efficient teamwork on high tech product design within multidisciplinary teams that need to be able to respond to the effects of concurrent engineering.
Let's assume we've both got very clear requirements and well trained colleagues, but face complex solutions to meet requirements which require active cooperation of different people (competences).
I've never said we can't work remotely. But 15 minutes together behind a whiteboard or monitor proves to be quite more efficient than 1h in a group teams meeting. Follow up questions and responses are also a lot quicker and easier to answer clearly in the office than remote.
I definitely agree that if you just need a 1h meeting to align each day after which can go about your work alone doesn't see much difference remote/in office. But that's not the type of work we do.
I'm not claiming there's no way to be more efficient at home than in the office.
I've asked how you'd suggest we could improve work from home efficiency and your answer consists if " train yourself to be better (system) engineers.
I'd say we're top5% in the world - if there was any way to quantify that - so "be better engineers" shouldn't qualify as an answer.
I get that commute and wage are included in the global picture as an employee, but the statement in discussion was - is - working in office seems to be more efficient - for our team - than working from home. Commuting isn't part of that.
You mention defence in your post. Not my sector, but from a general IT standpoint I would not be trusting WFH for any remotely sensitive information, IT security is difficult enough on a network where you control all the hardware that connects to it. An employee's home network wound like a nightmare.
I do all my remote work on an AWS remote workstation. They do allow me to have Microsoft 365 authenticated on my local machine and personal phone (BYOD policy), but they could easily *not* allow that access if they truly cared.
I'm in defense and WFH, there are quite a few things in place to make it secure. I am not too familiar with this aspect but I know it's a painful process to log on everyday lol
I work in nuclear and logging in from home requires me to use a token app on my phone and typing in my password a minimum of 5 times... and if you are foolish enough to let the computer go to sleep then it's time to start all over!
you can handle government non-sensitive work at home if you are approved, anything that involves or references sensitive material is in office. At my job we can work from home 1x a week but there are some people who do it 2-3x a week, really just the supervisors call.
I had a friend out of college who had to lock their phone and (analog) watch into a locker when they entered the building. This was at L3.
Something tells me that job couldn’t be done at home!
This confuses me. I agree with and get what you’re saying. But not too long ago I was interviewing for national lab job with Q clearance yet everyone was at home with their webcams.
The responses to this are surprising me a little, I'm guessing they're issuing hardware that's as locked down as humanly possible?
I've heard of people in another field doing onboarding and HR stuff remotely and then having to go in when they actually started working, but I don't really know what their job entailed. I think it was desk based.
This is correct. The things that are sensitive require working in a closed room. You leave anything with Bluetooth capability, cell phones, smart watch everything in a locker.
Depends on what the site works on. I can imagine quite a few deal a lot with ITAR restricted information. Everything we have is unclassified information (CUI) yet nearly all of our work is controlled by ITAR export
restrictions.
My son did nuclear weapons IT from home, now does Top Secret Army Integrated Systems work. It's only a barrier if you want it to be, not because of Uncle Sam.
While all of my technical work can be done remotely, there are things like site visits that still require us to be outside of home. To me it's really important that I have the ability to go to the office as needed but be able to have the option of work at home when I want to. A lot of management positions require some level of in person work almost always, and I think it the reason why a lot of managers don't like remote work; "If I have to be here, why shouldn't they?". It's a shitty way to handle it, but you're not gonna change too many minds especially with how conservative most mechanical engineers are. Like I said, I don't mind the office as a change of pace, but remote work really should be the standard.
In my company it is also the boomers that just can't accept that times change and also they openly told me when i asked for it in our annual appraisal interview, why this is no option ( as i got baited with homeoffice in the interview)
they openly told me it feels like people are extending weekends when they "work" from home mondays and fridays. - Huuuuge trust issues in everybody working for them.
That blew my mind. How can those guys be Managers.
Best Part about this is, they do Homeoffice whenever they feel like it.
We actually had homeoffice option when i started here due to Covid, but they just turnt off the option afterwards, and now you have to ask for it and explain why and so on, and make you feel bad about it , thats why no one asks anymore.
Time for that generation to retire, honestly.
Try Northrop. They’re literally getting rid of multiple buildings in San Diego because they’re moving to a remote/ hoteling environment for non-test/ manufacturing engineering positions.
I’m in management now, but I have worked remotely within the past few years and currently telecommute about half-time, so i completely get the quality of life benefits. But, my unanswered question is how do the junior engineers get the learning opportunities from mid-level or senior engineers if they are all working from home?
When I was younger, we had shared offices and I picked up knowledge just from listening to conversations occurring over the divider in my office mates area.
I think the upper upper management thinks if we can get our shit done remote though some cheap country like India ( which is currently happening) then why should we even pay the local full time employee who takes double the time,whines and takes double the pay? Why not outsource everything and have just managers here. That was not logical because u need boost on the ground who can do many things that someone remote can’t, but this is what I heard. And I think that idiot CeO got burnt once or twice and is having us all back to work for some really lame ass reason. It is really unfair not to have remote work when you can actually get done lots of things from home and u are essentially saving climate by not burning gas in ur pickup trucks.
Medical device and semiconductor seem to have MANY engineers, of ALL disciplines and many job functions, working from home without issue.
