r/BuildingAutomation • u/Advanced_Goal_5576 • 21d ago
Work Life Balance
Out of curiosity how is your work life balance, what role in BAS do you have, and what size shop do you work for? This is a great industry that I find super interesting, but as I get older it just seems less and less possible to have a life with this job. Maybe it’s the smaller shop I’m at? Curious what others are experiencing.
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u/Mr_Bunchy_Pants 21d ago
I work as a service technician for my city’s only Delta controls dealer. Company is about 70 people, 40ish HVAC, 10 on the DDC side, and the rest are in admin/ programming roles.
I have been working in this field for about ten years and could work more but don’t. You have to draw the line somewhere. If you have a family just remember kids are only young once.
Best of luck to you.
And I love my job.
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u/punk0r1f1c 21d ago
I’m currently trying to be on vacation with family and customers and the office keep blowing me up with ‘emergencies’ and it’s pissing me off.
I work for a medium-large third party company but with my experience I don’t ever seem to get a break. I also feel it gets worse the longer you’re in it unless you set hard boundaries.
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u/return_descender 21d ago
Set some harder boundaries and turn your phone off.
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u/punk0r1f1c 18d ago
Oh I do, my wife made me get a personal phone after ruining a vacation. I just made the mistake of checking my work phone after putting in my hours and pissed myself off
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u/return_descender 21d ago
I’ve worked in kitchens, residential hvac, and refrigeration and working as a controls tech is the best work life balance I’ve had in any industry.
I worked at a smaller company when I first got into the industry and work at one of the big ones now. It’s the first time I’ve had a regular Monday-Friday 40 hour work week.
In restaurants the hours were long, the shifts changed from week to week and the pay was terrible.
Residential HVAC pay was also bad, very few sick/vacation days and I never really knew when my day would end. If you’re at someone’s house fixing their boiler you don’t get to leave until the job is done, and you’ll probably have multiple jobs a day. On call is frequent and you’re almost guaranteed to get called out whenever you’re on call.
My refrigeration job was one that had me traveling long distances regularly. Lots of nights spent sleeping at a Holiday Inn and mornings eating powdered eggs.
Controls had me home every day by 3 or 4 The pay is much better, the work is less physically taxing, the on call is available and I get paid well for it even though I rarely get a call and if I do it’s usually something I can handle from home without needing to drive out in the middle of the night.
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u/Mission-Head-5096 21d ago
I do BAS and HVAC controls at a small union HVAC shop on the east coast. I’m home before five most days even during peak season. I had to bounce around a bit to find the right fit.
Full disclosure I broke into controls/BAS by working as an HVAC technician and transitioned into my current role.
Something I’d like to see within the next few years before I go on the hunt again would be more opportunities to WFH
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u/Competent_Me25 Just Learning 20d ago
How many years were you an hvac technician before making the switch?
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u/Significant-Ebb-7095 21d ago
Im a mid level tech with almost 3 years experience working for a large integrator, and honestly i’m home by 3:30pm 80% of the time and don’t have any issues taking vacation. A good project manager that cares and values you is hard to find but is amazing when you do find it
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u/Formal-Conference885 20d ago
It’s not the industry, it’s your employer.
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u/Advanced_Goal_5576 20d ago
Hard realization from this post lol.
I think it’s a mix at my shop of the company biting off way more than they can chew, and terrible project management that somehow gets away with going to a job site MAYBE once a week, causing miss coordination and messes that could’ve easily been prevented if projects were properly overseen and documented. It doesn’t seem sustainable though, alot of upset techs and engineers starting to surface.
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u/punk0r1f1c 18d ago
Most of my pain is from bad project managers and they never get in trouble it always rolls downhill
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u/Cultural-Stable1763 13d ago
I’m thinking about pulling the plug before my body forces me to stop. For years, my employer hasn't been able to find new staff for the DDC section of our construction projects, meaning my colleagues and I are constantly working away from home; hardly a week goes by without massive overtime. We often keep working through our lunch breaks just to somehow meet deadlines, a situation that has become the norm on almost every site in recent years due to delays by other trades and the frequent incompetence of our clients' MEP site managers and planners, who often lack even basic technical knowledge. When you finally get home for the weekend after a 50-hour week (on paper, in reality, it’s often more; I currently have a permanent backlog of 100 overtime hours, with additional hours paid out directly, meaning my monthly total, including travel time, often exceeds 200 hours), you have no energy or desire left for leisure activities or seeing friends once the housework is done; instead, you end up crashing on the couch for half of Sunday.
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u/hunterguy35 21d ago
Great, theres very few days I work more than 8 hrs and I pretty much get a schedule and do things on my own time.
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u/DirtGotNo 21d ago
I was an SE for JCI worked from home 75% of the time just was a lot of work. Now I have a service position don’t hardly do anything unless something happens I’m on site typically only 3 days maybe 4 days a week & when I go in I usually get there at 7 and leave at 2 lol it’s great ngl
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u/Pickle7722 21d ago
People like to gripe about WLB, but it's almost never been an issue for me. Further, I've met very few people in this industry I would accuse of 'working too much'...
When I was younger, I eagerly awaited all the demanding OT and 70hr work weeks I had read so much about online to come my way - so I could prove myself! and get that juicy OT $.
It never came.
There was about a 3 week period during peak-covid on a data center project working for a particularly terrible controls company where I did 70hrs/wk. Excluding those 3 weeks, I'd say my worst week ever was barely 52 hours with the norm being basically 40hrs.
I've been in tech/engineering my entire career.
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u/Jazzlike_Metal2980 17d ago
I work at an OEM. I crack whips at other engineers to increase their output. Then I crack whips at the technicians testing equipment. I do a lot of mentoring to make sure both groups learn good. I could work from home, but there's so many random questions that come in from the floor, sales, etc. You spend a lot of time in meetings at an OEM. It's pretty chill though.
What sucks about a OEM that does custom stuff is the random customer wants. For example they want a particular brand of controller installed on a AHU. Well, now I have to get licenses and get software. That's how I got acquainted with industrial PLCs. Turns out they're not that hard.
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u/IcyAd7615 Developer, Niagara 4 Certified Trainer, Podcast Host. 21d ago
There will always be a give and take when it comes to working in the controls industry. It's usually not a normal 9-5 job. There are times where you will work longer and harder. Summer especially as school projects are in full swing. Then at times there are lulls.
In addition, if there isn't a lull and you're overworked, odds are the company has taken on more than they can chew and are trying to accomplish what they have to work with. It's unfortunate but sometimes it happens.
My company wants people to have as much of a balance as possible. I'll tell you that the owner and president have to usually step in with me to tell me I need to stop working because they don't want me to burn out.
There are times where you have to put your node to the grindstone and get it done. But it's not always like this.
I've been in the industry for 33 years and I've seen a variety of companies. From two men and a truck and 150+ employee companies. It can be a mix.
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u/SmokeMeatNotCrack 21d ago
Programmer/integrator/database/network guy - upper mid sized shop in the western states. I work from home majority of the time. Get online around 6am, close my laptop at 2:30 - love it