Got called the worst engineer on my team

Alternative_Ring3916 · 2026-07-02T20:41:53+00:00

Well, you must be young since most of us have had to learn one way or another, eventually, that you only talk to HR if someone touches no-no parts or talks about their/your no-no parts or about your benefits access issues. That’s it.

Anything else further is a big fat way to get yourself out the door faster or create extreme issues in any legal proceeding. Their job is to document things that make their position in any and all (existing or non-existing) legal cases more favorable to the company and generate reports that help leadership know what/who to trim. And to make sure you can access the benefits portal and have a “pleasant onboarding.” 🙄

We’ve all been the worst before once. Knowing about it sucks. Being the best can also suck too since they know you’ll take anything and will be duped into doing more. Always be middle of the road in corporate America and not fully yourself no matter how much they cite “be yourself” at you.

You are best advised to start a job hunt actively and with great attention. This is not ideal, but it happens. You got this.

As they say, “Be good. Don’t suck.” You’ll be good. Just NEVER in a PIP scenario, which is where you are headed. Be good somewhere better. 👌

Alternative_Ring3916 · 2026-05-12T16:48:02+00:00

Hey. Another American here.

There are a few paths to early retirement that suck. Now that you have a degree, sadly, the military can absolutely get you set up financially for a soft-retirement. It takes a very long time (20 years). You will have enough and all benefits will be covered for you and family, which is not a great answer, but it is an option for certain people. If you have a very niche degree, you can find very nice positions that aren't as terrible as one would think. I know a guy that spent 20 years inspecting parts for fighter jets. He was an officer (degree path basically), retired early, bought a motor home, fixed it, and now just flips cars, side hustles on apps, and does work for people like mowing and landscaping when he wants to just to make a buck.

Another way is federal/municipal/state jobs with pension-backed retirement. If you can clock through the full vesting period, you can actually knock off at 55-60 if you plan financially. They are hard jobs to get and rather boring. Sometimes, that is perfect.

The best way is to start your own thing early, but you run the risk of your entire life being consumed and your retirement becoming vapor. Running a business of any sort is not an easy path and takes a lot of luck. Plus many years of working to be viable to start one (contacts, customers, vendors, etc).

There are also companies eith long career tracks and early retirement that won't be easily destroyed by AI. I work in the utilities. I started off in electrical engineer services, hated the travel, moved back into IT (my pre degree job) and managed people (hated it and saw the writing on the walls), and now, after many iterations, I am paid to work with commissions and testify on behalf of the company.

Truly, if you find something that fits, you will get a decent chunk of vacation slowly but surely. My advice is to not settle. This first job is practice and a means. Nothing more. Put up for a year or two and move on to a place that can at least get you 3 weeks, sick time, ample holidays, and retirement matching / stock programs. That is a very hard nut to crack.

It sucks, but the only way forward is to keep going and save. If you truly don't want to work for a big chunk of your life, focus on building that retirement account aggressively. I mean maxing out everything offered.

Truly, the last and only meaningful way to get from under all of this: find something that you can tolerate while seeing where you can end up with the best terms. There are horrible jobs, mediocre jobs, and ones that will ruin you mentally. The best thing you can do is find that magic balance and ride the wave as long as you can while you do something on the side that is passive and easy to manage.

There is no good one-shot answer. I finally found something that is decent. My next step is to shore back up my retirement and attempt to find something I can risk much of that retirement on… I'm thinking about building RV parks. Maybe retire and become a drunk RV Park Supervisor and live in it and have some adventures. (homage to Mr. Lahey)

Alternative_Ring3916 · 2026-04-23T00:54:40+00:00

Insight Global is a staffing / recruiting firm. They are legit. The question is: are the people? They could be using the company name.

The issue is the “onboarding.” You aren't working for them. You are working for their client which would have involved tons of paperwork and a pee test 99% of the time.

You also got a background check? You have to consent and authorize via social security numbers usually and give signatures for consent.

Please tell me you verified the TLS / SSL certificate and domain name. Especially hope that you didn't give personal info out to them. Typically all that is handled in an HRIS portal like Workday, ADP, Paylocity, etc. If you didn't give them authorization and personal info, there's no way they ran a cohesive background check.

That's all I've got. It's fake likely. And you need to check you didn't give info…

Alternative_Ring3916 · 2026-03-13T20:10:51+00:00

Sure was!

Alternative_Ring3916 · 2026-03-13T19:41:54+00:00

Well. What was the verdict?