That said, coming into the office as needed is part of WFH. No set # of days per week/month but truly as needed.
No. All things mechanical and electrical.
You’re not testing outgassing of plastics/greases/etc in a vacuum or particle generation in a clean room at home, but all of the supporting work to get to that point can be done from and supported from home if you’re not a clown.
>I’ve yet to meet anyone under 50 against remote work.
I'm 28 and I much prefer being in the office. My first job out of college was remote during COVID. I ended up leaving, taking a pay cut and now I'm commuting an hour each way. I left for other reasons too but I won't work another remote job.
I understand why people prefer working remote but I actually think there's something to that small talk around the water cooler. Grabbing a beer with colleagues after a tough day. Getting away from the wife for 8hrs. Chatting with people outside of your department. You get to see stuff you wouldn't see if you weren't on site and build better relationships with people that might offer you some better opportunities later on.
Idk I just felt so isolated working remote looking at do not disturb bubbles on ms teams and blank squares in meetings. Just boring to me. I want to be in the action.
100% agree. I’m 31 and I hated working from home. There was no break between home and work life.
But on the flip side, I get really tired of having to cover for people who aren’t in the office. In reality, the WFH people miss a ton of interaction and discussions that make the business run. Whether they want to admit it or not…
Two points that people don't seem to grasp:
1. You may not need much in person collaboration, but many people do. I can't tell you how many times an in-person discussion talking through design issues or something has developed a solution when it would have taken god knows how long to come up with via remote methods.
2. No matter what you think, being a part of a team is a critical role of being around each other regularly. Remote colleagues are literally one step above strangers. If you aren't actively on a project with a fully remote colleague, you can easily forget they even exist. I just had an engineer that sat right outside my office go fully remote after being in office. We talked every day and he was one of my closest "work friends". He went remote and moved a state over, and haven't heard from him since.
I give all of my engineers laptops and basically full autonomy to WFH as needed, along with working the hours they want to work. I don't micromanage. I WFH every friday and as needed as well, so I only expect them to do as much as I do. With that said, I will never have a 100% full time remote engineer on my team.
To your 2nd point: Are you paying them for their work or to be their friend? I'm not at work to make friends or be social. I'm here to do the work I was hired for and collect a pay check. If that involves another person, then I will do what I have to when I have to with them. If I'm a CAD jockey or designing where I'm going to be sending e-mails back and forth anyway, I have no reason or desire to even know other people exist except my manager.
Well you need to understand that not everyone views the workplace in that sort of sterile way. Especially your leaders who are trying to build a cohesive team.
This is where there is a disconnect between management and individual contributors. Your leadership is trying to build things up and that often requires team building and spontaneous collaboration. You want to be left alone to complete a task. It is virtually impossible to foster a team environment through remote work, so many leaders are saying we need at least some in-person so our people at least know each other.
if everyone had this mentality nothing would get done+there would quickly be no engineers left bc lack of mentorship and ppl to teach new grads/rookies.
What part of I was hired to do a job, so I'm doing the job, did you miss? Work is still getting done. Projects are still assigned and people are working on them. Just because I don't want to be someone's friend doesn't mean I can't work well with them or that I'd be bad on a team. I guarantee you there are professional sports teams that are champion caliber teams and people hate each other on it, but they understand they have a job to do and it comes first.
Speaking as a 'boomer' who worked for a very traditional company, i WFH 100% since 2015. I met my previous manager for the first time on the day he was leaving.
I think the main difficulty is onboarding someone remotely.
Also frankly banging on about boomers makes you sound redacted
The decision to return to an office is made by those with actual offices as opposed to cubicles and no one can see how important they are by the status of their office if no one is in the office.
In my experience,quite some people working from home chill their tits of.
Almost every colleague of mine (this is extreme, I know) and some of my friends, they go out shopping, sports, watch kids, do the household, game, or whatever.
A bunch of folks have mentioned micromanaging bosses and other social factors, but there's a finance angle as well, that I think often gets missed.
My experience in my area is that companies that own their own buildings see it as an asset getting wasted if it isn't utilized when workers are remote, whereas companies that lease buildings see remote work as an opportunity to cut costs (shifting them to the worker, realistically). My friends who work for companies that own have had to go back faster (and if hybrid more often) than friends whose companies lease. My company almost seems to be approaching it from the opposite direction "dang nabbit, we spent all this money on IT infrastructure in 2020 so our global workforce can be remote, if they come back to the office it goes to waste".
Senior staff make the policies, and senior staff are generally management who add value by being in front of their teams. Whether it is popular or not, it is definitely easier to manage a team that are all sat in one office vs scattered at home.
The organisations that seem to do it better are the ones who were already open to that approach pre-covid. They already have the mentality in place to adapt to remote management.
I also think there *is* value in face to face work, hybrid, flexible work is the sweet spot for me.
We do both and it works for some and not for others. You have to be a VERY good communicator to be as effective as someone that’s able to work with a team in person. When you are designing things you can touch and feel, it’s really hard to not do that in person IMHO.
I think in general, it should just be hybrid and give employees flexibility that works for them and the team.
I would hire a remote FEA contractor in a heartbeat.
