Hey, it’s Collin. Welcome to Engineering Echelons, a newsletter full of ideas and insights to help engineers excel at management.

Here’s what I’ve got for you this week.

• New and noteworthy news

• Something to consider

• Some insights to delve into

• And more…

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Alright, let’s get into it.

Noteworthy Headlines

Compensation Trends in AEC (Zweig Group)

Highlights:

• Diverging salary changes between engineers and architects. Last year, engineers received an average 8.8% increase; architects received an average 1%.

• The largest difference was between engineering and architecture managers. Engineering managers received an average 8.4% increase; architecture managers received an average 3.9% decrease.

• Fast-growth firms (annual revenue growth rate >20%) had the highest salary increases; stable-growth firms (annual revenue unchanged) had the middle amount of salary increases; slow-growth firms (annual revenue growth between 1% and 19%) brought up the rear in salary increases.

New Orleans Terror Attack Lawsuit Targets Engineer, Contractor, and City (ENR)

Thoughts:

• This is an important reminder that your decisions literally alter the physical world we live in, and as a result, there is a lingering risk associated with the work performed. Consider how each decision impacts the risk profile to help manage risks.

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Consider This Thought

Hiring people is necessary for growth. However, an engineer who creates a team by hiring two people does not automatically equal a team of three. At least not at first from an output perspective.

When a person joins a team, training is required. Even if they are experienced in the field, there are differences between the way they have done things in the past and how their new company does things. Informal networks need to be learned, compliance methodology, etc. For these reasons, let’s call them an untrained person.

To become a trained person, there needs to be training. And oftentimes that training requires time from existing employees.

Let’s try to quantify this.

Imagine the scenario above, where a trained engineer has hired two untrained engineers. Assume they work 40-hour weeks. If the trained engineer spends about 10 hours per week with each untrained engineer (total of 20 hours per week), and the untrained engineers are roughly half as productive as the trained engineer, the total output is equal to 1.5 trained engineers ((1 trained engineer × 0.5 productivity) + (2 untrained engineers × 0.5 productivity) = 1.5 trained engineers).

Eventually, the untrained engineers will become trained, which opens the door to hiring more untrained engineers and the team keeps growing.

There are two big takeaways from this thought experiment, one quantitative and one qualitative.

Quantitatively, it’s clear that the more efficient and effective training programs are, the quicker the conversion of an untrained engineer to a trained engineer, which is a competitive advantage. The organization that minimizes that conversion time increases output faster, which allows it to grow quicker. This can be done by strategically hiring, using technology to aid training, and combining training into groups.

Qualitatively, the type of person who will most likely be hired (to fit the quantitative efficiencies) is someone who fits into the system well and will take the least amount of time to become trained. This might be fine for some positions like those that directly contribute to project/product production. However, hiring the same type of people homogenizes the staff, which contributes to organizational fragility. Remember that there is a lot of value in diversity of experience.

Delve Into These Insights

Warren Buffett on hiring:

“We look for three things when we hire people. We look for intelligence, we look for initiative, and we look for integrity. And if they don’t have the latter, the first two will kill you. Because if you’re going to get someone without integrity, you want them lazy and dumb.”

—

Daniel Pink on money as a motivator:

“The best use of money as a motivator is to pay people enough to take the issue of money off the table.”

—

Marcus Aurelius on seeking the truth:

“If anyone can refute me—show me I’m making a mistake or looking at things from the wrong perspective—I’ll gladly change. It’s the truth I’m after, and the truth never harmed anyone. What harms us is to persist in self-deceit and ignorance.”

Level Up With This Resource

Why Open Secrets are a Big Problem (MIT)

An open secret is a piece of information that is widely known but never acknowledged as such. These can be wide-ranging, but oftentimes they skirt moral lines. As a leader, you have an outsized impact on open secrets and if they are permitted to permeate the team culture.

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Or…

• Let me know if you’ve found something worth sharing.

• Let me know what challenges you’re having as a manager.

• Let me know what challenges you see other managers having.

Send me an email at [email protected]

Looking forward to hearing from you. See you next time.

Collin

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