Hello, I've been thinking of switching my major to chemical engineering next year. I would be graduating at 24. Is 24 too late to graduate for an engineer? Folks around me (esp my family) say that graduating as fast as you can is for the better. But I want to know if the companies really care that much. The university I'll be going to is an accredited university and a more reputable one. Does anyone also went through the same thing as I did, you know switching to different engineering branches, losing a year etc. I would like to hear your opinions and takes on this. Thank you!

Hi All,

Just after some advice regarding internally changing teams at work and how to navigate this/break the news to my current manager.

I’ve struggled with my manager for a while now. He’s made me a lot of promises that he hasn’t been able to fulfil (ie building a team around me), but also he has also recently started working only 3 days a week and I’m finding it increasingly difficult to get the support that I need from him. There’s also a severe lack of technical support in my team as a whole.

I would essentially be doing the exact same job, under a new manager who is more aligned to my goals and priorities, and with increased technical support in the team as a whole.

I’ve received approvals from all other parties involved, but I’ve just told everyone to hold on actioning this until I can have a chat to my manager about it.

How do I approach this with my current manager? Do I tell him the truth, or keep it vague - frame it as more of a ‘scenery change’?

Hello everyone! I don't post often so please excuse me if I seem short.

I am a member of SWE, Society of Women Engineers, as a non-traditional community college student and wanted to try gaining a network and communicating with those in the group.

It was mentor week this past week, and I had a terrible experience. I signed up for 3 mentor meetings. None of them happened, two of them were no call/no show and I have yet to hear back days later. One of them couldn't meet on the day she had availabilities for. I was incredibly excited to be meeting with the two that no call/no showed since they have similar experiences and I genuinely wanted to hear about their academic histories.

Is it worth it to even try the next Mentor week, or should I be doing something else, either with SWE or another group? I was already a bit discouraged due to my age and experience discrepancies, but now I'm wondering if I can really even gain anything from the group aside from the Continuing Education/learning center.

Hi all, I've lurked here for awhile and honestly often skip over posts bc I know it'll just make me mad. Maybe I should've been reading more to prepare me for actually starting a job as a woman in engineering because DANG, has this been a rude awakening. I've been working at a big company since January (right after graduating with my degree in Mech E) and have a few stories, but I'll just share two.

I'm doing a rotational program, and we just got back to our home base for two weeks of training. The first training class was "Presentation Skills" which was actually pretty informative and useful. The other women in my program and myself could definitely tell that our instructor was used to giving this class to men though for a couple of reasons.

1. He had NO IDEA about professional wear for women.

He gave a good piece of advice (that I'd never heard before but had always kinda done instinctually) to always dress one step above your audience when presenting. For example, if your audience was wearing jeans and a polo, wear khakis and a button-down. All of his examples were directed toward men's professional wear, and he finished that with, "And women... I don't know, figure it out." BRO WHAT???? He had mentioned earlier in the class that he has 3 daughters (18-26), so I straight up called him out after this and said, "You have 3 daughters and don't know what women wear in the workplace??" This man ignored me, which is expected, and I think he didn't really like me much after that. I truly do not care though. Do better.

2. He included a tasteless and offensive quote in the section about humor.

The irony is that he had just mentioned how careful you want to be with humor so you don't offend anyone. Then he includes this quote from Winston Churchill that he says he absolutely loves and is "so true". The quote was: "A good speech should be like a woman's skirt; long enough to cover the subject and short enough to create interest." Sir, I get that you usually teach this class to only men, but you truly saw NOTHING wrong with that quote?? He even followed it up with, "And if someone is offended, it's okay because it's not your words!" Umm...

I did leave feedback about this in the after-training survey, and I mentioned it to a woman who organizes all the training for our program, but still, my goodness.

I am starting a new engineering job with a big company immediately after college graduation. I also do not know many people in the area and am hoping to meet friends through work. I am a woman and a little worried about finding female friendships in a male dominated field. Additionally, I am trying to make the best first impression possible with this company. I have had one internship, but would love some advice on office etiquette, dos and dont’s, and things people wish they knew sooner. Thanks!