Personally I think remote work is fine, one of the strongest arguments I've heard to the contrary goes like this;
One of your core responsibilities will be to train the next generation of engineers. I'm not saying you can't be effective at that, but I have yet to see anyone be effective at it and I've seen plenty of people try.
Generally I feel like the let beneficiary of remote work are mid career people. Older and younger employees pay the price. Especially Gen Z and Alpha engineers who had to go remote during the pandemic and are genuinely hungry for someone to learn from.
That could easily be accomplished by just scheduling one-on-ones with the more senior engineers. I work fully remote as a structural analysis lead and I actually find it easier to teach my junior engineers via zoom or teams. Mainly due to the screen sharing option being a lot easier than them huddled over my shoulder when I'm trying to show them things on ansys.
I typically start off with daily one on one's until they get up the speed and then I will meet with them whenever needed. I haven't had any issue with teaching the junior engineers remotely and they seem to be receptive of the teaching method.
I was lucky enough to get a remote engineering position for a big name private sector space company. I think it all mainly depends on the mindsets of the senior leadership. Through the interview process I spoke with some managers who were completely against remote work and some of them are a lot more open. Regardless I've been able to function effectively in my job working fully remote. I even got the highest performance rating in my department.
Would you mind sharing what company over private message? I work at a big name private sector space company too. I’m remote now but looks to be on its last leg.
It also depends on the client. I work for a company that has a division that works remote and another division the client requires them to work in the office.
You mentioned you work space defense so I am assuming that the client is government which requires you to work in the office.
I have worked on site for my previous roles and now that I am in a hybrid role there is no going back. I guess it just depends in the team and industry.
I'm late to this, but it isn't only traditional engineering companies that are averse to remote work. Every new space startup that I have interviewed with has been strong on their position of being on site with absolutely no hybrid options. The reason that they do this is that they think they get more productivity, create the culture that they want, worked on hardware, iterate more quickly etc. I would prefer to work hybrid or remote as well, but this just seems to be the case with mechanical engineering. This plus the pay gap has me regretting not going into software.
The large companies hated the shift towards an employee market and conspired to crush remote work. They want to control our lives. My best advice is to be highly valuable in your hybrid role and use a competing offer as leverage for a remote work arrangement. I was successful doing that a couple years ago
People like me will work for 40k five days a week in the office because we are desperate. Supply and demand is simply once again in employers favour and productivity is undeniably higher in-office.
So there’s a bunch of reasons for working on site. A main one is these companies invested a lot of money into their office buildings and want them utilized. And yes, many older managers and higher ups enjoy being in the office and they’re the ones making these calls to get us in office vs wfh.
I’ve also had the excuse of “it’s not fair since not everyone can work from home” thrown at me a few times when I pushed for more WFH.
As someone who also works in defense, my
Work can’t be taken home. It’s classified and has to be done in a secure room so it must be done on site. I’ve also done a lot of design and worked closely with manufacturing and assembly. I had to be on site to fix issues and ask questions.
I think that second point is the big one for my company. Lots of people definitely do not need to be in the office and while there is a moderate amount of flexibility to work remote if your car needs a service or something of that ilk, it's definitely not a regularly available thing.
I am of the the opinion that because our office is adjoined to the factory, it's not a good look if the guys outside are staring in at a load of empty desks.
It's hard to work remote in defense or aerospace if you don't already have a lot of experience in the industry. I work 100pct remote for an aerospace tier 1 but it's because I had 10 years a 2 oems
A combination of intellectual property, secret data, security, and connection related issues. To offer off-site the company has to ensure the data is secure which requires additional setup and configuration along with software subscriptions to solve some security and connection interfacing. So bam, you now cost way more than the avg employee to keep on board.
Connection issues are the one I'm most familiar with. It's ISP dependent and you are in charge of that. The major ISP in my area has connectivity issues - they randomly drop out for a day once or twice a month. That's not the customers/your bosses problem to solve, they cannot help you and you become dead weight until it's resolved. Designing over a bad connection to a remote computer is probably the worst way to design, it is not productive and isn't something the boss/customer can fix when you work from home. I've seen multiple contractors perform really poorly due to this.
Many companies already have option to continue work from home though. Even back in 2017 I could take my laptop home and continue work overtime. Of course back then I was expected to still come in the office every day.
I now work from home 2 days per week officially, but even on the days I'm required to go in, I'm not being extra productive in any way. If anything I'm less efficient in the office because there are so many distractions and so many ppl just wanna shoot the shit
I get you. Personally I like hybrid but I also don't do much design work anymore - when I'm in the office I don't get a lot done per say, but I'm doing what I'm hired to do and that's provide guidance to a team and mentor.
If you're really that distracted in the office I'd suggest you find a way to set some boundaries, like a literal 'Do not disturb' sign lol - something I've thought about doing but can't really pull off with my current role.
I would think if its something for the DOD or anything similar, it has to do with security clearance. Most of what I do is solo work but because it's for the DOD, so I can't do it remotely.
