Sorry, this is lengthy and a bit of a vent. TLDR at bottom.
I have been in the design industry for over 10+ years when I started working for my current company over 5 years ago. There was only one other employee that was doing shop drawings and I would be taking over 99% of the responsibility as the new CAD Manager. At first there was a learning curve for both me and the company getting used to how things would be presented and learning the ways that they wanted details to be presented and how to elevate them to an Architectural Standard.
Things went well the first few years, and I got a raise as the work that I was producing was impressing the Customers, the Architects and Design Teams that were receiving our shop drawings. I also started doing all of the material takeoffs for the estimates and began giving crucial information to the production team to help make their jobs easier trying to figure out complicated angles or other info. No one else at the company was doing it before and as far as I know is able to do it other than myself even now. This led to many other little daily questions for information and more responsibilities in the company. We are approved by different Government agencies to manufacture to the highest tolerances for storms (think Florida hurricanes) and have annual inspections, forms and criteria that must be met, and this becomes more involved as each project gets more intricate. I am the only one in the company that manages all of the certifications of equipment, forms and inspection in addition to all of the other tasks that have been given and assigned. All of these additional assignments and no raises because “COVID profits are down.”
Fast forward to a few weeks ago, I got to the point that I was just overwhelmed and in front of another coworker I broke down crying from all of the stress. He said that he had done it many times when he first started here a while ago. I didn't know what to take of what he said, and it scared me a little bit, so i decided to have a meeting with the owner to discuss my current work production, assignments, and compensation. I did some homework before the meeting and saw that this year’s sales have already matched our total company sales for the entire 2019 year. I went in expecting to have some sort of raise and him to acknowledge the hard work and effort that I have put forth to help lift the company and bring some standardization to the workflow.
The Owner did agree that my work production has been more than acceptable and that I have helped to push some of the other staff in the sales department to step their game up in details. He also acknowledged that I have been a huge part in helping to get a better standard for the details to go out to the production team for fabrication and that he sees the potential for more as I am able to collaborate with the Production Manager and Shipping Manager. The he started in on his normal rants when I brought up my compensation, always complains that we are never doing our jobs and constantly asks what I am paying everyone a lot of money for if I have to do everything myself. I have not had a raise since the original one 4+ years ago. He then mentioned to me ” Don't be surprised if I have a company meeting in the next couple of days to discuss this topic with the whole company.”
Sure, enough a two days later he had everyone come into the Sales office so he could go over how badly the company was doing financially. He mentioned that he even broke his own rules about over stocking our inventory (almost 3X what we typically stock). He stated that he ” Knows this is the time of year that I typically do job reviews and give out raises, however since our profit is down and I broke my own rules about our inventory carrying too much, no one will be receiving a raise. He went on to say that “IF the second half of the year's profits are better, we all POSSIBLY could get a bonus.” This was about a week ago.
He is currently away on vacation in Spain for 5+ weeks, and this morning due to the time difference (East Coast USA) he spammed all of the employees with about 50 different pictures of his escapades on vacation with his new fling of the week.
I am currently hunting for a job and cannot wait to hand in my two-week resignation. I don't believe that this company or the owner deserve the two weeks, but even if they immediately started hunting for someone to replace me, they would not be able to find one person someone to cover all of the additional tasks that I have taken on. I also do all of our in-house IT and run our website (had to teach myself WordPress, html, php and javascript to get it to work after the company that we hired failed to finish the project.)
For anyone on the East Coast US that is looking for a new CAD Manager please dm.
TLDR: Boss is refusing to give a raise after acknowledging the additional work, better products, and shop drawings. On my way out the door…