Throwaway account in case someone recognizes me.

I'm about 10 years into my career in structural engineering, but I think I am way behind where I need to be compared to my peers. I only have a bachelor's degree, I didn't go to grad school, I wasn't able to get a good internship, and I guess all of these factors added up to spending the first five years doing highly specialized, repetitive design for two different companies (think only designing something like pylons). Eventually I moved into wood design, but those structures were all prescriptive and I never got an understanding for some of the more rudimentary things like how load moved through connections, etc.

My first job was pretty rough. It was at a specialty designer for the (pylons), not an engineering firm, and I didn't have much mentoring. I was a novelty as The Girl Engineer, the sexism was out of control (seriously, the place felt about 25 years behind) and I was mentally frustrated because I did the same thing over and over again. I didn't learn new things, but I'm very good at pylons! I left that job for an actual engineering firm, but I was quickly let go when they realized all I could do was pylons, even though I was an EIT.

I was unemployed for almost a year, and at that point I took the only job I was offered during that time. This job was better in terms of how I was treated, but still very repetitive, one-special-thing kind of projects. Occasionally I had the opportunity to work on something like a steel platform, but I never worked with concrete, masonry, or actual buildings, and for the most part, was a glorified detailer for my 70 year old boss's hand drawn designs. Six years after I graduated I finally started doing wood, and I had to teach myself based on webinars. I thought I was really good at wood after working on them for a while, but single family homes using IRC are not exactly doing engineering. This job was frustrating because I was usually passed over in favor of the men at my job for anything interesting that came up, and I spoke up and expressed interest, but nothing much came of it. I did learn a lot there, though, and am grateful to the people who helped me there. I passed the PE and got licensed in 2019.

About a year ago, I left that job for another company. It's above and beyond any place where I've worked before, both in quality and in expectations. There are other women! They are awesome! I have learned so much in the last year, but I still feel like I'm on the same level as the EITs. There are very basic things that I just never learned that is second nature to a room full of 27-year-olds. I am fully willing to learn, of course! And a year ago, I would have said I'm pretty good at my job, I'm confident coming in, let's do this. After a year, I've learned just how much stuff I never learned, because I didn't have the opportunity to do so. But the nature of being a PE means that I cost more to be slow. And recently, another PE was let go for not being up to speed on the basics, taking too long, and not being profitable.

I think this company is very big on training engineers from the beginning, and it's a very young company - my boss is younger than me, and knows so, so much more about the intricacies of engineering than I've ever even thought about. There are women's groups, but most of them have been here their entire career, and it's a VERY good place to work as a woman. But still - we have to be billable and not go over budget.

I am TRYING. I am trying so hard. I know I am smart and capable! But I constantly have to ask questions about simple things, software I don't know how to use, portal frames, you name it. I am so tired mentally at the end of a day that I want to collapse. My boss encouraged me to start studying for the SE, which would be great, except that the basics of the course I've been doing are still pretty new to me. And I want to be better! I want to be a good engineer who thinks of load paths and diaphragm behavior and knows how to work with lots of different materials and I'm just not there.

Has anyone been through this? How did you come out the other side? I don't want to get another job, I want to flourish here, if at all possible. I'm not expecting my company to take on the burden of making sure I know things I should have known ten years ago, but I also am not even sure where to start. My boss says my problem is confidence, but after almost a decade of all the other experiences, of course I don't have confidence? I am pretty introverted, so asking questions is not in my nature, but I am doing it because I want to learn and get better and do things correctly. Any advice?

I’m curious to know if anyone else experiences this in their work place, and how you all deal with it.

I’m 2.5 years into my career and every so often the topic of personal development comes up. Typically initiated by a manager and usually accompanied by some sort of deliverable that reflects a plan to further advance my skills. It feels very disingenuous to me, and more like something that managers are doing to check a box. I very much value work-life balance, and typically am not willing to go out of my way to go above and beyond when it comes to things like overtime or spending time in classes outside of work (unpaid), or coming up with new exciting tools and processes. I complete my projects on time, am very thorough, and seek guidance when needed. In the last 2.5 years I’ve found that the best way for me personally to develop, is through a natural progression of taking on new and different assignments. Having to put together an actual document outlining my “plan” to develop continues to feel forced, fake and pointless to me.