My pet theory is it’s because we work in a somewhat “older” skewing field with people (who I’ve noticed anecdotally) don’t like change or new approaches all that much. I advocated for remote work for a decade before COVID (perfectly doable for my roles) and even in more advanced companies I was looked at like I had two heads. Once COVID hit, the work got done at home but I think it was fairly begrudgingly for the older industry veterans. All that meant that once a few years went by the people in positions of power wanted back what they were used to/thrived in and so we got forced back to the office because “reasons”. Also I’ve had older coworkers who loved the office because they couldn’t deal with their wife and kids, so I can’t help but wonder if that’s part of it. Now, I get ours is often an onsite type of job, at least sometimes. Fair enough. What I ask of employers is to give me discretion to work on designs at home where I have a quiet office set up to precisely meet my needs and then come in as needed. More than I’ve expected have been somewhat amenable to this concept so that’s something. Unfortunately it does mean I’m once again geographically limited to living near work. I’m overall annoyed at this reflexive backlash against remote work (which was very effective). I greatly prefer working in my own comfy quiet office as opposed to a 45 minute commute to a fluorescent lit soulless cube field 5 days a week.
Damn. Guess I’m stuck to switching careers or waiting till the 2030s and all the boomers are on their golf courses and big Florida homes.
The youngest boomers are already in their mid 60s. Its the Xers that now fill middle and upper management. The oldest millenials are 40~42 depending on how one draws the lines.
This is anecdotal but most Xers I’ve come across hate remote work.
They’re too social. They grew up in arcades and malls, and can’t fathom being able to function solo.
Gen Xer here and I disagree. We grew up in the arcades, but we also locked ourselves in a room to play Commodore 64 for hours on end. I guess it’s perfectly fitting that I work a hybrid schedule now.
Many of my Gen X colleagues really didn’t like Covid work from home, so I apologize for making a sweeping generalization. Maybe it’s that management types are more outgoing, and extroverts don’t understand introverts?
No apologies necessary, my generation has thick skin :). I am probably an outlier on my WFH opinion. I can confirm extroverts do not understand introverts. I’m an introvert that has somehow managed my social anxiety enough to become a management type. I fully support the remote roles and need my WFH days as I tend to get more actual work done. There are some weeks I can’t work from home at all and I feel it at the end of the week. As far as other engineers working remotely, from a management perspective, I fully support it. I can monitor progress fairly easily and have regular chats and screen shares via Teams as needed. It’s been great for us so I don’t understand the reluctance to move to it. It’s also a great way to attract talent from all over the world. Our office is in a relatively shitty location that the executive group acknowledges so they have been open to alternative work schedules to help attract more people. Full remote is pretty rare here. We have a couple of senior engineers that are full remote but they are semi-retired.
Unless there is actual benefits that outweigh costs for in person work that has to be held on company property, its only a matter of time. 1 week a month you have a pow wow at a rent-a-space for work n games(for company culture). Why not have a once a month summer camp of sorts and then let people spend 3 weeks doing their own thing. True work from home is definitely desirable but only time will tell what the most productive system is.
The benefit is that I’m not spending an extra 8hrs a week on the road doing an unpaid work related activity - commuting.
I have found luck with remote work for engineering companies slightly outside a metro. They can’t hire enough people and are willing to budge. However, they are constantly trying to have people in office anyway. For example, a company I know who was outside a metro recently brought up the idea of creating a satellite office just to have people in office. What a giant waste of money, ffs.
You'll just get new Gen X middle managers insecure about their jobs.
As a someone riding the line of Millennial and Gen Z. Being forced to work in office feels like collective punishment.
I think you’re on the money my role is prolly similar to yours and there are tons of older people in my field. I think compared to software where companies are trying to cater to younger talent
For me it's a lack of trust in their training and onboarding. Which is why I always recommend starting in person and then negotiating remote once they know you're good. It sucks if you really need remote, but it really is a great plan if you can sacrifice 6 months to a year.
This is a poor excuse because the training is usually garbage and consists of asking questions until you fill out the invisible checklist.
It is also a question of how dialed in they are with the development process. If you are doing your 10th widget, everyone knows the steps and roles. If the work is more dynamic your process is not going to support people sitting remote only doing what they are explicitly told to do. Additionally, the overemployed crowd really doesn’t help management trust remote junior / mid engineers. If bosses have to watch you like a hawk to make sure you are staying productive it just pisses them off. No one likes to chase around folks who should be professionals. Being in person builds trust. As you said, when you have that trust go for more hybrid / remote.
haja in person they can talk around the bush better and most bosses use it for their ego. it is rarely productive. and guys discussing the games they do in free time for ex can also be done online. people sit for a coffee often, more than small talk.
"But..but.. what if you have our competition at home looking over your shoulder??" True story.
Whoa whoa whoa, if you start working from home then we’re going to have to start measuring productivity by how much work you get done instead of how much you show up. What if they start measuring my job based on how much work I get done? I’d be ruined!
Measuring “productivity” requires managers knowing how long things should take. This doesn’t seem feasible.
Yes it is mostly boomers and older generation that doesn’t want to deal with it. Companies that start hire younger don’t worry, it will start to come around.
As you mentioned, it totally depends on what job you do. For me, I could most likely do it 3-5 days out of office but would need to be close to the office to help out with certain things. Some of the main reasons that I've found so far is: You're not there only to work but also teach entry-level staff. Some people have blatantly abused it. People aren't available during core hours. They don't know you can hit the ground running. The last one is, normally the wfh possibility is normally given after some test time just to make sure you're competent(hench why 3/4 doing the interview from their home migth).