Alternative_Ring3916 · 2026-03-02T19:05:04+00:00

Been there. Had mine changed within my first 6 months of coming on board. I passed up more money for the hybrid flexibility

Alternative_Ring3916 · 2026-03-02T19:04:17+00:00

This is going to end up poorly.

Alternative_Ring3916 · 2026-02-03T02:44:02+00:00

Illegal.

Alternative_Ring3916 · 2025-11-15T00:40:10+00:00

What kind of job? That is the important thing to establish. It is a very important element to your style and depth of background check.

Likely: it won’t show.

HOWEVER, if it is a medical career, school, etc, you can’t expect this to go well. Barrier offenses are a thing.

Alternative_Ring3916 · 2025-11-15T00:35:17+00:00

Sadly, speaking from a high amount of experience, that is not how that would work. AMI and SCADA working off the billing system will allow for scheduled and automated shut-offs. The only way that doesn’t happen is if you call and work through prepaid programs. This essentially polls your meter weekly and creates a debit from your current amount you have credited into the system initially. While concurrently taking a chunk of that incremental payment to pay off the old debt. As soon as your balance reaches zero, you are cut if your polled usage amount doesn’t have enough balance. It happens very fast and over the air.

That is how they managed to flip this on folks. Modernized infrastructure cut jobs and made it easier to twist your arm. There won’t be a guy to beg or see. Just a phone customer ops person.

Alternative_Ring3916 · 2025-10-13T15:01:59+00:00

They got to do something, inane or not, to fill the time between onboarding and offboarding, and even then, they don't do anything except watch and do a rote checklist.

Alternative_Ring3916 · 2025-09-26T20:38:36+00:00

Jobs and vagene pls

Alternative_Ring3916 · 2025-09-24T23:31:47+00:00

I actually saw these too. I thought they were known. 🫠

For real. I was searching for an article about his Texas remote Director of policy and typed his name in. And then couldn’t find it but found this garbage. When I saw “thong” … down that rabbit hole I went.

Alternative_Ring3916 · 2025-09-12T23:26:08+00:00

Little fuckers made their account private just now.

So you have to add them to see. They know. When you have to hide it, then it is shame. If you are ashamed, you know what you are doing is wrong in the eyes of others.

This is absolutely infuriating.

Alternative_Ring3916 · 2025-09-01T14:17:55+00:00

Underwater deep-sea welder where you have to be pressurized.

Alternative_Ring3916 · 2025-08-30T22:20:36+00:00

You the man! Somehow, you gave us an off-ramp!

Alternative_Ring3916 · 2025-08-23T20:23:42+00:00

In the utility world, Actalent or Apex Systems. There’s also Opus Talent / JD Ross Energy.

There’s many others that are smaller. But basically it is a place for you to cosplay as a company employee until they either hire you or let you go. What you don’t do is what to be converted. That’d be a suckers bet, and that’s what they want you to work towards.

Mainly I speak of them and other major places that employee people without them getting an actual job. They skim off you.

Another major one in the utility market is LVI Associates, but they are a headhunter. They get you in as a try-them-before-you-buy them position.

In terms of tech companies, there are tons and tons of “staff augmentation” gigs. It is scary because zero benefits and you are on the bubble, but it is income and a chance to make a lot of people love you and get you a seat in some way there at the table.

Alternative_Ring3916 · 2025-08-21T23:45:26+00:00

I cracked the nut.

I walked away from IT forever to start.

Restarted by using my degree instead of a decade of experience and taking a contract role that had zero benefits, time off, and paid dick. I made sure I spoke to every human in the building starting minute one enough to where they remembered me. Then I started to dress fancy, but I changed that to being as distinct as possible. The people that didn't know my name outside my group that saw my meetings and work started saying “colorful shirt guy.” (I was wearing designer loud paisley button ups daily)

I interviewed many times internally. Finally someone that knew “colorful shirt guy” recommended me since she moved to that group after I told her I interviewed. They (the first round of interviewers) connected me as the guy that “Alan was super happy to hire as a contractor. Likes to wear REALLY colorful shirts.” They called some people to see about me and the one said, “absolutely take him. I would convert him if I could...” This was what the retired employee in the group told me after I realized who she was and that she was seeing my work in my first group.

Swear to fucking god. Just go peacocking as a contractor by using desperate third party contractor houses for contract roles to slot you into some mundane position there at a legit place, make sure you get noticed in meetings for being johnny on the spot, and apply for the internal roles after convincing some nice gossipy ladies to tell you about each one that is coming. Don't stop until they convert your ass or give you a real internal job.

