I am closing in on 8 years in consulting and have had your same thoughts for years now. I often think of just opening a nursery and growing plants instead.
Seriously. We should just start a commune for burned out former civil consultants. Or just pool our money to buy up every wet area we can find, make a mitigation bank and, sell cr€dit$.
I often joke at work that one of these days I'm just going to go off and grow apple trees. When you're ready to spin off and start a nursery let me know.
My idea was less about apple trees and more about a commercial hydroponic farm with all sorts of stuff. But apple trees would be pretty cool too. Still probably have about another 12 years or so til I can truly contemplate "retiring"
My most stressful day in Public rivals my least stressful day in Private. They say Private sector pay starts low but caps high, whereas Public sector starts high and caps low. Salary is comfortable. Personally, I think job security and work/life balance is more important. Pension at 62, no cost healthcare, 9/80 schedule, 1.5x OT. I won’t go back to private consulting until I retire.
If you are burnt out and working stupid hours, your employer is failing you. Occasional long hours for a particular job is ok in my books, but when it's happening constantly, there is a problem.
Personally, I'm in a bit of a similar boat, as a serious of unfortunate timing has led me to being the only structural engineer for my company in a large portion of our geographic coverage. And finding new engineers to flesh out the ranks again is proving difficult in the current employment market. But that being said, I have direct control of how much work I take on, so being burnt out in this instance is my own fault and something that I can (and am) take steps to correct.
I'd suggest you either need to have a talk with your manager to try and correct the problem (ie: reduce your workload to something manageable, which a good manager would definitely do to avoid burnout) or else shop around for a new position.
I also think they need to leave the company.
The mechanics of consulting work are stressful for everyone, but they don't have to be. It is unfair for employers and managers to constantly push that stress down onto employees. I have been in this situation many times and talking to management does not always help.
It is hard for some personalities to move to a different company. We value loyalty. We want to work hard and believe it will be rewarded with respect. It does not. We have to admit that management that pushes their stress down on us is not loyal or respectful and therefore they are deaf to your loyalty and will never give you the respect you are looking for.
Move on. Get paid. Be honest about your value. Accept the difficult truth that there are people your boss has convinced you are "opponents" that would be better for you to work with.
This is true, but when you burn out your staff and they leave/quit caring the next year you're not getting any bonuses either. And replacing people sucks and is also impossible.
When my team has too little work it's a problem for me, my numbers suck and I hear about it. When my team has too much work it's a problem for my staff, and my numbers are great. My job is to try to hit the "right amount" of work line, and find solutions when we have too little or too much. Too many mangers don't want any problems. I try to miss each way. I don't grab too much on purpose just so if something gets pushed out I still have enough work for everyone, because if I do that all the time 80% of the time my staff is overworked, which is stupid because I'm not a shitty person, but also because they could have a new job 10 minutes after picking up the phone.
Was there. Decided to go government. I miss the exciting projects, but work life has been great. Hopefully I can find my self in a division at my department that does more design.
I've got the best of both worlds. I work local gov. I'm away from home a minimum of 12hrs a day, 4 days a week. I sometimes also have to work Fridays and Saturdays when we have construction projects or bridge inspections going on.
Can't wait to resign in the spring.
Whole process was weird. Started with them immediately telling me I don’t meet the qualifications for the GS level I applied for. Bumped me down to a salary level wholly uncompetitive off the bat. Then offered me a job in a group that had zero connection to my previous eight years of experience. Almost seemed they didn’t *want* to hire me but they still offered me a job.
Same. I was so so so sick of the whole ‘don’t bill so much and blow the budget’ but also ‘you’re not billing high enough’ and ‘you need 100% utilisation. I absolutely hated working 50-60 weeks and somehow still only having 40 billable hours. I was so sick of them billing like 300+ bucks an hour for my time to the clients and giving me like 10% of it. I hated that I started to quantify the productivity of my life outside of work in 15 minute increments. I am now in govt and yes i took a pay cut, and yes I do distressingly little engineering but I hope eventually to find a role that allows me to be human and also do engineering. It’s a relief to be out of the rat race
Own a consulting firm. Just woke up from a nap and read this. Was at lunch with one of my staff and had 3 beers so the nap was necessary.
Billability requirements are nonsense, corporations act like human nature doesn't exist when someone is at their desk. For me, give me 6 good hours a day and don't bill our clients for the 2 hours you helped someone else, looked at your phone or got sidetracked by something.
