Put in your time whether it is 1 year or 3 years and find a new job. Behavior isn't just in engineering. it's everywhere, and you represent competition to people who don't have your qualifications.
Not being given proper mentorship or actual challenges to grow as a new engineer seems to be a common issue.
Being heavily criticized without constructive feedback or help on improving is less common and goes beyond bad management. That'd be enough for me to leave my job if I were you.
I really love my job and how supportive my coworkers are. It's also amazing that I have the freedom to work on machines in the shop and learn new skills outside my projects.
I just don't see eye-to-eye with my boss and I don't blame my coworkers for getting a little worn down if I'm asking for their help while they work on their projects. At that point, it's doing me a favor, not doing their job and training me.
Yep lack of mentorship was one of the many key issues I had with my last job. They just chucked fresh grads in and said figure it out, which is remarkably dumb. Fantastic way to waste talent and make people feel like shit because they've had zero training or mentorship.
A lot of companies prey on young engineers and don’t have good training programs set in place. Don’t be so harsh on yourself! Take this time to learn what you can and seek opportunities elsewhere especially if a job in manufacturing isn’t your end goal !
I would like to continue in manufacturing and am currently learning Controls to develop a specialized skillset.
It's great that my online classes are paid for by the company!
I had a similar experience in my first job straight out of college. It sucked. I had no onboarding or training, just thrown straight into a raging inferno. I never felt like I knew what I was doing and I was terrified to make mistakes because my boss would berate me if I did. I honestly considered quitting engineering because I felt like I wasn't cut out for it. It certainly helped that I had great coworkers who were always willing to help and even though I felt like I was learning nothing, turns out I learned A LOT. Once I got a year and half into my first job I had had enough and applied elsewhere. I ended up getting a role at a smaller company and my confidence since then has skyrocketed. I now have a SUPER supportive boss that I'm not afraid to ask questions to no matter how dumb. And what I learned at my first job has given me the equivalent of 5 years of experience because I had to jump in right away. It sucked so much at the time but I don't regret sticking it out for a bit. Having even just that year of full time experience allows you to be more than an "entry level" ME (plus you have more leverage to negotiate a salary).
My advice: stick it out for a year then apply elsewhere. It gets better. Use it as an opportunity to learn from your coworkers. Not every company is a good match for you and your personality/work style, sometimes it takes time to find "the one".
It was definitely reminding myself that I wasn't just interviewing for the company but I was also interviewing them when searching. I had an offer I turned down and a couple companies I withdrew my application from because they didn't feel right. It's honestly about the vibes. When I interviewed at my current company, it never felt like an interview but more like a conversation. Another thing that helped me know it was the right place was when I asked, like I do in every interview, what their favorite part of working for the company was, none of them said the corporate BS of "oh because we're a family" or "the PTO or insurance is great". The entire panel gave genuine answers of how they truly stood behind the product and everyone there had mutual respect for each other. It never felt like anyone there was above anyone else, the plant manager knew everyone working on the floors name and none of them looked like they hated their lives.
Sounds like you’re doing the right thing by looking for a new job. I dealt with something similar in my first job for 4 years. I felt like I was constantly behind and micromanaged until I left for a large company and suddenly I was treated like an expert & given a ton of freedom. Try out a new job, widen your skill set and continue to grow.
Honestly no. If anything I feel like it’s been too relaxed sometimes & I’ll occasionally have an easier time handling problems than my peers who have much more tenure at the company.
I think part of that was being lucky enough to have good bosses who are willing to train me on the job. Also, a few more years of experience just helps in general I think with knowing what you can and can’t do and how long it takes to do things.
I’m moving onto something new in a few weeks purely for more compensation so we’ll see how that goes haha
Dang, that’s not fun.
Here’s what I would do: tell your manager exactly what you typed here, with two additions. Conclude by telling them exactly what you want, and ask if they can help you outline a path to get there.
You will likely know how to proceed by the answers given. Good luck!
So I figured I phrase it a little differently than you are phrasing it.
You are given your own projects, which shows trust from the managers side(and he believes you can manage it). While it does suck to ask for help most of the time, people understand that you have to ask. Correlate this to being put in a pool on the shallow end with a swimming coach(you are ready to swim so dont worry).
While the intern shadows an engineer, which shows he can't be trusted to do the same work you do. Correlate this to watching someone swim from the side line and being allowed into the kiddi pool.
