It seems that upper management has no real interest in providing opportunities for their CAD technicians to grow their careers. On most teams, even with the title of Designer or Sr. Designer, you will not get many opportunities to do any actual design work, short of laying out some water or sewer lines. Its almost as if there is little to no trust in having non-engineers do any real design. Even if you have years and years of design experience under your belt, 99% of all design is entrusted to engineers. Including 1st year engineers who are still learning the ins and outs of the industry. In short, PD offers no real career path for CAD technicians. There are no job descriptions so don't expect to have any benchmarks to help guide you along the way. You will get no training when you start. So you'll have to rely on asking someone on your team how to do every little thing, which cuts productivity and doesn't always allow the time needed for the information to sink in. Also, you'll be expected to do plats as a technician. So if you thought you'd be coming in, learning about design and strictly working on design projects, think again. Plats will be required, even though I personally feel that plats should be done by survey technicians and be a part of the survey department. Thats where that level of expertise belongs. PD seems to have this "sink or swim" mentality so if you're not a fast learner or absorb a lot of information thrown at you real fast, you're going to struggle to learn the "PD way" of doing things. You cannot wear earbuds and you cannot create a workspace that is your own. In most cases, you'll be told you can't have certain things in your cubicle for whatever reason management seems fit to enforce. There is very little room for self expression. Working 8 to 5 is frowned upon by many project managers. The unwritten rule is you're expected to put in 45 to 50 hours a week. If you stick around during lunch, get ready for your PM to ask you do something. Micro-managing seems to be something that a lot of managers at PD do. And many managers just have no people skills. They might be great at pumping out the jobs, cranking out the numbers and telling their clients "YES!" to every demand they have, but simply do not know how to manage people effectively. Some are rude, condescending, and out of touch with their team. Most of the time, no one says hello when you pass them in the hallway. It doesn't feel like a family at all, unless you're in good with upper management or with the right people. Office politics and favoritism exists. Engineers are heavily favored and groomed while technicians are left feeling undervalued and unimportant. One last thing, CAD is full of problems is very slow at times. Makes work very frustrating and difficult. For a company is this size, these problems shouldn't exist.
