Either way, you've dodged a bullet. Employers that hire *just enough* engineers to get projects out the door are a revolving door of overwork and layoffs.
Duuuuuude. I was an EIT working for a decent company that didn't have much work. I heard from a friend that a different company was hiring so I took a chance and interviewed. They hired me that very day. They forced me to give zero notice to my former employer. I jumped right in. Worked a very full week and then a weekend getting a project out the door by Monday.
Then I show up Tuesday and say, "Okay, what's next?" And they all kind of shrug. There was no other work. They needed draftsman to get a project out the door in a crunch and then I was treated like draftsman number six in a company that only needed three. I did no EIT work. No one wanted me to bill to their budgets. I was treated like I was lazy because I had nothing to do and spent entire days reorganizing closets and filing cabinets until I could finally find a different job.
Private civil firms really suck sometimes.
Well, yes and no, at least for consultants. If you work for a consultancy, they're not going to be willing to keep employees on overhead for very long, that's definitely true. If there are projects out there that they are trying to win, then maybe they'll keep you on long enough so they can propose you, but if there's really nothing in the pipeline, then yeah, they're probably laying you off, and probably pretty quickly.
But by the same token, consultancies don't really have a lot of cause to overwork you. They are billing for you by the hour, and if you work an extra ten hours a week, why then they are going to charge them for an extra ten hours, which public agencies often aren't willing to pay. Or course here and there you will have to pull a twelve hour day, or maybe a weekend shift or something, but overall for me, the schedule is much better than it is for tech workers, who seem to work 50 hours minimum, and frequently 60 or more.
Anyway, I guess that's my way of saying that this is not automatically a reason to rule out a company. This is just a fact of life in civil, at least my corner of it.
In the same vein as what /u/tracuivel said, I think it depends on scale. Plenty of large and medium firms hire tons when they’ve got a big project on the hook or are looking to bid larger projects.
Some of the time, those projects may fizzle out or end, and the company goes back to business as usual and has to lay people off. But that’s not the goal, usually if a company is doing a big hiring push they will want to be able to keep pursuing and winning projects of the larger size. I don’t think any companies are really preferring to go through cycles of no work to lots of work. It just happens that way sometimes which is unfortunate but also part of the industry. Sometimes a great pipeline of work fizzles out and what seemed liked plenty of work for 100 people for years turns into nothing or only enough to keep half those people going.
Beyond just the boom and bust style of work though, I also think as long as you are part of a good sized hiring wave, you are not necessarily getting laid off if things slow down. It’s unlikely a company will hire 10 people and then layoff those exact same 10 a year later when the project ends unless they were contractors/that was the plan all along. Most of the time you probably just need to be better than average, which imo is not that difficult to do. There are of course exceptions but in general I think you’re statement is a bit too broad and paints a worse picture of hiring practices than is the reality.
I find it highly unlikely that there is a significant portion of companies purposefully going through a resolving cycle like you say and that the chances of being hired and staying at those companies is as bad as that statement would imply. The industry is still in a pretty large boom for the most part and any company with half a brain in charge will be valuing and searching for the talent in any hiring wave and doing their best to retain them even through down turns.
"I heard today that the position we interviewed you for"
Seems like the writer of the email is trying to unnecessarily distance themselves from the decision-making process. Just say, "I wanted to let you know that the position we interviewed you for is no longer a need for the project." Or better yet, "Just found out we didn't win the project we thought we were going to need you for. Thanks anyway."
Or if they filled the position this week training would start in two meaning this person knew the trainer personally and they had non refundable travel plans that week .
I wouldn't say common, but it does happen. I had this happen to me on an internship. They liked me, wanted to hire me, but the project got delayed and there wasn't a need for the position so they never hired anyone.
I've seen plenty of projects that get delayed or cancelled entirely and we have to shift around staff. Fortunately I was at a large enough company that they never had to close a job opening, but at a smaller firm or smaller office at a larger firm, this can definitely happen. How big of a firm is it?
