I've never discussed 1on1s with my peers before. Most of the time, nothing is really worth talking about. This week, all our 1on1s were our year-end reviews. And it's the first time we all got together to discuss how each of ours went.

I guess the win is that we all got the same feedback (since I'm the only woman, it's why I consider the fair treatment a small win). But the loss is the feedback we got. We're all fairly pissed. Apparently, and this is news to us, the leadership teams get together for a peer review of what each manager's ratings are for each of their team members.

My own specific feedback was:

• I need to communicate when I'm going to be OOO for recurring meetings.
  • This one pisses me off the most. During Oct 2024, I had PTO, all day training, physical inventory, and the SWE conference W/Th/Fri for every week. I marked myself OOO on my calendar and had automatic replies set. As soon as I came back, the manager of the recurring meetings came to ask me about it. And I explained to him I was marked OOO with automatic replies and everything that I had. He acknowledged it and SAID NOTHING ELSE. But apparently, this was a sticking point when my manager submitted my rating.
• Need to follow thru on commitments
  • There is 1 project that I was handed when I first started here. It was never MY project; I was just asked to assist thru the transition. Well, because I'm the one that submitted the capital request, it turned into my project. Then, leadership didn't know what they wanted on it, SO IT SAT WAITING FOR THEM TO FIGURE IT OUT. So, I had committed to picking it back up in 2024, which I did. I DIDN'T COMMITT TO FINISHING IT, WTF???

For all my engineering peers (in my dept):

• We need to communicate more (frequently)
  • We've analyzed our emails before. We receive ~10 "FYI" emails daily and around 8 "We need you to do something" emails daily. Just averages across 4 of us. On average, we respond within the same week with solid answers. This is case-by-case, it depends on if we need to investigate anything and how long said investigation will take. Sometimes we can reply the same day without issue. Other times, it takes 5-7 business days (small joke, but seriously)
• We need to drive commitments (instead of waiting for someone else to take over)
  • This was intentionally worded for it to be vague on WHOSE commitments we are supposed to drive. regardless of who the owner of the commitment is, WE are supposed to drive it for it to be completed on time.
• We need to be more positive
  • This is from the stupid corporate survey they have us do every year. Our department scored terribly when it came to our perception of how well the company is doing as a whole.
  • The other factor to this feedback was about how we "always look for someone to blame" when we are dealing with issues. This even made the rest of our team members mad because all we have ever pushed for was accountability.

We shared out shitty reviews with the rest our department team (without or manager present). They felt bad for us, and we ALL were insanely deflated.

No, no one is on a PIP and, no, we didn't have unfavorable ratings. At least our manager came thru on that front and made sure we still were considered "adequate." But no one is happy. For sure thing is we're all opting out of the survey next year, and we have a collective plan to be maliciously compliant this entire year with their ridiculous feedback.

I updated my planner organization at the start of the year so that I can note everything I do every day, and a summary at the end of each week. I'm not used to taking the time to catalog everything like this. But looks like it's required this year.

Update to this: https://www.reddit.com/r/womenEngineers/comments/1iccbmt/would_these_messages_from_a_male_mentor_ever_be/

I just wanted to give a quick update because you all really saved me with your comments. I got really overwhelmed and upset by the amount of people telling me how bad this was so I just deleted the post, but I decided to report him and did it yesterday. I work at a large company with an external vendor that investigates these things and it seems like they're taking it very seriously since I've already been contacted twice reported it submitted yesterday. I had a bunch of breakdowns about this and second thoughts but I kept rereading everyone's comments and it helped me keep it together. Thank you again to this community.

Hi,

I’m looking for a structural engineer who might be interested in mentoring me in the design aspect of the field. If possible, I would be happy to give back in any way I can.

I recently completed my master’s degree, but I feel that I have been struggling with the technical aspects of structural design. I want to prove to myself and my team that I can be a strong engineer. I’m looking for someone with whom I feel comfortable asking questions without hesitation.

I am dedicated, but I sometimes get lost in my research, spending too much time searching for answers without finding them efficiently. I also experience stress and imposter syndrome, which sometimes causes me to freeze and overthink.