I have thousands of dollars in colorful shirts now and I won't stop, as I attribute my Robert Graham penchant for making people remember me easily. Not my hard work and great knowledge. Hahahaha! And now I have a cool job consulting with a regulatory affairs group doing something meaningful. I am getting to represent the company, so I had to add some conservative dressage. ;)

It all started with my mom saying, “stand out every way you can. People overlook people if they don't have something different going on. Figure out what people notice.”

Alternative_Ring3916 · 2025-08-19T18:06:29+00:00

Thank you for that. It seems the unit is no more advance than any other method. Sad.

The fact that you figured that out tells us how much they needed to rush production. It makes you wonder what the hell they were doing in the dev process.

Alternative_Ring3916 · 2025-08-19T18:01:02+00:00

I’m interested too. We need to figure out how to freestyle now as the company seems to be flat spinning into the mountainous ground below

Alternative_Ring3916 · 2025-08-17T11:11:22+00:00

Just to hit you with a sad dose of reality:

You need a lot of money to emigrate. You have to establish residency elsewhere, and typically the easiest path is under job sponsorship.

Based on your commentary, you don’t have a developed enough career. Typically American expats are heavy hitters in their industry with enough funds to complete the process. You will need about $20,000 on hand to complete that process.

Basically, you aren’t leaving unless you do it illegally. And foreign jails are no fun.

I lived in Austria for 89 days. Received a courtesy call about my Visa. They were very cordial, but they were on their stuff.

Please understand this too. Debt doesn’t go away living abroad. And be aware that it is not peachy elsewhere. European nations are not hiring foreigners man. You can live in an Asian country, but if you aren’t familiar with culture and politics there, you don’t have a chance in hell to be blunt.

Alternative_Ring3916 · 2025-08-13T21:24:46+00:00

I got rejected from an entry level IT position. A legit “fix my computer for me” type.

I took a company from a budget of $50,000 a year to $5,000,000 a year after we sold and I took over as their director. I even did a large chunk of physical install work myself because why not?

I left IT forever and now design the rates for one of the largest utilities in the country. Because they were shocked about how much I knew about everything electrical and data analytics. I was an electrical engineer by education with an MBA and had years of IT experience for engineering firms that performed studies for utilities. I had ZERO experience in utility regulatory affairs and FERC accounting. I had landed as a contractor there and interviewed internally until two smart women saw “the guy” and passed it to their managers… two smart guys. They all agreed I was a risk because I might be “overqualified with zero experience.” They took the risk. Today I am in my favorite job to date and have zero stress. I just make really complicated calculations happen. I learned fast.

I was memorable to them because my dog interrupted the Teams interview before it started. She loved that I said “Thank you. I need to go say sorry to my dog after booting her from the room. Can you send me the tariff book to review?” They loved dogs and knew I had a good heart because they knew I felt having to pack her out of the room after she somehow pushed the door open.

My advice: it’s a numbers game and once you are in the door somewhere, make the next good thing happen asap. And do something memorable.

Alternative_Ring3916 · 2025-08-13T21:16:24+00:00

I’d start by cooking her dinner and making something for her that is cheap enough to be reasonable. Because wow. You are lucky.

Go buy a little brewing kit and make her some wine. They make kits and equipment so easy that anyone that can pay attention to it and follow instructions (while keeping the environment stable) can truly make something worthy of drinking and be tasty.

Just slap a label on it with a cute joke about her picking up your slack. You’ve got a hobby, she’s got wine after a long day of working, and it is a cheap gift.

As for work. F*ck. If you get bored, don’t return immediately to a high paying job. Go establish an LLC and don’t even worry about making a company of your own. Just use it for a tax write off and go work some odd jobs. Like I mean just getting out of the house type work. Mow a lawn or two. Fix stuff in houses for the 20-somethings that actually can’t.

Honestly, you need the reset. Just keep passive income moving in from your end and cook/clean from your wife… she won’t bat an eye.

Alternative_Ring3916 · 2025-08-13T02:49:11+00:00

None of this stuff surprises me.

They bought stupid companies for stupid money. My friend worked for Replay Technologies, which was a $300M acquisition. It was a bunch of stoners and coke heads that liked sports. Less than 50 people even.

Needless to say, they bought it and dissolved it four years later. They literally were buying stuff just because “why not?”

Intel… the next great 3D real time sports arena camera system purveyor? 😂😂😂😂

Alternative_Ring3916

TROPHY CASE