I was an engineering SME old white guy who retired in 2022 to max his pension and got a side glance thanks from management as I walked out after 25 years. Three months later my desperate 30 something outside "tech" hire director contacted me and asked if I would come back and teach the new kids how to be automotive engineers. I said yes, but I wanted my LL5's salary to do her job, they said yes. Then six months later it was still a mess and they asked me to stay so I said yes, but wanted a solid COLA raise, they said yes. On the third request I said I wanted my LL4s pay, and they paused ... and said yes. I worked my @ss off trying to teach these new tech people what it takes to make "millions" of good cars and they still do not get it. So today, I told them money does not matter, I am done. I plan to really retire and plant my garden and watch these tech Google, Amazon whizz kids plant Ford 6" down. God bless all you who can still put up with the daily pain. I am checking out for real in July. Good Luck and God Bless.
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I was told on Friday by my People Leader that we have a new college in Mexico, and she wants me to teach him what we do. I think my department and my job are doomed. I feel like I should say No, but then what? What should I do? Looks like Ford is going to ki-l my department.
Actually, my kids are very intelligent. Far more intelligent than any blue collar or trades worker. My kids are university bound. That's very different than what blue collar or trades people do with their lives.
In fact, you just gave me an idea. I'll have my kids take plumbing classes at the community College during the summers. I'll encourage my friends to do the same with their children. That way, we'll never need to hire plumbers for anything in any of our homes ever again.
Thanks!
That's what the cost of living dictates.
When minimum wage was introduced it was specifically designed the be a livable wage for a family. Back then it included a working husband and a stay at home wife taking care of the home and children.
Over the years, the greedy corporate fat cats squeezed that away from the working class. That includes us white collar engineers too.
The top politicians are doing a good job of convincing their electorate that minimum wage is for children. Then they tell you to gain a skill or education to get higher wages. While also doing everything they can to stay in bed with the education providers to ensure that their loans will be government backed and not dismissable in bankruptcy.
The entry wages should be higher. Your wages should probably be higher. The fat cats would just respond by raising prices and then calling it inflation. It's greed, plain an simple.
Fighting against higher wages hurts us all.
what one of the problems also is the kids coming out of school are expecting $100,000+ a year as a starting salary. They had an article on it. Then there not willing to learn everything possible from the company that hires them. Ford laid off a ton of experienced people company wide, thinking they can hire kids fresh out of school with BIG new ideas to help the company. Those of us they let go knew our jobs well and were good at them. But it took us years to learn those skills. When new people came into my area I did what I could to pass my knowledge to them. No one is left inside now that can do that or even cares to do it.
From the areas I worked in documentation on a persons job was non existent. There was no notes or training to follow. When they laid us off management didnt care what you were doing. Whatever you were doing fell on the floor and stayed there. There was no passing of your knowledge to someone replacing you. And they wonder why they have so many quality issues now. That and the people in purchasing cutting money to buy the cheapest parts possible for the vehicle, not caring about quality. Cheap parts from puchasing and rookie engineers that dont know how to do there job and fix issues.
Most of the kids now, come into company spend a handful of years seeing the company is so sc--wed up. Then leave for a new company, figuring they will get a huge raise with the new company. When I hired in we were getting a ton of people from Hyundai, doing that exact thing.
You right man! Beside, us blue collar plant workers are going to be all that's left of Ford North America pretty soon!
Them office jobs are being sent to cheaper countries. Just assembly will be left here to avoid tariffs.
Her college kids ain't gonna have no jobs to work fo!
OP is spot on with trying to teach new young employees.
RTO has taught me, in my first hand experience, they just don’t care. Zip Zero work ethic. NO drive.
Person just off FCG sits right next to me so can’t help but notice….on the cell phone constantly, watching podcasts on work computer all day long. Makes constant mistakes, but has been shown how not to, and yet asks zero questions. Comes in late, leaves early.
Didn’t bother to show for a meeting so had to go get this person. Response….sry, was on fb marketplace looking for…. Tone deaf to reality.
Guess we got low cost though, so there’s that.
@1sdc+1tdY7wWG hey butt head, your stupid kids won't be able to fix their own homes if you don't teach them blue collar skills. Then I will laugh when you cry you can't afford to pay a plumber his 200 dollar an hour surcharge. D-mbest comment here.
