Mar 29, 2013 01:03
In the very odd work of engineering contracting, I work for one company (A) who in turn rents me out to a different, competing company (B). At Company B I work on a team of half a dozen people, some of whom work for B and some from other companies like mine (C, D).
The work my team does is paid for by two contracts, Y and Z. Company B is in charge of the work for both of those contracts, so a manager from B is who hands down the orders for who does what.
Contract Y is ending, and Contract X is beginning. The work covered by contracts (Y+Z) is the same as what's covered by (X+Z). However, Contract X isn't part of Company B, it was won by a bid from Company E! Company E didn't want to hire folks from A, B, C, or D, though. And since the work is kind of specialized, it's tough to find someone who hasn't been working on this stuff for a year or two already who would just be able to be assigned to the project and start being useful and productive real fast. (It takes ~6 months to learn enough to be really good at this).
Once E figured out that none of its inexperienced people were going to be able to learn their jobs fast enough, they started scrambling to hire anyone they could from A, B, C, and D. But some people actually have company loyalty, and so eventually E had to make agreements with the other companies to rent out their people like B rents me from A.
My team has been shrinking, as people head off for other opportunities. I still kind of work with some of them, but in the last year the team has shrunk from 6 to 3.
This week, the other two guys on my team transition from contract Y to contract X. I'm still on contract Z. And suddenly, I'm the ONLY person in my team, working on Z. Everyone else doing the same thing as me has gone to contract X.
This is a little scary. I'm an engineer, not a department manager. I don't really love doing managerial things... I really like doing engineerial things instead. (It's why I'm an engineer! Go figure...) As before, all the work (X+Z) is all the same work as before, so I'll continue working with the guys who have been on my team, but there's a slightly odd divide between the X and Z contracts, and the way that the work is divided up is a little odd to us too. But, whatever, we'll get it all done.
Now, I need to start attending the daily department planning meetings. Used to be that the head of my team went to them, and we all got our daily marching orders from him. Now... it's just me. It's not like I've leveled up, the old head of the team was in a first-among-equals position rather than a higher=ranking one. But still, it's a change of mindset.
The other part of this transition is that when there were three of us on the team, we each could do everything, but we also each had specializations. I've spent the last 2 years working on one part of the process, and doing only very little amounts of the rest of it. Ditto with the other two guys -- they worked together do to the other 2/3 of the process, but relied on me to do pretty much all of my 1/3. So now, they get a crash course in doing "my" stuff (while I help them through) and I get a crash course in doing "theirs". Luckily for me, in the years that I've been working here, I've filled up 5 1/2 250-page notebooks with everything I've learned and everything I've done, on a daily basis. So, I've got more than a little bit of reference material for how to do... um... everything I've ever had to do, even once.
Well, there are my work-related brain-droppings for the day.
engineering