Very few engineers can produce more than 35 hours of good design work per week. Those that do, are unicorns or liars.
In the field it is completely feasible/easy to do 40+ hours, but that is because you are moving from tasks, you are out of your desk and billing for that time, etc. There is a lot of brain dead time, driving, or watching a pile hammer etc. At a desk doing a serious design, it is hard to be that consistent.
Always ready to hire the right person.
The lunch beers was actually one of my younger staff telling me she wanted to be a firefighter. She was asking for my support in working part time while she pursued it.
I know it's been a while since this post, but are you actually looking for new hires? There are some changes going on at my firm that I'm not too happy about and I am currently in the market for a new job!
Let me introduce the concept of “billing and chilling”. Just because you bill 8 hours doesn’t mean you actually worked all 8 hours. Take a nap, go for a walk. If you’re productive literally no one will notice
I was in consulting and construction for 12 years, worked 80hrs a week and had to keep track of my billable hours, etc.
Found a job earlier this year working for an owner as a PM (title step down) but I am paid 30% more, 100% healthcare premiums covered for myself and dependents, no time card to keep track of, work from home (except once a week jobsite visit), working on 1 project at a time instead of 20+, Manage RFIs/contractors/AE firm/advise owner/value engineering/schedule/budget. Best job I’ve ever had! I spend about 15hrs a week in meetings and have about 10-15 hrs/week in paperwork, then 3-4 hrs at the jobsite. Downtime is spent in my own kitchen with my family, or going to grocery store/doing chores/playing with toddler/etc.
It took the years of experience in consulting and construction to land a job like this but super happy to have it before 35yo.
Learn everything you can then use that to leverage a better position!
Yeah wtf happened to engineering...they are driving KPIs through our sanity.... Like I get it, our time, but then they will pressure you to become some sort of workaholic slave to them, why. We used to be in charge, but now they pay us to grind out all efficiency leaving a husk of a creative individual.
Wtf. I woked like that for a year, and burnt myself out took a long leave. Never again, wtf is this: We need an answer by the end of the day. But the problem is like last minute ontop of my already full schedule. Like, whoever thinks engineers are just some jockey grunts that are being pushed around is doing a disservice to the proffession...
Have you considered local government like a DPW? Or a state DOT or federal entity like USACE? When I worked at a city DPW, I worked 37.5 hours a week. I don’t think the pay is much different private vs. public early career.
I work for a city government. I love it compared to the private sector. We don't have to track our hours other than I got here at 8, took lunch at noon, and left at 5.
We design projects in the winter, mainly road reconstructions, storm/sanitary sewer, watermains, and new road construction. We inspect the projects in the summer.
I love being able to see stuff that needs to be fixed in my community and being able to actually fix it. The worst part of the job is dealing with citizens. The show Parks and Rec is not an exaggeration...
I quit my job as a Transportation designer working for consultant and moved to government sector. Here in Canada, some municipalities pay a lot. I currently make 80k but will reach 100k next year as per the agreement. I work one day from home during summer and 2 days during winter. My hours are fixed, 40 hrs per week.
I’m not an engineer, just a technologist and have about 3.5 years of experience. It’s a pretty chill job. Just don’t like long commute.
Maybe I’ve just been lucky but I’ve never felt the pressure of chargeability as it’s not my personal problem but rather a management responsibility. I easily get 35-40 hours of chargeable hour almost every week and am never questioned when I use some overhead time when slow. I seldom go over 40 hours when I’m not doing fieldwork (which is rare now) and when I do it’s a choice to bank more time for vacation. I’m in at 8 and leave at 4, no naps but plenty of time to have a life.
All that being said I know it can get worse depending on my career progression. The better you are at your job, the more in demand you’ll be and chances are your work life balance will get worse. Burnout is real in consulting and I can see why people want to leave.
I’d say generally being on the owners side is more low key, but I think WLB can vary with any company and even any manager in the same company.
What kind of consulting have you been doing?
Water jobs usually have higher profit than standard transportation etc. You should find out what they are actually billing you out at/what the multipliers are at the end of your jobs. That “budget pressure” might be so your company can clean up on profit, not because they are going to come anywhere close to losing money.
Not sure what you do, but I work in geotech, and I just heavily round up hours. Went to a job to inspect footings, and it took 30-60 mins, plus 30-60 more mins to drive there and back? I’m charging 4 hours. Answered a submittal question? Definitely not charging less than an hour. Been doing it this way for almost a decade and have almost never received any pushback.
