Would you pass your knowledge on for free?

[trubleshtr]

Here's to "Bitter old men" and the young inheriting the earth....

[NC Cams]

Bitter??? Yes, most assuredly. Have good reasons and excuses to be.

Have been asked to train younger engineers - and was replaced by the trainee after a summary dismissal - called a RIF (reduction in force). He didn't create anywhere near the amount of parts I did but he's long gone and my parts are still being sold - 20+ years later. Nice to know the company has made millions off the parts and I got 9 weeks severance.....

Saw "kids" given excuses time after time at another job yet I was called in to fix the mess and make it work. The thanks I got was reassigned to another FUBAR'd mess instead of the glamor job I turned the former FUBAR one into. THey tried to lay the "you should be honored" crap on me when the "kid" got the cream and I got someone else's folly to fix. NO money, no position, just more exploitation. Oh, BTW, the "kids" who I replaced got promotions into managment.

There's any number more but you get the picture.

I always wondered why my dad (a creative hard working construction worker) was so bitter about his job and his situations (overheard while "guy talk" took place at family doings). At this time, I fully understand why - and know how to overcome/deal with them.

Solution: prepare yourself to WALK, no RUN to the next opportunity.

There is a difference between wisdom and knowlege. Schools provide knowledge, the aging process provides wisdom.

It is not that often that one is fortunate enough to be take advantage of the one that is offered and the good sense to recognize when the other is there for the grabs.

Yes, people get bitter. But even a dog quits coming when you call it and beat it when it arrives. In my case, I turned it (the bitterness and disillusionment and KNOWLEDGE) into a business opportunity as well as a chance to offer something special/different in a rather mature and set in its ways industry.

Now I just have to deal with the people who begrude the fact that my job is "so easy". It should be, I spent half a lifetime setting myself up to take advantage of it and the other half learning as many tricks as I could so as to make it that way when/if it happened.

Luck is when opportunity and preparation meet...... I don't make a lot now but a lot of the kids I do work for at the OEM's have clear envy in their eyes when they come to the shop in mid afternoon and we're playing fetch with "shop dog".

Does as good a job as antidepressants and much less problems with the mind numbing side effects. Got to go - the dog wants/has to go out..

[Geof]

[QUOTE=NC Cams]Bitter??? Yes, most assuredly. Have good reasons and excuses to be.

Okay, just stop dumping on people who have a different philosophy of life to you.

[NC Cams]

Geof: with all due respect, please reread post #1 on this thread.

It might be percieved as "dumping" but the intent was to provide the perspective of a person who's gone thru the same thing more than once. IE: learn from my mistakes and/or my example.

Fortunately, I've gotten past (doesn't seem like it though) the worst of the "feelings" but they still surface when properly stimulated. The nice part is that a number of former colleagues now ask me for advice as they too have started to see the exploitation that takes place in the type of industry I was in.

When you learn that you're best friend got escourted out of the building (while I was on trip, by intent) and lose your mgr in a plane crash only to have mgt have YOU pack up his 30 year career into 3 boxes and dump it, you SEE what managments do and what they think of people.

The thing that young folks lack is perspective. They're young, enthusiastic, intelligent, "sponges" just looking to absorb as much of life's knowledge and skills that they can. To that end, colleges DON"T teach the politics of business - only life can. Some of us had harder classes than others.

I've explained any number of times to professionals in HR depts that I've met outside of professional environment some of the things that I've gone thru. Can't tall you how many, "Don't know how you could handle that's...." I got.

Sorry for apparently dumping. However, there is a clear lacking of documentation in business relations courses on how to deal with a manager who is bound and determined to have you dismissed and/or who wants to exploit you for HIS career advancement goals.

My advice/ramblings/whatever are offered for their worth and can be followed or ignored as the reader sees fit. However it did happen and surely will happen again. If you're lucky/prepared, it won't happen to you....

[sdantonio]

Interesting enough. I saw an interview of a young woman author who had just graduated college this year. Her first book cronicles what she calls the "me generation", making the case that her generation, the group just graduating, now is the most self centered and self serving group in the history of the country (America). I can tell you, being a part time college professor and having to dumb down the curriculum so that they could pass, they ain't the brightest generation either.

And yet they call us bitter old men...

I wonder how bitter they will end up, once reality sets in, starting off with an already bad attitude.

I see some companies in my field advertizing themselves as having a young and vibrant management team. I usually interpret that as actually saying ...we have a management team who haven't made the mistakes and gained the life experiences to actually know what their doing. No wonder 9 out of 10 startups in this country fail in the first 5 years.

I was once interviewed by a young lady chemist who must have been about the same age as my stepdaughter. I would ask her a few simple questions about what her lab was doing and almost every single answer was wrong (I had been running the same type of lab doing the same thing for another, much smaller company, for about 5 years at that time). Thankfully, when I went up the food chain and interviewed with her boss, the dept manager, he actually knew what he was doing (but then he was my age).

