Technical skills (and advancement of technical skills) are almost non-existent or not exactly promoted. The labor market in the area acts sort of like a bubble, isolated from the normal labor market as a whole. Technical skills can be ignored, they value trade experience. If you come here to work, you better hope you have learned technical skills (vlookups, pivot tables, macros, etc.) at your previous job. but you can get by not using them. The department/company doesnt necessarily push you to improve or explore these technical skills. As a result, you can become very comfortable and lazy. Stimulation at this job comes in cycles. for 6 months you could be doing stimulating, time sensitive, fun estimating, then the next 6-8 months it will be slow and you're stuck doing rinky-dink change order estimating. Management in my department has just recently improved and they began asking for estimator inputs/ways to improve the estimating/proposal submittal process with change orders. They are very cookie cutter and vanilla. A lot of the more senior estimators have a lot of trade background experience, so you can always go to them for insight on estimating a particular trade work scope. After working here for a number of years, and just recently began applying for job opportunities outside of my company and outside of the hampton roads area, I can say that I feel left behind (in terms of technical skill development). A lot of companys who have similar "cost estimator" job title positions opened will ask for forecasting, monte-carlo, risk analysis experience. I think that the shipyard delegates certain responsibilities to certain departments so an estimator will just solely estimate and do nothing else. This can be seen as a con. There is also a lot of bureaucracy within management in my department. There were 2-3 reorgs lately, shuffling around work loads under different managers. I find myself reporting to a M2 and then he reports to the other manager. Its wasted time. Pay is also isolated from the normal labor market of similar job industries in the area. I find im underpaid, and many others here feel the same. But thats the biggest reason why I am applying to external positions. Better pay and more stimulating work. Growth in positions is rare. You need a vacant position to apply to in order to get pay increases. Work banter is very "boomerish" - lots of the run of the mill major media regurgitating, propaganda, etc. I get the shipyard is a defense company, so american exceptionalism is flowing from the water fountains here, but any sort of nuance to geopolitics is completely thrown out the window. Major geopolitical issues appear to only happen in a vacuum with these people. Again, all nuance is ignored. You will hear "Covid" and "vaccines" on a daily basis if you venture into the office. Keep your personal ideologies to yourself and you will be fine. Play their game and you will win at it.