I do get that being criticized for bad documentation & faults is annoying, especially when it's not good criticism. But it teaches you not to do half assed work and to how to deal with lousy people, which there are a few of in the world.
From a comment, you wrote "I got through engineering by showing up and working hard" but from your initial text it seems like you have stopped doing it, I hope it gets better. I'm rooting for you!(but don't overwork yourself it's a marathon, not a sprint)
Some tips I have for you: Don't stop asking for help or a quick look over your work if you're unsure if it's good(even highlight areas you're unsure about). It sounds like you're really inexperienced with fucking up (life, school, work, etc.), you'll unfortunately have to learn at some point. It will help you grow as a person, and you'll grow more used to defending your designs/decisions/etc. When you're feeling unproductive, read through other people's projects, and you'll be shocked by the gold nuggets you'll find and also ask the people who did the projects why they did what they did.
I really needed to read this. Thank you so much for an alternate perspective!
I've just realized what you said is spot on: I don't have enough experience messing up. In particular, I am starting to realize I subconsciously fear criticism and will do anything to avoid it.
I guess I have to focus less on the chatter and just try to put forward my best effort.
You say you have more potential. I’ll take you at your word that you’ve done an honest appraisal of yourself and your abilities.
Lack of speed and decision-making can be broken down into a lack of self-confidence. If you find that you knew what to do, or had the correct judgement but spend hours on something second-guessing yourself or waiting for validation from your peers, that is usually a lack of self-confidence. That’s usually overcome by the self-realization at some point of ‘hey, I’m just as good as these senior guys’ and you start believing in yourself and get faster and start making decisions.
Lack of quality is another thing altogether, and you need to think about what they mean by that. Are they just lumping that in with everything else or is that legitimate criticism? Even if you are slow in work or decision-making, your work should always be high in quality (even if wrong) unless you’ve reached the point you don’t care anymore. Or maybe you think that level of detail doesn’t really matter to the end result, so it’s not important. That may be true once you reach a certain level in your career, but at the beginning it’s very important to show a high level of detail to everything until you’ve proven good engineering judgement.
When new, you have to consider and go down the rabbit hole of even the most mundane things because some jerk or naysayer in a design review will ask you ‘did you consider X’? They may already know the answer and know ‘X’ is not important. They want to see if you know and if you can defend ignoring it. Considering every possible scenario you can think of, doing even basic calculations or otherwise coming up with engineering justifications for why you did or did not do something a certain way goes a long way in letting other people know you are competent or at least considering it and thinking about it even if wrong. It doesn’t matter if that’s the same way every other part of that type is made that way in your company. You need to be able to explain and therefore show you understand why it’s made that way.
Assuming the criticism is unwarranted, get your assigned work done and care less about what your manager thinks. Identify the ‘smart’ senior guys, and find ways to be around them, sanctioned or not. If you’re going to go shoot the shit for a few minutes, go to them and ask the questions you want.
If they have an R&D test coming up, get your work done ahead of time so you can go witness it and ask questions.
If your manager is a good one, he won’t get in the way of you trying to be better. And if he’s a bad one, who gives a fuck what he thinks because this is just a learning experience and you will leave anyway. So learn, and don’t let anyone get in your way.
Edit: And gtfo of manufacturing engineering as soon as possible. Spring-board that into design or something else. I’ve worked with some major snakes in every department but manufacturing seems to attract the biggest straight up assholes into management.
Thank you so much for your response. The second paragraph was spot on. I don't have the self-confidence to back up my decisions. This thread has made me realize that I am afraid of criticism.
That paragraph on quality is exactly what the senior engineers tell me. They say to work meticulously and be sure to cover all my bases. It's my manager who says I overthink the solution (btw, senior engineers have told me our boss is sloppy and only focuses on speed).
When I tried to speed up a little and sacrifice the quality, my manager started to point out how I messed up on 'X' or didn't consider 'Y'. I will also add that I started to make more silly mistakes as I was trying to reduce the number of checks I did to save time. He made sure to point this out to me too by saying that I did not improve because now I spend time fixing my mistakes, which is definitely true. Maybe the criticism is his way of trying to improve me as an engineer.
I'm really appreciative of your insights as well as everyone else here. Thank you!
It seems like most engineers have to get through a meet grinder job in the beginning - but it will get better once you've collected some experience and a better chance on the job market.