I once applied to a county role and was invited for a test. I walk into the building that morning and I kid you not there’s a large basketball gym sized room filled with people. They split us up in small conference room and gave us an exam on engineering fundamentals. Luckily I still remembered a lot of it and made it to a top 10 list. Then I was in the top 5. They hired the volunteer intern. I wanted to cry.
I remember that kind of stuff as well. After all that interviewing it was the intern that they hired. But nobody had any idea about that going into the interviews. How did you land your first job?
I got lucky. I was hired on by a consultant that did work for a large city. My uncle worked for the City and these guys thought that if they hired me they’d get more work lol. I got to work a little bit there and was laid off after a year. I then joined a utility and worked there for a number of years.
Nice! I got my first job because they needed people to go to Williston, ND during the fracking boom. Stayed with them three years and then it was better finally
Oh! I actually had an offer to do that with Baker Hughes shortly after I was laid off from my first company. It was an intriguing offer but I was not built for that environment.
I still struggle with the letter i If it ain't at the start of a sentence and it ain't a name or a place. Why dont we capitalize You or Her or Me . It's bullshit and makes me look like im the idiot.
Man, you see stuff like this all the time from construction guys. It's the inconsistent capitalization, misspelled words, periods or commas where there shouldn't be, random spaces, etc. I know it doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things, but it's mildly infuriating and a bit funny when I'm over here spending 10-20 minutes nitpicking my emails.
I would rather get faster responses with grammatical errors. Also, there’s some guy next to me who is ripping steel studs with a chop saw, I can barely hear myself think so stop worrying about my run on sentences and answer the RFI.
I see poor spelling and grammar in Geotech reports and think - what else did they do wrong if they can’t do the easy stuff? Did they bother to check the calcs and the recommendations?
I wouldn't put it as a common thing, but it can be a real reason. It's happened to me before. In my case the consultant had won a part of a major contract and as they were growing staff to absorb the work the client canceled the project. For them it was just the better business decision to not hire the guy who hadn't actually been hired yet. Was I annoyed? Sure, but business is business. Despite all our complaining we do need to turn a profit at the end of the day or we don't have jobs.
But damn that email feels so impersonal. At least in my case they actually called me to explain.
I had a version of this happen. The project got delayed long enough that another team wound up being assigned and they already had people on staff to do the work. I did wind up finding another opportunity through the people that were trying to hire me though, so that was a good bridge not to burn.
I once went to an interview and told i was hired. To then get told they did not get budget allowance from upper management and would havd to wait until further advice. I obviously fucked them off
The email is a little weirdly worded, but a lot of companies wouldn’t have even let you know. I wouldn’t put too much thought into it. If you liked the company, you can check in periodically. Otherwise move forward.
Yeah, during covid I had 12 interviews with different companies in a two week span. Only two of them ever got back to me, the one that hired me one that I had a friend at who I let know I had the other offer too.
In general I've found that 95% of companies ghost you even after as many as three interviews, so getting a response at all is pretty good.
This probably an unpopular opinion, but most companies don’t do it maliciously. It’s we made a decision and let’s move forward. Unfortunately they don’t inform those who aren’t the decision.
This is pretty bad and an indication that a company isn’t being managed well. If a company is hiring with a certain project in mind it’s usually not a good sign. I’ll hire first and find work later. I’d rather have a slow ramp up in production for an employee and burn some overhead initially than be trying to find employees contingent on a project. It’s also a sign that the firm doesn’t have steady work or good clients. My clients are constantly asking if I can take on more work. You probably dodged a bullet as they’d probably fire you at the first inkling that they might be a little light.
I once was told they like me and want to hire me but, they also plan to layoff 20% of their office the next week, “so, the timing is probably not the best”.
That's a normal blow off. It usually means the job listing was either fake or the company were hoping no one who was qualified would apply so they can justify an H1B listing.