I say to all Blue collar people-refuse to work for people like this woman. A stuck up privileged piece of ****!
I love that people are stressing how these new engineers don't know much and have a lot to learn compared to old engineers.
Yeah, that's how experience works. Us old engineers were new once, too. And we used to know nothing. The old engineers who we worked alongside thought we were green too. We learned over time as we gained experience.
Disliking the next generation, or at least feeling different from them is nothing new. Our parents felt it, our grandparents felt it. And these kids today will feel it in the future.
“ go the benchmark center for a workshop and observe”. Yep, been there. I can see the difference between the 90s generation of engineers and current. OMG. The current generation of college graduates have so much to learn. With few exceptions many are clueless.
There was this one new engineer in PDC that was creating a TikTok video every day, the manager told the engineer to stop doing it as it is taking too much time to prep, make the video, edit it, etc. and focusing on work. The engineer went to HR and complained that the boss was harassing!
People are missing an important point, and in so doing, are at the same time proving the very same point that @1ouc+1tdY7wWG made, and that is that degrees don't equal wisdom, experience, and maturity. No one said anything about replacing degreed engineers with blue collar workers. What was said is that experienced engineers, wise engineers, mature engineers, are being replaced by low cost, fresh out of college engineers, many of which have no common sense, mechanical or electrical aptitude, basic skills, or even decent work ethic, let alone wisdom, experience, or maturity. They're also being replaced with workers in LCC's that can't purchase or drive the products they design or compete with. The fact that so many people feel they're above others because they have a degree is disgusting, because everyone that's been to college in this century knows that it's basically become an expensive joke, and if you thought otherwise, the only reason you probably graduated to maintain the schools quota. If you want a good laugh, go the benchmark center for a workshop and observe the engineers as they pour over the competitors vehicles. You'll get a real lesson in just how clueless many of Fords engineers really are.
@ykl+1tdY7wWG yes and what mo--n (to use a click and clack term) came up with the term 'software defined vehicle,' right? probably a "thought leader." software isn't going to haul your carcass across town or up north, bro. Ok yeah maybe the I.P. cluster can be retro or modern in a mustang... kind of amusing but not exactly critical.
Most of the problems in the world today are caused by "solutions".
I was in the airport the other day with my kids. We were walking and saw these dirty tradesman repairing the moving walkway. They were crawling around and were all sweaty and dirty.
We all chuckled. I told my kids that they had better pay attention in school and go to college or else they'll end up like those guys.
Someone mentioned more women engineers than men in the future. 🤔😂
My 1990 engineering class and my son’s engineering class in 2022 basically had the same percentage of women. Even after 30 years of “pushing or enticing” women into STEM.
@1mwc+1tdY7wWG Women will never dominate the engineering fields (unless we are under tiranny, a tiranny that would force them into engineering). Women are not interested in engineering, but in social careers.
@1lyt+1tdY7wWG MBA doesn't make you an a$$hole... you were before. I have friends with MBAs, some of them in Director's positions, and they came from blue collar families, and did blue collar jobs. They are not a$$holes, but you are.
The snake oil type of guys you mention, may be well considered by modern stoopid women, particularly if the women are in power positions. As I said before, a lot of modern women are stoopid. However, most regular people would prefer real bound to earth knowledgeable blue collar guys. Think about how "good" we are now under Silver Spoon Bill Ford and Snake Oil Fartley, versus Engineer Mullaly, and let's not forget that those types were at the helm of a company founded by Blue Collar ol' Henry Ford.
If you were an actual engineer you’d know that “ is inches and ‘ is feet…
What's going to happen is that the gender imbalance in STEM fields will swing the other way.
There are far more women than women going to college and graduating from college.
In the near future we will have far more women engineers than men engineers.
Who would have ever thought that we would be telling our children NOT to go into engineering. At the same time, we have programs like STEM and Girls Who Code. Someone needs to wake up these organizations to let them know US tech careers are a dead end.
@1lyt+1tdY7wWG MBA....🤣. You have to be an id--t to write a comment like yours.
That's not it at all.
The people who have the capability to go to college are very different that the labor or skilled trade types.
Have you ever talked to those trades people? Or law enforcement types?
