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Pro/e contractor questions

I had been browsing the job boardsand was beginning to get interested in doing contract work after seeing some of the job opportunities and pay rates out there. I'm more interested now after reading this thread.


I'm a relatively inexperience engineer whos looking to prepare to get into contracting. I have about a year and a half of ProE experience. I've taken a couple of ProE training courses. One of which is a surfacing course with Enser Corporation. But I havent had to use surfacing much for my current position.


I guess my question is: what should i do to get in a good position for contract work? I think I'm too light on ProE experience for now.
 
contracting is good for the inexperienced because you can gain six months in a job where your forced to get another six month job in a similar or different field... all in a year! I suggest to the young engineers that go to design engine for manufacturing or proe training to contract for a few years.

1. you get to check out a wide variety of companies
2. you experience a wide variety of jobs
3. you meet many other contractors and hear their stories

Most of the major manufacturers will offer you a permanent position but most turn those down for the two or three years while they contract themselves out.Design engine and her past students maintain a healthy contract agency list where we have software tools for emailing that list resumes and contact information.You might ask Enser (I see their job postings) if they have a similar list however I think they are a contract agency as well and I speculate that they would be biased and look at other contract agencies as competitors.

your smart for taking the surfacing classes!
Edited by: design-engine
 
Thanks.


Is pro/cable more for electrical engineers? Being a mechanical engineer, would i be able to get into pro/cabling work. How much do these contractors look at your experience and background as suppose to justyour level of CADcapability whether it is surfacing or cabling.


And how doesPro/cable compare to Inventor. I saw on Inventor's website that ithas cabling capabilities.
 
I don't know much about inventor but i will say that military contractors don't use Inventor so the rates will not be there like with Pro/CABLE. That is what I base all my training needs on.and to help contractors demand a high rate.

I want to focus training only where the jobs are.
 
Is pro-cable in demand right now? Or maybe should I say, it that the specialty that is most demanded?

How much has it changed from say, rev 7 or 8, which is the last time I used it. I'm sure it has but how much? Still use csys to route sections?
 
This is a bit more rambly than I had intended, but I have worked both contract and direct. I'm not the typical contractor though I have done contract work. I don't tend to want to work as many hours as possible so overtime pay isn't that strong a motivator for me. I have looked at the clock on a Friday afternoon, calculated how much I got per minute if I just worked a bit longer and still decided it was time to leave. I also have a family (husband and dogs) and don't want to leave them.

My first contract job was 3 hours from home. I would drive down on Sunday and back on Friday. I probably should have gotten the contract house to get me the per diam thing set up. I didn't do that and just took the tax deduction for my travel expenses. If you work more than 50 miles from home (I think that's the number) then you can get part of your pay untaxed as long as it is a temporary job. You'll want to talk with a tax expert to make sure of the rules. I wouldn't have taken this job, except we really needed some kind of income for the household and there wasn't much else around.

My next couple of contract positions were local. It worked out well for me since my husband was able to get health insurance for us thru his work. By working contract, I got hired faster and got paid for all the hours I worked. (as opposed to the salaried guys who were expected to do overtime but pay didn't change) The companies also thought about how much overtime they really needed from me since they had to pay for it. Each contract house is slightly different in what you can get. Some will offer a few paid holidays. Some will offer a few days of vacation if you have been with them long enough. The contract houses I have worked with have had 401Ks that you could contribute to. (They did not contribute anything, but reducing my taxable income and contributing to my retirment seemed like a good idea.)

The companies that I have worked for have generally treated their contractors as real people. I have heard of places that don't but have not experianced that. Getting hired as contractor may only require a phone interview. They figure if they don't like you then they can just let you go. At one company, they were willing to hire me contract after just a phone interview. I had just left a company that I was not comfortable with. The new company was in the same industry, so I was nervous that they might be similar. I asked and was granted a chance to meet the group I would work with before giving them a decision. The same rules about taking jobs apply working contract as not - interviews go both ways. You need to decide what you are willing to put up with in a job enviroment.

Working contract lets you see how a bunch of companies do things. Some processes work better than others. Also, there are times that it is very nice to remember that you don't work for the company so it's less your problem and to remind yourself that you get paid by the hour so the slow repeatative task isn't that bad, really it isn't. (as long as you don't go crazy doing whatever it is)

Depending on the company, you may be doing lower level tasks as a contractor, or they may have you doing the same things as a direct employee. There are advantages to not having as much responsiblity. There is also a tendancy to not have contractors attend as many meetings - definately a plus.

