RANT: Why Can't People just Hire the Right Person For the Job????

SNK

Member
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May 2004
Location
Toronto, Ontario
Posts
885
It seems like this day and age, we as "Industrial Automation Engineers" have to know a little bit about everything. We have to learn about 50 different versions of software, understand the correllation to real-life situations, and make everything work, so that our companies can stay in business and continue to be profitable. That is the key...PROFITABLE.

What I am seeing on this forum in the last few months, is a trend of people trying to do something that they have never done before. Don't get me wrong, I am pro-to change, and love to do something different. Hats off to those people. The problem is, they are COSTING US OUR jobs.

They struggle with a project, at the cost to the company and themselves. It actually costs reliability, quality and product throughput by people "taking their time" to "learn" a new concept.

What I am worried about personally is the way that our society accepts this type of philosopy, in a business perspective. With our economy crashing the way that it is, with the manufacturing job losses, why would someone with no expertise take their time trying to fix something when they should have just hired a consultant that has a proven track record in that area of expertise.

Sure, when there is downtime, and it is in no way affecting the companies throughput, then take the time to learn. Even learn on the companies time, but don't slow down production while you try to make yourself better, while the rest of us sit back and watch.

There are specialized people that can tackle a job in very little window. People should learn to smarten up and get the job done quickly, and effectively the FIRST TIME. This will help our economy grow, and hopefully hold on to a few more positions for our kids down the road.

So, instead of trying to learn VB-NET, or RSView32 in a weekend, why not make the right choice by HIRING someone with EXPERTISE in that field and get the job done immediately. Pay a little extra to have some specific training on the job completed, and let us all keep our jobs.

Bring on the comments.
 
They are cheaper.

and, "It's only a PLC, how hard can it be?"

Management never learns.

A degreed manager will sniff out a degreed programmer, even fresh out of school, without regard for an established, experienced programmer, simply for the "degree" reason. I've seen this.

Oh, and "what is the best laptop?" SEARCH THE FORUM! To me, THAT is "too new". If you can't find a friggin' laptop, maybe you should be flipping burgers.

/rant off.
 
Good things come to those who wait.
I to have seen a lot of novice programmers try to keep a system running. They hunt and peck, shorted branches here and there. Between their basic lack of knowledge in process controls and their lack of documenting their changes, sooner or later the companies will be calling us back in.

There are also a lot of people programming who never really will be good at it and will always be on the "B" team.

I once knew a guy, who had a machine to startup. He didn't write the code but was sent on the startup. The code was in a similar format to other machines we had did. Well when it didn't work he started changing XIC to XIO or deleting contacts.
He spent the entire morning doing this and each change he did snowballed downhill. He finally called me over, we reloaded the original program, I found the problem in about 5 minutes and we soon had the machine running. The sad thing is he had been programming for years bouncing from one company to the other.

I have also wondered here in the past about some of the questions asked here (NO versus NC contact). I realize that a lot of us have been programming for many years now and a lot of it comes second nature to us now. But from some of the questions ask, I doubt that a lot of them will ever be real good programmers.
 
Mmmm , the same reason electricans get undercut for quoting on an outdoor job to include: steel wire armoured cable and an Rcd , when some neighbour turns up and runs it bell wire down a length of garden hose !!! and then calls you a robbing ^&+5%$d!

However , when the local garage charges £400 for a car service and an Additional !!!! £300 for 2 x shocks and a wheel bearing ......You will always find someone trying to do a job on the cheap

We try and outsource contracts to specialists in that particular field

We had a company that specialised in machinery moving and what we paid in "high" costs repaid itself 4 times over in negligable downtime

Hopefully the "professionals" charge more to clear up where someone makes a complete hash of a job they should not be doing and calls someone to get it unstuck

The other side of course is should someone start a job if they are "reasonably capable and are learning as they go "

I presume your point would be with the medium to large jobs , that should be done by those qualified to take on the work
 
SNK, we see this all the time.

There are a couple of people or integrators that have using our products for 10 years now. They know motion, hydraulics etc. They can program and set a motion controller in very little time.
Still a new customer wants to install the motion controller himself with his own people that haven't even been to one of our classes. The difference is usually 2 days vs 2 weeks. As pointed out above, no one figured the cost of the down time. I will add to that. No one figured the benefit of watching someone really good and learning.

We see people on this forum doing projects where they don't even know what questions to asks let alone understand the answers. They certainly don't know the problem well enough to supply the forum with the correct information so we can help so we must play 20 questions.

