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The title is fairly summary. I want to convince the upper management of the company that I work for to create a new position for me to leverage my unique skill set, and to give myself a substantial increase in wages while converting from hourly to salary. Background: I have been working for my current employer, a manufacturing firm that makes parts and assemblies for commercial aerospace companies for a bit over eleven years. I started as an inspection clerk when I was twenty two, so about the same age as someone who was getting out of college, though I don’t have a degree. Over the last eleven years I’ve progressed from an entry level position posting purchase orders for subcontracted processing services (heat treatment, finishing and outside machining) under close guidance from program managers, buyers and the like, to managing the subcontracted supply chain process from RFQ to EOL. Along the way I’ve spent significant time as a machine shop inspector, learning general machining best practices, GD&T, instrument calibration, first article requirements, etc. I became the authority on dispositioning discrepant orders coming back from finishing and wrote our receiving inspection and rework processes. I also branched out into manufacturing planning and engineering, doing edits to work order instructions and master planning, mostly relating to subcontracted services but also for inspection as required since I was located directly in the inspection lab. I also branched out into scheduling and expediting, again mostly related to the subcontracted portions of the manufacturing process, but also leveraging my knowledge in other areas as necessary to fill in gaps in information and making sure orders complete on time. Due to my lack of education, relative youth and inexperience, I started out at a pretty low wage, $10/hr. My pay was frankly, quite poo poo for a long time, but starting at the end of 2017 I was able to leverage my experience into a promotion to a full time position in Supply Chain as a catch all Outside Processing Coordinator, with a decent bump in pay, to $22/hr in 2018 and then to $25/hr in 2019. I moved out of Quality and took on responsibility for everything related to subcontracted services, from quoting and writing master planning for those services, to writing the purchase orders and approving expedites, to reviewing invoices and dispositioning quality related issues and rework instructions for subcontracted services. I could work all the overtime I wanted and averaged 52 hours a week from 2017-2019. Around this time, the CEO and owner of the company decided to cash out and sold the place to a private equity firm. Several months later the PE firm, dissatisfied with the admittedly dysfunctional management of our company, bought another local aerospace firm about 1.5 times our size and merged us together. Their management ideology is quite different from our previous one, if one such existed (though equally dysfunctional in some ways) and many of the side functions I performed out of necessity in quality and engineering were transferred away from me because I was in Supply Chain and should focus on buying things and there were other people dedicated to doing all of those other things I did. The last 20 months or so have been a slow purge of the top level management of our company and more or less all of the old timers, accelerated of course by the 737 MAX grounding and the whole COVID thing. Our total headcount has been reduced by roughly 70% and many of the remaining staff are transfers from the company we were merged with when layoffs and reorganization efforts were happening. I’m the sole remaining member of supply chain from the old company and at this point I think I’m in the top 10 in terms of tenure from a company that was started in 1992. Most of the people who were supposed to do the things I used to do before we were merged were laid off in the last eight months and really we’re feeling the effects. Managers and Directors are taking on tasks to varying degrees of success and the stuff I used to do in an hour takes weeks or months to finally get done. I’ve taken on buying all the hardware and consumables for what remains of our assembly operations, but that will be all transferred to the main campus of the company we were merged with in the coming months so I'm worried about having enough poo poo to do. Without all the overtime I was working from 2017-2019 my pay is really quite mediocre and with the current economic forecast (though admittedly better in the very recent term, TY FAA) an outright raise is probably out of the question. So meandering back to the start here, how do I convince our upper management team to make a new position to let me do all the stuff I’m really good at so that people who are kind of poo poo at it and don’t really give a gently caress don’t have to do it anymore (while making more money of course)? I feel like I have the clout to at least make the case, I’m the go to person in the division for everyone when they don’t know the answer to an off the wall question and my supervisors all the way up to the CEO (who I worked with daily when he spent 8 months as our GM during the merger) think I’m awesome at my job, when they remember that I exist at all. I feel like that’s my biggest impediment, I work at a different location in the same city as all of the upper management and I’m more or less left to my own devices. I have little day to day interaction with my superiors in supply chain and it’s oftentimes me asking them what needs to be done to accomplish short and medium term goals instead of the other way around. My original idea was to broach the subject in my yearly review, but I haven’t gotten one in well over a year, most likely because they don’t want to talk about pay in any way. Do I proactively ask for a review and an opportunity to discuss my future with the company? I don’t even know who I should ask given that I want to pull responsibilities from three different departments into one job. Do I just go to the CEO directly and shoot my shot? This is the first time in my career where I feel like I can proactively do something like this but if it fails it could really backfire and I don’t feel like I could find an equivalent job at another company due to my lack of formal qualifications.
