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?
Its the catch-22 of it all. You need more money to pay for things, the only way to do this is to climb the ladder, you get into higher paying positions but the price is that you are now responsible but still have no real power. It sucks.
I don't know what your relationship with your team is so trust may or may not be an issue. But you could just ask them what they want to do. You can let them know that the work isn't going to let up and the load is just going to continue getting worse and worse (assuming I understood your assessment of the situation from the post) and very gently, very quietly, nudge them all into looking for work elsewhere. You do the same while also trying your best to keep upper management content enough to not pay too much attention to what you and the rest of the team are up to. If things work out, everybody just slips away pretty quickly into jobs once they've been secured and wash your hands of that situation.
Its not going to work out that smoothly, so thinking through ways to support the teammates that don't find work as quickly/easily as others is going to be a must.
You're not a sell out, you're doing your best in an impossible to win situation. :rat-salute-2:
Thank you, I will start having these conversations with my coworkers. They don't understand their collective power.