The growing problem of a lack of Maintenace Technicians. Have you had any success ?

I have been doing this nigh-on for 15 years, all with my degree in Economics, does that count?

You would be surprised how many people out there have the ability to learn on their own. I would take my hard knocks education over a college engineering program again in a heartbeat. I am a (un-degreed) automation engineer that worked my way up from an entry level mechanic. The practical stuff I learned hands on over the years can't be taught in a classroom. I have had freshly degreed engineers come in that can't even tap a hole.

And my student loan total......$0.00

Wasn't meaning to be offensive, just growing up I never thought of people being engineers outside of schooling.
 
Happy Birthday!!

And an embarrassingly belated "Thank you!". :) (I must have been busy these last two months. Hard to imagine, tho...).


I must admit, I'm not in the States but it's basically a situation of supply and demand and will vary from location to location. What I find funny is that companies seem to have missed the point where they are the ones facing a lack of supply and do not readjust accordingly to try and get people in and keeping them happy.

What companies are missing is that people will put in a lot of effort if they are treated right. If you don't lie to people, invest in someone to up their skills, or are truly flexible in their hours or, in the case of system integrators, value and respect their time off, it is easy to keep an employee. But sadly this is not the case and likewise people will move on if given the chance.

In the company before this one, I was the fifth Controls Engineer to work for them in the previous 18 months. The day that I hired on, the other one quit.

I was told that week that I had to come in on Sat. & Sun. I asked them what happened to the 45 hour work week? "Oh, we just told you that to get you to hire on".

That was employer number two for the year. I have high hopes that I'll manage to hang on to this one until at least January. :)
 
Really... why? nothing is ever free, someone is going to pay for it regardless if its the taxpayers or the students it will never be free so why should taxpayers pay?

You're correct, it isn't free. The ones that go on to make more money will end up paying higher taxes which will pay many times over for that "free" education.

We can go on about the fairness and effectiveness of taxes and how they are used, but that's a different discussion entirely.

Like I said, you have to play the long game.
 
I'm not sure if I should be shocked anymore but the amount of "engineers" I have met that have never been to college (maybe not even graduated high school) is higher than I imagined.

I'm one of those guys. And "back in the day" companies were hiring anyone who had the aptitude, but not necessarily the paper. News flash, they still do.

One of the best programmers that I have ever had the pleasure to work with was a former landscaper who had a knack for PLCs.

I got my start in PLCs when I waited for everyone to leave one night at the plant, and fixed a problem in the PLC that had been causing the operators to have to wreck out 500 pounds of hot smoking rubber about six times a day. And this was for no other reason than the engineers hadn't gotten around to fixing it yet (for months on end). I was an electrician on that job, and I hadn't even heard of PLCs before then.

After they got finished chewing me out the next day for being so bold, they gave me the job. No raise mind you, just the job. :)

That was on a GE Series Six, and about a year later, I ran into a company that was desperately looking for S6 programmers for work at Saturn. That led to working for Saturn as an engineer, and later on for GM. We had six engineers in our group, three with degrees, three without.

As an aside, I figured out that we could double the memory of a S6 board by soldering a jumper back in that GE cuts out at the factory to make it a smaller board. This way we didn't have to purchase a bigger board. That saved the company about $40K. GE was not amused...

But I did manage to get out of high school with a diploma (albeit with a 1.2 GPA. I was aiming for 1.0, but I messed up and got too good of a grade in Electronics).
 
I’ve been in the field for six years now and I really don’t think there is anything new going on in terms of who succeeds in this position. From what I’ve seen working with dozens of different integrators now is that the only common trait of the real “engineers” I’ve met is personality. Skill sets can build with experience sure, but to creatively build solutions is just as much about ambition and drive as it is about knowledge as long as fundamentals are known. Those that have inspired me or I’ve taken notice of have all been self starter types. If a problem comes their way, it’s almost an obsession that takes over until they solve it and move on.

With all of this said, a college degree does not give a person these traits. From what I’ve seen so far its probably 60/40 in favor of degreed engineers that have impressed me. If I had to narrow it down to the top five then that ratio skews towards the non degreed folks. Myself, I have a two year degree with an electrical background and am the only non degreed engineer with my employer. I got a lot of snobbish feedback when I first started but a few years later and I’m the first stop for most incoming grads. I have the pleasure of introducing them to an awesome profession and they help me manage the largest workload in the group.
 
I am in the UK, started n the 80s, with an apprenticeship which was 4 years of low pay but they trained me on the job, with 1 day/ 1 evening a week at college doing electrical engineering theory, for a large dairy facility. That goto me qualified as an enginerring tech so got paid to learn and ended up with HND . I went onto work in a lot of different industries and now am in pharma

I still live in the town where i started out but all the larger companies who would have a maintenance department/employ apprenticeships have closed

The 3 main employers in a 20 mile radius all pay the maintenance guys about the same so people are not incentivised to jump ship

Blue collar /overalls engineers are not given the respect or the training, skills or knowledge and in many cases would get more cash working on production supervisory level

My daughter is looking at University , so i was leafing through a jobs booklet targetted at students and i could see starting salaries listed. Lawyaers, Acountants, Retail managment etc all had high pay, upto 50K. Engineering was 20-25K

I was told by a wise engineer back in the day, "you know what they think of you by what your paid". I agree pay isnt everything, how your treated, the working hours, any perks etc all create the job where your happy to stay


The shortage of good people is due to no industry to speak of in many areas to support training of young people, unwilling managers to employ apprenticships and bright engineering graduates getting pulled into finance type jobs for more pay plus the poor opinion of the engineers by high managment
 
Another problem...
Question to HR department.... I have 25+ years experience with the PLC and the Scada system you ask for...
But I do not have degree..so no job??? And the degree does not have to be related to the field? It could even be a chemical engineering degree? Really frustrating and odd..