When I was young I was very interested in comparitive religion. One distinction all the ancient mysitcal texts make is the difference between knowlege and wisdom. Knowlege you can get from reading a few books. Wisdom you gain from actually running the machine and screwing up a few parts before you actually have a feel for what's going on and learn the tricks necessary to make the part correctly.

Now, after 30 years of often having to fix my own lab equipment (sometimes stripping things down to the board level and looking at test points), I am looking to go into field service. Thank god there is an abundance of young kids with bad attitudes in the workplace ready and willing to f**k up their machines so I have a plentifull supply of work for the future

[WhiteTiger]

I have to say that it really doesn't seem to me to be generational.

In the two decades I was operating my business I had at least a couple dozen people who wanted me to apprentice them, some of them as much as 20 years older than myself. Out of all that number, not a single one was willing to do the work to prepare for training. It got to the point that I kept a book list made up to hand out... never did have anyone come back and want to discuss any of the materials from any of the books.

Young, old, in the middle, made not a lick of diff. What all seemed to want was to be indoctrinated with a list of point and click answers to all possible questions/problems. The very idea of having to learn how to solve problems for themselves seemed to terrify all comers.

The biggest reason I started posting here and annoying you people was that there is a high percentage of people here who *do* want to know, learn and apply. Very refreshing change of pace from the "gimme the answer" crowd


Tiger

[truman]

I think that even though you groan about teaching you still hold hope for us greenhorns because you are a member of this forum, I know I have gained alot of knowledge from most of you guys and am very greatful for it and I hope to pick your brains for alot more. I would love to apprentice with a machine shop but its a who you know type of thing around here and I really don't know anybody.

[sdantonio]

The biggest reason I started posting here and annoying you people was that there is a high percentage of people here who *do* want to know, learn and apply. Very refreshing change of pace from the "gimme the answer" crowd

Well said. I have found the same thing here, but this forum seems to be the exception rather than the rule in the world at large.

Would you post your list of reading materials please? Can't say I'll read them all. Only the ones that apply to my limited applications. But as mike will tell you I am noted out here for asking plenty of dumb questions.

[Geof]

[QUOTE=sdantonio]......And yet they call us bitter old men...

Actually they, if by "they" you mean the younger people posting, didn't; I did and I certainly don't qualify as a younger people. I also don't see younger posters demonstrating a particularly bad attitude so I think you are getting yourself twisted around. In addition blaming the products of an inadequate education system for the need to " dumb down the curriculum so that they could pass" is not fair. They did not set the standards they were expected to meet throughout their education; your generation did. To quote from another post; "The thing that young folks lack is perspective. They're young, enthusiastic, intelligent, "sponges" just looking to absorb as much of life's knowledge and skills that they can." This is correct and if all the sponge absorbs is bitterness interspersed with ridicule of this type; "you are either inordinately naive or very, very inexperienced in the realities of business" you should not be surprised if they turn into the "me generation".

[ghyman]

OK... who here can program, set up, run, and repair a 15-axis swiss machine?

I can, but my GOD I am tired of being the only one in my shop who can, and does, for 12-14 hours a day!

I will gladly train someone to do the things I can do, providing that it results in: A) a benefit for the company, and B) a more 'normal' work week for me!

On the other side of the coin...
I am a software programmer in my 'spare' time. I spent most of a year coding a CNC program editor/plotter/DNC package. It involved my having to jump through some hoops to figure out the best way to do something (optimize the path that connects 200+ holes, for example). Now-- I don't mind sharing some programming tips and tricks, but I'm not about to turn over entire sections of code (RS-232 port analyzer, for example) to someone who wants to learn to program.

Just my two cents.

[lakeside]

I’m 46 years old, been machining for 25 years was trained by the old school. I live 20 miles south of Boston. Have seen the fore river shipyard close and was part of a group that received Federal job training in the hopes of reopening it. No luck. I have seen company after company close shop and move out of Massachusetts Bitter at my age, you bet I am

[NC Cams]

Geof: A sponge will only absorb what it is imersed in. If you ONLY imerse it in water, that's all it will pick up. I you imerse it in water and detergent, it will clean and sanitize things. THus, you have to imerse it in MANY liquids (situations) to determine its optimum useage potential.

I was the "first class" graduate of the tech program that was offered at the college in my home town. Nearly 15 years after graduation, I got a call from a former professor who was now Dean of the school. He asked me the usual questions (job, job history, etc) and then the interesting question: "What didn't we teach in school that we should be teaching???"

Several simple replies:

Common sense

Industrial problem identificaiton/solving

and, most of all

OFFICE POLITICS 101.

After explaining some of the "episodes" that I went thru, he admitted that the OP101 course would probably be a great course to teach but he didn't have a clue how to create a ciriculum nor could he imaging where he could go to locate one.

So much for academia.... Some things can't be taught but have to be learned which is why some of us got dumped on so much/so badly over the years. It doesn't pay to be TOO creative, TOO outspoken and TOO independant.... But it doesn't hurt to keep your eyes open for free advice.