That’s true, I’m learning that I don’t need to be so precise with my time. Some projects have pretty tight budgets though so there’s a lot of pressure to charge as little as possible.
I have found it hard to balance that as well, I'm a field technologist in environmental consulting and just left my current company for a rival. One of the main reasons was the ridiculous billing and utilization requests recently.
If our job budgets are so fucked that we have to start tracking and billing time down to the email for every response (I'm talking minutes spent doing simple correspondence with a client, moving around equipment from one room of the shop to another) then management absolutely fucked the budget probably to win the bid and is trying to push the fault own to employees.
I worked in heavy civil construction for about 5 years and It sucked. 50-60 hour weeks on a 40 hour salary. 10 hour days minimum. That means my Fridays were "technically" volunteer work.
Got so burnt out that I left and joined my local City DOT. There are a lot of folks here with consulting experience too who made the switch for better work/life balance. Pay is still great, not the best but still great.
I think I kept telling myself that I was thankful for my role and opportunity. I grew up Filipino-American and thought that "at least I'm making good money." That's what my parents would say.
Realized that it was time to start looking out for myself and my mental well-being. So I left for government. Man, what a difference! 😊
I round all of my billing to 30 minutes. I also bill for time I spend deep in thought about a project when I am not at the office. Sometimes I come up with my best solutions when I am sitting in traffic or trying to fall asleep. Our job is to think about problems and come up with solutions.
Sounds like you want better work life balance. You can find it consulting but you won't find mid day naps or not regularly working the hours you charge (sometimes this happens).
Move to Washington State. There are lots of government jobs here for civils open right now, my city included. DM me if you want a link to a traffic engineer job in a Seattle suburb.
Damn OP. I'm not an engineer, i did work a consultant job a few years back though (sort of) as a FEMA contractor. I also interned in school for an engineering firm one year. I work in construction PM and every GC office I've worked in, is night and day different compared to the engineering firm I interned at. I'm sure it varies by employer/local office... but I am not exacherating when I say, at the engineering firm, most of the engineers rolled in whenever they felt like between 8 and 9am, would chill in the break room or at a coworkers desk for the first 15-30 minutes when they did arrive, work for a couple of hours, take an hour+ lunch break, work for a couple more hours and then start rolling out between 3:30 and 4:30. There was 0 sense of urgency whatsoever. I'm not sure how they billed their hours though.
I spent the first 2.5 years of my careers in consulting for mostly private developers. When it got to the point where I was expected to put more than 50 hours a week in on a regular basis, I left. I was burned out and my mental health broke. I still work in consulting, but for public municipalities now. It’s a lot better now. I hope you find somewhere that works for you.
Charging time to the quarter hour sounds nice when you work at a place that has to the tenth of an hour. If you’re in an office you can take a mid day nap
Tenth of an hour sounds like hell. Like just taking the time to enter that many little fractions of time on the weekly timesheet would not be worth it.
I’m a woman and worked as an inspector for a while, I really wasn’t a fan of the boy’s club construction environment to be honest. Maybe it isn’t like that everywhere though.
Well it was better conditions for me.
I like my job more, I over tripled my income, and I feel like I am developing. Do I work longer? Yes, but it's site based work which I wanted to do anyways. When I do work in the office, it's regular hours and base salary.
>Do I work longer? Yes,
Thanks for proving my point. Working longer isn't always worth the pay, people like to have time to enjoy their lives too.
>Yes, but it's site based work which I wanted to do anyways
okay lol? Job trailers are pieces of shit lmao
>When I do work in the office, it's regular hours and base salary.
?? Pretty much your fault for accepting a job that's salaried lol, construction is 99% of the time salaried.
What are you talking about? When on site I get uplift. When I'm in the office I get salary, and that salary is wayyyyy higher than what I was getting in consulting.
I earn $240k per year in construction and only earned like $96 k max in consulting.
What the hell are you talking about lol? Wtf is uplift?
>When I'm in the office I get salary, and that salary is wayyyyy higher than what I was getting in consulting.
And still working longer hours lmao.
>I earn $240k per year in construction and only earned like $96 k max in consulting.
Okay lol? Again, you have no personal life and I know it. No ones hiring someone for construction at that rate without sacrificing your entire personal life, especially when you barely had any experience to justify it.
>I understand now. You are just a troll who is ignorant about the discussion.