After my undergraduate degree, I worked for two years but was not exposed to technical design, leaving me with mostly repetitive tasks. That experience motivated me to pursue a master’s degree to gain the knowledge I was missing. I learned a lot, but I still have a lot to learn.

Thank you!

Since yall loved my post a few days ago, I thought I’d share another extremely sexist comment I have heard in the work place! 🙃🙃

I had an older male coworker, maybe 55-65 years old, and he had been with the company for a while. He would often come into my office and ask me super basic questions for things he should’ve known already and I figured he was just being weird or trying to get to know me as I had just started.

One time he stood right outside my office (my door was open), and started a conversation with another employee.

Male: Did we get any applications for the secretary position?

Other: Yes! We actually got quite a bit, I think around 30, but I’ve narrowed it down some.

Male: Make sure it’s a hot girl who is 25 and single!!

Me, a 25 year old single girl sitting quietly in my office listening to every word: 😮😮😮

Needless to say, I put my two week notice in that week! One of the worst jobs I have ever worked. It was a smaller company and had maybe 25-30 employees and they were all sexist and racist!

I made a post earlier about not feeling welcomed by my "new" team (I've been here for over six months now, not sure if that still counts as new). I did not end up bringing up that issue with my manager as the issues were social and not related to my work. I am still not invited to events off of company time.

Unfortunately I have a new issue with another coworker who seems to think that I am useless and is trying to micromanage me. This coworker is another regular engineer on the team, not a manager or lead. They have taken it upon themselves to give me tasking (which seems to be fine with our manager and lead, I've mentioned that Coworker has given me tasking and they say "ok" and move on) but it's clear that this coworker does not like me for whatever reason. They check in on me for an update on my work substantially more than any of my other coworkers, including the team leads and manager.

The coworker will tell me "do ABC" without giving me any other instruction and when I come back to them with my work I am given some sort of negative feedback like "this is wrong, you should've approached it like this instead." Once I was trying to complete a task for them using a program I had never seen before and some resources for it I found on the internet. I sent a screenshot and said something along the lines of "Hi Coworker, I'm doing the task you assigned me but the program is giving me an error. I've tried the steps on www.website.com and they don't seem to be working, would you mind helping me out?" and all I got was something along the lines of "read the error message." what it's worth, yes I did, but the error message was a basic thing like "failed to connect to the server." I eventually asked a different coworker for help.

None of their comments have ever been HR-levels of problematic, but the way that they're giving me feedback is seriously discouraging me. I dread going to work and getting messages from this person because I know that every interaction I have with them is going to be negative. Coworker has also publicly interrupted me in meetings and told me the way I've been approaching problems is wrong. Still, they will say the generic "reach out if you have questions" sort of message, but I am afraid of this person. I don't feel comfortable asking them questions since I know that I'll just be chastised for asking.

I have a mentor now but it's another person on the team who is good friends with the negative coworker and I don't trust either of them with this sort of question. Since this is work-related, how do I bring it up with my manager? I still can't leave the job for 2 full years (July 2026) without having to pay back the signing bonus which I can't afford. I'm struggling to make do as it is.

As an aerospace engineer I am appalled.

https://apnews.com/article/plane-crash-washington-dc-trump-dei-claims-3ac5486ec594d81e919e8ebbd9733869

Can I add that it is so disrespectful to the mourning families to start spouting this kind of garbage.

Edit: Both CRJ and Blackhawk pilots appear to be white male. The Tower also has a male sounding voice. Please correct if I’m wrong.

Edit2: News article with helicopter acknowledgment of CRJ

I'm 30 with about 8 years of experience. No kids yet. I recently started a new job, in a contract to hire position. It's been about 3 months, so I've been getting up to speed on the product until now.

Every. Single. Time. I am introduced to someone new, they ask me if I'm an intern and I am lost for words every time. I understand my round face shape makes me appear a bit younger but I'm not flattered one bit.

I don't want to be passive aggressive or rude, but this is making me really upset. I just wish that I had a canned response for this type of interaction that's better than "no, I'm not an intern."

Any ideas? Or maybe just some commiseration would make me feel better?

I’m a college student studying engineering, and I’m curious to hear from women who are already in the workforce, do you think trumps DEI executive order will affect our opportunities in the work place ?

I am mid-career and honestly too old to be this nervous about this. But here I am, not being able to sleep thinking about it.

