Lack of Communications from RB Oriented Shops

[SLVRBAKSLPZ]

Besides the skillset decline in the mechanics world, you think there's a bit of gatekeeping with info/teaching as well?

[GTSBoy]

2 hours ago, joshuaho96 said:

Even if you have a passing interest in this stuff you need to make a big effort to learn about it on your own these days. Uni will not teach you anything practical. Even the mechanical engineers interested in engine calibration/combustion spent their days learning the thermo diagrams but not much else. Zero time spent actually figuring out what any of that translates to in reality. It's a weird world where the information is more available than ever but seemingly none of it is used.

Nothing has changed. Engineering graduates have always come out as partially formed embryos that require 5+ years of working experience before they can be considered to be a functioning engineer.**

The amount of stuff that you get shoved in front of your eyesockets while doing an engineering degree is really only exceeded by medicine and veterinary students, and they get at least 1 more year of course work to cover it.

**Except maybe civil engies who only need to know how to design a column, a beam and a berm and then they can be released into the wild to f**k up road and bridge building projects as well as their older, more experienced brethren do.

In Chemical Engineering you have to do 2 years of P&I chem and organic chem. In later years this is replaced by Kinetics and Reactor Design, Thermodynamics and other similar reaction and energy transfer related subjects. There's probably about 20 semesters of full load subject matter there, across 4 years. There is also maths in the first 2 years. The 2nd year subjects are Differential Calculus and Fourier Series, Laplace Transforms Probability and Statistics, Vector Analysis and Complex Analysis. That's 6 semesters of full load subjects. I cannot even remember the names of the 1st year maths subjects, but they were similarly split across algebra and calculus.

In 2nd year you typically had a 6 hr organic chem prac every week and a 4 hour P&I prac every week. My organic chem pracs were on Wednesdays, from 3 until 9PM!!

In first year you get 2 full load subjects each of which are broken up into 3 or 4 smaller subjects that run concurrently, either for a full semester or the full year. You have a programming language, engineering drawing, mechanism design, electrical circuits and machines, basic thermodynamics and fluid dynamics type subjects, statics, dynamics, and so on. Oh, and a group design/research project that typically sucks balls, like all group projects do because you get stuck with the lazy arsehole, or the Indonesian student with no English that somehow got in, or the meathead, or the schizo who is a different person every day, or the blatant liar who never does what they promise, etc. There's so many of them and so long ago that I can't remember them (the subjects, not the team project losers).

In 2nd and 3rd year you get materials subjects, stress analysis and more. Oh and many engineering prac designed to show you how viscosity works, how pneumatics works, how gas absorption works, how similarity and correlation works, distillations and separations,

In 3rd year you start doing some electives on top of the compulsories. So you get more materials and maybe biochem and so on. Biochem is definitely a big thing now, we only had it in 4th year back then. There's also Biomedical Engineering electives (prosthetics, supports for ortho, post surgical, bed ridden people, that sort of thing).

In 2nd, 3rd and 4th year you get research and design projects. Multiple. Usually resulting in long all nighters at unit to run simulations and the like, gradually getting more and more stressed because nothing is working. Poster presentations and other shit. 4th year also gets a seminar class where you do a research project and then have to present it. Oh, and Engineering Planning and Design, Petrochem, Advanced Chemical Engineering (which I tutored for a few years about 20 years ago and was probably the closest thing to real-world engineering lessons that were offered to the students, compared to all the other theoretical bumpff).

And there is more. I couldn't possibly trawl my memory deeply enough to pull it out.

And god help you if you fail something, because you have to repeat it while keeping up with the full course load of everything else in the next year. I did that in 3rd year. On top of the 38 contact hours that 3rd year chem engies have programmed, I had to handle the lectures, tutes and assigments of the stuff I was repeating. I reckon my weekly workload in 3rd year was about 50 hours of "at uni contact hours or equivalents" where the equivalents were for stuff I couldn't actually attend and had to find a way to keep up with, plus about 40 hours per week of writing up pracs, dong research or work for projects, assignments, tute prep. Plus working 15 hours a week during semester and many more hours than that during "holidays". Oh and you have to rack up many weeks of valid engineering work experience across your "holidays" in the later years to be able to graduate.

