Would you pass your knowledge on for free?

[keithorr]

Just skimming through some of the posts, so may not have caught the finer points.

I thought this post started as the equivilent of "would you spend your free time with a newbee without compensation".

Working on the job within a group has an inference of getting along and being a team player, which includes showing others how to perform tasks.

In the case of a working shop and being an employee, I would rather teach someone to do something well than fix their mistakes born of ignorance. I'm getting paid the same if I'm showing someone a machine or just standing in front of it. I've been an employee and employer. Fortunately I'm no longer involved in worker/management head butting.

Compensation should be based on all skill sets combined, not breaking out the individual value of each competency.

[One of Many]

The questions in this poll seem to filled with a large portion of circumstantial bias directing the results to one conclusion. Not much direction to positive outlook options that I can see, but only "what is in it for me". I think a lot of us have been there at one point or another.

Part of the solution is to become pro-active, not reactive.

As to training:

I attempt training for anyone that is willing to ask for assistance. On or off the job. What good are my skills that I have gained via other generous souls, if I don't pass them along to someone else. To confuse the question of compensational "self worth" to training others "on the job" is on the side of compulsory dissatisfaction with what the employer has already offered as his idea of fair trade. I can't imagine finding any satisfaction withholding my skills because there is nothing "extra" in it to benefit me. I fear underlying tones of this type of selfish mindset, can show effects in other areas of ones life. Ultimately, the one that loses out the most is the trainee. :frown:

I don't care what I am asked to do, either I am on the team or not, as long as I get paid what I determine as an acceptable compensation package for my skills. As long as no one is complaining that something else isn't getting done. Finding the environment unacceptable is when it is time to raise the white flag, start looking for the next level of opportunity to step up or a leap onto the same ride this employer is on. You don't have to become them, you just have to survive. Then in retrospect, think of all the hours you will be training noobs for a minimal return when they walk once skilled because you can't or don't want to afford to pay them what they are really worth.

As to wages:

What always gets me about requesting a raise is like a major offense to an employer. Yet if you try to moonlight with your own equipment on the side, you now are competition. The brass tacks of this dilemma seems to be, as has been mentioned, a control freak issue. It is to their greater benefit to keep costs down and grow, regardless of whether there is any benefit left over to hand to the employees as last on the list. They have plans for that money you helped generate and that may not include you!

Many, many years ago, I recall one past employer whom consider he OWNED and CREATED me and my measly net worth. Telling us all that from time to time to pamper his own inflated ego. Who and the hell did I think I was, asking for more than I already over pay you(1980 at $7.75/hr was 60% the going rate for Machinists). Nearly constant public ridicule and intimidation was the tone he set, so no one else would even question his authority. The order of the day was that no one else is going to hire you punks, so you need me more than I need you. Not ALL employers are like this, but if they try to CONTROL your prosperity in the slightest way......you can fire them on the same terms. No love lost with this jerk either!

The way I see it, business owners either pay the going rate for the facility and materials they need to stay in business or they are in trouble. Going elsewhere is not always an option. When an owner/employer raises their prices, it is in effect so they don't lose money out of their own pay check. To put an employee in the hot seat or brow beat them for even suggesting they need to be raising their price is hypocritical IMO. If you don't walk when they say no, then they still win. Do their suppliers or landlords give them a choice? Everyone has the take it or leave it option on the table. The victor is usually the one that had proven the loser had less leverage to go elsewhere. Don't think for a moment that they cannot survive without you. Chances are, they will find another sap(or 2) to take advantage of, possibly at a cheaper rate than what they paid previously.

So, to keep peace in the shop/office the only choice is to silently market those services in the experience you have elsewhere. Competition is fine, but sometimes the loss of key people may make them suffer on the cheap for a short term. Of course every job market has its wage limit. If you can prove you are worth more, don't expect the moon and the stars. Similarly, if they over price the products produced compared to the remainder of the market. Sales go elsewhere to boot!

As I have been told, there is no real money as a shop floor worker. The real money is in management. The more you can manage, the more compensation there is, whether you own it or not. Working with small shop owners that squeak when they walk will never change. If the shoe were on the other foot, I'm sure we would fall into the same step!

DC

[epineh]

Iain, just finished reading the entire thread (phew*), dont know if you have made a decision or not yet, but my opinion is this...

Have you considered just talking to your boss about the situation, it does not sound like your job is at stake, explain your thoughts and concerns. Sounds like you could use help to cover the workload, suggest moving forward with this in a way that everyone is happy, surely he will appreciate the straight forward approach (unless he is a moron) suggest monetary compensation and see what he says.

After all, no holidays - when do you go fishing ???

Russell.

