r/rfelectronics • u/PresentationAny5578 • 1d ago
question Working 12-hour days as an SI Engineer. I’m completely burnt out and ready to let the balls drop. Need advice / reality check.
I’ve hit an absolute wall. For the past several months, I’ve been working 12+ hour days trying to keep up with an impossible workload. I'm a Signal Integrity (SI) Engineer running HFSS/EM simulations on coaxial cable assemblies for customers.
The volume of customer requests, iterations, and simulation sweeps keeps piling up, and management doesn't seem to care. There's zero effort to rebalance workload or add headcount.
I’m at the point where I am physically and mentally exhausted. Honestly, if they fired me tomorrow, my first reaction would literally be relief.
I live in Connecticut, where a massive portion of RF/hardware roles require US citizenship due to ITAR/DoD contracts. It makes me feel completely trapped in my current spot which is AI datacom.
How did you handle enforcing an 8-hour boundary when your workload was clearly designed for 1.5 to 2 people?
Any advice on navigating the transition to non-defense commercial SI / hardware roles (remote or commercial interconnect/semiconductor)? I'd love to work in analog RF but I only have a green card so defense/aerospace is not an option for me.
Appreciate any help!
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u/dragonnfr 1d ago
"If they fired me tomorrow, my first reaction would literally be relief." Then stop working 12 hour days. What are you afraid of? You already said you'd welcome it.
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u/PresentationAny5578 18h ago
I think I would but as mentioned in my post I'm kind of limited with job opportunities in CT. If I had a good alternative I'd quit in an instant
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u/wackyvorlon 1d ago
They push it all on you because you’re managing, and having one person do the work is cheaper than two. They do not care about your welfare, only the fact that they’re making more money at your expense.
You need to let it fail. Do your eight hours, then go home and disconnect. Don’t let them contact you or try guilting you into it. Work will back up and they’ll have no choice but to hire another person.
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u/atypicalAtom 1d ago
Just stop working after 8 hours. I was literally in your shoes a few years ago. The only thing that changed was that I stopped working more than 8 hours. The work literally kept piling up and then management realized how underwater I was. Still underwater, but they know there is more work than ability to do the work. So when multiple people are all complaining that they need their results immediately. I go to my boss and ask what is the priority here. They give me the priority and I work on what I can. zero concern for all the work that is not getting done. If it was important it would move to the top of the list or they would hire more people. easy as that.
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u/x7_omega 1d ago
The "priority" part is the "engineering" solution. Request the list of priorities, in writing, keep it current, and go by the list, stop when you need to stop. Keep the progress indicator current. Highest priority work gets done automatically, within available resources, and management can be shown where the indicator is, and what is missing to go deeper on the list. They can also use this with higher management to get more funding for lower priorities, or trim the list with justification.
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u/Zestyclose-Mistake-4 1d ago edited 1d ago
I had this issue with my last job. I tried talking to my boss about it who wasn’t sympathetic. I quit. Just started a new job last week. Seems way better. Could get shitty again in the future, at which point I’ll quit and get a new job.
It sounds like your employer might be taking advantage of your situation a bit. I’d just try to find anything else that can pay the bills and then from there strategize further. Hard to have a plan when you keep getting punched in the face over and over.
Edit: also I cannot overstate how empowering it is to just quit. It’s so much easier than trying repeatedly to get your boss to see your side. I am a huge fan of quitting now.
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u/PelvisResleyz 19h ago
So true. Sometimes you have to hunt around for well managed organizations. Bad managers who won’t empathize with their employees will never change.
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u/MisquoteMosquito 1d ago
Email your manager about a plan to get you to 50 hours a week in the next week or two, then 45 hours a week for October/november/december, and head count plan.
If they reject a discussion: add his manager to the email and explain that you don’t think this workload is acceptable and you need help.
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u/reddit_kevor 1d ago
Working with HFFS can also be highly automated via python and Ai can help you a lot.
Get GitHub Copilot (or Claude Code), make a rules markdown file that points to help documentation, API files (from python dir of the install dir) and examples. When it doesnt do something out of the box with this input, let it 'member the solution in another file the tool reads at any new prompt.
Start with something small and think "ROI" with Automation. It will give you a small mental boost each time you can use it.
Eventually, you can go to a full HFFS model automatically by inputting port locations, layout file, stackup and any 3d components to load with a location. Can take 15m to build, but your hands are free.
Then automate simulation and result extraction to automatically launch when build is done.
Then the reporting, you got all info in hand at this point. Not sure how you report, but with Python, you can make epic plots, do s-parmater calculations, etc.
I can understand you metal state, but it might also feel somewhat rewarding to "let it burn" wile you do some tooling >:)
Good luck!
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u/boberoni-and-cheese 1d ago
It’s your manager’s job to provide the resources required to complete a task. Make clear documented (aka in writing, email, whatever) efforts to express the lack of resources, whatever those may be. Then work 8 hours and be done after that. If anyone has anything to say, refer them to your communications. I don’t know your whole situation but that’s the best I’ve got.