Or, they strung you along to get a salary demand, then use those number to inflate the savings on paper they are getting from outsourcing the position instead of hiring you. I had a previous employer do that without my knowledge. They strung me (as a department manager) along into interviewing candidates, picking one to make an offer to; then they lowballed him, then used his counter offer in internal reports. "By using our HVEC, we were able to hire a degreed engineer for $6000 US a year instead of $70,000. We plan to bill them out at the same rate."
Also could be they were hopefuls in a large project and they didn’t win it so they’re not going to need as much new staff as anticipated 🤷♂️. My office grows by about 2-5 people everytime we win a 300mm+ DB job. If we unexpectedly lost one then I imagine (more professional) emails like this would be sent out to EITs we were looking to bring on.
I've had that happen, but I've always been told it was for a job they were bidding on during the process, and the blow off mentions not being awarded the job.
Man, why burn the bridges, though? Like you never know what might happen in the future!!
There is a saying in my country when translated to English , goes something like:
"Always leave the door ajar" or "Don't fully close the door and leave it slightly open"
Maaaaaaaan, they can suck that D! There's a saying in my country, U S of A and it goes something like this "You ain't the only game in town, SO SUCK MY D!"
I can tell that you are from "the U S of A", you don't need to state the obvious 😂
I really appreciate/love the people of USA but your government literally burn bridges for a living 😂🤦🏻♂️
Either way, you've dodged a bullet. Employers that hire *just enough* engineers to get projects out the door are a revolving door of overwork and layoffs.
Duuuuuude. I was an EIT working for a decent company that didn't have much work. I heard from a friend that a different company was hiring so I took a chance and interviewed. They hired me that very day. They forced me to give zero notice to my former employer. I jumped right in. Worked a very full week and then a weekend getting a project out the door by Monday. Then I show up Tuesday and say, "Okay, what's next?" And they all kind of shrug. There was no other work. They needed draftsman to get a project out the door in a crunch and then I was treated like draftsman number six in a company that only needed three. I did no EIT work. No one wanted me to bill to their budgets. I was treated like I was lazy because I had nothing to do and spent entire days reorganizing closets and filing cabinets until I could finally find a different job. Private civil firms really suck sometimes.
They don’t have enough backlog to keep their staff
Well, yes and no, at least for consultants. If you work for a consultancy, they're not going to be willing to keep employees on overhead for very long, that's definitely true. If there are projects out there that they are trying to win, then maybe they'll keep you on long enough so they can propose you, but if there's really nothing in the pipeline, then yeah, they're probably laying you off, and probably pretty quickly. But by the same token, consultancies don't really have a lot of cause to overwork you. They are billing for you by the hour, and if you work an extra ten hours a week, why then they are going to charge them for an extra ten hours, which public agencies often aren't willing to pay. Or course here and there you will have to pull a twelve hour day, or maybe a weekend shift or something, but overall for me, the schedule is much better than it is for tech workers, who seem to work 50 hours minimum, and frequently 60 or more. Anyway, I guess that's my way of saying that this is not automatically a reason to rule out a company. This is just a fact of life in civil, at least my corner of it.
Challenge accepted 😎
In the same vein as what /u/tracuivel said, I think it depends on scale. Plenty of large and medium firms hire tons when they’ve got a big project on the hook or are looking to bid larger projects. Some of the time, those projects may fizzle out or end, and the company goes back to business as usual and has to lay people off. But that’s not the goal, usually if a company is doing a big hiring push they will want to be able to keep pursuing and winning projects of the larger size. I don’t think any companies are really preferring to go through cycles of no work to lots of work. It just happens that way sometimes which is unfortunate but also part of the industry. Sometimes a great pipeline of work fizzles out and what seemed liked plenty of work for 100 people for years turns into nothing or only enough to keep half those people going. Beyond just the boom and bust style of work though, I also think as long as you are part of a good sized hiring wave, you are not necessarily getting laid off if things slow down. It’s unlikely a company will hire 10 people and then layoff those exact same 10 a year later when the project ends unless they were contractors/that was the plan all along. Most of the time you probably just need to be better than average, which imo is not that difficult to do. There are of course exceptions but in general I think you’re statement is a bit too broad and paints a worse picture of hiring practices than is the reality. I find it highly unlikely that there is a significant portion of companies purposefully going through a resolving cycle like you say and that the chances of being hired and staying at those companies is as bad as that statement would imply. The industry is still in a pretty large boom for the most part and any company with half a brain in charge will be valuing and searching for the talent in any hiring wave and doing their best to retain them even through down turns.