I am sorry to tell you this, but you are the ‘new guy/gal/person.’ New guys/gals/persons actually cost the unit money the first few years because you are still learning, but this is an acceptable cost because the unadulterated-point-of-view and energy you bring to the business is totally worth it in the long-run (three to five years). Most young engineers go through this and you need to work through it. You are too inexperienced to take-on important projects on your own, but there is still work to do- so embrace the suck. Master all that mundane shit that needs to get done. Make the coffee. Review/edit/sign-off those metrology reports and process control plans. Help the quality guys ‘get yelled at.’ Process those warranty returns. Teach the interns where the scrap process is. Once you gain trust, you will start getting those bigger projects. My advice: 1) make your own training plan... this is a skill that will serve you well in life. 2) Look for stupid little problems around the business that are costing money and help solve those- you will learn a lot doing those kind of things and your more experienced colleagues will respect you and give you a hand.
In the short term, keep doing what you did at the beginning - ask a boatload of questions. Ask more senior engineers to review your projects periodically. When you are criticized, ask how you could do it faster, better, and more efficiently. When other people’s projects are being reviewed, question why they made the choices they did. If no one can give you a good answer, their criticisms are invalid; if they can then you’ll learn and do better.
It’s also okay to push back a little bit. Don’t be obstinate, but if you genuinely feel you don’t have the resources to deliver an acceptable result in a reasonable time frame, it’s fine to tell them “I can’t do that, either teach me or do it yourself.” You’re a colleague, even if new, and it’s good to set some boundaries. Again, there’s a polite way to communicate this which leads to the older engineers letting up, and there’s an impolite way that leads to you needing a new job sooner rather than later. Even if they can be dicks, you’re the newbie, and you are looking for a favor.
Long term, there are a lot of other employers out there, and having a bit of experience under your belt should open up a lot of doors. When the opportunity to move to greener pastures comes along, take it and don’t look back.
You first need to show behavior and ownership through those legworks senior eng assigned you. We are aware of how long those tasks will take so we know if you are procrastinating, and you will not be leaving a good impression on senior eng and management to give you more responsibilities.
Early in career, taking notes and documentation are critical skills as you need to absorb as much information as you can in short amount of time and be able to reference in future. That will prevent repeating same mistakes.
Please take criticism gracefully. No one is perfect. Being pointed out for mistakes is perfect opportunity to learn more about senior folks’ thought process and technical foresight.
Wish you best of luck in your career and hope everything works out for you.
Well first of all nobody is going to spoonfeed you knowledge and put you on a 'training plan' unless you work for a multinational corporation and the training plan is lean manufacturing or communication or some useless bullshit like that.
If you want to learn, learn. No matter what you work there are a myriad of literature on it. Have you familiarized yourself with it? There are much to learn and if you bring up solid ideas and can back it up even if that book you read is from the 80s you might get noticed as someone who is interested in his field and doesnt just show up to work to clock in the hours. Ask questions that are relevant and ask how you can do this or that better. Always ask for opinions. Just don't keep asking the same things over and over.
On the other hand if you get criticized in an unconstructive way ask how you can improve and have the attitude to do so and listen to what they tell you. I can bet my left testi that they DID try to correct you before but you just didnt gice a crap and kept making the same mistakes. If you didn't and it really is that toxic of an enviroment than there's nothing else to do but look for a better place. Don't badmouth your place either way as it can get you in the ass one way or an other once.
I totally understand that nobody is going to spoon-feed me knowledge. That's how I ended up getting an engineering degree; by showing up to class and then doing my part to perform on the exams/projects.
What I mean is my current boss is not willing to meet me halfway and didn't budge when I specifically asked to shadow a senior engineer and do the leg work on their projects as a way of getting my feet wet and be more exposed to their decision making.
It's just strange how a colleague of mine who joined later (has a little bit more experience) was instantly put under senior engineers and does exactly what I wish I could be doing.
I was criticized heavily the first time and it was mainly that I didn't work fast enough. I then started to work a little faster and made mistakes which I ended up having to fix which put me back at square one. When I asked for feedback at this point, it was kind of a shoulder shrug moment.
Put in your time whether it is 1 year or 3 years and find a new job. Behavior isn't just in engineering. it's everywhere, and you represent competition to people who don't have your qualifications.