I was laid off last fall. After 4 months of looking, I was offered a 6 month contract role. If you don't know, in contracting, the money is great and the benefits are bad. Otherwise, it's an okay job, no big complaints but nothing too thrilling. I have been here for 4 weeks. They are interested in hiring me full time, but that could be anywhere from 4-6 months from now, or not at all.

Yesterday I had an interview and today I got an offer for a role much more in my field. More responsibility and influence, better benefits. This is the role I was looking for throughout unemployment. I have to take it, but I have raging guilt and anxiety telling the current company. I don't like confrontation. I feel bad that I spent most of the last 4 weeks training and not contributing.

Is it going to be okay? Lol help.

So first off, disclaimers: this isn't a catastrophic problem, and, in general, I really like my job, coworkers and boss. I don't believe this is being done out of malice.

Example of a reoccurring situation:

(In a meeting with others)

Boss: I want the BOM done for this project as soon as possible.

Me: Are you sure? We don't have all the components finalized yet (and won't for weeks).

Boss: yeah, that's fine, just put in what we know for sure now, submit the paperwork, and we'll edit things later as we move forward

(I go and spend literally 3 days doing this, and bring the paperwork to his office so he can sign it)

Boss: Why did you already do the paperwork?

Me: I thought we said, in the meeting last week that we wanted it done asap?

Boss: well this doesn't make sense, it's a waste of time to make the BOM before we finalize the parts.

Me: right . . . I agree

Boss: so why did you do it?

Me: I was under the impression that you wanted it done now, to be updated as we go along. I'm sorry if I misunderstood something.

Him: oh, well you can always feel free to ask for clarification if you're confused.

It's like he doesn't remember what he explicitly told me to do. Other people on my team have noticed this to the point that they have literally said that I'm being gaslit.

But here's the thing, throughout this whole interaction, my boss never gets mad at me, he just seems genuinely confused. And he's a really nice person. Like the type of boss who lets you leave no questions asked if something personal comes up, and randomly takes my team out to lunch. Hell, he even checked in to see if I was doing ok the morning after the election results came in. Every time we have one of these "miscommunications" he seems to chalk it up to "fresh college grads being fresh college grads" and doesn't hold it against me or anything.

It just still makes me feel bad because whenever this happens I look incompetent and like I'm going crazy.

Another example of this was when we had a problem, and the boss asked me to come up with a solution. I designed something and showed him a sketch in my notebook (idea A). He said it would never work and suggested something else (idea B). In a meeting two days later, I brought up that I was about to start prototyping for idea B. He said that would never work. Boss then describes to a T, my original idea (A). I show him the sketch in my notebook from the last meeting. He says "exactly!". He orders supplies for it. I start working on it. He comes up to me, looks at the supplies that he ordered that I'm using to prototype for "his" (orginally my) idea, and says the whole thing won't work.

This didn't happen at all for the first several months I was at this company, but this month it has happened nonstop. I'm the newest employee on my team of 7 basically new college grads, the only female, and my boss is the CEO and founder of the company. So I can't really call him out (and wouldn't want to, because again, he's not being mean, he's just confusing the hell out of me). Any advice is appreciated!

Heya,

Throwaway for reasons.

Do y’all ever get a second, easy, throwaway job? I’m talking something that takes up maybe a total of one or 2 days a week. I can think of all the usual possibilities like retail or pet sitting, but I’m curious if anyone has any more interesting ideas for temporary second income.

For context, I’m a junior software engineer. I’ll be honest I’m making triple what I made previously in my last career. Maybe I shouldn’t be struggling so hard, but I’m also not a kid. I came into this job incredibly poor in my 30s, and life has only gotten significantly more expensive since. It wasn’t so bad a year ago, I had finally saved a little bit of money up. But then an unexpected cross country move and life circumstance hit and took that savings away. Not a sob story, just feel like I need to justify why I could possibly be struggling while in a job that for most people is a financial blessing of a lifetime.

I keep thinking if I could just get a throwaway second job to pull my head above water, I’ll have finally made it.