Rates vary depending on the industry and what you are doing and the part of the country the job is in. Having a degree can boost your rate unless they just need drafting done. Rates are more likely to be posted for contract positions. Direct positions it's harder to find out what the pay would be. I will say that there may not be as much difference in pay between contract and direct - overtime is a big factor in this. I changed contract jobs and got an hourly increase, but lost overtime, so lost pay with the change. Make sure you know what they really will expect in overtime. I was lead to believe there would be more in the second job than there was.

I do not have a typical contractor mentality. I tend to take a bit more ownership of the product I am working on and make sure that I understand the company's processes and try to improve them. I also tend to take off more time than typical. I used my contract status to take the vacation time that I wanted. (unpaid of course) I am currently in a direct position and scheduling my paid time off for the next year - hoping I don't get sick, and knowing that I won't be able to take off nearly as much as I might like. Also, one job, they didn't want me to work more than 40 hours without permission - I got used to leaving early on Fridays at that one. With short lunches and a couple of long days (9-10 hours) it's easy to get in 40 hours.

One down side, if you can't go to work, you don't get paid. I was out a couple of days for an illness in the 6 weeks before a holiday. I didn't get the holiday pay because that contract house required a certain number of hours in the weeks before the holiday.

If you don't have things that tie you to a specific location, I would definatly recomend going for it. Also, you would be surprised at what is considered good enough pro-e skills. I've seen quite a range amoungst the people I have worked with.

Carrie
 
Carrie, thats a nicely written bit of info, thanks for the input. Here in the UK the same rules apply and I agree to everything you have said.


As for the pro-e skills, wellMy pro-e skills have grown in time with little practice but Oh Wow have I seen some absolutely dreadful modelling in the past... makes me feel likea master haha. I guess the same applies to each & every bit of software, just this week I was going through a whole bunch of 2D autocad drawings and modelling them in pro-e.... dimensions missing, hidden lines solid, centre lines missing, section views incorrect.... bla bla blaaaa............
smiley18.gif
 
My last year contracting (officially with an agency) was 1998 and I miss driving and flying all over.I miss it really. The part I don't miss is working with people that leave work right at 5:00...

Ownership is so important!
 
design-engine said:
My last year contracting (officially with an agency) was 1998 and I miss driving and flying all over.I miss it really. The part I don't miss is working with people that leave work right at 5:00...

Ownership is so important!
Click to expand...


A contractor with ownership, now there's a novelty.


The only ownership that contractors have that I know of is with their timesheets - especially the portion after 40 hours..
 
I hear from past students that CASE is about to have a layoff of all the contractors. Fiat I guess owns them. Any word on other layoffs with respect to Pro/ENGINEER...
 
We used to take a WIA grant to train persons who were under employed or out of work.... We wanted to get the Unigraphics guys who did high level work in Unigraphics but lived in Michigan.... get them jobs at Cat. The darn case workers would fight us tooth and nail as such we never got to do the WIA mass training and get those guys jobs in Peoria. We had a 100 percent success rate too.

Inner City machinist were the easy ones to get jobs at CAT. They were mechanical inclined and fit nicely into Pro/E jobs. No one wanted to go to Peoria... the ones that did got jobs that month. The ones that waited got jobs the month they decided to go to Peoria. It was ridiculous having that kind of success getting people jobs and even then it was persuasion to get them to take our three week training... then persuasion to get the case workers to pay for it... persuasion to get the workers to go to Peoria...

It was all a bunch of work above and beyond training people... trying to convince them they can do it.

Looks like that opportunity just went out the window.

Might be easier to play up on the contractors fears that they need to train and retrain to keep on top of their game for us to stay in business with training... or thats going to be my next angle. ;)

[url]http://www.pjstar.com/business/x1049860912/Temporary-layoffs -will-idle-some-Caterpillar-plants-in-East-Peoria [/url]
Edited by: design-engine
 
Okay... I just learned that the layoff was planed over a year ago due to that business unit moving to South Carolina or something. Hardly any contractors have been let go from what i have been told by past students who are working at Caterpillar.
 
scared me too since they hire our three and four week students...I was beginning to think 'there goes the economy' but it looks like CAT is still hiring contractors as new reqs open up in January. We will see in January. I keep getting calls for Pro/CABLE RSD people.... I don't have anyone to give them... not cat tho. Mostly contract agencies. I did find one company in Michigan looking for Pro/CABLE RSD people... i sent them my resume and got the call back today. It's an engineering company and he wants Pro/CABLE in a bad way!
 
sorry to add to this post but i have learned again that my original information was correct and that CAT has let a lot of their contractors go. even full time employees were hit, anyone with less than 6 months was let go. from my understanding this is from the engineering department and may have affected all departments. is there not one person on this board that works for CAT?
 
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