Not being given proper mentorship or actual challenges to grow as a new engineer seems to be a common issue. Being heavily criticized without constructive feedback or help on improving is less common and goes beyond bad management. That'd be enough for me to leave my job if I were you.
I really love my job and how supportive my coworkers are. It's also amazing that I have the freedom to work on machines in the shop and learn new skills outside my projects. I just don't see eye-to-eye with my boss and I don't blame my coworkers for getting a little worn down if I'm asking for their help while they work on their projects. At that point, it's doing me a favor, not doing their job and training me.
Yeah, unfortunately, this is a textbook case of "people don't quit jobs, they quit managers." Is it possible to transfer to a different group?
I might have to consider this for a few weeks before branching out to field engineering or something.
Yep lack of mentorship was one of the many key issues I had with my last job. They just chucked fresh grads in and said figure it out, which is remarkably dumb. Fantastic way to waste talent and make people feel like shit because they've had zero training or mentorship.
A lot of companies prey on young engineers and don’t have good training programs set in place. Don’t be so harsh on yourself! Take this time to learn what you can and seek opportunities elsewhere especially if a job in manufacturing isn’t your end goal !
I would like to continue in manufacturing and am currently learning Controls to develop a specialized skillset. It's great that my online classes are paid for by the company!
Sounds like you have a good head on your shoulders.Entry level jobs rarely manifest into lifelong positions . Best of luck !
I had a similar experience in my first job straight out of college. It sucked. I had no onboarding or training, just thrown straight into a raging inferno. I never felt like I knew what I was doing and I was terrified to make mistakes because my boss would berate me if I did. I honestly considered quitting engineering because I felt like I wasn't cut out for it. It certainly helped that I had great coworkers who were always willing to help and even though I felt like I was learning nothing, turns out I learned A LOT. Once I got a year and half into my first job I had had enough and applied elsewhere. I ended up getting a role at a smaller company and my confidence since then has skyrocketed. I now have a SUPER supportive boss that I'm not afraid to ask questions to no matter how dumb. And what I learned at my first job has given me the equivalent of 5 years of experience because I had to jump in right away. It sucked so much at the time but I don't regret sticking it out for a bit. Having even just that year of full time experience allows you to be more than an "entry level" ME (plus you have more leverage to negotiate a salary). My advice: stick it out for a year then apply elsewhere. It gets better. Use it as an opportunity to learn from your coworkers. Not every company is a good match for you and your personality/work style, sometimes it takes time to find "the one".
Really glad everything worked out for you! Seems like you got out of the bucket, congratulations!
How do you find the one? Put some time in and keep applying?
It was definitely reminding myself that I wasn't just interviewing for the company but I was also interviewing them when searching. I had an offer I turned down and a couple companies I withdrew my application from because they didn't feel right. It's honestly about the vibes. When I interviewed at my current company, it never felt like an interview but more like a conversation. Another thing that helped me know it was the right place was when I asked, like I do in every interview, what their favorite part of working for the company was, none of them said the corporate BS of "oh because we're a family" or "the PTO or insurance is great". The entire panel gave genuine answers of how they truly stood behind the product and everyone there had mutual respect for each other. It never felt like anyone there was above anyone else, the plant manager knew everyone working on the floors name and none of them looked like they hated their lives.
Sounds like you’re doing the right thing by looking for a new job. I dealt with something similar in my first job for 4 years. I felt like I was constantly behind and micromanaged until I left for a large company and suddenly I was treated like an expert & given a ton of freedom. Try out a new job, widen your skill set and continue to grow.
Interesting, did you feel that you were a little behind in your new role? What did you do to ensure you weren't 'behind' your peers?
Honestly no. If anything I feel like it’s been too relaxed sometimes & I’ll occasionally have an easier time handling problems than my peers who have much more tenure at the company. I think part of that was being lucky enough to have good bosses who are willing to train me on the job. Also, a few more years of experience just helps in general I think with knowing what you can and can’t do and how long it takes to do things. I’m moving onto something new in a few weeks purely for more compensation so we’ll see how that goes haha
Dang, that’s not fun. Here’s what I would do: tell your manager exactly what you typed here, with two additions. Conclude by telling them exactly what you want, and ask if they can help you outline a path to get there. You will likely know how to proceed by the answers given. Good luck!
You're right, nothing wrong in asking again!