In a previous role, I was in an environment where you were made to feel that if you weren’t always excelling then you just weren’t doing well at all. Because of that, I struggled a lot with feeling as though I am not a career oriented person (I guess maybe I’m not?) and feeling like I have questionable work ethic. I’ve since joined a new team (same company) and many of these frustrations have been alleviated now that I’m in a better environment. But managers still continue to push for development.

In my limited experience I have noticed that it is somewhat common in engineering positions to be surrounded by people that expect you to be an overachiever. I work to live and not the other way around, and sometimes it seems like that’s frowned upon. I feel I’m supposed to go out of my way to continue to climb the ladder, and I have no interest in that at all. Of course I’m not opposed to learning and trying new things, but I just can’t wrap my head around why it isn’t more acceptable to allow that to happen naturally. Am I really supposed to constantly strive to go above and beyond? I’m happy and content with putting in my 8 hours, covering my baseline work statement, and then going home and living my real life. I guess I’ve got a “quiet quitter” mentality, but is that really so bad?

I’m enjoying my new job, but I guess I still struggle being okay with just being “okay”.

I’m a software engineer that has gone through many management changes over the years. This most recent change has brought in a new skip level manager who is male and has on more than one occasion refused to say my name or acknowledge me in any way. My teammates have pointed out on calls when work that I have done is being credited to someone else. Now I’m getting emails where amongst my peers who are all referred to by their full names I am referred to by my company alias only. It seems very much intentional to try and exclude me in some capacity. Ive never had an issue with this person in fact I don’t know them well enough to say much about them other than how they refuse to acknowledge me. I’ve brought it up with my direct manager before but nothing has changed. What would you do in this situation? Am I overreacting?

Hi all,

I've been having a hard time at my current job where there are 2 women on a team of 20, and probably 5 women out of the adjacent 80 people I work with. It's in manufacturing, so it's not too surprising, but I was wondering if there is a good way to find companies with lots of women engineers on a team? I applied to my current job and interviewed through SWE and felt lied to when I showed up and was the only woman here. I'd love to be on a team with more women, but I'm not sure how to go about that.

Hey y'all,

I'm a recent graduate (December 2023). I started working as a Plumbing/Mech engineer at a consulting firm right after school. I haven't learned much engineering, but I learned enough to write a program using MATLAB/Octave that sizes water pipes depending on the plumbing fixtures present or fixture units demanded.

I did this for fun, unprompted, because I thought it'd be a useful tool for myself and perhaps even the company. But I did spend a lot of time on this outside of work hours. Actually, every hour I spent on it was outside of office hours. There's no way I can be compensated for this. Should I just keep this to myself? I'm not even sure if it's that valuable to my or any engineering company, since it feels like such an obvious simplification of this process should have been made widely available long ago. Keep in mind that I told my boss that I was making this tool, and I even demoed it for him, lol.

Hey all, I'm a senior undergrad in mechE and have recently been feeling incredibly disillusioned with engineering as a whole. I'm lucky enough to go to a very supportive school and have never experienced any discrimination or sexism, and do truly love what I do on a technical level, so that's not the issue. I'm currently taking an environmental justice course and learning about all the ways industry and corporations hurt communities for profit, the sheer extent of pollution and the climate crisis, and increasing disparities in health. This, coupled with the chokehold the military industrial complex has on engineers, especially in the face of all the issues surrounding Palestine, has made it incredibly difficult to reconcile being an engineer with having a positive impact. Even corporations that I once respected end up being tied to union busting, war crimes, or environmental scandals after a bit of digging and it has sent me into a pretty depressive spiral and uncertainty over my place in the world as I graduate. Has anyone else here felt this way and have tips on how to get over it? Alternatively, any suggestions for truly positive places I could work as a mechE? Another semi-related concern was the extent of ethics education in engineering--I wanted to talk over improving the curriculum and incorporating environmental justice topics with my capstone advisor, so I would also appreciate thoughts or advice on this.