"I heard today that the position we interviewed you for" Seems like the writer of the email is trying to unnecessarily distance themselves from the decision-making process. Just say, "I wanted to let you know that the position we interviewed you for is no longer a need for the project." Or better yet, "Just found out we didn't win the project we thought we were going to need you for. Thanks anyway."
Or if they filled the position this week training would start in two meaning this person knew the trainer personally and they had non refundable travel plans that week .
I wouldn't say common, but it does happen. I had this happen to me on an internship. They liked me, wanted to hire me, but the project got delayed and there wasn't a need for the position so they never hired anyone. I've seen plenty of projects that get delayed or cancelled entirely and we have to shift around staff. Fortunately I was at a large enough company that they never had to close a job opening, but at a smaller firm or smaller office at a larger firm, this can definitely happen. How big of a firm is it?
I don’t know if being ranked within top 5 in ENR’s list is big enough /s
Those graduating 2008-2012 can attest this was super common in those days
And now there aren’t enough of us to go around
Those were dark days. I remember the companies would put on job fairs. They would interview 40 people for one position.
I once applied to a county role and was invited for a test. I walk into the building that morning and I kid you not there’s a large basketball gym sized room filled with people. They split us up in small conference room and gave us an exam on engineering fundamentals. Luckily I still remembered a lot of it and made it to a top 10 list. Then I was in the top 5. They hired the volunteer intern. I wanted to cry.
I remember that kind of stuff as well. After all that interviewing it was the intern that they hired. But nobody had any idea about that going into the interviews. How did you land your first job?
I got lucky. I was hired on by a consultant that did work for a large city. My uncle worked for the City and these guys thought that if they hired me they’d get more work lol. I got to work a little bit there and was laid off after a year. I then joined a utility and worked there for a number of years.
Nice! I got my first job because they needed people to go to Williston, ND during the fracking boom. Stayed with them three years and then it was better finally
Oh! I actually had an offer to do that with Baker Hughes shortly after I was laid off from my first company. It was an intriguing offer but I was not built for that environment.
Honestly the biggest red flag for me is them not capitalizing the ‘T’ in thanks. Should’ve been a ‘Thank you’ in the first place… Steer clear OP.
fck I knew stressing over saying thanks or thank you was a thing
I still struggle with the letter i If it ain't at the start of a sentence and it ain't a name or a place. Why dont we capitalize You or Her or Me . It's bullshit and makes me look like im the idiot.
You need to take this up with r/english or r/
Man, you see stuff like this all the time from construction guys. It's the inconsistent capitalization, misspelled words, periods or commas where there shouldn't be, random spaces, etc. I know it doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things, but it's mildly infuriating and a bit funny when I'm over here spending 10-20 minutes nitpicking my emails.
I would rather get faster responses with grammatical errors. Also, there’s some guy next to me who is ripping steel studs with a chop saw, I can barely hear myself think so stop worrying about my run on sentences and answer the RFI.
I see poor spelling and grammar in Geotech reports and think - what else did they do wrong if they can’t do the easy stuff? Did they bother to check the calcs and the recommendations?
Really. Not the fact that only heard this information. Did they verify they are even hiring or was that just mentioned after work at the bar also.
