Getting Ready for Delivery

[Papa]

It's why I always sought out prior service applicants when I was hiring.

I work for a large company (100K+ employees), and more than 20% are veterans. I have a brand new college hire working for me now, and it's a challenge to keep him engaged. Not a lot of self-motivation in these kids today. They want you to give them the answers, not just the questions. Trying to teach them to solve the problem themselves -- that's what engineers do! I give you requirements, you give me solutions.

[RBachman]

I work for a large company (100K+ employees), and more than 20% are veterans. I have a brand new college hire working for me now, and it's a challenge to keep him engaged. Not a lot of self-motivation in these kids today. They want you to give them the answers, not just the questions. Trying to teach them to solve the problem themselves -- that's what engineers do! I give you requirements, you give me solutions.

Exactly! I have argued with so many young engineers about providing the goals and objectives I tell them and NOT what they want to give me. Environmental's are some of the worst. I hire them to tell me how to do a project legally, safely, and within codes and guidelines. They instead think they get paid to tell you why you can't do a project and you're evil for wanting to put a slab of concrete. Never has anyone hired someone to be a problem, create problems, or accept problems. People get hired to solve them! If you can't design within the box you're given, then design outside the box and make it work anyway. Otherwise I need to hire someone to fill that space they just made. And for the Love of God, please grow some respect!

True story:
After active duty, I was developing/running a large scale energy efficiency project at Fort Monroe, Fort Eustis and Fort Story, Va in the early 2000's. The base engineer had a set of objectives he needed accomplished within the project. One of my young engineers had a poor opinion of our military (did you know we're dumb and too stupid to know what we need?) He didn't want to give the BCE/DE what he asked for. It was a constant effort with that guy and he made it harder on everyone, including himself, and didn't give a damn. It came to a head with General Abrams at TRADOC (the 4 star son of the 4 star dad). Well, this engineer needed to get into a mechanical room in an office building. The General was standing in front of the door chatting with another star studded senior Army officer. This guy walks up, waits all of 5 seconds, interrupts all those stars with a deep sarcastic sigh and says something like "hey Bud, you want to move out the way so I can get in there and do my job?" I was walking right behind him, fresh from a "do your job" lunch chat, and went numb cold. I blabbered apologies so fast I don't think any of it made sense. I got them laughing when I said that the Generals were welcomed to keep the engineer and send him to Fort Jackson for basic training if they felt necessary. We chatted a bit and it was a big thrill for me. Anyway, there was little respect then, and it's worse now with the hard-core entitlement whiners. Glad I'm out of it and retired now.