Hello Everyone,

I'm graduating this May with a BS in Industrial Engineering with a minor in Engineering Management. I recently got a job offer at a manufacturing company. The company is family owned and is relatively small compared to other manufactures. However this past year has over 95 million in revenue so they are doing quite well. I toured the plant and met the team 2 weeks ago and really liked the company.

Today I met with the HR and the hiring manager and they said the salary would be 68K. Initially the job description said the position was for $72,500 - $82,000, but was told today that, that range was for experienced 3-5 year hires. Since I'm a new grad i wouldn't qualify for that salary. I was really looking forward to working with the company but I think the starting salary is too low for an engineering position. I'm just wanting to get some outside opinions and perspective.

Edit: I'm located in the Southern US. I have 4 year internship experience in CI and Automation. My current other option is stay with the current company I'm doing my year long internship with. The only downside is that there has been a lot of changes in management and lots of layoffs the past year. The base salary would be better but not sure of the working environment as a full time employee compared to a year long intern.

I came here with a question that was basically: Am tripping for feeling this way? And I found multiple posts about women feeling similar, feeling that they are the problem, feeling that they may be overthinking an interaction, or that somehow that feeling a certain way is our own fault.

I’m guilty of that as well and I’m tired 🥲.

I work as a software engineer and every code review I have I make sure to take all the comments and suggestions my all male team mates make. But I’ve been noticing that with the other team mates(all man) their PRs are approved for right away without many suggestions. So I started feeling I’m shit at my job and that nothing that I do will get me to be like them. I do recognize I have less experience than the majority of my team, and that’s why I think that this might be my fault and that I’m actually bad at it.

I don’t think my male team mates waste their energy feeling that they were rude or that anything in the world is their fault, and that probably helps them in their career.

So I wonder how’s everyone here doing with similar situations, and how can we try and just be better at trusting ourselves when the whole world tells you otherwise. Or if this is my team issue and maybe I just don’t fit with this team. Were folks here had different experiences in different companies?

Again, I’m so friggin tired of feeling this way… I like what I do but this feeling sucks.

thanks for reading, and now I realized this is more like a vent post and I’m sorry about it. 😔

I just wanted to see if anyone has been in a similar situation and also what your response was/would've been. I joined this all male team about 2 years ago and had to go remote due to a sudden disability. The team seemed okay with me being remote despite their hybrid roles because they do online meetings and notes anyway. However, my mentor shortly turned against me and called me terrible slurs even bluntly saying I was probably kicked outta my previous job due to my actions (I had to resign my last job after being a project lead due to some personal circumstances).

I complained to my manager and he involved HR. I thought it'd get better at first but it just got worse because I'm a newhire and no one would train me or even help me when I asked so I'm still a complete noob in this area. Now my entire team hates me and my manager put me on an improvement plan. I don't mind improving but they're still trying to retaliate rather than actually help. I get called out every meeting and severely criticized. I never had anxiety my whole life but now have crippling anxiety after a few incidents where my manager publicly bullied me. What should I do? The HR refuses to help now because they think it's a performance issue on my end but they don't want to see the reason I'm performing so poorly? I can't quit right now due to my financial situation...

Tldr; all male team bullies me and refuses to train me, HR thinks it's my fault for not learning. How do I face my anxiety and improve in such a situation?

Update: I've been getting some comments that blame my situation on me applying to grad schools this cycle. This situation has been going on for two years, and my grad school prep only started about 6 months ago when I had enough. Plus, no one in my team works past the 9 hour mark, but I did on several days (10/11hrs recorded) and ended up sacrificing weekends on grad school applications. Please feel free to blame my intellect next if you will....

Hiii, I'll enroll to mechanical engineering this year and I need some advice about what computer I should to buy. I'd like one able to coding and useful for the career, also I'd like something no too much expensive. Any suggestion?