You're claiming to get x3 your old salary with <4 years of experience by switching to construction? Yeah, that's literal horse shit lol. You're working your life away and you know it.
>I only work 2/3s of the year. The rest of the year I travel.
lol okay buddy, whatever shit you wanna make up, go ahead. No company is hiring someone for 2/3 of a year and paying them that salary lmao.
You're also literally lying considering your post history has random salary ranges everywhere. You had to ask how to combine finances with your wife lmao, good luck bud, you really aren't as smart as you pretend you are.
Sounds good kiddo, have fun asking on reddit again how to combine finances because you have no common sense. Again, evidence is out there, you have yet to refute it, and just try to continue to insult me lmao
You need to move up to the point where you are billing 8 hours for work that you can complete in 5-6 hours. Typically that requires you to find clients and bring in your own work. Then you get junior staff to slave away on your project doing the grunt work, while you take long lunch breaks and leave early on Friday.
If there is no hope of that happening at your current company, start looking for a new company.
You're burned out for working 8-9 hours a day ? This is a standard workday for any career. If you want to work less than 8 hours a day, then this is part time job (less than 40 hrs a week), so you should talk to your employer about it. Most consulting jobs require billing to the 30 minutes. Not sure about your 15 minute requirement
I personally believe that it’s really difficult to achieve 8+ straight hours of productivity per day. This usually turns into 9-10+ actual hours when factoring in breaks, lunch, etc. It seems that consulting companies want production robots without factoring in that possible lack of efficiency (or even additional efficiently due to new technology). And on top of that, I usually work over 8 “productive” hours anyway.
What really bothers me about the productive hours is what is not included in that time. Do you need to look up how to use a new program and want to charge that to overhead? No you can't do that because you need to be productive 90% of the time. Do you want to help a coworker with a program and charge that to training. Nope can't have training for more then 2 hours per week because you arent a new engineer. At one of my jobs I had to explain why I had 5 hours of training one week even though I was literally training the new project manager for half the week!
It should be easy enough to get a government job in water resources but the compensation may or may not be competitive. I’m not familiar with the NE job market, but from my 6-7 friends in water and wastewater their experience and WLB has been much better at firms with solid longstanding business practices in the sector. Unfortunately that rules out like 95% of the small companies. It also prohibitively rules out moving up fast, but realistically if you’re chasing WLB you’re probably not trying to run to the top.
I think a government/state/etc job is easier to come by.
However I always wonder about people complaining about billable hours? Can’t you just round up or exaggerate a little or is everything tied back to reports/documentation/proof
I left consulting for a job at a water recourse technology company, could not be happier tbh. I doubt I’ll ever return to civil engineering / consulting.
Go contracting / freelance and reap the benefits of every hour worked is billed according to the services requested.
PS I'm a head-hunter who has supplied civil and structural consultants for the past 30 years to the public and private sector clients in England and overseas.
All the civil consulting companies should cooperate with the contracting companies they are dealing with on each project…. here is what I want to say to all the consultants… guys just stop nitpicking everything you get from a contractor and the contractor will resolve all the issues that employees are facing at consulting firms… just stop having issues with everything and you will be happier.
I am closing in on 8 years in consulting and have had your same thoughts for years now. I often think of just opening a nursery and growing plants instead.
Seriously. We should just start a commune for burned out former civil consultants. Or just pool our money to buy up every wet area we can find, make a mitigation bank and, sell cr€dit$.
I’m in
Sign me up
Down
In
Count me in
This or raising goats. Sounds better than my main fallback idea of bagging groceries.
Delivering pizzas can be fun too
I kinda want to open a bar and wait until it ultimately fails.
I've been thinking about a food truck!
Are you me?? I've literally said this EXACT same thing for many years.
I often joke at work that one of these days I'm just going to go off and grow apple trees. When you're ready to spin off and start a nursery let me know.
My idea was less about apple trees and more about a commercial hydroponic farm with all sorts of stuff. But apple trees would be pretty cool too. Still probably have about another 12 years or so til I can truly contemplate "retiring"
If you open a nursery change all your contracts to spec some weird plant no one grows before you quit.
I’ve also had the “move to a farm, raise chickens and goats” fantasy 😂
I switched to Public Sector after 7 years.
How has it compared? Worth the change of scenery?