Out tech support often has to read the manual to people. These people that can barely read should be installing motion controllers. About every two weeks we a motion controller back for "warrantee repair" because some how AC got connected to our controller when there are NO ac inputs or outputs.

What about the right tool for the job?
http://www.plctalk.net/qanda/showthread.php?t=40435
 
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Peter Nachtwey said:
We see people on this forum doing projects where they don't even know what questions to asks let alone understand the answers. They certainly don't know the problem well enough to supply the forum with the correct information so we can help so we must play 20 questions.

This is precisely my point. WHY do people insist on giving those type of people the answers? We are feeding the problem.

I wish that someone would just have the nuts to reply...

"Find someone Locally that can do your job".

Pretty soon, our industry will be self supported by Google.

(Or better yet, USB, Plug & Play).
 
The problem with SNK's proposal is that end user will never develop any talent that way. His proposal would require that the end user develop a 'tech center' with all the stuff they want their guys to learn and let them play when nothing else is going on. First of all, there is always something else going on. Second, if these end users won't spring for experts to come in in the forst place they certainly won't spring for a tech center.

I have been 'fortunate' to always work for an OEM. I have had the freedom to learn on the fly both on my own and with experienced people to help. In that environment it's no skin off the OEM's nose if I, as a salaried employee, decide to work 10 or 12 hours on a problem so I can figure out what to do for the next time. Given SNK's proposal and the realities of corporate culture, we will either end up with no experts after the current crop dies out or all the experts will come from the OEM world.

We all know that the education system in general and the technical education system in particular is strong on mechanics but weak on application. Colleges turn out masses of individuals who can differentiate a non-linear equation like mad but can't apply it to a physical system to save their life. This is largely by necessity as it is non-value added from the college's standpoint to try and teach application since the applications are so varied. This applies at the technician level also. Simply knowing how a plc works, how to program it and how to implement it only gets you so far. And that is all that is taught. The place you pick up application experience is through experience in applications. The way you pick up experience is by doing.
Keith
 
kamenges said:
Given SNK's proposal and the realities of corporate culture, we will either end up with no experts after the current crop dies out or all the experts will come from the OEM world.

You are correct kamenges.
This is precisely what is happening. You can't see it on your end?
You are working for an OEM, as you have pointed out.

You are not exposed to the "end-user" mentality, obviously.
 
I am an end user for process control. I see both side to the story. I have asked the stupid questions before. I like to think that the stupid stuff that is answered might just keep a job in the states. If I don't know and can't find it why keep me around?

I am an integrator for machine controls as well. I see several of the help us fix this. Once everything is running I get the story that "Bobby the bit banger" was working on it for 3 days and it just stopped working. Yea the good stuff!!!

The only thing I realy want to say is not all of us end users are that screwed up. I am having Rockwell's local AutoMax guru come in and teach me on our systems. I refuse to get the text book this is a XIC, XIO **** with an overhead projector, monkey see monkey do training that so many people go on and on about.
 
SNK, some forums or use groups are more like social groups that informative.

SNK said:
This is precisely my point. WHY do people insist on giving those type of people the answers? We are feeding the problem.

I wish that someone would just have the nuts to reply...

"Find someone Locally that can do your job".
I have. Haven't you noticed I a pragmatic grump?
I looked at that "learning by doing" and shake my head.
I many times have I told people they not ready to do what they want to do?
How many times have people got pi$$ed at me for telling them they are doing it all wrong. I can go through my threads. Haven't seen some of my replies in the biggest font available? I am surprised you couldn't hear the 'shouting' across the continent and in Canada.

Just for you, SNK, I can crank up the grumpiness factor.
I can be a real hard a$$ for a weekend.

I have said this before.
At one time I thought this forum saved a lot time. Millions of dollars of time. However, now I am beginning to think otherwise. The same questions come up over and over and over again and people are not willing to search. The same questions get answered over and over again.

grump said:
So why are you guys reading this? Do you want to be entertained? Go study something so you have something useful to contribute. I should be learning how to be programming in java and working on a hydraulic servo simulator instead of reading this non-sense.

kamenges said:
The problem with SNK's proposal is that end user will never develop any talent that way.
The point is that you are suppose to watch what the experts do!