Please let me know if I’m being sensitive or overthinking this: Last week i asked a manager in a different department to approve an order. He hadn’t done it yet so i sent him a message on teams, directly.

Anyways he didn’t respond to me directly. He instead sent out an email. In the “to” section he put me and another guy. In the “cc” section, he included two more people. What is upsetting me is when he wrote the email, he didn’t address me in the header but he addressed the other guy: example “[your name], and then he proceeds to ask if there was a cost effective alternative to what i asked” That’s fine, i didn’t respond because i had got side tracked with something else. One of the guys who was cc’d on the email also responded and said to hold off on the order. He stated his reasoning. Which was fine.

Then the guy who i originally messaged and who sent out the email proceeds to say “thank you, glad i challenged this.”

Now, that made me upset because i feel he was trying to be dismissive and petty towards me for saying that.

Am i being overly sensitive or is this guy being petty? I started to respond to the email, but i stopped because i realize i was going to be unprofessional. I also wanted outside opinions. Thank you

Okay, look folks - I begged for this criticism. I wanted specific, actionable feedback, and wanted to figure out why my superiors were not willing to give it to me. I appreciate this advice and want to talk about it, but damn the phrasing made me CACKLE.

I realize that some of this might be gender biases, but in general I also feel this way about my personality so want to discuss those things.

For appearing less aggressive, this is straightforward. Especially when I'm typing on Teams or whatever, I can be very blunt, and need to work more on gentle phrasing or thinking of more nuanced ways to ask people things. 100%, agree.

For appearing fragile... I'm at a loss. I BEG for criticism at every opportunity - this is my first post-grad job so I NEED help. When I receive criticism ("focus more on X, not Y") I express gratitude and make the changes, and will follow up as appropriate, but no one is even telling me what problems there are!

How can I improve on this??

Hi everyone!

I just accepted my first summer internship for a civil engineering firm with their agriculture team where I will be doing lots of field work. The daily dress code is casual so we can always go out to project sites whenever needed. I am in Southern Wisconsin so summers can be hot and humid to cool and windy. I plan to go to some second hand stores to find work pants and tops for lower prices.

Any tips and suggestions to stay cool and not look as manly would be greatly appreciated!

Also any tips on preventing farmer's tans, lol!

This might sound weird but I feel headache, literally, whenever working in office. I’m with ~60 RHR, healthy blood pressure, with regular exercise, and no cold symptom, no measured abnormal items.

I know it must be due to working in office as I stayed home for a whole week for a bad cold and surprisingly the headache disappeared completely, even I worked at bed after I recovered. I also tackled a tough engineering problem that bothered me for a while.

And after the WFH week I had to return to office. only after two weeks, the headache came back 😢

Am I alone for this office headache syndrome?

Possible reasons:

• at home I sleep maybe 15-30min longer due to no need of commute
• at home I’m isolated with any office gossips, social pressure, etc. I confess I hate it. The working environment is kinda with (unnecessary/inefficient) pressure, with some annoying colleagues. As long as I don’t see it in person, I feel very relaxed.
• other reasons?

I don't know when exactly I want to start having kids, but I know most companies don't let you use maternity unless you've been there for a year.

I'm currently a Contract Software engineer, I'm on my husband's benefits. I get 1.5x OT pay.

However, my company does not give paid maternity, I can take up to 18 weeks unpaid. I am thinking I can just save up for it, but I'm not sure how good of an idea that is.

I really like the work I do, but work isn't everything.

what did you appreciate the most during your maternity leave?

I work at a start up where it’s pretty common for people to wear sweat pants and t-shirts. Another woman at my office regularly wears bicycle shorts. While I wouldn’t necessarily consider these clothes professional they aren’t revealing. I have some tank tops that are spaghetti strap that don’t show any cleavage but do show more of my collarbone/shoulders. Do you think these would be okay to wear to work given the vibe? Or should I go with something else because my shoulders are so sexy they may be distracting to my male colleagues?