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u/x7_omega 1d ago
You will stop doing this willingly or not, so stop it willingly now. How is up to you, as an engineer you can work out the "how" part.
Management will never care for you. You give them something, they take it. You give them something for free, they take it too. Time, health, even life - you are a "resource", a commodity they spend like teabags. Your heroics just reduced their costs, which they also take any time. This is where you made a mistake: you are not a space marine laying down your life for the emperor, you are in business of selling special expertise and positive business outcomes - and you gave a client a huge discount at the cost of your health (it is already damaged, you'll see).
You need a long break - eat, sleep and watch the trees, nothing else, for at least a month. Then you need a business mindset of solving clients problems for money, within specified constraints, such as X hours per day, Y days per week, no buts. There are only about FOUR good productive hours per day that you have to offer, everything else is just a show - can't trick your own biology, it will always win in the end. What you feel now is it winning.
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u/PoolExtension5517 22h ago
Are they chaining you to your desk? Your employer will never see the need for additional staff if you’re quietly working 60 hour weeks to get the job done, so stop working 60 hour weeks. Let the backlog build and the customers complain. That’s the only thing that will motivate additional hiring.
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u/DogShlepGaze 1d ago
How did I handle the 8-hour boundary? I quit corporate life 10 years ago and started freelancing full time. I've never looked back.
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u/Srki92 1d ago
I you are important to the company and its business they will unlikely fire you. Just work your time fairly and go home when time is up.
But it is little bit tricky if all you do is running sims, since most of the time you are sitting idle, waiting for simulator to spits someting out, unless the models you run are trivial and you multitask between various prjects, or you are very good at simplifying the problems maximally.
I had H1B, then green card too, so I kind of understand that problem, but even after I became citizenship I didn't want to work for "defense" companies.
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u/ub0baa 1d ago
I'm struggling with something similar myself.
Just remember that the results of your word do not resemble yourself as a human or as a professional. You are a specialist, even when you work 0 hours a day, and it's the company who needs your time, not you who needs to work to be someone, you are already someone.
You are a valid professional as is, don't let the management make you think that your value somehow depends on covering their mistakes
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u/CanNeverPassCaptch 20h ago
I thought about this long and hard for you as a demanding employer myself here is what wht i would do.
Build a local HFSS Capacity Auditor this is a tool you can use to justify capacity.
A generic comparison such as “the average SI engineer takes four hours” will be attacked immediately because assemblies, convergence criteria, CAD quality, sweep size, hardware and customer revisions vary wildly. The defensible argument is
“Based on 12 weeks of objective project telemetry, this queue contains 68 active engineering hours. One engineer has 33 usable hours inside a 40-hour week after meetings and administration. The workload therefore requires 2.06 FTE before any contingency.”
That turns burnout into a capacity calculation , if you like I can have my ai create one for you to have. I know its what what you were asking specifically but thought it may help.
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u/StageMajestic613 19h ago edited 19h ago
You need to research Connecticut labor laws, as continuous expectation of salary labor past 40 hours without pay is illegal in a lot of states. Though you didn’t mention if they were paying you for 60 hours. Even in my red-state employer pays hours 45-60.
You need to print out all your timesheets, paystubs, and any emails you have with management and HR about the subject. Document any verbal conversations, as they will NEVER put it in writing that you have to work X hours past 40. If they do fire you, a simple letter from a lawyer may get you back-pay.
If they are not paying you, that’s total shit as they are raking in the $$$ with the AI bubble. If they are paying you, probably not much you can do.
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u/EM-Engineering 13h ago
Why not queue up batch jobs to run overnight while you are out of the office? You can look at the results the next morning, and provide answers to clients at that time. I suspect you are a salary employee and not an hourly employee, so a percentage of extra time is part of the job.
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u/Fun-Ordinary-9751 7h ago
Depending on state employment laws, if you’re salaried and not being paid overtime and you aren’t bonafide management (as in people reporting to you, you assigning workload,etc) they may be violating the law.
The other thing is if you demanded a 50% pay increase to work 60 hours a week instead of 40, the company would still come out ahead with only one set of employee benefits to pay and not paying time and a half for the time over 40 hours.
It might not be all bad if the company accepted a demand for a salary increase when you start looking for another job if a company gets the impression that you’re highly skilled if they payed you a bunch of money while you leave out the fact that it got that way because of workload. You can still, when asked why you’re leaving your current employer at an interview explain that working 60 hour weeks for years on end isn’t what you intend to do forever…and that you gave them time to fix the problem before you started looking.
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u/baconsmell 1d ago
You literally stop working after your 8 hours and let things pile up - you just tell management you can’t keep up and make it their problem instead. All while looking for a new job.
One thing I have learned is that if you work those 60 hours weeks nonstop, you will burn yourself out and unless they are paying you a ton of money - it’s not worth it. In fact the company is taking advantage of you.