Wanted to post this here in case anyone might be interested. I am an engineer here currently and we are looking for someone to add to the group. The job is for Sam Houston Electric Cooperative in Livingston. If you have any questions feel free to PM me.

This is the link to the job information.

https://careers.electric.coop/jobs/11963442/engineer-i

Nice of you to post.

I deal with about 30 different electric companies, even a recent site in Leggett with you guys.
It appears they all are having problems getting or keeping designers/engineers. The last few years there has been a constant turnover, especially in west Texas, I can go through three designers before a project gets finished.
I know several that have left electric companies (coops etc.) and have moved on to positions with oil companies.
Good luck, I hope you find a good one.

Losing Engineers is a common problem. As an Engineer, or at least was an engineer, it’s the same problem everywhere. An engineer comes out of college and takes a job and in a year gets a 3 or 4 percent raise or cost of living. But the fact that there aren’t enough good engineers means that starting salaries go up about 7% per year. The result is that the 1 Year guy now makes less than the newbie. Give it 3 or 4 years and the experienced guy is making noticeably less than the new guys. Then they leave for more money somewhere else. I’ve seen it happen many times, and of course it happened to me. I left the first oil company job for more money.

My cheapskate Boss, many years later, was wondering out loud why they could not keep Chemical Engineers at our Texas chemical plants. Being a Chemical Engineer and familiar with the problem, I explained the above to him. He then asked what we could do to keep them, since they were now trained. I said to him that we need to pay them more to keep them. He said “we can’t do that”. And that, Ladies and Gentlemen, is why engineers leave for other jobs.

I should get a consulting fee for having outlined that. Who do I send the invoice to?

Send the invoice to your old job accounts payable department......95% chance you will get paid.....ergo problem number 2......

I encouraged all of my kids to get engineering degrees....specifically mechanical engineering as a bachelors.....after that you can do whatever you want.....

strong background in mechanics applies to everything......

He took that and ran with it too. Great advice paw!

Aggie11, you wouldn’t need an assistant would ya?

Pretty much any job you just described there...

There is a huge shortage of engineers right now. I am a civil engineer and I have been trying to hire 6 position for 18 months. It’s industry wide. My friends in other companies are having the same issue. I’ve hired three since December but still have openings. Most of the candidates we are getting in for interviews are no where near qualified and mostly a joke. After you interview them you understand why they don’t have a job in such a hot market. Good luck on your search.

If there is a huge shortage of engineers, then we are likely in a period where the starting salary of new engineers is higher than that 7% avg increase I mentioned earlier. That naturally makes the monetary incentive to find a new job that much more attractive, even after only one year.

If you work, or did work, for a company that did away with the old style retirement pension and replaced it with the ‘new’ defined benefit approach, part of the reason for the change was to incentivize the younger employees to stay with the company instead of leaving for a little more money. The old style pension, when graphed, had a ‘hockey stick’ shaped value versus years with the company, and you had to stay with the company for many years to get max benefit. The new style has a much different graph with a more equal value per year, which gives new employees more up front value so they don’t have to wait so long to show benefit. That should actually work for non-engineers, but I really doubt that it’ll help keep good engineers.

Not long ago I saw a list of graduate degrees that had best early career incomes and starting salaries, and 8 of the top 10 were engineering degrees. Today’s technical world needs engineers, so push your kids that way.

In my whole work career, I never once had to look for a job. They came looking for me, as a Chemical Engineer. I did one resume, when I got out of college. Never did another one. Same with my youngest daughter and with her husband, both Chemical Engineers.

I agree. Salaries are up and continuing to increase. Supply and demand. Senior engineers are retiring or they are comfortable in their positions and not interested in making a change. The number of engineers graduating from college is on the decrease. The worlds technology and infrastructure needs are on the rise and demanding engineers.

I saw a presentation a few years ago that talked how the baby boomer generation is working into their 70’s and 80’s until retiring, and most of those have retired or are retiring now. The majority of the following generations are retiring in their early sixties so the workforce is not lasting as long. As far as engineers, there are less students going into engineering and of those that graduate the number that go on to get licensed is on the decrease. He predicted a severe shortage in technology and engineering employees around 2020 +/-, now we are hear and I’m starting to see what he was talking about.

So yes, encourage your kids to go into engineering and technology. It’s a good career, salaries are increasing, and there is a good job market.

Thanks for all the responses to this thread it really outlines the exact situation we have seen over the years. We have 3 engineers here now and we all have grown up here and have no plans to leave the coop or area. Other engineers in the past have done what everyone has explained. They worked here a couple years to get experience and then moved on to what they thought were better jobs and some have had success and some not so much. The benefits are overlooked now days by most and the focus is on the salary but when the whole package is taken into consideration a coop is at the top of the list for a career in my eyes.

Bump

Agree, engineering is a great field to go into IF you have the math background & aptitude. With my company, we have about 250-300 open requisitions around the country for various levels and backgrounds of engineers. For our Austin facility, we have expanded our design engineering departments from about 65 heads at the beginning of 2017 to past 130 currently with at least 20+ requisitions currently open for our Austin facility. Overall, we have over 5400 people in engineering across the US and still hiring like crazy. We are trying to prepare for the so called silver tsunami with the aging workforce and the baby boomers coming into retirement years. That will be a huge amount of experience gone over the next 5-10 years and we are staging with bringing in junior and mid-career engineering personnel to mentor with the senior subject matter experts prior to their departure.

as for salaries, I still reflect back to my college days of years ago when a professor told us that we needed to get a job and stay for about 5 years, then start looking for another to really increase our salary and experience. It's hard to retain top talent with the 2-3% merit increases ...