I have read more books on my subject and field I am in than most engineers....And most engineers are looking for desk jobs.... not floor work.
 
Another problem...
Question to HR department.... I have 25+ years experience with the PLC and the Scada system you ask for...
But I do not have degree..so no job??? And the degree does not have to be related to the field? It could even be a chemical engineering degree? Really frustrating and odd..

I have read more books on my subject and field I am in than most engineers....And most engineers are looking for desk jobs.... not floor work.
Yeah, that sound about right. HR people don't have a clue what the job entails.
 
I am in the UK, started n the 80s, with an apprenticeship which was 4 years of low pay but they trained me on the job, with 1 day/ 1 evening a week at college doing electrical engineering theory, for a large dairy facility. That goto me qualified as an enginerring tech so got paid to learn and ended up with HND . I went onto work in a lot of different industries and now am in pharma

I still live in the town where i started out but all the larger companies who would have a maintenance department/employ apprenticeships have closed

The 3 main employers in a 20 mile radius all pay the maintenance guys about the same so people are not incentivised to jump ship

Blue collar /overalls engineers are not given the respect or the training, skills or knowledge and in many cases would get more cash working on production supervisory level

My daughter is looking at University , so i was leafing through a jobs booklet targetted at students and i could see starting salaries listed. Lawyaers, Acountants, Retail managment etc all had high pay, upto 50K. Engineering was 20-25K

I was told by a wise engineer back in the day, "you know what they think of you by what your paid". I agree pay isnt everything, how your treated, the working hours, any perks etc all create the job where your happy to stay


The shortage of good people is due to no industry to speak of in many areas to support training of young people, unwilling managers to employ apprenticships and bright engineering graduates getting pulled into finance type jobs for more pay plus the poor opinion of the engineers by high managment

As someone that started recently in the UK as an engineer, this really puzzles me as even though there is a shortage in some areas, the salaries seem to cap at a certain point and no company is willing to budge in raising that level.
 
It's what they think they can pay cardosocea.
But I keep tabs on payment level and availability and see the same thing over and over.

Jobs come in my inbox everyday. I'm not looking for a job but posted my CV to all the engineering recruiters to see how the land lies.

I see some that are actually taking the p1$$. £18 per hour for self employed programmer - systems engineer for 3 month contract etc. Immediate start... you don't say.

These jobs that are offering a low salary (and even the high ones) are re-advertised week after week. The wording gets more desperate.
Starts off with 'interviewing soon'
Then interview by phone or skype
On to urgent and very urgent
Then and only then............salary negotiable.
They know they are trying to catch a tuna with a worm.

I quote for jobs with a fair and honest price and am often told 'way too high'
I don't leave it at that. I reply with a few costings and a hint that they will get what they pay for.
Quite a few come back trying to nibble a little bit off the price (what happened to way too high)
We are never seen as highly skilled engineers - we wear workmans clothes and have local accents. Why should they pay us top wages.
 
I had a director of a manufacturing company tell me that 'engineers are not core business for us' and 'engineers are an overhead'

When i was a young apprentice one of our lecturers told us we would all be weathy because he saw the skills gap back in the 80s

He didnt see all the business folding or moving overseas, or the companies looking for techs taking on anyone who knew what a spanner was for, rather than a skilled person, to keep rates down

I get sent job ads for what i was earning 20 yrs ago so pay is stagnant
 
I don't know if this is a pointer or a fluke (I'll see next year)
But I have had the best year for more than 10 years this year.
My annual income has gone down every year - until this year with a big jump

Long may it continue.
 
It's what they think they can pay cardosocea.
But I keep tabs on payment level and availability and see the same thing over and over.

Jobs come in my inbox everyday. I'm not looking for a job but posted my CV to all the engineering recruiters to see how the land lies.

I see some that are actually taking the p1$$. £18 per hour for self employed programmer - systems engineer for 3 month contract etc. Immediate start... you don't say.

These jobs that are offering a low salary (and even the high ones) are re-advertised week after week. The wording gets more desperate.
Starts off with 'interviewing soon'
Then interview by phone or skype
On to urgent and very urgent
Then and only then............salary negotiable.
They know they are trying to catch a tuna with a worm.

I quote for jobs with a fair and honest price and am often told 'way too high'
I don't leave it at that. I reply with a few costings and a hint that they will get what they pay for.
Quite a few come back trying to nibble a little bit off the price (what happened to way too high)
We are never seen as highly skilled engineers - we wear workmans clothes and have local accents. Why should they pay us top wages.

What actually bothers me more is when the interviewer comes out with these two sentences or a variation of them:
"We don't pay overtime!"
"We don't like people looking at the clock."

On one occasion, the HR guy was stumped why I would have turned down such a good offer and I said that I would only accept if I had to punch a clock and got paid overtime for my work (and travel) or they would just have to give me far more than what they were offering to offset the potential hours worked outside of the 9 to 5.

Interestingly, I find that the best way to catch tuna is with a nice shiny lure on a sunny day. They'll go crazy for that. :)

Hopefully the rise in pay will be for all...
 
We wear workmans clothes ... Why should they pay us top wages.

I find it very beneficial to avoid workman's clothes whenever possible (though I don't go all the way to suit and tie). Impressions mean a lot. If someone sees you as a trade, they'll treat you like a trade. If they see you as a businessman, they'll treat you like one of those. For most people, those two terms are mutually exclusive, which is probably a big part of the problem discussed in this thread.
 

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