I'm an engineer and we've been under staffed to a laughable degree, and the workload has not been adjusted for it. Our plant is budgeted for an engineering manager, and 3 engineers. One project engineer, two associate engineers. With the AE's each taking 25% of the project load, Project Engineer taking 50%, and engineering manager keeping everyone on track.
Our current capital plan was created when we had all positions filled, with me being an AE. The engineering manager retired, Project Engineer was promoted to engineering manager, I took over as Project engineer, and the other AE took a position at a different plant. So I was left to execute that plan, and develop the next one while the new manager filled the positions.
We have not been properly staffed since February 2021. We hired one AE, who executed about $40,000 worth of work(out of our $6mm plan) then took another job. I talked to my engineering manager about lightening the load going into capital plan preparation season. He said he would take some of the load, and handle a couple of the projects and some of the capital plan development. Then he went on Paternity leave for 6 weeks, during our capital downtime AND capital presentation. So I executed both. By myself.
When he came back, he basically said, “Thanks, Good Job!” and went back to normal. Now that we're getting to the end of our fiscal year, we're in a crunch to execute the end of the plan. I put together an estimate of work hours required, and business hours between then and the end of the year. It was more than triple the work than I had time for. Again, he said he would handle some things, to lighten the load on me.
Then get an email at 6AM on Tuesday, “Hey team, had a family emergency, won't be back for at least a week. bobombpom will be handling the 2 day site audit, and all of the work for the downtime next week.”
So now not only is ALL of that work back on my plate(which all the progress he had made was 2 emails on each of them). Plus I'm now now handling multi-day audits, that require me for the whole day.
Then I get a knock on my door today, “Hey, Engineering Manager didn't cancel the interview today, and we flew the candidate 1000 miles to be here. Can you interview them in an hour?”
LIKE FUCK. That makes 13 months I've done the work of 3 people, and now it will be at least 8 weeks, during the busiest times of the year, that I'm doing the work of 4. I'm pretty close to out of here.
The only problem is that this company either employs or contracts roughly 85% of the technical companies in my area. If I fuck them over, I basically have no choice but to move.