[Hallicrafters] Re: Nobody wants to be a "technician" anymore

[Charlie]

While some may find this thread boring, I'm getting a new insight to the job 
farming situation.  It's easy to swallow the hate-everything-about-America 
bias from the media to think that it's those evil corporations who are 
causing that "great sucking sound".  It never occurred to me that much of 
the fault lies in our microwave generation's sentiment that the world owes 
them a living.   I snuck into engineering by way of the a tech school (CREI) 
that obtained accreditation for a BS degree, graduating in '67.  I've always 
worked for small companies where there was no hiding room for incompetence 
and the last actual job with Microlog Corp ('78 - '87) so contact was with 
typical hams which of course, ran the gamut from professional engineers to 
pre-teens with a Novice license.  Before that, 1978 back, most of my 
industry contact was with sharp tech people.  My point is that my 
perspective of the current EE graduates is severely dated, being at least 30 
years old.  Combine "I want-it-all-&-I-want-it now" with our PC attitudes, 
and it's no wonder we're in this situation.

I recently heard an analysis of why foreign students excel when the locals 
don't is that they do not consider themselves "victims" with an entitlement 
mentality.  They see the opportunity and accept the fact that they have to 
work for it. Does the term "dumping down" ring a bell?

73' Charlie k3ICH


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ron Lawrence W4RON" <W4RON at carolina.rr.com>
To: <hallicrafters at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Monday, March 31, 2008 7:05 PM
Subject: [Hallicrafters] Re: Nobody wants to be a "technician" anymore


> Yep I agree completely.
> I've been working in the electrical, electronic, equipment
> design field for more than 35 years. I started with electronics
> class in high school, went to Air Force Crypto School,
> took classes at the local community collage and learned
> the rest of it the hard way, by figuring it out as I went along.
>
> I'm now working in a "camera repair" department for a local company,
> where I'm the ONLY real technician. The rest of them are basically trained
> monkeys, they were brought in and trained on one piece of equipment,
> "if it does this, replace that part, if it does that, replace this part".
>
> After I had been here a couple of months the boss wanted to add to
> my list of equipment I repaired, he asked me to sit with the "technician"
> that was currently repairing them and let him show me what he did.
> The first thing he showed me was a layout of a PB board with number
> next to some of the components. He told me that if you get one that
> doesn't work, you replace the part #1 first, if that doesn't fix it you
> replace part #2, and so on and so on.
> He had (has) no idea what any of it does, or how the trouble shoot it.
> He was brought in to the department from the warehouse because
> the supervisor liked him.
> He's just one of many, well not as many now days, we're down from
> 22 people to 9, my end date is May 7th, it was April 7th but I got
> extended for 30 days.
> The company was bought last year and all of our jobs are moving
> to St. Louis. The only problem is the folks in St. Louis can't seem
> to figure out how to repair the equipment I work on so they extend
> my time...
>
> I'm reminded of an old SciFi story about a whole civilization that
> had gone back to cave man times because no one could remember
> how to fix all the machines.
>
> I hope I don't live that long....
>
> 73, Ron W4RON
> http://radioheaven.homestead.com/index.html
>
>
> ______________________________________________________________
>