Work stuff

No baby stuff to talk about tonight, but I thought I'd ramble about goings on at good old Deere for a while.

I made some reference to this in a previous post, but things are getting shaken up at work. The other metallurgist at the plant has decided to take a different job in Waterloo. He was discouraged by the same things that make me question materials engineering as a career - there are almost no entry spots into management or senior technical positions, and when one does open up they either downgrade it or almost exclusively hire external candidates. It means basically we're stuck under some kind of promotional ceiling, and the only reward for learning new skills and accomplishing major projects is that the job gets a little easier, at which point they pile on a little more. So he's getting out of materials engineering and going into supply management instead, which appears to be a promotional slingshot, with the trend being promotions to management level in less than 3 years. I can't blame him, cuz he deserves to be moving up, but it puts me in a bind. Prior to this week I had been fiercely opposed to even considering doing any of his work, because he is already a grade-level higher than me, but it looks like that situation might right itself soon. ("Soon" in Deere's HR terms is like 3 months as opposed to NEVER.)

My department manager (who was awesome!) left in January - they haven't replaced her yet. Her boss, who is now my boss, has had openings in his department since last October that aren't filled yet. With that track record, I can't imagine that he'll have this metallurgist position filled any time soon, and in the meantime, I'll be doing the job of two people (Not to mention the new life I'm growing, which really does take a lot of daily energy). When ever this new person does come in, he/she will have only a matter of months to learn from a decreasingly mobile me before I go on maternity leave, meaning there will be one inexperienced person doing the job of two people. Chances are, I won't be caring at the time, but things will be crazy when (if?) I come back.

Oh, and to add to it, the furnace repairman (the only person in the plant who has enough technical and mechanical knowledge to fix a production-dependent heat treat furnace when it goes down) has decided to move to a "less stressful" position until he retires in October. Again, awesome deal for him, sucky for me. Maintenance has elected not to replace him, or even consider designating someone to whom he can pass his knowledge to. So if something goes wrong with the heat treat furnaces in, say, November, there will be absolutely nobody in the plant who has even a clue, and it takes at least 8 weeks to get a contractor in to start diagnosing the problem. I guess that's some Union thing that other people who get paid more than I do need to work out, but they can't say I didn't warn them.

So it will be an interesting summer at work. Things tend to come in waves - when one part fails, there's usually 4 or 5 other unrelated things that go wrong at the same time somewhere in the plant - so I guess I will just hope for big lulls. And kickass vacations!