General > General Technical Chat
Of all the electronics-related jobs, this is very boring...
<< < (6/6)
PlainName:
One of my first jobs was as a mechanic (junior) and I could tell you some hair-raising tales of my (fortunately short) time there.

Nevertheless, there are good places. The garage I normally use now is generally good and the main workplace is always spotless (usually a good sign). The garage my partner takes her car I was a bit suspicious about, but recent experience of a problem they fixed at short notice convinced me I was wrong.


--- Quote --- typically lumped in with a lot of the other blue collar stuff
--- End quote ---

What's wrong with blue collar stuff? Why can we not think highly of workers classed as blue collar?
AlienRelics:
I was not doing well financially being self employed. So I went looking for a job working for someone else.

I found one, making eddy current probes. In the interview, I was asked how I was going to handle the boredom.

I told them that I have a rich internal life. I am constantly thinking about how to do my job better, and about a lot of things. They hired me, even though I was asking for 50% more than their usual starting pay, and told me they were reopening their R&D department and they hired me specifically to do so.

It was, in fact, an incredibly boring job making probes. If all you did was what they asked of you.

Unbidden, I repaired the LCR meter, lathes, drill press, bandsaw, grinders, etc. and made many jigs and fixtures so I could build probes faster and more accurately. I specifically chose the jobs that were more difficult and larger orders. During employee evaluations, the boss reiterated that they would be reopening the R&D department at the end of the summer, with me as the R&D department.

Sadly, the company had been bought several years before and that company decided to move everything we were doing to another location that they had also purchased, and only asked a few employees to move.

I went back to school on the Displaced Worker Retraining program to get that all important piece of paper that says I can do what I could already do.

I now do another boring job that only requires board level replacement. Boring if you only do what is required. I repair some boards that are not available any more. I have come up with repair procedures for equipment that had no procedures. I have built jigs, fixtures, stands, and built some electronics to partly automate some testing. I've 3D printed parts (nothing that goes into the field). I have analyzed failures, and now some things get corrective measures applied so they won't experience that particular failure.

I make my jobs interesting.

I did similar way back when I was working on consumer electronics. I built my own test equipment for specialized tasks. I fine tuned my cassette deck, and made my own test tapes so I could set a tape player speed by ear. One of my bosses hated this, he insisted I use his expensive 3kHz test tape. I didn't want to, because he kept warning me that he'd make me buy him a new one.

I could set speed more accurately and MUCH faster by ear with a music tape than he could with a 3kHz test tape and a frequency counter.

I built speaker dummy loads that handle 1kW per channel for as long as you like, with a fan. Without a fan, about half that. Not like those crappy ones that claim 100W, then tell you that is only for 1 minute followed by 9 minutes of cooldown.
fourfathom:
That reminds me of my first job after high school.  I was working at a company that made small air compressors, and I ran a drill press as well as doing hand-assembly.  It was boring.  I asked my supervisor if there was anything else that needed doing and I ended up helping the machinist make test and assembly fixtures, re-wiring portions of the shop, helping design and set up a new burn-in area, and driving the owner's Firebird (a hot car at the time) all over the Los Angeles area picking up boxes of bearings, etc.  And occasionally I still worked the drill press.  All in all, not a bad experience.
james_s:

--- Quote from: dunkemhigh on December 06, 2021, 06:59:37 pm ---What's wrong with blue collar stuff? Why can we not think highly of workers classed as blue collar?

--- End quote ---

Nothing at all, I actually enjoy that stuff, but society does not tend to look upon it highly. It is often viewed as jobs for people that aren't smart enough for college, so it ends up being dominated by not particularly intelligent people. It would be nice if it was not viewed that way, more smart people might consider working those jobs. It's not that we can't view those jobs highly, it's just simply a fact that currently society generally does not.
thm_w:

--- Quote from: CatalinaWOW on December 06, 2021, 12:10:09 pm ---Throughout my working life I heard complaints like this about many jobs.  And have drawn two widely different conclusions.  First, there are a great many people suited to repetitive tasks.  If they want a fancy job title it is fine with me.  The jobs need doing and whatever it takes is good be it titles, money or free beer.  Second, there are very few jobs that get assigned to engineers that don't have room for creativity.  Being bored is as much a comment on the worker as it is on the job.

--- End quote ---

Yep AlienRelics story is a good example.
Unless we are talking straight production line or amazon warehouse employee, where you are severely restricted.
Navigation
Message Index
Previous page
There was an error while thanking
Thanking...

Go to full version
Powered by SMFPacks Advanced Attachments Uploader Mod