Background: I work in the pulp and paper industry as a Product Development Engineer. I’ve worked with the same company my entire career - 22 years total - starting as a lab tech and moving up the ladder to an engineering manager. I have an MISE and an MBA from Auburn. I’m recognized both within my company and with our customers as a person who provides a high caliber of work, a deep knowledge of our industry and products, a well above average responsiveness and an ability to successful manage a high amount of projects (over 40 currently).

Friday I went into my office and discovered my supervisor left his notepad on my desk while I was out. It was opened up to our new annual salaries and raises for his engineering team for this year. I didn’t snoop - it was the top page. I found out that I make 15% less than the other engineer who is close to my age and work experience. He has less time at the company. He’s an ok worker but doesn’t match my output. He also doesn’t have any master degrees. Additionally I found out I got the lowest raise by percent of salary and overall monetary amount. Again - all the reports are male as is my supervisor.

I texted him to let him know I found the notebook and left it in his desk drawer since it contains confidential information. We are not allowed to talk about salary or raises at my company. I let him know I of course saw the information and I was upset with what I saw. I asked for a face to face sit down with him next week. He agreed to a sit down. I have learned he also contacted Hr independently and filled them in on what happened.

How would you handle the meeting? What are some things I need to keep in mind. I’m awful at advocating for myself and typically just push through unfair situations.

I love my job and I don’t want to leave. I’d have to relocate to make what I make. Not ideal. But I’m tired of being run over and I’m constantly contacted by recruiters. I know I have high worth.

I have a question for anyone who works as a manufacturing engineer. I'm currently working as a controls Engineer and have just been offered a position as a Senior Manufacturing Engineer.

As a controls engineer, I work on designing the electrical and software of new machines. The main reason I'm looking for a new job isn't the subject matter of my work (design, programming, etc), but the unrealistic pace, project managers, and customers. I'm overwhelmed with too much work and poor management.

The position I've been offered means that my primary focus would switch to quality and yield of a production line. And upgrading old equipment to improve both. There would be more data analysis and being able to focus on a machine.

My concern is that I'll be bored in a month, but I can't overlook the fact that it would likely massively decrease my stress levels.

Has anyone switched from controls to manufacturing? Or if you're in manufacturing, can you give it an opinion?

I'm in my late 30s, and seriously thought I was way past being envious of the popular kids.

TL;DR, 2 questions: what types of struggles might people have even when they look like they're on top of the world? And what are some effective ways to deal with feelings of insecurity, inadequacy, envy, that come from seeing someone who looks like they have everything you could possibly want?

There's this woman at work who is clearly very smart, very attractive, very athletic, very charismatic, very determined. She's an amazing public speaker, she asks tons of insightful questions, and her projects seem to be super successful. Just, wow! Everyone seems to like her. She's got an engagement ring, so I guess her personal life is going the way she wants too.

After coming very close to feeling like I "had it all" myself and then having it all fall apart, I learned the hard way that nobody is actually perfect. I think I've mostly made my peace with that. But somehow I can't help loop thinking: what is this girl lacking?? That sounds catty and like I'm trying to tear her down, which I'm not. But when I've worked so hard to accept my own shortcomings and do the best I can with what I've got, it's really hard to see this apparent perfect life!

I wish I wasn't envious, but I concede I am. I keep it to myself, but it's still not a good look. Please help!

Edit: thank you all for taking the time to write such thoughtful, insightful, and helpful responses. This is a cool community!

[Update post to “I Cracked Yesterday”]

Firstly, thank you to all of the supportive comments, I needed that. I will be more active in advocating for myself in the future.

Yesterday, I reached out to the grad student the undergrad and I work with closely. In the past, we’ve discussed how the undergrad disproportionality dismisses me, he notices it too. He is typically very supportive of my ideas and recognizes that I understand certain aspects of the lab more thoroughly than both him and the undergrad. Anyway, I communicated my anxiety to him about the incident while also acknowledging that I needed to say something, and asked for his perspective on the situation. After reassuring me about the team dynamic, he validated that I should’ve been listened to and that it was good that I said something. He also acknowledged that he was guilty of dismissing me that day as well, which I guess I didn’t even notice. He then offered to either talk with the undergrad or get me on a different project if things don’t get better going forward. I declined, as I saw that the undergrad was making a conscious effort to listen to me after I pointed it out, and also because this will be good practice in advocating for myself. He agreed with my assessment but kept the offer on the table if I ever need support on that front.