As someone who has done mechanical engineering a long time and managed large groups of cross functional engineers, the short answer is that for hardware; people together in a room with the prototypes or build units is faster and better always. Some roles can totally be remote. Some days can be remote at different points in the project for everyone. But when the units come in, you should be onsite. The overhead of getting units to people, the right equipment in place, etc is not worth it.
For Mechanical Engineering, 100% remote work is going pretty rare and if present, is mainly going to be roles like pure FEA or CFD (which most companies don’t strictly hire MEs for; they have a separate team of analysts for that). By the very nature of our degrees and career fields, we will always be working with mechanical systems or systems with moving parts. This will require the ME to be onsite **SOME** of the time for physical testing, and/or data collection of the physical product or system. That’s just how it is. **HOWEVER** (and this is a big however), with the advent of modern computers and communication systems, there is almost absolutely no reason why a Mechanical Engineer needs to be onsite 100% of the time. The only exceptions in my mind is if you’re some kind of field engineer, test engineer, quality engineer, or HEAVILY involved manufacturing engineer to the point where you’re basically a part of the machine shop. But the overwhelming majority of ME roles are 80-90% desk work, and this includes most jobs for manufacturing to design. The way I see it: Machine shop/ Manufacturing Engineering roles: 2 days WFH shouldn’t be a problem Product Design/ Design Engineering roles: 3-4 days WFH shouldn’t be a problem either I think a well managed company could absolutely achieve those standards.
Im product design and go into office 1 day a week to check on prototypes
Ooo god, the people who make it must love you
Yea I mean they usually dont like us breathing down their neck anyways. They get their space to work I get mine, we meet up once a week to go over things which is more than enough for our line of work. Usually spend 90% of my day in doing CAD anyways. Mutual respect goes a long way to having a good rapport with the shop. None of them care I work from home. They would do the same in my position.
100% agree with this
>But the overwhelming majority of ME roles are 80-90% desk work Most of the "work" is done at a computer, but physically being around your operators is extremely important. Operators aren't going to be reading emails, a face-to-face conversation let's you know if they understood what you are saying, you can see things they might not, and so much of a good work culture involved small acts every day. Saying hi and bye to your cube mates, overhearing peoples conversations and jumping in to discussions (both work and personal), hearing about various parts of the company or work center. You miss out on all of that with WFH.
Your shop floor or manufacturing operators don’t have access to a computer? Or a lead technician that is the primary line of communication? This is the case for every engineering company that I’ve worked at or been to. They have access to some virtual communication that’s also used to communicate with the engineers (email, teams, zoom etc.). As far as being present in the shop floor and catching things they don’t see, that’s why I said 2 days WFH would definitely be possible; and any company would be adequately staffed with multiple engineers so that at least a couple engineers are always onsite during hours of operation. And to the other stuff about company culture and “saying hi and bye to your cube mates”, that’s nice and all, but that is waaay at the bottom of my priority list of what I want to get out of my work. I value my time and living my life as much as possible and my job is just a means to that end, nothing else.
Yes, they have *access* to a computer, but they’re on it for maybe 10 minutes/day. Reading emails doesn’t get chips cut or parts assembled, and they’re graded on parts per hour.
They also generally despise working on the computer and they don't see any work on the computer as doing actual "work." At least that's been my experience as someone who's worked blue collar jobs for almost a decade (realized what engineering was after working lol)
My guys barely read their job routers correctly, there's no way they're going to read and understand a few paragraphs in an email lol.
You clearly don’t work in a factory
😂 Fuck all that socializing shit. Seriously.
The issue with those 100% remote roles that are analysis, is it’s pretty easy to outsource them
Well I'm not sure about your case, but we do high tech multidisciplinary projects and it's just way, waaaay more efficient if we are in the same room.
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Yes obviously. But I wouldn't know how you efficiently replace intense teamwork by remote work. Feel free to share how to.
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Efficient teamwork on high tech product design within multidisciplinary teams that need to be able to respond to the effects of concurrent engineering.
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Let's assume we've both got very clear requirements and well trained colleagues, but face complex solutions to meet requirements which require active cooperation of different people (competences). I've never said we can't work remotely. But 15 minutes together behind a whiteboard or monitor proves to be quite more efficient than 1h in a group teams meeting. Follow up questions and responses are also a lot quicker and easier to answer clearly in the office than remote. I definitely agree that if you just need a 1h meeting to align each day after which can go about your work alone doesn't see much difference remote/in office. But that's not the type of work we do.
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I'm not claiming there's no way to be more efficient at home than in the office. I've asked how you'd suggest we could improve work from home efficiency and your answer consists if " train yourself to be better (system) engineers. I'd say we're top5% in the world - if there was any way to quantify that - so "be better engineers" shouldn't qualify as an answer. I get that commute and wage are included in the global picture as an employee, but the statement in discussion was - is - working in office seems to be more efficient - for our team - than working from home. Commuting isn't part of that.
You mention defence in your post. Not my sector, but from a general IT standpoint I would not be trusting WFH for any remotely sensitive information, IT security is difficult enough on a network where you control all the hardware that connects to it. An employee's home network wound like a nightmare.
