What are you supposed to do when you're being wildly undervalued in a system that has mechanized employment? When your place on the bell curve has shifted past center, you know a lot of stuff but you're a little older now and no one will call you back?
I work for a major utility, our parent "owners" are a global multinational player. I'm a contractor, and I draw plans for the Planners. It's a union company where it there's not much point in applying for anything that's a union position as internal union members have 1st priority over any qualified external candidate. This has resulted in petulant, childish adults who get paid twice my salary but a stunted professional development.
This week I was ordered to create a plan set from client provided drawings. These were not CAD files but rather scans of plan sets that were emailed to the Planner. Three different plan sets with three different orientations and scales. Eight sheets in total that I had to scale translate and rotate for a Planner who said to me, " I can't figure out what's going on in these plans an where we are." And he makes twice my salary....
I spent 6.5 hours managing the import of "graphics" preforming RTS adjustments, digitizing all the line work... because no one could pass along a CAD file, to make a single large format drawing because out professional couldn't handle a multi sheet plan set.
To add insult to injury I have to do all this with MicroStation, which seems like it's the apple to PC of the drafting world and clearly set up for people lacking engineering perspectives over artistic/architectural outlooks.
It's like being a medieval peasant being asked to draw an exotic animal from a description with an 8 pack of crayons. Then the construction group does whatever pleases them in the field and I get a ball point pen "red line" back to create the "as-built."
How does this happen? How do we let vital industries utilities we all depend on come to this?
If you live in New York, Maine, Mass, CT there's a chance you're a part of this mess and when you get your utility bill you have more to be mad about than the cost.