#6 - Casting Doubt on Your Abilities

This is a weird one to categorize, but basically when someone you are working for doubts that you really had the ability to gain your license in the first place.

Recently, I passed the PE exam for my home state. BB seemed to love to throw that back into my face, particularly if he was too lazy to go over something he wanted drafted.

The phrase of the day was usually, "...well, you're a PE, how would you do it." "I don't know, aren't you the PE?"

Another BB in my career, years ago, openly wondered in front of me, "how did you ever pass the FE exam??" This was in regards to his company's calculation standards, again someone who was either too busy or too lazy to tell me what they wanted to see. At that point in my career, having an EIT meant that I should also magically know how his company sets up drawings and calculations because that was all common knowledge, so someone that just got hired would totally know the inner workings of a company that's been established for, oh, 50 years or so...*sigh*

The mark of a bad boss is someone who will not teach you. Period. End of story. Whether you are an engineer or an architect or a cashier, you have to be taught how things work. That's how experience works, you learn from more experienced others either directly or through a manual of some sort. Don't ever let a BB make you feel stupid for not knowing something.