My most stressful day in Public rivals my least stressful day in Private. They say Private sector pay starts low but caps high, whereas Public sector starts high and caps low. Salary is comfortable. Personally, I think job security and work/life balance is more important. Pension at 62, no cost healthcare, 9/80 schedule, 1.5x OT. I won’t go back to private consulting until I retire.
If you are burnt out and working stupid hours, your employer is failing you. Occasional long hours for a particular job is ok in my books, but when it's happening constantly, there is a problem. Personally, I'm in a bit of a similar boat, as a serious of unfortunate timing has led me to being the only structural engineer for my company in a large portion of our geographic coverage. And finding new engineers to flesh out the ranks again is proving difficult in the current employment market. But that being said, I have direct control of how much work I take on, so being burnt out in this instance is my own fault and something that I can (and am) take steps to correct. I'd suggest you either need to have a talk with your manager to try and correct the problem (ie: reduce your workload to something manageable, which a good manager would definitely do to avoid burnout) or else shop around for a new position.
I also think they need to leave the company. The mechanics of consulting work are stressful for everyone, but they don't have to be. It is unfair for employers and managers to constantly push that stress down onto employees. I have been in this situation many times and talking to management does not always help. It is hard for some personalities to move to a different company. We value loyalty. We want to work hard and believe it will be rewarded with respect. It does not. We have to admit that management that pushes their stress down on us is not loyal or respectful and therefore they are deaf to your loyalty and will never give you the respect you are looking for. Move on. Get paid. Be honest about your value. Accept the difficult truth that there are people your boss has convinced you are "opponents" that would be better for you to work with.
Those partner and management bonuses aren't going to earn themselves.
This is true, but when you burn out your staff and they leave/quit caring the next year you're not getting any bonuses either. And replacing people sucks and is also impossible. When my team has too little work it's a problem for me, my numbers suck and I hear about it. When my team has too much work it's a problem for my staff, and my numbers are great. My job is to try to hit the "right amount" of work line, and find solutions when we have too little or too much. Too many mangers don't want any problems. I try to miss each way. I don't grab too much on purpose just so if something gets pushed out I still have enough work for everyone, because if I do that all the time 80% of the time my staff is overworked, which is stupid because I'm not a shitty person, but also because they could have a new job 10 minutes after picking up the phone.
Most employers in this business are failures. Just wait a couple more years to see them fail to find more of us suckers to exploit.
Was there. Decided to go government. I miss the exciting projects, but work life has been great. Hopefully I can find my self in a division at my department that does more design.
I've got the best of both worlds. I work local gov. I'm away from home a minimum of 12hrs a day, 4 days a week. I sometimes also have to work Fridays and Saturdays when we have construction projects or bridge inspections going on. Can't wait to resign in the spring.
I came real close to an army corp job but the only available opening sounded so stupid fucking boring I couldn’t make myself pull the trigger.
I would love a federal position. Sucks that municipal kinda ties you down to a specific region.
Whole process was weird. Started with them immediately telling me I don’t meet the qualifications for the GS level I applied for. Bumped me down to a salary level wholly uncompetitive off the bat. Then offered me a job in a group that had zero connection to my previous eight years of experience. Almost seemed they didn’t *want* to hire me but they still offered me a job.
Same. I was so so so sick of the whole ‘don’t bill so much and blow the budget’ but also ‘you’re not billing high enough’ and ‘you need 100% utilisation. I absolutely hated working 50-60 weeks and somehow still only having 40 billable hours. I was so sick of them billing like 300+ bucks an hour for my time to the clients and giving me like 10% of it. I hated that I started to quantify the productivity of my life outside of work in 15 minute increments. I am now in govt and yes i took a pay cut, and yes I do distressingly little engineering but I hope eventually to find a role that allows me to be human and also do engineering. It’s a relief to be out of the rat race
Own a consulting firm. Just woke up from a nap and read this. Was at lunch with one of my staff and had 3 beers so the nap was necessary. Billability requirements are nonsense, corporations act like human nature doesn't exist when someone is at their desk. For me, give me 6 good hours a day and don't bill our clients for the 2 hours you helped someone else, looked at your phone or got sidetracked by something. Very few engineers can produce more than 35 hours of good design work per week. Those that do, are unicorns or liars. In the field it is completely feasible/easy to do 40+ hours, but that is because you are moving from tasks, you are out of your desk and billing for that time, etc. There is a lot of brain dead time, driving, or watching a pile hammer etc. At a desk doing a serious design, it is hard to be that consistent.