They're all rough around the edges and not really presentable.
We need academic types leading this company. They are much more likely to be intelligent and able to run a large business and interact with big money customers.
We can have to less educated rough types at our dealerships. They'll be able to talk to the trades types of people when they buy their low end F150s.
Those blue collar types are usually very uncomfortable around the college types. It's best to keep them apart as much as possible.
We'll be happy to hire the non-college people to work on our assembly lines. That's where they're happiest. They feel a lot of pride working extremely physically taxing jobs and seeing a finished product at the end of their day.
We learned all about this when I got my MBA.
in other words, you're amounted to a prost---te working for hourly wage... and it took you that long to figure out the price of bondage vs. freedom. I say you're a very slow learner.
The people that are most delusional are those that believe a degree can replace wisdom, experience, and maturity. Ford has been wholesale replacing wisdom, experience, and maturity that took many years to acquire with low cost, inexperienced, immature employees, and in many cases people in LCC's that literally have no real connection to the products they design and build. Think about the problem there is with that logic. The fact of the matter is that most of the worlds problems today are caused by a lack of respect for wisdom, maturity, and experience, and Ford is no different.
Hiring American engineering talent has got to become a management fad or the transfer to LCCs will continue. Like if Elon Musk or Toyota does it, then they MBA-set will latch on.
But for now, mother's don't let your boys grow up to be engineers. There's no job security in it, especially once you reach 45, no matter how much experience and education you've accumulated. If your kids can do anything else, do everything you can to keep them away for careers in science, technology, engineer and math.
@tdY, I’m hardly miserable nor bitter. But I’ve been a manager in hi tech and more recently Ford for 20+ years. When it comes to shifting the business to more LCCs and as a result downsizing our local talent (which usually have the real nuts and bolts experience), I’ve never seen someone win against finance with the argument that we are losing all this experience. So what happens, finance wins to give the best quarter they can and we are stuck trying to build the house with no one that knows how to put up a wall. But we don’t ever get to go back and hire that experienced person who left, and certainly not at the crazy salaries levels the OP was claiming. We are just stuck dealing with a bunch of nimwits and trying to do the best we can. And yes, that means we are perpetually losing institutional knowledge, but people at the top and even investors are only worried about the next quarter when it comes to publicly traded companies. The OP is delusional that what he said actually happened, or more likely a troll to stir up things.
I can't tell which post you're critiquing: the OP or the guy who called him delusional?
Reading the delusional post made me laugh! Indeed, you can trade experience for salary and you will always win in the short term. Every time you make that trade the company gets closer to becoming an inexperienced noob in a business where nobody is looking out for you, but rather wants to talk you into giving them your lunch. As a bonus, get your staff reductions wrong and you get to make the organization re-learn stuff the hard way that - whoops, could have been avoided with the right thinkers and doers in place. Nothing new about that! After the learning experience(s) hopefully you still have customers and stockholders. Delusional does have a valid point though, not all "experience" has great value. Choose wisely as you prune the tree. Some expertise is really hard to replace.
Being miserable and bitter is no way to live life.
This is one of the most delusional posts I’ve seen in awhile. People like to think their experience is worth so much, but in reality, management is willing to accept the loss of knowledge for short term financial gain.
Best to stay out of your garden, you’ve had too much sun.
I was an LL6 TS. Always mentoring and releasing design rules for my commodity and dealing with the daily supplier and plant f ups. Told my management it would be nice to train someone as a successor for my future retirement. But no. Got the push out in Aug 22. Now the person who was given my old job contacted me about my old files back up and occasionally needs my input. They kept their old commodity then got mine. They are overwhelmed and the moral is in the cr-pper. Then a few months later Farley says we need to lean on the TS to move forward. Well he fired more than half of them and promoted DEI in many others.
I wonder if the digital types just don't get what it takes to be successful at mechanical system integration, reliability and durability or if they are just too green. Software and to some extent hardware development have there own problems and are a world apart. Can't stand on a one legged stool, need accurate and skilled design, test and analysis to get to the durability gate. I really believe from own career that it takes a decade in any one of those areas to be competent. How you grow that talent or how you throw that talent away takes a company to where there are today. Weaknesses in any critical area that are self inflicted should be corrected by removing the leadership that created the gap.
" means inches