Update: I so appreciate everyone’s responses! It’s helped me get some perspective, and also confirmed that hopefully someday I’ll feel better about taking on a weekend job. There’s still time to catch myself back up. But for now, it’s probably best to just hunker down and try to make it through this rough patch. I really really do not want to jeopardize my current position, or let down my team and company, by being spread too thin.

Curious to know what amount of time is typical these days for maternity leave in the civil/environmental engineering world. I know that companies have been increasing their parental leave policy recently but not sure what is typical now.

Edit: Specifically wondering for people employed within the US

I got invited to do a pre-screen interview. I’m trying to pivot my career and applied for the quality engineer position. While I have the right “qualifications” and believe I have the right skills to be successful at this job. I do lack the direct experience that they might be looking for. I’m afraid I might not get a first interview. Any advice/tips would be greatly appreciated!

I currently am using a North Face Backpack. It has held up for YEARS and I do love it, but I’m looking for other recommendations for carrying my laptop, water bottle, small tool set, and normal lady items (pads, tampons, lipgloss, contacts, lotion, etc).

I got the North Face initially because I was traveling and it was easy to just kind of sling around from place to place and not have to pack/repack. I’m not opposed to another backpack, but open to other recommendations as well (Beis tote bag?).

Bonus if it’s a small business and double bonus if it’s women owned!

I’m looking for something to last another 5+ years if possible.

Thanks in advance!

What kinds of insane comments have you gotten from people in your career? Did it ever make you question continuing as an engineer? I’d love to hear any funny ones as well, I could use a laugh

Hello!

I'd love to get some feedback on this weird issue I've been having at work, and I'm totally open to hearing this is all in my head haha.

Basically there is this extremely nice, professional manager in a team adjacent to mine who I work closely with - we're a civil engineering firm with multiple sub-teams under one VP. This manager is awesome - super friendly, open, and great at his job! I really enjoy working with him. However, for the past year or so I've noticed this trend - when I try to speak on a Zoom call he immediately either say "oh hey you sound garbled/it's difficult to hear you" OR he'll say "oh did you mean to come off mute". Other people on the call will confirm they can hear me fine.... I've never heard him do this to someone else so it doesn't seem to be an issue with his audio. He also only seems to do this on higher stakes meetings when there are other managers in the room. A tiny part of me feels targetted and like he just doesn't want me speaking in these types of meetings?

I could totally be overthinking this and maybe he just honestly has a bad connection or headphones. But it just seems to happen way too frequently and only to me. Has anyone experienced this before? Do folks think I should try bringing this up gently? I was thinking something along the lines of "hey I noticed you've pointed out issues with my audio/unmuting several times, was curious what this is sounding like on your side"... or perhaps just asking my own manager for feedback? Open to any and all feedback here, thanks in advance!

I’m at a crossroads and I really don’t know what to do here.

I’ve been in my position for three years in June. We’ve gotten a spate of new hires in the last 6 months.

One was just brought on today. He wasn’t initially intended for our group, but he’s ours now. I am the only girl in the group.

The person selected to officially be assigned his mentor has been there five months. He was one of the new hires we just got. He admitted to me he didn’t feel like he could say no, and he feels wholly unprepared for this situation.

Meanwhile, I helped mentor him, another new hire, and our summer intern while their respective mentors were out.

I’ve had the discussion with my supervisor and the reason I was given feels unsatisfactory to me.

In addition to that, I have a large list of things that should’ve aligned me properly with promotion, and was passed over for one anomaly that was affected by events in the office he was fully aware of, the death of a coworker who sat close to me in the office, which also hit me quite hard.

I’m not sure what to do from here. I have one person saying to file EEO, another person saying I need to have concrete examples of why I feel I was not given a fair shake for promotion, and I just don’t know what to do.

Anyone?

What are you doing for work now? Do you enjoy it? Do you feel fairly compensated? What’s your fav part of the job?

Hi girls,

I graduated with a degree from electrical engineering and one of its requirements is having an intership. I HAD to to have some coorprate experience and the only people who would call back were technical sales. So I took those opportunities.

I loved working on the technical projects I would do for my degree and definitely know I don't want to do sales. I want to break into the professional market before its too late.

For clarification; I live in a business hub country and technical roles are already scarce. But it is possible and I've seen it happen even with freshers. I really just want a stable job as a professional. But I geniunly don't know how to do it. my degree isnt enough.