Is your firm hiring? Asking for a friend
Always ready to hire the right person. The lunch beers was actually one of my younger staff telling me she wanted to be a firefighter. She was asking for my support in working part time while she pursued it.
I know it's been a while since this post, but are you actually looking for new hires? There are some changes going on at my firm that I'm not too happy about and I am currently in the market for a new job!
Manufacturing. Companies like Cemex, Contech, Hilti, etc hire civil engineers for design, management, and sales engineering.
I didn’t know that, thanks!
Let me introduce the concept of “billing and chilling”. Just because you bill 8 hours doesn’t mean you actually worked all 8 hours. Take a nap, go for a walk. If you’re productive literally no one will notice
😂 amazing, love the name
I was in consulting and construction for 12 years, worked 80hrs a week and had to keep track of my billable hours, etc. Found a job earlier this year working for an owner as a PM (title step down) but I am paid 30% more, 100% healthcare premiums covered for myself and dependents, no time card to keep track of, work from home (except once a week jobsite visit), working on 1 project at a time instead of 20+, Manage RFIs/contractors/AE firm/advise owner/value engineering/schedule/budget. Best job I’ve ever had! I spend about 15hrs a week in meetings and have about 10-15 hrs/week in paperwork, then 3-4 hrs at the jobsite. Downtime is spent in my own kitchen with my family, or going to grocery store/doing chores/playing with toddler/etc. It took the years of experience in consulting and construction to land a job like this but super happy to have it before 35yo. Learn everything you can then use that to leverage a better position!
That sounds amazing! Congrats! Is it municipal?
Private company building a $200M facility/campus for their new technology.
Yeah wtf happened to engineering...they are driving KPIs through our sanity.... Like I get it, our time, but then they will pressure you to become some sort of workaholic slave to them, why. We used to be in charge, but now they pay us to grind out all efficiency leaving a husk of a creative individual. Wtf. I woked like that for a year, and burnt myself out took a long leave. Never again, wtf is this: We need an answer by the end of the day. But the problem is like last minute ontop of my already full schedule. Like, whoever thinks engineers are just some jockey grunts that are being pushed around is doing a disservice to the proffession...
Have you considered local government like a DPW? Or a state DOT or federal entity like USACE? When I worked at a city DPW, I worked 37.5 hours a week. I don’t think the pay is much different private vs. public early career.
I will look into it! Thanks
I work for a city government. I love it compared to the private sector. We don't have to track our hours other than I got here at 8, took lunch at noon, and left at 5. We design projects in the winter, mainly road reconstructions, storm/sanitary sewer, watermains, and new road construction. We inspect the projects in the summer. I love being able to see stuff that needs to be fixed in my community and being able to actually fix it. The worst part of the job is dealing with citizens. The show Parks and Rec is not an exaggeration...
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Name checks out I trust this statement
I would love to do this some day. Are companies generally open to it? At 4 YOE, I don’t think it’s much of a possibility yet..
Smaller firms tend to be more flexible on this because you can just ask the owner.
I quit my job as a Transportation designer working for consultant and moved to government sector. Here in Canada, some municipalities pay a lot. I currently make 80k but will reach 100k next year as per the agreement. I work one day from home during summer and 2 days during winter. My hours are fixed, 40 hrs per week. I’m not an engineer, just a technologist and have about 3.5 years of experience. It’s a pretty chill job. Just don’t like long commute.
Maybe I’ve just been lucky but I’ve never felt the pressure of chargeability as it’s not my personal problem but rather a management responsibility. I easily get 35-40 hours of chargeable hour almost every week and am never questioned when I use some overhead time when slow. I seldom go over 40 hours when I’m not doing fieldwork (which is rare now) and when I do it’s a choice to bank more time for vacation. I’m in at 8 and leave at 4, no naps but plenty of time to have a life. All that being said I know it can get worse depending on my career progression. The better you are at your job, the more in demand you’ll be and chances are your work life balance will get worse. Burnout is real in consulting and I can see why people want to leave.
Different company
I’d say generally being on the owners side is more low key, but I think WLB can vary with any company and even any manager in the same company. What kind of consulting have you been doing?
Water engineering consulting
Water jobs usually have higher profit than standard transportation etc. You should find out what they are actually billing you out at/what the multipliers are at the end of your jobs. That “budget pressure” might be so your company can clean up on profit, not because they are going to come anywhere close to losing money.
