depending on assignment/task on hand. my dad is a professional engineer. I sometimes help him out around the office or put together huge reports/proposals. He is the co-founder of Accord Engineering which does mostly soil cleanup/environmental clean up work. He's bee nat this since the early 1980s.
Quick summary of my dad's education:
Prior to 1979: regular high school and elementary school, graduated within top 20% of the class. (this is Taiwan 1970s, so things are a much more competitive than the American school system).
In Taiwan it is required all men 18 years of age must join the military for 2-4 years. my dad did his time was a military engineer building dams and roads. (civil engineering work). In 1983 he applied for college to get a professional engineer degree in civil engineering (eventually a master's degree) at the California State Long Beach University. He was accepted and in 1984 moved to the US. In the US
he worked extremely hard at the same time took a part job at Earth Tech (sp?) as some dead-end office assistant. Later he worked several years in a soil sample lab while in school. 1986 my mom came over the the USA. 1988 I was born. By then he had finished his Master's of Engineering and working full time as a professional engineer at IT (this is a really big company). His approximate work week was 52 hours (7 days a week) long and made approx 35k a year. Worked hard, got to be manager of something or other around 1992. My mom told me he worked hard, generally the regular 40 hrs but sometimes up to 100 hrs to make a deadline or something. I remember my dad sometime would not come home for up to 4 days because of work. By 1993 he was making around $80k.
Since 1997 he was some kind of project manager. This I'm told is a very high "rank". He's been making about 100k a year since. His work was the standard 5 days, 40 some hours, as project manager he over looked projects and labor. labor in this country is unionized, and the union will not work weekends unless its overtime. So my dad didn't work weekends or long nights unless it was required.
2003 or so he left IT and started his own company along with another guy, David Cheng. My dad's 1040 tax form income amounts did not change even though he said he didn't make as much as before. And he did work more than normal, pulled 2-3 day continuous work shifts to make deadlines and such. Still does this today, and I do so too with him if needed to make a project report deadline or something.
His paycheck stubs claim a rate of $55/hr. He averages 32 to 42 hrs a week normally, and up to 75hrs on big projects. With my help when I can, it drops to around 50hrs. still a lot for a 55yr old man.
My last FAFSA application he claimed $116,000 income a year. (yeah, I'm in college)
Work environment (from what I experienced): a typical office environment. the dress code at my dad's office is very casual unless there's a client(s) coming in. In other places I think a business attire dress code. What we consider acceptable would be far too casual for most other places. Sometime we go out to the field, which is once literally was "the field", an outdoors environment,manual labor rare but may be required. mostly surveying, collecting information, etc. Lots of walking around.
I don't do presentations normally. My job has me working the background and away from clients. My dad has done presentations, Accord Eng generally uses a variety of methods: there's the paper report or proposal provided to the visitor. For very large files that's impractical or extremely bulky and sometimes would kill about a hundred trees to print, we hand out CD or DVD media with PDF or word files, generally Word 2003 or before format for best compatibility. The TV is used often for any video presentations, and the digital projector often used for power point and the like.
common technologies used at work:
-A computer with Microsoft windows XP or Vista.
-Microsoft Office (Powerpoint, Excel, Word)
-The printer or copier
-Email and IM messaging (generally MSN messenger)
-AutoCAD sometimes used, nearly all in 2D only.
-Adobe PDF (read, create, edit)
-The cellphone/pager
My dad's project manager job at large projects he can oversee as many as 3,000 people. He can have dozens of sub-project managers under him, and sub-sub project managers below the sub project managers. He uses a chain of command, its not leadership, but all in efficient and clear communication. He obviously can't control all the 3k workers under him so has generally a system of managers, supervisors he talks to and those will talk to people below them on the chain of command. So he really supervises at most like 50 people at a time than all 3kpeople. Its not leadership, but mostly good communication and the ability to have patience and good organization to do something like that. he needs to keep track of what's going on with each of the supervisors below him.