Interesting Times to be Hiring Engineers in the Bay Area

Its a great time to be an engineer! There are so many technologies that are at the beginning of the maturity curve that needs innovative people guide to operationalization, to commercialization, to new applications, and/or to market. Furthermore, there are so many big societal problems to be solved; How are we going to generate enough electricity to meet exponentially increasing demand? How are we going generate more carbon neutral and cost effective electricity? How do we leverage the full potential of electric and autonomous vehicles? How do we reduce the impact of climate change? How do we harness the positives of AI without unleashing negative exploits upon our society? These are problems that engineers here at Applied Technology Services (ATS) are working on. What a great time it is to be an engineer!

To be able to tackle the challenges above, ATS, as always, is looking for innovative, experienced, and/or high aptitude individuals to join our team. However, I've been surprised by the difficulty in recruiting talent to join ATS recently. Many of the candidates we encounter from the Bay Area are fixated on finding jobs that are fully remote and with the highest base salary. Admittedly, I can't compete with the Tech companies in the bay area when it comes to those two factors. I always tell the candidates that we offer something different than the other companies in the Bay. ATS offers stability, work-life balance, a clear career progression path, and the ability for individuals to chose the work they do. Let me explain.

Stability

In the stretch of slightly over two years - covering 2022, 2023, and the early weeks of 2024, tech companies have slashed more than 36,000 jobs in the Bay Area, according to WARN layoff notices filed with the Employee Development Department. In comparison within the same timeframe, ATS has had a 20% increase in approved head count. Furthermore, our attrition rate outside of retirements within the same timeframe is less than 3%; when people come to ATS, they usually want to stay. I like to think its because they love the work and the culture.

Work-life Balance

One of our principal engineers that joined ATS in 2021 had competing job offer from a large electric car manufacturer in the Bay Area. The determining factor for the engineer joining ATS is because the other company scheduled their candidate interview with him at 9:00PM! The candidate took that as a bad sign for work-life balance at the company. When he told me that story, I also thought it was crazy; I have young kids (6 and 8 years old) and I want to spend every available moment with them. Most of my co-workers at ATS have families that they want to spend time with as well. I am committed to minimize the impact of work on life as much as possible and we all support each other in that mission.

Clear Career Path

ATS leaders understand that we are not only accountable to company outcomes, but are also accountable for the careers of individuals they supervise. We take that very seriously, which is why we are intentional in ensuring there are opportunities and plans for each of our co-workers to progress their career in the way they want; we wrote that into our goals for 2024. We have set aside significant dollars in our 2024 budget specifically for co-worker training and progression. We have planned for and will invest in our co-workers.

Choose Your Adventure

Due to the nature and variety of the work that ATS does, co-workers get exposed to a lot of interesting problems. Most of the ATS engineers are able to create their own work focus based on their interests. If you are interested in Gas pipelines, we got work for you. If you are interested in failure analysis, its a growing area for us. If you are interested in technology R&D, we are a part of a $80M program. If you want to test and validate technology already in the marketplace, we have a program for that. If you want to get out to the mountains and work with rotary equipment, we got a full team that does performance testing at powerhouses. If you want to work with your hands and build, we got that too. The diversity of work at ATS really allows motivated engineers to create your own work portfolio and progress in your interest area.

In sum, I think what we offer at ATS is an engaging career path within a organization with excellent work culture. We are not interested in engineers that sees themselves as guns for hire, working for the highest bidder. We are also not a company that sees our co-workers as disposal tools that get thrown out when used up. We invest in our co-workers and allow each individual to add to our culture and values.

Am I crazy to think that what we offer is still competitive in today's work culture? As I stated, its been extremely difficult to recruit for engineers these days. I've seen a big priority shift since the start of the Covid Pandemic. When I speak to candidates on the phone, I admit that we can't offer $300,000 for mid-level engineers and that we need our engineers to collaborate in person rather than spend most of their time remote. I beg folks to come visit ATS so that we can show folks what we are all about. Yet, we have 8-10 Senior and Expert Engineer positions that we are still actively recruiting for.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on today's work culture and how an organization like PG&E - ATS can continue to be competing for the best engineers. I also want to extend an open invitation to anyone to visit ATS if you like the organization that I described above.

Cheers,

Wen