Overall, I’m so glad that I said something in that meeting, it made explicit the issues in the lab that I’ve tried implicitly addressing. It also was very nice to get validation from the grad student, only because he is a neutral party who sees this unfold first hand. I’m hopeful about the lab moving forward.

As a side note, a department head reached out to the undergrad encouraging him to present “his” research to the upcoming undergrad research symposium, and cc’ed the professor running the lab. Professor replied to that chain almost immediately, including me in the chain, saying that undergrad worked with me on this project and that I needed to be involved with this as well. While very annoying that I wasn’t initially included, I’m very glad that professor noticed this and vouched for me. Undergrad and I are going to work together on this and will likely make some great network connections at the event (yay!).

tl;dr: Grad student supported my “crack” and offered his active support moving forward. Thank god.

Hello, I guess I am just asking for a sanity check, or maybe I am just really bad at office politics or maybe it is all just sexism!! I can not tell and it is making me feel so sad.

Essentially, I am a CivE and I started in this field (going into my 2nd year) and I have had not the best experience. I came in with no internships, no drafting experience, and I had just used CAD for the first time (I did a different engineering major). After receiving, honestly very little training I was let go to my own devices and so obviously I made a ton of mistakes. Which, my managers said that they expected and that is how they want people to learn. (stated in my yearly review that they 'threw me to the sharks'). Only, that is not how they want people to learn because they single me out in my small department and are now scrutinizing me constantly, even though they say that is not their intention.

Now, I am in these basically PIP meetings but they won't call it that. They said they don't want to fire me they just want me to 'do my best', but they are giving me no guidance. In fact, they just asked me to give them metrics of improvement for myself. Like bestie !!! I don't know isn't that your job?? And I just had a meeting with my boss and it honestly felt awful. He wrote so many things down that were generic. It was like: you are too chatty, you need to ask more questions but also don't bother people, you need to know how to do your job better, but also we won't give you any time in your work day to improve, and we will tell you wrong information.

He told me that him and my other boss struggled to come up with actual things that I was doing wrong that I should change, and struggled to come up with any measurable goals. Which to me feels genuinely just like a perception thing. I think that they just perceive me sucking, and subsequently they harp on any minor thing I could be doing wrong. They basically told me they weren't treating me like an engineer and just like a technician.

Sorry for the long post, but I have no idea what I should do. When I ask my coworkers, they say that they enjoy working with me and that I have improved a lot. Should I just find a new company? Should I just keep my head down and put up with it? Is this normal? I was very high achieving so I have never been given the 'problem child' treatment, and I just have never felt less sure of myself.

I have a question regarding the legal implications of providing engineering reports in a state where I'm not licensed as a PE. Let's say I'm approached by an insurance company to provide such a report in a state where I don't hold a license. What are the potential legal ramifications I should be aware of?

Would greatly appreciate any insights or experiences you all might have on this matter. Thanks in advance!

So in our 1:1 I brought up how overwhelmed I feel at work and stepping up to the plate with a new promotion. My boss is also aware I also have a few huge changes to my life outside of work that I couldn't necessarily avoid bringing up in prior discussions. I wanted to address my workload, which is excessive even without the life changes but he refused saying he's pushing me hard intentionally. He suggested I cope with the stress by smoking weed, which is a controlled substance in my state and against company policy.

I'm stunned. I personally don't have any desire to consume weed. I brought up how overwhelmed I'm feeling to address my workload and was told to work harder and use a recreational drug to manage my emotions. This feels very wrong, thoughts?

edit: If your gut reaction is to tell me that weed isn't that bad, you don't know my health history, family history, or reasons why I've chosen not to consume. You're also missing the point, rather than be a manager and help me do my job, he flippantly suggested using an illegal drug can get me fired. I shouldn't have to get high to for the sole purpose of dealing with workload that can be fixed with better management