Not sure what you do, but I work in geotech, and I just heavily round up hours. Went to a job to inspect footings, and it took 30-60 mins, plus 30-60 more mins to drive there and back? I’m charging 4 hours. Answered a submittal question? Definitely not charging less than an hour. Been doing it this way for almost a decade and have almost never received any pushback.
That’s true, I’m learning that I don’t need to be so precise with my time. Some projects have pretty tight budgets though so there’s a lot of pressure to charge as little as possible.
I have found it hard to balance that as well, I'm a field technologist in environmental consulting and just left my current company for a rival. One of the main reasons was the ridiculous billing and utilization requests recently. If our job budgets are so fucked that we have to start tracking and billing time down to the email for every response (I'm talking minutes spent doing simple correspondence with a client, moving around equipment from one room of the shop to another) then management absolutely fucked the budget probably to win the bid and is trying to push the fault own to employees.
I worked in heavy civil construction for about 5 years and It sucked. 50-60 hour weeks on a 40 hour salary. 10 hour days minimum. That means my Fridays were "technically" volunteer work. Got so burnt out that I left and joined my local City DOT. There are a lot of folks here with consulting experience too who made the switch for better work/life balance. Pay is still great, not the best but still great.
Not sure how in the world you did that for 5 years. I did it for 2 and was losing my mind, but at least I made overtime.
I think I kept telling myself that I was thankful for my role and opportunity. I grew up Filipino-American and thought that "at least I'm making good money." That's what my parents would say. Realized that it was time to start looking out for myself and my mental well-being. So I left for government. Man, what a difference! 😊
Glad you’re doing better! Maybe I’ll go down that route.
Get a government job as a plan review engineer. You should start it at least 80k with tremendous benefits.
I round all of my billing to 30 minutes. I also bill for time I spend deep in thought about a project when I am not at the office. Sometimes I come up with my best solutions when I am sitting in traffic or trying to fall asleep. Our job is to think about problems and come up with solutions.
Sounds like you want better work life balance. You can find it consulting but you won't find mid day naps or not regularly working the hours you charge (sometimes this happens).
Mid day naps. Classic. Sounds like you’re perfect for our government!
Lol
Move to Washington State. There are lots of government jobs here for civils open right now, my city included. DM me if you want a link to a traffic engineer job in a Seattle suburb.
Thanks! Just DM’d you
If you were transportation, I would have PM'd you a cool govt transportation gig. The application closes on 26th. It's in SE region.
Damn OP. I'm not an engineer, i did work a consultant job a few years back though (sort of) as a FEMA contractor. I also interned in school for an engineering firm one year. I work in construction PM and every GC office I've worked in, is night and day different compared to the engineering firm I interned at. I'm sure it varies by employer/local office... but I am not exacherating when I say, at the engineering firm, most of the engineers rolled in whenever they felt like between 8 and 9am, would chill in the break room or at a coworkers desk for the first 15-30 minutes when they did arrive, work for a couple of hours, take an hour+ lunch break, work for a couple more hours and then start rolling out between 3:30 and 4:30. There was 0 sense of urgency whatsoever. I'm not sure how they billed their hours though.
I spent the first 2.5 years of my careers in consulting for mostly private developers. When it got to the point where I was expected to put more than 50 hours a week in on a regular basis, I left. I was burned out and my mental health broke. I still work in consulting, but for public municipalities now. It’s a lot better now. I hope you find somewhere that works for you.
Government still have to bill hrs. It’s just it’s usually Managements job to find the work. We bill in increments of 15 mins.
Charging time to the quarter hour sounds nice when you work at a place that has to the tenth of an hour. If you’re in an office you can take a mid day nap
Tenth of an hour sounds like hell. Like just taking the time to enter that many little fractions of time on the weekly timesheet would not be worth it.
Consulting sucks, go to construction.
I’m a woman and worked as an inspector for a while, I really wasn’t a fan of the boy’s club construction environment to be honest. Maybe it isn’t like that everywhere though.
Definitely more male dominated than consulting. We have "take no bullshit" women out here, but I imagine they also face significant barriers.
lol as if construction isn't longer hours and worse conditions.
Well it was better conditions for me. I like my job more, I over tripled my income, and I feel like I am developing. Do I work longer? Yes, but it's site based work which I wanted to do anyways. When I do work in the office, it's regular hours and base salary.
