The hierarchy of engineering companies has long looked like the typical pyramid shape, with thousands of engineering specialists propping up layers of management. During the industry downturn engineering companies have had to downsize, however this seems to have been done by removing all the workers yet leaving all the management positions in place.

Business structures no longer look like a pyramid, as the bottom layer is now the same size (if not smaller) than the one above it. When the industry picks up again there is going to be a lot of oil and gas freelance jobs appear to try and re-fill this bottom layer, and it will be interesting to see whether there is the engineering specialist workforce out there ready to fill all these oil and gas jobs. In our opinion, there will be an oil and gas industry professional talent shortage, which will result in companies having to adopt leaner working practices that use the engineering specialist workforce more flexibly, the very thing that we provide through TalEng.

Also, it must be hard to justify your role as a manager with no employees underneath you, but I guess they just manage each other all day in the hope that no one notices they are no longer needed.