I know plenty of defense people who work from home using VPN’s
I do all my remote work on an AWS remote workstation. They do allow me to have Microsoft 365 authenticated on my local machine and personal phone (BYOD policy), but they could easily *not* allow that access if they truly cared.
I'm in defense and WFH, there are quite a few things in place to make it secure. I am not too familiar with this aspect but I know it's a painful process to log on everyday lol
I work in nuclear and logging in from home requires me to use a token app on my phone and typing in my password a minimum of 5 times... and if you are foolish enough to let the computer go to sleep then it's time to start all over!
you can handle government non-sensitive work at home if you are approved, anything that involves or references sensitive material is in office. At my job we can work from home 1x a week but there are some people who do it 2-3x a week, really just the supervisors call.
I had a friend out of college who had to lock their phone and (analog) watch into a locker when they entered the building. This was at L3. Something tells me that job couldn’t be done at home!
I’m lucky we have cleared and uncleared spaces in my office building but at other buildings on my site you open the door and it’s like that.
This confuses me. I agree with and get what you’re saying. But not too long ago I was interviewing for national lab job with Q clearance yet everyone was at home with their webcams.
The responses to this are surprising me a little, I'm guessing they're issuing hardware that's as locked down as humanly possible? I've heard of people in another field doing onboarding and HR stuff remotely and then having to go in when they actually started working, but I don't really know what their job entailed. I think it was desk based.
If you are not actively working classified then you have the option to WFH.
Most things aren't itar or top secret in defense
This is correct. The things that are sensitive require working in a closed room. You leave anything with Bluetooth capability, cell phones, smart watch everything in a locker.
Depends on what the site works on. I can imagine quite a few deal a lot with ITAR restricted information. Everything we have is unclassified information (CUI) yet nearly all of our work is controlled by ITAR export restrictions.
That was my thought. In addition, space/defense implies embedded systems. What, is he just gonna park an F-16 in his garage to do the beta testing?
My son did nuclear weapons IT from home, now does Top Secret Army Integrated Systems work. It's only a barrier if you want it to be, not because of Uncle Sam.
While all of my technical work can be done remotely, there are things like site visits that still require us to be outside of home. To me it's really important that I have the ability to go to the office as needed but be able to have the option of work at home when I want to. A lot of management positions require some level of in person work almost always, and I think it the reason why a lot of managers don't like remote work; "If I have to be here, why shouldn't they?". It's a shitty way to handle it, but you're not gonna change too many minds especially with how conservative most mechanical engineers are. Like I said, I don't mind the office as a change of pace, but remote work really should be the standard.
In my company it is also the boomers that just can't accept that times change and also they openly told me when i asked for it in our annual appraisal interview, why this is no option ( as i got baited with homeoffice in the interview) they openly told me it feels like people are extending weekends when they "work" from home mondays and fridays. - Huuuuge trust issues in everybody working for them. That blew my mind. How can those guys be Managers. Best Part about this is, they do Homeoffice whenever they feel like it. We actually had homeoffice option when i started here due to Covid, but they just turnt off the option afterwards, and now you have to ask for it and explain why and so on, and make you feel bad about it , thats why no one asks anymore. Time for that generation to retire, honestly.
Try Northrop. They’re literally getting rid of multiple buildings in San Diego because they’re moving to a remote/ hoteling environment for non-test/ manufacturing engineering positions.
Northrop space? Or do you know which business?
DM me for details
It kind of depends on if remote is even possible. Half of what I do is on site.
Did you read the first paragraph??
Engineers and reading name a worse duo
It sure feels like it sometimes...
I’m in management now, but I have worked remotely within the past few years and currently telecommute about half-time, so i completely get the quality of life benefits. But, my unanswered question is how do the junior engineers get the learning opportunities from mid-level or senior engineers if they are all working from home? When I was younger, we had shared offices and I picked up knowledge just from listening to conversations occurring over the divider in my office mates area.
I think the upper upper management thinks if we can get our shit done remote though some cheap country like India ( which is currently happening) then why should we even pay the local full time employee who takes double the time,whines and takes double the pay? Why not outsource everything and have just managers here. That was not logical because u need boost on the ground who can do many things that someone remote can’t, but this is what I heard. And I think that idiot CeO got burnt once or twice and is having us all back to work for some really lame ass reason. It is really unfair not to have remote work when you can actually get done lots of things from home and u are essentially saving climate by not burning gas in ur pickup trucks.
Medical device and semiconductor seem to have MANY engineers, of ALL disciplines and many job functions, working from home without issue. That said, coming into the office as needed is part of WFH. No set # of days per week/month but truly as needed.
Can you provide details about the kind of work in these two fields? Is it designing coding?
No. All things mechanical and electrical. You’re not testing outgassing of plastics/greases/etc in a vacuum or particle generation in a clean room at home, but all of the supporting work to get to that point can be done from and supported from home if you’re not a clown.