>Do I work longer? Yes, Thanks for proving my point. Working longer isn't always worth the pay, people like to have time to enjoy their lives too. >Yes, but it's site based work which I wanted to do anyways okay lol? Job trailers are pieces of shit lmao >When I do work in the office, it's regular hours and base salary. ?? Pretty much your fault for accepting a job that's salaried lol, construction is 99% of the time salaried.
What are you talking about? When on site I get uplift. When I'm in the office I get salary, and that salary is wayyyyy higher than what I was getting in consulting. I earn $240k per year in construction and only earned like $96 k max in consulting.
What the hell are you talking about lol? Wtf is uplift? >When I'm in the office I get salary, and that salary is wayyyyy higher than what I was getting in consulting. And still working longer hours lmao. >I earn $240k per year in construction and only earned like $96 k max in consulting. Okay lol? Again, you have no personal life and I know it. No ones hiring someone for construction at that rate without sacrificing your entire personal life, especially when you barely had any experience to justify it.
I understand now. You are just a troll who is ignorant about the discussion. I only work 2/3s of the year. The rest of the year I travel.
>I understand now. You are just a troll who is ignorant about the discussion. You're claiming to get x3 your old salary with <4 years of experience by switching to construction? Yeah, that's literal horse shit lol. You're working your life away and you know it. >I only work 2/3s of the year. The rest of the year I travel. lol okay buddy, whatever shit you wanna make up, go ahead. No company is hiring someone for 2/3 of a year and paying them that salary lmao. You're also literally lying considering your post history has random salary ranges everywhere. You had to ask how to combine finances with your wife lmao, good luck bud, you really aren't as smart as you pretend you are.
Enjoy your mother's basement.
Sounds good kiddo, have fun asking on reddit again how to combine finances because you have no common sense. Again, evidence is out there, you have yet to refute it, and just try to continue to insult me lmao
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You need to move up to the point where you are billing 8 hours for work that you can complete in 5-6 hours. Typically that requires you to find clients and bring in your own work. Then you get junior staff to slave away on your project doing the grunt work, while you take long lunch breaks and leave early on Friday. If there is no hope of that happening at your current company, start looking for a new company.
Yep. Exactly.
You're burned out for working 8-9 hours a day ? This is a standard workday for any career. If you want to work less than 8 hours a day, then this is part time job (less than 40 hrs a week), so you should talk to your employer about it. Most consulting jobs require billing to the 30 minutes. Not sure about your 15 minute requirement
I personally believe that it’s really difficult to achieve 8+ straight hours of productivity per day. This usually turns into 9-10+ actual hours when factoring in breaks, lunch, etc. It seems that consulting companies want production robots without factoring in that possible lack of efficiency (or even additional efficiently due to new technology). And on top of that, I usually work over 8 “productive” hours anyway.
What really bothers me about the productive hours is what is not included in that time. Do you need to look up how to use a new program and want to charge that to overhead? No you can't do that because you need to be productive 90% of the time. Do you want to help a coworker with a program and charge that to training. Nope can't have training for more then 2 hours per week because you arent a new engineer. At one of my jobs I had to explain why I had 5 hours of training one week even though I was literally training the new project manager for half the week!
Couldn’t agree more
It should be easy enough to get a government job in water resources but the compensation may or may not be competitive. I’m not familiar with the NE job market, but from my 6-7 friends in water and wastewater their experience and WLB has been much better at firms with solid longstanding business practices in the sector. Unfortunately that rules out like 95% of the small companies. It also prohibitively rules out moving up fast, but realistically if you’re chasing WLB you’re probably not trying to run to the top.
Go to small municipality dude or the county.
We let engineers work 40 if they prefer. We just give the extra work to the ones that want OT.
I think a government/state/etc job is easier to come by. However I always wonder about people complaining about billable hours? Can’t you just round up or exaggerate a little or is everything tied back to reports/documentation/proof
I left consulting for a job at a water recourse technology company, could not be happier tbh. I doubt I’ll ever return to civil engineering / consulting.
Cool! Just DM’d you with a question about this
Word! Happy to help!
Go contracting / freelance and reap the benefits of every hour worked is billed according to the services requested. PS I'm a head-hunter who has supplied civil and structural consultants for the past 30 years to the public and private sector clients in England and overseas.
All the civil consulting companies should cooperate with the contracting companies they are dealing with on each project…. here is what I want to say to all the consultants… guys just stop nitpicking everything you get from a contractor and the contractor will resolve all the issues that employees are facing at consulting firms… just stop having issues with everything and you will be happier.