How are the rest of you getting on?

Nocaster

Hey,

Well over the past 2 years my working week (and associated pay!!) has gone from 5 to 4 to 3 to now 2 days, and with other pay cuts on top of that I'm now a chartered civil/structural engineer with 6 years experience who earns E16,000 per year!!! Its extremely disheartening to be honest. Just wondered if anyone's in a similar boat and if you can see any light at the end of the tunnell. Will there be any decent scale of structural work required in this country ever again?!

Cheers

dan_d

Wow. 16000eur. I think that's the worst I've heard yet.
I'm a civil engineer, been on site since I graduated 5 years ago. Took a paycut in January bringing my pay down to 38,000eur. Redundancy has come my way however and I'll be finishing up shortly and looking for a new career. In some ways I was lucky - worked through the worst of it, on a full week and only one paycut.
I think there's a glut of engineering firms (and engineers) for such a small country now, and there's so little work competition is fierce. I don't think structures will recover anytime soon, the way Nama is working and much as I hate to say it, I think more of the smaller firms will go under. I'm with one of the biggest contractors in the country, and we've been told there's no more work out there - they're looking abroad.
Sorry to be incredibly depressing. What are you doing on the days off you have every week??To be honest, I intend to use my time off to do as much as I can - CPD hours, try and do a language course, stuff like that. Anything to give me a bit of variety in what I can put on my CV. I'm facing the fact that I'll be job hunting outside engineering, the work just isn't there. A number of friends from college are in a similar position to you. At this stage, it's emigration or a total change of career, if you can even manage that.
I know that all sounds terrible but I'm trying to be as optimistic as I can about my future. There's no point sticking my head in the sand and thinking things will magically become better. They won't, so I just feel I'll have to go make my own luck, be it in or out of the construction industry.
Ending on an up note!!!!

folan

Im in software, working a 5 day week, no pay cut, just the wage freeze. Been here 2 years now.

Ive been doing pretty well, only thing is we can see the gap between available resources and work for them. We could do with maybe 10 more guys in the office, but cant afford to take them on. Some of these jobs have been from people moving on and not being replaced, so in a way its kinda of a redundancy, except noone was in the position to be made redundant, if you know what i mean.

Also, all company sponsored CPD etc has been ended, meaning everything additional has to be done in our own time since were too busy in work.

I can't see it improving, far too many civil and structural engineers about the place, before the Celtic Tiger building boom they were two a penny anyway, the acute shortage then got loads of people into 3rd level who are now qualified with a year or two experience. It's not only the structural side of engineering though, most of the multinational pharma and med devices companies are not hiring and are cutting back.

€16,000/annum for a 2 day week is not bad money to be honest, can you sign on for the other 3 days ?

aquascrotum

I was working for a civil / environmental consultant (at its peak about 140 staff) till Feb 2009. They'd been recruiting heavily including a full quota of graduates till about September 2008, then the sh*t hit the fan and they laid them all off again (about 12 if i recall) in Oct/Nov 08 with a 10% pay cut for the rest of us.

I was in the second tranche of redundancies in Feb 09 (another 10 or so), after which the rest of the office went to a 4 day week; then a further major tranche in April 09 which probably cut the workforce by a third and the remainder of the workforce returned to a full working week with another 10% paycut.

Personally I hit it lucky, returned to NI and got in with a small consultancy and we've ticked over nicely up until now - I was probably one of the only civil engineers in the country to get a pay rise in 2009/10! NI consultants were doing OK-ish when I returned - few redundancies and pay freezes at worst. Things are slowing a lot here though and we've found ourselves lifting the phones to see are they still working. Fingers are very much crossed at this stage.

irjudge

Am still working. Annual 10% pay cut at end of 2009 and 2008 and obviously goes without saying bonuses are gone. So all in all down 30%. within that time the company size was halved from about 60 to 30. Also a number of people were put on 3 day week.

In recent weeks a number of people on 3 days weeks have been reinstated to full working weeks because of workload. Fees from what I gather are through the floor, jobs being done at below cost just to keep some work in the office.

Unfortunately I think there will be a purge in the construction industry where some of smaller (domestic) consultants are likely to close. As said before we are now in a situation where supply way outstrips demand and that can only resolve itself one way.

Im working as a consulting engineer for about 15 years now and have invested a lot in my career but if the industry doesnt show signs of improvement I'll be considering a change.

BlackEdelweiss

I was a chef for 6 years before returning to college to do Building Services Engineering. Loads of stories of great jobs and careers awaiting us right up till the final year when we realized none of us were going to get a job at the end of it. Finished top of my class, got €35 a week on the dole because my wife was working. Got a lend of €1500 from my father to do a lighting design course in England, sent out over 100 c.v.'s, got about 10 replies, all with the same answer. I was lucky enough to get a chef job again, they are also in short supply.
I decided I wasent going to let this fcuking recession bring me down so I decided to use all my skills and start my own food related business, offering a luxury product for recession prices, people still want to feel like they are treating themselves even if they dont have much money and I am going to facilitate them. I have an interview with the bank on Monday afternoon to go over my business plan and with a bit of luck they will see my vision and give me the money I need to get started.
I never got to work in the engineering industry, I would love to have had the chance but such is life, with all the qualified engineers on the dole out there I dont think I have a chance of getting a foot in the door.
I'll really miss my calculator, going to have to swap it for a scales from now on hopefully.
All the best for the future with it all, I hope it picks up for you guys.

Brian CivilEng

I've been unemployed for over a year. Keeping myself occupied by reading every single science and engineering related book in my local library. Basically took a year out now as I had five years experience and am still quite young, but have been trying to find some engineering work in England for the last few months. Nothing so far. Coming to the realisation that the career in civil engineering I had always worked towards may not happen and trying to figure out something else to do.

Offy

I was unemployed from mid Feburary till today

gob

For those of you considering a career change:

I graduated in 2007 with a chem eng degree, spent sometime working in pharma consulting and am currently finishing up a M.Sc. in financial maths. From what I can see investment banks like engineers and there are a growing no. of well paid positions for people with this type of background.

dan_d

gob - so as not to derail the thread, could you PM me what you thought of the financial maths? It's something I've been looking into, I'd be interested to know what it's like.
Congratulations on the job offy!!

B1977

gob wrote: »

For those of you considering a career change:

I graduated in 2007 with a chem eng degree, spent sometime working in pharma consulting and am currently finishing up a M.Sc. in financial maths. From what I can see investment banks like engineers and there are a growing no. of well paid positions for people with this type of background.

Could you expand on that comment, I need a job

Lurching

I lost my job with one of irelands biggest civil contractors back in Oct. Started working again last week once I bit the bullet and headed for australia. Ireland is just a no go area at the moment, and id imagine it'll stay like that for some time.
Time to upskill!

RealityCheck

gob wrote: »

For those of you considering a career change:

I graduated in 2007 with a chem eng degree, spent sometime working in pharma consulting and am currently finishing up a M.Sc. in financial maths. From what I can see investment banks like engineers and there are a growing no. of well paid positions for people with this type of background.

Good stuff. Hope that goes well for you. Im a civil engineering student myself with one year left. At the moment im considering possibly taking a similar course of action, do a masters in either business, management or finance. Id be doing this to either further my BEng or to take a complete career change. I always had an interest in all things commerce.

By the sounds of things its not the most uncommon course of action to take especially in the current climate, would interest me hugely. Always liked maths, id imagine that would be a requisite for doing a course like financial mathematics?

Anyways have the next few months to decide. Time to do the research.