Due to my inability to ignore bad processes and my wanting to get paid more, over the last couple years I've been moving from a 100% design role to a part-design, part staffing manager. I now assign fellow designers in my engineering sub-department to the projects our company is hired for. I have very little input in what projects we take on, but from my position I can read their budgets and expected hours for various client submissions, I then take this info and try to balance the work between my coworkers. In the past 6 months we've been completely overwhelmed with work, too many hours of work to do for our team. Thankfully, our project managers and clients have had project deadlines slip but the projections always show a ton of work upcoming and many coworkers are working unpaid overtime. I've been advocating for hiring more designers, and in the last month have become very explicit in voicing this need, but, I think, worry about economic recession has kept management from posting a job opportunity online.
Does anyone have an idea or opinion that can help me? Am I selling out by leaving my design only role?
I am considering looking for a new job, I'm very in demand as there are few electrical engineers in my field. I'm also considering applying to grad schools in Europe, cheaper and more relevant to my specific goals, but my undergrad GPA was pretty bad. I worry that I'm running from my life though, and I could have an opportunity here to positively change my firm's culture?
Find an argument that will resonate with your bosses as to why they should hire more designers. Could be that they have talent to retain and clearly with more work piling up people are going to start leaving if they have to do unpaid overtime more and more often. Clearly if business is booming and your team is only still the same size, at some point you won't be able to accept more projects. If they want to get these future projects instead of the competition then they need to start planning now and hire more people. Or they can keep piling up work on your team and people will start finding better opportunities (the opportunities exist rn in the job market, they're not "stuck" with your company), and that will be a disaster. Imagine doing twice the work with half the team.
Talk to them in terms of budgets, profits and expenses it's the only thing they know lol
Collect what your team thinks and has to say (anonymously) and present it higher up.