[SPEEDRE]

I must admit a little sympathy for you. It is a dilemma I know. I am a pattern maker by trade, and a dying trade at that! Very few of us get the opportunity to pass on what we know to the next generation. Yes, you should ,for free. If you, as a craftsman , want to see the job you are in continue into the future it is an obligation to train whenever possible. One very large reason for the loss of employment in this country has been the refusal of the industrial establishment to train and make availible the nessessary education to continue those trades needed to be ultra competative in a global market. If poeple like you and me do not, we will see ourselves pushing burgers very soon. Think of that, I know I've there, laid off soo many times, seven to be exact, and let go because the company went under, three more times, and the last time because they sent my work to China. Do it because it is your duty as an American. Well so much for my two cents.

[NC Cams]

Speedre: the reason the work went to China was not because of a lack of trained personnel, or people who want to lear, it was due to lower labor cost. Besides who wants to learn a skill that is being phased out. Ask the local buggy whip maker school about that....

A tool and die maker in China makes pennies in comparison to what a journeyman T&D maker does in USA. He has NO appreciable benefits or health care. Industry now looks at this as "legacy costs" not "benefits" which is what they used to offer as enticements for you to come to work for them.

It is easy to get work if you give it away. What is your time and knowledge worth and are/will you be adequately compesated???

Keep that in mind the next time the kid who's working for minimum wage collects you $2.25 for a gallon of milk, or $3.00+ for a gallon of gas. He could care less if you're a skilled tradesman - the hospitals are that way tool. All they want is cash, credit card or insurance verification....

Sadly, that's what its boiled down to......

The car companies are going thru the deflationary spiral now ($25/hr jobs being traded for $15/hr). I fear the entire country will follow suit. Yet you don't see the VP"s or corporate "suits" going thru the same "rationalizations".

If there is a God, there times will come too....

[MrWild]

NC-Cams you are right most of the time, but you just proved that a fellow can't be right all of the time. Tool Making isn't the same as standing on an assembly line putting the same part on in the same place over and over again. Sure, the lowering of wages from silly to reasonable for a job a monkey can do isn't that far fetched. Tool Making however is a skill that is still needed.

My area has found it's manufacturing roots once again, only there is a huge problem. The skilled labor has retired or gone elsewhere following the jobs when my area decided to embrace rustbelt idiology. Now they (the manufacturers) face a problem. There is a NEED for skilled labor and none to be found. Youngsters didnt join the ranks because they saw the problems that the manufacturers imposed with their outsourcing.

Sure China and the other cheap labor countries offered reduced costs, but the probems of cheap labor thousands of miles away finally hit home. If there is a problem with the product, getting it fixed is much much harder and more expensive than if it was built in house on location. As long as there is manufacturing, there will always be a need for dies and fixturing. These items do not readily happen by programming a mill or lathe and popping out parts you can assemble and expect products to be made.

A Tool Maker is like a jeweler. Yes these are archaic skilled trades, but they are needed. Fits are crucial. Blanks need to be designed to work propperly. Blanks can be close through the aid of computers, but computers still are not the real world. When stamping blanks, they have to be right there, not close. Even the best CADs can still miss crucial flaws. Engineers still make mistakes.

It has been said many times here. The best machine still cannot produce the parts with enough accuracy to reproduce itself. This is where the Tool Maker comes in. He/she can take these parts with their minor imperfections and either file, sand, stone or fit them so that they work and not only meet the accuracy of the machine that made them, but surpass that accuracy. I seem to recall your mentioning a spindle bearing stack up with inferior bearings that ran as good as a high precision spindle with much much more expensive bearngs. How was it done, and what skilled craftsman did it?

A friend absolutely hates unions and sees that thry have beent he downfall of American manufacturing. Garbage men make wages unheard of ages ago, Riding a truck, dumping cans that were brought to the curb by the home owner, and demanding wages of someone that made it through High school (at least) and spent time learning a trade is ludicrous. Standing in the same spot putting a widget on in the same place, over and over is about the same. No skill nor education is needed. Why should they make such astronomical wages?

Skilled labor is every bit as important as a skilled and educated Engineer. Both went through the learning processes. Both sweated bullets to learn their trades. Both should be paid on par with each other. Oddly, a thought just crossed my mind. With so many computer programs taking the load of thinking off of an engineers shoulders, maybe they should have their wages reduced also. The president of a company can now tell a computer what kind of machine he wants parts o make, the computer can make him a working model on his computer screen, algorythims and canned calculus can work out the important physics, and an Engineer has been replaced.

When all the parts pile up off of the paletized tool room it will still take an educated person to assemble them and make them work together so that they produce parts. Skilled trades haven't gone the way of Buggy Whip Makers. If that were the case, you wouldn't have your business.

[NC Cams]

MrWild: I'd be inclined to agree with every syllable of your premise but sadly it doesn't fit what a very close friend went thru recently.

My business partner at camco was a machine shop owner/tool/die maker. The shops in his town cut each others prices to the bone to get/hoard the work away from their competition (mostly auto industry sub contactors). He couldn't cut anymore as there wasn't anymore fat to cut. The fat cat days of cost is no object to the OEM's is GONE.