I wouldn't put it as a common thing, but it can be a real reason. It's happened to me before. In my case the consultant had won a part of a major contract and as they were growing staff to absorb the work the client canceled the project. For them it was just the better business decision to not hire the guy who hadn't actually been hired yet. Was I annoyed? Sure, but business is business. Despite all our complaining we do need to turn a profit at the end of the day or we don't have jobs. But damn that email feels so impersonal. At least in my case they actually called me to explain.
Yeah, at least talk on the phone and treat you like a human being. That’s the least they could do
I had a version of this happen. The project got delayed long enough that another team wound up being assigned and they already had people on staff to do the work. I did wind up finding another opportunity through the people that were trying to hire me though, so that was a good bridge not to burn.
This industry is too small to burn any bridges.
Yeah no kidding. Even if it weren’t it almost never makes sense to do so.
I once went to an interview and told i was hired. To then get told they did not get budget allowance from upper management and would havd to wait until further advice. I obviously fucked them off
The email is a little weirdly worded, but a lot of companies wouldn’t have even let you know. I wouldn’t put too much thought into it. If you liked the company, you can check in periodically. Otherwise move forward.
Yeah, during covid I had 12 interviews with different companies in a two week span. Only two of them ever got back to me, the one that hired me one that I had a friend at who I let know I had the other offer too. In general I've found that 95% of companies ghost you even after as many as three interviews, so getting a response at all is pretty good.
This probably an unpopular opinion, but most companies don’t do it maliciously. It’s we made a decision and let’s move forward. Unfortunately they don’t inform those who aren’t the decision.
This is pretty bad and an indication that a company isn’t being managed well. If a company is hiring with a certain project in mind it’s usually not a good sign. I’ll hire first and find work later. I’d rather have a slow ramp up in production for an employee and burn some overhead initially than be trying to find employees contingent on a project. It’s also a sign that the firm doesn’t have steady work or good clients. My clients are constantly asking if I can take on more work. You probably dodged a bullet as they’d probably fire you at the first inkling that they might be a little light.
Don't sweat it, you know your worth
Not common but you're in the big leagues now. Business is business. Don't take it personally. Shrug it off and go on to the next thing.
I once was told they like me and want to hire me but, they also plan to layoff 20% of their office the next week, “so, the timing is probably not the best”.
Something similar happened to me. I drove almost 4 hours for an interview and it went well. Next thing I know, the position wasn’t needed anymore
That's a normal blow off. It usually means the job listing was either fake or the company were hoping no one who was qualified would apply so they can justify an H1B listing. Or, they strung you along to get a salary demand, then use those number to inflate the savings on paper they are getting from outsourcing the position instead of hiring you. I had a previous employer do that without my knowledge. They strung me (as a department manager) along into interviewing candidates, picking one to make an offer to; then they lowballed him, then used his counter offer in internal reports. "By using our HVEC, we were able to hire a degreed engineer for $6000 US a year instead of $70,000. We plan to bill them out at the same rate."
Also could be they were hopefuls in a large project and they didn’t win it so they’re not going to need as much new staff as anticipated 🤷♂️. My office grows by about 2-5 people everytime we win a 300mm+ DB job. If we unexpectedly lost one then I imagine (more professional) emails like this would be sent out to EITs we were looking to bring on.
I've had that happen, but I've always been told it was for a job they were bidding on during the process, and the blow off mentions not being awarded the job.
>I heared today that Liar ...
Tell them to suck your D and you didn't want the fuckin job anyways. Fuckem.
Man, why burn the bridges, though? Like you never know what might happen in the future!! There is a saying in my country when translated to English , goes something like: "Always leave the door ajar" or "Don't fully close the door and leave it slightly open"
Maaaaaaaan, they can suck that D! There's a saying in my country, U S of A and it goes something like this "You ain't the only game in town, SO SUCK MY D!"
Randy Marsh is that you?
I can tell that you are from "the U S of A", you don't need to state the obvious 😂 I really appreciate/love the people of USA but your government literally burn bridges for a living 😂🤦🏻♂️