We all know that the education system in general and the technical education system in particular is strong on mechanics but weak on application. Colleges turn out masses of individuals who can differentiate a non-linear equation like mad but can't apply it to a physical system to save their life.
Is that why I don't get transfer functions stamped on the machines? ;)

This is largely by necessity as it is non-value added from the college's standpoint to try and teach application since the applications are so varied.
That is because the instructors don't have the application experience. They have been teaching. The best of both worlds would be to hire retired engineers with lots of application experience.

This applies at the technician level also. Simply knowing how a plc works, how to program it and how to implement it only gets you so far. And that is all that is taught.
That is why they don't know how to do three point calibration.

The place you pick up application experience is through experience in applications. The way you pick up experience is by doing.
You need to do more than just do. Either you are the smartest person around and everything is obvious or you must dig through text books and articles to see how what you are trying to do has been done before.
 
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Then there are the times when you think you are contracting the right guy for the job. You ask for sample programs, sample drawings, and sample documentation of past jobs to get an idea of the person's skills, everything looks good, and then when you actually get him on site you find out really fast that he knows CAD just barely well enough to change the name of a drawing someone else did, that that he probably did not write the sample program because he does not understand half the PLC instructions and you realize that despite his claim otherwise, he's never worked on an installation because he does not know the names of conduit fittings, how to pull wire, how to solder, or even how to connect a motor.

And yes, I am ranting about an actual experience.
 
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I am feeling better now,

Maybe I just didn't get my morning coffee quick enough, But I am happy that others feel my pain....(in a sick sort of way).

I really feel like I need to distance myself from this forum for a month or two.

I just really like to help, from my experiences.....and learn from others....but I seem to be getting tired with some of the content...
 
I spent more than 10 years in the UK as a contractor, I could never get in at the start of a job, as being experienced I was too expensive.

I always seemed to end up coming onto a job mid-way through to try to correct the 'basic' design errors incorporated by the 'new grad's' they usually employed.

It seems cheap is the operative word, just seems to me that the whole project would have been cheaper getting the experience in first (at least one!!).
 
Peter Nachtwey said:
Just for you, SNK, I can crank up the grumpiness factor.
I can be a real hard a$$ for a weekend.

I have said this before.
At one time I thought this forum saved a lot time. Millions of dollars of time. However, now I am beginning to think otherwise. The same questions come up over and over and over again and people are not willing to search. The same questions get answered over and over again.

This one is for you Peter, do your thing.

http://www.plctalk.net/qanda/showthread.php?t=40445
 
End user, that’s me

Good morning,

End user, thjat's me and I’m proud of it. There is nothing wrong with being an End user. I came from a poor family in a poor neighborhood. I’m slow to catch on to something, such as the fact that there is other ways to get educate besides paying for it yourself. I taught myself how to be a mechanic, than I learned electronics now I program PLC’s. I’m at the top of my pay scale here at this place. There’s about 30+ maintenance personal here. Only two of us take care of the instruments and PLC’s. Modicon and Allen Bradley’s. We are both self taught. The companies policy is, why train you’ll just go somewhere else with better pay.

This is a food company. They are by far some of the lowest pay companies around. After all no one wants to pay a fortune just to eat and many can’t afford what they eat now. I realize that many of you have a lot of smarts and that some of you may have come from a back ground similar to mine. But if all of us were train as well as some of you. Then you would be cutting your price to get a job more than you do now.

Every now and then I post a question that I dread posting. Why? Because it is so obvious to you yet so elusive to me. After I learned it. I wonder why that was so difficult. DH+ For instance. I just couldn’t accept the fact that nothing had to be done at the target machine. As long as the address existed, was the only requirement. Nothing else was required. This was just too simple there had to be more. Yet when the ControlLogix came in. I had no problem learning how to handle the arrays. Or how to deal with the function blocks.

Every time a new machine from some company is installed I try to get with the installer/programmer to see or learn what they did. I see a lot of good programs and some bad. I have to maintain this system after they’re gone. When the plant has a problem they want it fixed now. I have been called in the middle of the night several times. Sometimes for things as obvious as a photo eye out of alignment or a push button being off, or an instrument not responding. But only once due to a controller problem. CPU went dead.

I put my daughter through college I have a mentally handicapped son. My house is paid for. Two cars paid for. Enough money to live on for a year or longer if I had to. One credit card with zero balance. I Earn $18.00 an hour. I like my job and I take pride in doing it. And yes I’m self taught. Without this forum I would still have made it. Maybe not as easily but I would still have made it. I think you need start a new forum where only experts hang out.
 
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