If you're in a market that is below or near capacity saturation, you can do OK. If the market is oversaturated with capacity - the prices get cut and so does profitability - and some businesses go under as well.

The camco was a carefully focused effort. We got into a business that we both knew and like. We also got into one that requires special equipment that very, very few shops have. Moreover, we addressed the "boutique" area of the market that the brand name cam companies can't/won't service. We also got invovled with high end consulting firms who do prototype work for the OEM's.

We couldn't give our services to the OEM's because of who we are and how we do it. Yet they pay nearly double what we'd charge but they buy it from a high priced consultant.

In some ways, we're responsible for our kids not wanting to be machinists. Did you/we ever say that they want there kids to have it better than me??? Yeah, go to college, get a GOOD job.

Sadly the college profs teach the kids that greasy knuckle work is not to be respected. Do it with CAD and CNC. Don't think so?? Interview a kid from UofM some time. Talk about an attitude.

I almost wish that the engineers had to go thru an apprenticship like they used to put kids thru when they came out of college. Learn the business from the ground up.

Interestingly, that's how they do it in some Japanese companies. Hardly anyone will argue that the Japanese are not exceptionally good at what they do. Strond discipline and knowledge of the basics are required. We've lost that somewhere along the way....

[vacpress]

machinist work being considered 'the same as engineering' is absurd - sorry..

that said, of course mold makers do lots of special skilled things... these days i see alot of cnc'd electrodes being used in cnc'd EDM machines... also, alot of cnc'd everything else for mold making... not so much in china though...

i know a bunch of physicists... their labs get most of their stuff made by manual machinists in house.. so not all college-boys dont respect hands-on.. in fact many of these theoretical physicists (UofC faculty and fermi lab people) are also good manual machinists themselves.. shocker: they learned in college... where if they wanted some special high-tolerance part made, they HAD to do it themselves...

my manufacturing-technology instructors never tried to talk trash about manual-machinists, they just advised that it was a bad career choice for most people...

i probably shouldnt have posted this!

cheers!

[NC Cams]

Engineers who know how to machine stuff make better engineers.

Machinists who become engineers are better engineers than those who won't get their hands dirty in a machine shop.

Engineer/machinists and/or machinst/engineers tend to be more creative and practical at solving problems - seems the ability to work in hard metal does something for preventing people from drilling holes inside the middle of a billet with no external point of entries - or even asking for it to be done and failing to see why it can't be.

Sadly, as a "babby boomer" who intended to go to college from an early age, when I got to high school, it was IMPOSSIBLE for a kid in the academics program to take "vocational education" classes (IE: metal or wood shop). I had to wait until I got out of school and employed as an engineer so I could buy the lathes and mills so I could learn to do what should have been a prerequisite course of study/education for ANY potential engineering student.

Sadder yet, some of academia to this day still instills the notion that manual machining is an unnecessary skill. CAD and CNC will/have replaced it and thinking the otherwise is an arcane way of thinking. Ask the MBS's who run industry now. Can you spell "outsource"??? They can.

No wonder some of the stuff designed these days is of such poor quality and durability. What do you expect when all the engineers are taught to simpy design it and toss it over the wall to some low cost producer to make it - what you say as the engineer goes. The concept of "design for manufactureability" is now a thing that has to be taught as a separate course - it isn't ingrained into the engineers/designers becuase they never had to make it.

We're destroying our infrastructure and losing our ability to make durable goods. Why should we make it when it can be imported (including ultimately the engineering and machining) from some off shore maching house that can and does know how to make it dirt cheap. More profit in marketing than in making it.

Will the last one who leaves, please turn out the lights?.............

[Geof]

Originally Posted by vacpress ...machinist work being considered 'the same as engineering' is absurd - sorry..

Where, in the thread, did anyone post that machinist work was considered the same as engineering?

I have scanned through but cannot find it.

[FPV_GTp]

Originally Posted by keithorr Just skimming through some of the posts, so may not have caught the finer points. I thought this post started as the equivilent of "would you spend your free time with a newbee without compensation". Working on the job within a group has an inference of getting along and being a team player, which includes showing others how to perform tasks. In the case of a working shop and being an employee, I would rather teach someone to do something well than fix their mistakes born of ignorance. I'm getting paid the same if I'm showing someone a machine or just standing in front of it. I've been an employee and employer. Fortunately I'm no longer involved in worker/management head butting. Compensation should be based on all skill sets combined, not breaking out the individual value of each competency.

Hi

keithorr very well said

i wonder whos brain i can pick in here

some interesting opinions in here

cheers

[krt9751]

for me it all boils down to who i'm passing the knowledge on to. if some one wants to really learn and do something yes i'm all for it i will spend some time with them but on the other hand what if you have the bosses kid show up and you have to teach him your skill and he has no desire to learn or be there for that matter i say they can all kiss my #$& will you know what i mean