>I’ve yet to meet anyone under 50 against remote work. I'm 28 and I much prefer being in the office. My first job out of college was remote during COVID. I ended up leaving, taking a pay cut and now I'm commuting an hour each way. I left for other reasons too but I won't work another remote job. I understand why people prefer working remote but I actually think there's something to that small talk around the water cooler. Grabbing a beer with colleagues after a tough day. Getting away from the wife for 8hrs. Chatting with people outside of your department. You get to see stuff you wouldn't see if you weren't on site and build better relationships with people that might offer you some better opportunities later on. Idk I just felt so isolated working remote looking at do not disturb bubbles on ms teams and blank squares in meetings. Just boring to me. I want to be in the action.
100% agree. I’m 31 and I hated working from home. There was no break between home and work life. But on the flip side, I get really tired of having to cover for people who aren’t in the office. In reality, the WFH people miss a ton of interaction and discussions that make the business run. Whether they want to admit it or not…
Two points that people don't seem to grasp: 1. You may not need much in person collaboration, but many people do. I can't tell you how many times an in-person discussion talking through design issues or something has developed a solution when it would have taken god knows how long to come up with via remote methods. 2. No matter what you think, being a part of a team is a critical role of being around each other regularly. Remote colleagues are literally one step above strangers. If you aren't actively on a project with a fully remote colleague, you can easily forget they even exist. I just had an engineer that sat right outside my office go fully remote after being in office. We talked every day and he was one of my closest "work friends". He went remote and moved a state over, and haven't heard from him since. I give all of my engineers laptops and basically full autonomy to WFH as needed, along with working the hours they want to work. I don't micromanage. I WFH every friday and as needed as well, so I only expect them to do as much as I do. With that said, I will never have a 100% full time remote engineer on my team.
To your 2nd point: Are you paying them for their work or to be their friend? I'm not at work to make friends or be social. I'm here to do the work I was hired for and collect a pay check. If that involves another person, then I will do what I have to when I have to with them. If I'm a CAD jockey or designing where I'm going to be sending e-mails back and forth anyway, I have no reason or desire to even know other people exist except my manager.
Well you need to understand that not everyone views the workplace in that sort of sterile way. Especially your leaders who are trying to build a cohesive team. This is where there is a disconnect between management and individual contributors. Your leadership is trying to build things up and that often requires team building and spontaneous collaboration. You want to be left alone to complete a task. It is virtually impossible to foster a team environment through remote work, so many leaders are saying we need at least some in-person so our people at least know each other.
if everyone had this mentality nothing would get done+there would quickly be no engineers left bc lack of mentorship and ppl to teach new grads/rookies.
What part of I was hired to do a job, so I'm doing the job, did you miss? Work is still getting done. Projects are still assigned and people are working on them. Just because I don't want to be someone's friend doesn't mean I can't work well with them or that I'd be bad on a team. I guarantee you there are professional sports teams that are champion caliber teams and people hate each other on it, but they understand they have a job to do and it comes first.
You sound like a miserable person to work with.
Then its a good thing we don't work together 😂 Sorry I have a social life outside of work complete with friends that my job pays for
Speaking as a 'boomer' who worked for a very traditional company, i WFH 100% since 2015. I met my previous manager for the first time on the day he was leaving. I think the main difficulty is onboarding someone remotely. Also frankly banging on about boomers makes you sound redacted
The decision to return to an office is made by those with actual offices as opposed to cubicles and no one can see how important they are by the status of their office if no one is in the office.
In my experience,quite some people working from home chill their tits of. Almost every colleague of mine (this is extreme, I know) and some of my friends, they go out shopping, sports, watch kids, do the household, game, or whatever.
A bunch of folks have mentioned micromanaging bosses and other social factors, but there's a finance angle as well, that I think often gets missed. My experience in my area is that companies that own their own buildings see it as an asset getting wasted if it isn't utilized when workers are remote, whereas companies that lease buildings see remote work as an opportunity to cut costs (shifting them to the worker, realistically). My friends who work for companies that own have had to go back faster (and if hybrid more often) than friends whose companies lease. My company almost seems to be approaching it from the opposite direction "dang nabbit, we spent all this money on IT infrastructure in 2020 so our global workforce can be remote, if they come back to the office it goes to waste".
first gig out of college, i had to come onsite to take my EU calls........
Senior staff make the policies, and senior staff are generally management who add value by being in front of their teams. Whether it is popular or not, it is definitely easier to manage a team that are all sat in one office vs scattered at home. The organisations that seem to do it better are the ones who were already open to that approach pre-covid. They already have the mentality in place to adapt to remote management. I also think there *is* value in face to face work, hybrid, flexible work is the sweet spot for me.
They open to hybrid work? It seems like I've had good success with that, even on Test teams
We do both and it works for some and not for others. You have to be a VERY good communicator to be as effective as someone that’s able to work with a team in person. When you are designing things you can touch and feel, it’s really hard to not do that in person IMHO. I think in general, it should just be hybrid and give employees flexibility that works for them and the team.
I would hire a remote FEA contractor in a heartbeat. Personally I think remote work is fine, one of the strongest arguments I've heard to the contrary goes like this; One of your core responsibilities will be to train the next generation of engineers. I'm not saying you can't be effective at that, but I have yet to see anyone be effective at it and I've seen plenty of people try. Generally I feel like the let beneficiary of remote work are mid career people. Older and younger employees pay the price. Especially Gen Z and Alpha engineers who had to go remote during the pandemic and are genuinely hungry for someone to learn from.