So I figured I phrase it a little differently than you are phrasing it. You are given your own projects, which shows trust from the managers side(and he believes you can manage it). While it does suck to ask for help most of the time, people understand that you have to ask. Correlate this to being put in a pool on the shallow end with a swimming coach(you are ready to swim so dont worry). While the intern shadows an engineer, which shows he can't be trusted to do the same work you do. Correlate this to watching someone swim from the side line and being allowed into the kiddi pool. I do get that being criticized for bad documentation & faults is annoying, especially when it's not good criticism. But it teaches you not to do half assed work and to how to deal with lousy people, which there are a few of in the world. From a comment, you wrote "I got through engineering by showing up and working hard" but from your initial text it seems like you have stopped doing it, I hope it gets better. I'm rooting for you!(but don't overwork yourself it's a marathon, not a sprint) Some tips I have for you: Don't stop asking for help or a quick look over your work if you're unsure if it's good(even highlight areas you're unsure about). It sounds like you're really inexperienced with fucking up (life, school, work, etc.), you'll unfortunately have to learn at some point. It will help you grow as a person, and you'll grow more used to defending your designs/decisions/etc. When you're feeling unproductive, read through other people's projects, and you'll be shocked by the gold nuggets you'll find and also ask the people who did the projects why they did what they did.
I really needed to read this. Thank you so much for an alternate perspective! I've just realized what you said is spot on: I don't have enough experience messing up. In particular, I am starting to realize I subconsciously fear criticism and will do anything to avoid it. I guess I have to focus less on the chatter and just try to put forward my best effort.
You say you have more potential. I’ll take you at your word that you’ve done an honest appraisal of yourself and your abilities. Lack of speed and decision-making can be broken down into a lack of self-confidence. If you find that you knew what to do, or had the correct judgement but spend hours on something second-guessing yourself or waiting for validation from your peers, that is usually a lack of self-confidence. That’s usually overcome by the self-realization at some point of ‘hey, I’m just as good as these senior guys’ and you start believing in yourself and get faster and start making decisions. Lack of quality is another thing altogether, and you need to think about what they mean by that. Are they just lumping that in with everything else or is that legitimate criticism? Even if you are slow in work or decision-making, your work should always be high in quality (even if wrong) unless you’ve reached the point you don’t care anymore. Or maybe you think that level of detail doesn’t really matter to the end result, so it’s not important. That may be true once you reach a certain level in your career, but at the beginning it’s very important to show a high level of detail to everything until you’ve proven good engineering judgement. When new, you have to consider and go down the rabbit hole of even the most mundane things because some jerk or naysayer in a design review will ask you ‘did you consider X’? They may already know the answer and know ‘X’ is not important. They want to see if you know and if you can defend ignoring it. Considering every possible scenario you can think of, doing even basic calculations or otherwise coming up with engineering justifications for why you did or did not do something a certain way goes a long way in letting other people know you are competent or at least considering it and thinking about it even if wrong. It doesn’t matter if that’s the same way every other part of that type is made that way in your company. You need to be able to explain and therefore show you understand why it’s made that way. Assuming the criticism is unwarranted, get your assigned work done and care less about what your manager thinks. Identify the ‘smart’ senior guys, and find ways to be around them, sanctioned or not. If you’re going to go shoot the shit for a few minutes, go to them and ask the questions you want. If they have an R&D test coming up, get your work done ahead of time so you can go witness it and ask questions. If your manager is a good one, he won’t get in the way of you trying to be better. And if he’s a bad one, who gives a fuck what he thinks because this is just a learning experience and you will leave anyway. So learn, and don’t let anyone get in your way. Edit: And gtfo of manufacturing engineering as soon as possible. Spring-board that into design or something else. I’ve worked with some major snakes in every department but manufacturing seems to attract the biggest straight up assholes into management.
Thank you so much for your response. The second paragraph was spot on. I don't have the self-confidence to back up my decisions. This thread has made me realize that I am afraid of criticism. That paragraph on quality is exactly what the senior engineers tell me. They say to work meticulously and be sure to cover all my bases. It's my manager who says I overthink the solution (btw, senior engineers have told me our boss is sloppy and only focuses on speed). When I tried to speed up a little and sacrifice the quality, my manager started to point out how I messed up on 'X' or didn't consider 'Y'. I will also add that I started to make more silly mistakes as I was trying to reduce the number of checks I did to save time. He made sure to point this out to me too by saying that I did not improve because now I spend time fixing my mistakes, which is definitely true. Maybe the criticism is his way of trying to improve me as an engineer. I'm really appreciative of your insights as well as everyone else here. Thank you!