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Nov 21, 2020 04:54
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| # ? May 1, 2024 09:20 |
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rscott posted:The title is fairly summary. I want to convince the upper management of the company that I work for to create a new position for me to leverage my unique skill set, and to give myself a substantial increase in wages while converting from hourly to salary. "I have some ideas of how we could restructure my position to better support the company's goal of Blahblah, who do you think I could talk to about this?" If you have a direct supervisor, I would go to them first if you think they'll have your back, or if there's multiple pick the supervisor who likes you most/thinks you can help THEM out the most. Repeat: this is not about helping you or getting you to salary. This is about helping the company/your boss, and focus on getting the position created. That is what you are selling. Once they buy into it, then you can bring up what title/pay will make sense for your new role. You may decide if it's better for you in the long run to get a title change to manager or director or whatever and use that to change jobs (it likely is). If you can work for a smaller company and do all of these things, you may get a better position right off the bat. Are you looking actively for other jobs? I really hope they're not planning to lay you off but take an honest look at what you wrote and see if this could be the case. Edit: and where are you located? moana fucked around with this message at 07:06 on Nov 21, 2020 |
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Nov 21, 2020 06:56
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Moana is very correct in terms of approach and framing. There is significant bias in most organizations, especially highly technical organizations, regarding managers without a bachelor's degree. Have you considered trying to complete a degree? It is quite possible that even if you successfully advocate as Moana suggests that you will not be considered qualified for the role that they develop.
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Nov 23, 2020 13:21
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:Moana is very correct in terms of approach and framing. Agree with KGJ and Moana on framing Re: You must have a degree. The only exception to the "manager titles MUST have degrees" in aerospace that I've witnessed is in a manufacturing environment where the manager's direct reports are all technicians. An example that comes to mind is a ~120 person aerospace assembly subcontractor that has machinists, machinist "leads" who are usually the most knowledgeable person about a particular type of machining, and all of those will report to managers who often used to be machinists/machinist leads. I think this is rscott's environment, but completely agree that there's still an aversion to this and they never make it to director, to be sure.
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Nov 24, 2020 04:15
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Agreed, in a true production environment you have a shot, but it sounded to me like rscott was backoffice and not shop floor, which is tougher. You know aero better than I, though. It also sounds like rscott is looking for broad responsibilities rather than the route of "I am the God of [specific process/task] so therefore I manage everyone on [specific process/task] and don't do anything else"
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Nov 24, 2020 12:45
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:Agreed, in a true production environment you have a shot, but it sounded to me like rscott was backoffice and not shop floor, which is tougher. You know aero better than I, though. It also sounds like rscott is looking for broad responsibilities rather than the route of "I am the God of [specific process/task] so therefore I manage everyone on [specific process/task] and don't do anything else" Yea good point
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Nov 24, 2020 12:58
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I don't want to sound pessimistic, but in a contracting company overseen by private equity, they're not going to create new roles or pay people more. It's just a long, slow bleed to "improve" EBITDA before a sale or liquidation event. See if you can get the company to pay for the credentials and then look for a job elsewhere.
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Nov 24, 2020 14:51
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Once again Dik beats me to saying what I was about to say. OP, if you want to reach even middle management you are going to need a degree.
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Nov 24, 2020 23:03
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Dik Hz posted:I don't want to sound pessimistic, but in a contracting company overseen by private equity, they're not going to create new roles or pay people more. It's just a long, slow bleed to "improve" EBITDA before a sale or liquidation event. Itll suck, but get a degree. Have they started cutting coffee yet? As a PE survivor, its a telltale sign of worse things to come, let alone promotions.
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Nov 25, 2020 02:03
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| # ? May 1, 2024 09:20 |
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After reading your OP, you and I are in similar boats, I'm just further down the river and have gotten what you seek: management title with salary position after almost a decade of grinding overtime in manufacturing. I will tell you to be careful what you wish for. Salaried jobs in manufacturing are a double-edged sword and you frequently are exploited by those above you. Now that you're salaried and management, we'll cut all your direct reports to the bone and now you get to fill in what they were doing on top of your management duties (timekeeping, supervision, data analysis, report creation, presentations, and OMG ALL THE loving MEETINGS). Not only that, but you'll also be working the same, if not more hours! For no extra pay! There are some perks, like 1 hour lunches (over the 30 minute breaks we'd get), slightly more flexibility on start/end times. The responsibility and accountability are really hard, as well as the fact that now you rarely, if ever, get a vacation. If you just want more money, go somewhere else.
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Nov 30, 2020 19:05
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