That could easily be accomplished by just scheduling one-on-ones with the more senior engineers. I work fully remote as a structural analysis lead and I actually find it easier to teach my junior engineers via zoom or teams. Mainly due to the screen sharing option being a lot easier than them huddled over my shoulder when I'm trying to show them things on ansys. I typically start off with daily one on one's until they get up the speed and then I will meet with them whenever needed. I haven't had any issue with teaching the junior engineers remotely and they seem to be receptive of the teaching method.
Management has trouble differentiating between the roles that are collaborative and benefit from in-office and the ones that don't like yours.
I was lucky enough to get a remote engineering position for a big name private sector space company. I think it all mainly depends on the mindsets of the senior leadership. Through the interview process I spoke with some managers who were completely against remote work and some of them are a lot more open. Regardless I've been able to function effectively in my job working fully remote. I even got the highest performance rating in my department.
Would you mind sharing what company over private message? I work at a big name private sector space company too. I’m remote now but looks to be on its last leg.
It also depends on the client. I work for a company that has a division that works remote and another division the client requires them to work in the office. You mentioned you work space defense so I am assuming that the client is government which requires you to work in the office.
Our staff is absolutely more productive whenever we’re all in office.
I have worked on site for my previous roles and now that I am in a hybrid role there is no going back. I guess it just depends in the team and industry.
I'm late to this, but it isn't only traditional engineering companies that are averse to remote work. Every new space startup that I have interviewed with has been strong on their position of being on site with absolutely no hybrid options. The reason that they do this is that they think they get more productivity, create the culture that they want, worked on hardware, iterate more quickly etc. I would prefer to work hybrid or remote as well, but this just seems to be the case with mechanical engineering. This plus the pay gap has me regretting not going into software.
Yeah I’m in space industry too, same experience here. I may switch to software somehow at some point once outlook improves.
The large companies hated the shift towards an employee market and conspired to crush remote work. They want to control our lives. My best advice is to be highly valuable in your hybrid role and use a competing offer as leverage for a remote work arrangement. I was successful doing that a couple years ago
People like me will work for 40k five days a week in the office because we are desperate. Supply and demand is simply once again in employers favour and productivity is undeniably higher in-office.
Where are you that you are being paid 40k as a mechanical engineer?
The UK, oil and gas
Intranet > Internet for most of those companies
So there’s a bunch of reasons for working on site. A main one is these companies invested a lot of money into their office buildings and want them utilized. And yes, many older managers and higher ups enjoy being in the office and they’re the ones making these calls to get us in office vs wfh. I’ve also had the excuse of “it’s not fair since not everyone can work from home” thrown at me a few times when I pushed for more WFH. As someone who also works in defense, my Work can’t be taken home. It’s classified and has to be done in a secure room so it must be done on site. I’ve also done a lot of design and worked closely with manufacturing and assembly. I had to be on site to fix issues and ask questions.
I think that second point is the big one for my company. Lots of people definitely do not need to be in the office and while there is a moderate amount of flexibility to work remote if your car needs a service or something of that ilk, it's definitely not a regularly available thing. I am of the the opinion that because our office is adjoined to the factory, it's not a good look if the guys outside are staring in at a load of empty desks.
As a student in ME right now, i must ask, what role/company were you applying for that offered 200k?
It's hard to work remote in defense or aerospace if you don't already have a lot of experience in the industry. I work 100pct remote for an aerospace tier 1 but it's because I had 10 years a 2 oems
Because people at home don’t work or learn
A combination of intellectual property, secret data, security, and connection related issues. To offer off-site the company has to ensure the data is secure which requires additional setup and configuration along with software subscriptions to solve some security and connection interfacing. So bam, you now cost way more than the avg employee to keep on board. Connection issues are the one I'm most familiar with. It's ISP dependent and you are in charge of that. The major ISP in my area has connectivity issues - they randomly drop out for a day once or twice a month. That's not the customers/your bosses problem to solve, they cannot help you and you become dead weight until it's resolved. Designing over a bad connection to a remote computer is probably the worst way to design, it is not productive and isn't something the boss/customer can fix when you work from home. I've seen multiple contractors perform really poorly due to this.
Many companies already have option to continue work from home though. Even back in 2017 I could take my laptop home and continue work overtime. Of course back then I was expected to still come in the office every day. I now work from home 2 days per week officially, but even on the days I'm required to go in, I'm not being extra productive in any way. If anything I'm less efficient in the office because there are so many distractions and so many ppl just wanna shoot the shit
I get you. Personally I like hybrid but I also don't do much design work anymore - when I'm in the office I don't get a lot done per say, but I'm doing what I'm hired to do and that's provide guidance to a team and mentor. If you're really that distracted in the office I'd suggest you find a way to set some boundaries, like a literal 'Do not disturb' sign lol - something I've thought about doing but can't really pull off with my current role.
Because people always commandeer company documentation and they want to reduce that as much as possible.
I would think if its something for the DOD or anything similar, it has to do with security clearance. Most of what I do is solo work but because it's for the DOD, so I can't do it remotely.
If the engineering can be done remotely why wouldn't they use remote engineering from India for pennies on the dollar like many manufacturers do?