I was laid off this morning. I was not expecting it at all. I got my California PE license last week, and the owner was really excited about it as he couldn't pass the seismic exam but wanted to break into the California market (I'm located in Massachusetts). Two weeks ago, a project I did the stormwater design on was approved by the city on the first submittal with no comments. My boss literally came out of his office applauding me. Its so weird to go from the high of that and getting my license to being out of work. I feel crushed. I really enjoyed the work I did and I loved my coworkers.

The owner was clear that it was only financial reasons that they let me go. So at least I can use them as references in my job search.

Has anyone else felt blindsided like this before? I feel so naive for not seeing it coming, we were a bit slow on work but but I was still making 40 hours easily and the owner had said that we had lots of work coming soon.

I'd love any advice on how get back in the saddle and feel motivated to start looking for jobs. I feel so defeated. I keep hearing about how awful the job market is right now and knowing that even if I am hired somewhere, I'll be the first on the chopping block again makes it feel pointless.

Thanks in advance!

(Also, if anyone is hiring a Water Resources engineer in Massachusetts, please let me know!)

One time my bosses boss came into my office as I was pouring a cup of coffee and this awful conversation happened:

boss: “wow you’d make a good house wife!”

me: “… huh?..”

boss: “you make the other coworkers their coffee! You’d be such a good house wife!”

me: “uhh… well actually (male coworker names here) makes the coffee every morning not me, I’m just getting a cup”

boss: “oh.. well you’re good at cooking right?”

me: “… 😐yeah sometimes I suppose”

boss: “see you’d make a good house wife!!”

me: “😐😐😐”

boss: “I’m going to go tell your boss that you’d make a good house wife!”

me: “uh I don’t think he cares ..?”

boss: “I’m going to go tell him!”

And that was the entire conversation 🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️ still not sure why he came into my office to make comments like that or what but I still think about it often

EDIT: I just want to let everyone know that I no longer work at this company! I have plenty of stories about all of the comments that I’ve received as a female engineer, but this one was by far the worst! My current jobs is MUCH better about making comments like this as it is a women owned business, and employs a lot of women and younger individuals!

I saw a post yesterday about how this sub has been trending towards venting about social challenges with being a woman in engineering. This is a serious issue but I wanted to start a more positive and discuss a big side of being a woman in engineering that people don’t post on as much - solving technical problems and making cool stuff.

So what are you all working on? What types of projects do you get excited about?

There is a contest Code Firefighters contest, that has really nice prizes! Running from January 31 to February 5, 2025!

Show off your problem-solving skills, tackle urgent bugs, and compete to win exclusive DojoCode prizes!

https://preview.redd.it/908otsm7cpfe1.png?width=1024&format=png&auto=webp&s=6cf86312fbd30c73338d444cfdac870371ba8cad

Hi y’all I’m currently in a position that’s focused in propulsion, even though it’s not super technical tbh. However, I’m having doubts about my interests. I always enjoyed fluid mechanics and rocketry in college but actually working in it made me realize that I want to do something that’s more impactful. It probably has something to do with my job not being fulfilling but that’s another problem.

I want to move into renewable energy. Specifically what field in renewable energy, I’m not too sure but I think I might enjoy it more. I’m nervous about not having refined technical skills (barely remember solidworks and Matlab) so I wanted to ask if anyone’s made a change in their career and if they could give any advice on what helped them. Thank you!!

Hi all, I’m 23F about to complete my masters in data science but finding it difficult to land an interview.

Already applied more than 2000+ applications but no response. I’ve had 2 internships and almost 2yoe full time.

If anyone has any opportunities / openings in their teams or would help me with a referral it would be appreciated!

Thank you

Hello!

I am working on a school project where my team and I work to conduct research and propose a solution to close gender gaps in STEM fields. The responses are completely anonymous and though our project is geared towards women, anyone with interest in STEM fields is invited to participate. All responses are greatly valued. We would greatly appreciate if you could take ~2 minutes to fill in this short survey. Thank you! https://forms.gle/MHoX6VRixKqU9Rto8

Hi! Someone sent me a message asking for their wife that is an EE that needs some guidance/ direction bc her firm is toxic. I pushed the wrong button and wanted to say that I am happy to chat.