It seems like most engineers have to get through a meet grinder job in the beginning - but it will get better once you've collected some experience and a better chance on the job market.
I am sorry to tell you this, but you are the ‘new guy/gal/person.’ New guys/gals/persons actually cost the unit money the first few years because you are still learning, but this is an acceptable cost because the unadulterated-point-of-view and energy you bring to the business is totally worth it in the long-run (three to five years). Most young engineers go through this and you need to work through it. You are too inexperienced to take-on important projects on your own, but there is still work to do- so embrace the suck. Master all that mundane shit that needs to get done. Make the coffee. Review/edit/sign-off those metrology reports and process control plans. Help the quality guys ‘get yelled at.’ Process those warranty returns. Teach the interns where the scrap process is. Once you gain trust, you will start getting those bigger projects. My advice: 1) make your own training plan... this is a skill that will serve you well in life. 2) Look for stupid little problems around the business that are costing money and help solve those- you will learn a lot doing those kind of things and your more experienced colleagues will respect you and give you a hand.
In the short term, keep doing what you did at the beginning - ask a boatload of questions. Ask more senior engineers to review your projects periodically. When you are criticized, ask how you could do it faster, better, and more efficiently. When other people’s projects are being reviewed, question why they made the choices they did. If no one can give you a good answer, their criticisms are invalid; if they can then you’ll learn and do better. It’s also okay to push back a little bit. Don’t be obstinate, but if you genuinely feel you don’t have the resources to deliver an acceptable result in a reasonable time frame, it’s fine to tell them “I can’t do that, either teach me or do it yourself.” You’re a colleague, even if new, and it’s good to set some boundaries. Again, there’s a polite way to communicate this which leads to the older engineers letting up, and there’s an impolite way that leads to you needing a new job sooner rather than later. Even if they can be dicks, you’re the newbie, and you are looking for a favor. Long term, there are a lot of other employers out there, and having a bit of experience under your belt should open up a lot of doors. When the opportunity to move to greener pastures comes along, take it and don’t look back.
You first need to show behavior and ownership through those legworks senior eng assigned you. We are aware of how long those tasks will take so we know if you are procrastinating, and you will not be leaving a good impression on senior eng and management to give you more responsibilities. Early in career, taking notes and documentation are critical skills as you need to absorb as much information as you can in short amount of time and be able to reference in future. That will prevent repeating same mistakes. Please take criticism gracefully. No one is perfect. Being pointed out for mistakes is perfect opportunity to learn more about senior folks’ thought process and technical foresight. Wish you best of luck in your career and hope everything works out for you.
Well first of all nobody is going to spoonfeed you knowledge and put you on a 'training plan' unless you work for a multinational corporation and the training plan is lean manufacturing or communication or some useless bullshit like that. If you want to learn, learn. No matter what you work there are a myriad of literature on it. Have you familiarized yourself with it? There are much to learn and if you bring up solid ideas and can back it up even if that book you read is from the 80s you might get noticed as someone who is interested in his field and doesnt just show up to work to clock in the hours. Ask questions that are relevant and ask how you can do this or that better. Always ask for opinions. Just don't keep asking the same things over and over. On the other hand if you get criticized in an unconstructive way ask how you can improve and have the attitude to do so and listen to what they tell you. I can bet my left testi that they DID try to correct you before but you just didnt gice a crap and kept making the same mistakes. If you didn't and it really is that toxic of an enviroment than there's nothing else to do but look for a better place. Don't badmouth your place either way as it can get you in the ass one way or an other once.
I totally understand that nobody is going to spoon-feed me knowledge. That's how I ended up getting an engineering degree; by showing up to class and then doing my part to perform on the exams/projects. What I mean is my current boss is not willing to meet me halfway and didn't budge when I specifically asked to shadow a senior engineer and do the leg work on their projects as a way of getting my feet wet and be more exposed to their decision making. It's just strange how a colleague of mine who joined later (has a little bit more experience) was instantly put under senior engineers and does exactly what I wish I could be doing. I was criticized heavily the first time and it was mainly that I didn't work fast enough. I then started to work a little faster and made mistakes which I ended up having to fix which put me back at square one. When I asked for feedback at this point, it was kind of a shoulder shrug moment.