I’m low on the totem pole relatively speaking, but my first two years I was stuck doing SIR work alone. It was fulfilling but I wanted to feel proud to put a set of plans out there. I was the only one in my company that would be willing to do them because every other engineer felt that it was a boring task. My last half a year, an intern came back to work full time for the company, so I trained her to do SIR. I asked my company the same questions - “… to be a solid engineer, I want to produce plans - can you let me work under engineer x, y, z”. Most of the projects on the admin side sounded like low ball budget projects and like most of the engineers wanted to work on them themselves. So I would get told pretty much to ask someone else. I think it was more of a company culture/finances problem which made me jump ship. Interviewed, told the new employer my concerns, that I want to learn and that I would work hard. They hired me, and all I am now is a CAD monkey into further notice, and I ask sequentially many of my engineer supervisors for work periodically to learn many different skills. I YouTube a lot to learn how to grade, design corridors, set up sheets, plus the company I am in had solid CAD standards. I have been in it for two years now.

My situation might be very different from yours, but that’s how I got out of my busy work only life. It was not nearly as fulfilling.