And all of that just to be spat out at the end as a soft-shelled egg needing further nurturing and exposure to the real world before actually being able to be trusted to do real work.

And in the years since I have been more and more saddened by the proportion of engineering graduates who are not even what I would call "engineers" in their head. They do not think like engineers. They have somehow been herded into doing engineering by their parents or their school guidance or something. Now that everyone has to go to uni instead of doing something more directly practical or vocational, you get a bunch of people doing courses who never would have before. Back in the old days it was only the guys who grew up dismantling their bike every weekend, or rebuilding a flickering TV or fixing the tractor (because many engineering students were farmers' kids back then) that went to engineering school. Then they started trying to convince more girls to pick engineering, and so you get the really clever girls coming in, but a smaller proportion of them had those same personality traits as the bike dismantlers et al. Instead they were just good at maths and maybe chem/physics. Some of them made decent engineers, but many of them were not "engineers".

And don't get me started on all the flaky shit that now gets called engineering. I better stop ranting.

[TurboTapin]

4 hours ago, joshuaho96 said:

Even if you have a passing interest in this stuff you need to make a big effort to learn about it on your own these days. Uni will not teach you anything practical. Even the mechanical engineers interested in engine calibration/combustion spent their days learning the thermo diagrams but not much else. Zero time spent actually figuring out what any of that translates to in reality. It's a weird world where the information is more available than ever but seemingly none of it is used.

I started life off as an electrician before continuing my education in electrical engineering. With that being said, 9/10 times an electrician will get paid more then an engineer in Canada. Why you ask? Because everyone's an engineer now... and 80% of them don't know how a drill works or how to troubleshoot diddly squat. They all end up working in non technical fields like project management. 

[Murray_Calavera]

I wouldn't mind reading more rant, that was quite eye opening. 

[MBS206]

6 hours ago, GTSBoy said:

Nothing has changed. Engineering graduates have always come out as partially formed embryos that require 5+ years of working experience before they can be considered to be a functioning engineer.**

The amount of stuff that you get shoved in front of your eyesockets while doing an engineering degree is really only exceeded by medicine and veterinary students, and they get at least 1 more year of course work to cover it.

**Except maybe civil engies who only need to know how to design a column, a beam and a berm and then they can be released into the wild to f**k up road and bridge building projects as well as their older, more experienced brethren do.

In Chemical Engineering you have to do 2 years of P&I chem and organic chem. In later years this is replaced by Kinetics and Reactor Design, Thermodynamics and other similar reaction and energy transfer related subjects. There's probably about 20 semesters of full load subject matter there, across 4 years. There is also maths in the first 2 years. The 2nd year subjects are Differential Calculus and Fourier Series, Laplace Transforms Probability and Statistics, Vector Analysis and Complex Analysis. That's 6 semesters of full load subjects. I cannot even remember the names of the 1st year maths subjects, but they were similarly split across algebra and calculus.

In 2nd year you typically had a 6 hr organic chem prac every week and a 4 hour P&I prac every week. My organic chem pracs were on Wednesdays, from 3 until 9PM!!

In first year you get 2 full load subjects each of which are broken up into 3 or 4 smaller subjects that run concurrently, either for a full semester or the full year. You have a programming language, engineering drawing, mechanism design, electrical circuits and machines, basic thermodynamics and fluid dynamics type subjects, statics, dynamics, and so on. Oh, and a group design/research project that typically sucks balls, like all group projects do because you get stuck with the lazy arsehole, or the Indonesian student with no English that somehow got in, or the meathead, or the schizo who is a different person every day, or the blatant liar who never does what they promise, etc. There's so many of them and so long ago that I can't remember them (the subjects, not the team project losers).

In 2nd and 3rd year you get materials subjects, stress analysis and more. Oh and many engineering prac designed to show you how viscosity works, how pneumatics works, how gas absorption works, how similarity and correlation works, distillations and separations,

In 3rd year you start doing some electives on top of the compulsories. So you get more materials and maybe biochem and so on. Biochem is definitely a big thing now, we only had it in 4th year back then. There's also Biomedical Engineering electives (prosthetics, supports for ortho, post surgical, bed ridden people, that sort of thing).

In 2nd, 3rd and 4th year you get research and design projects. Multiple. Usually resulting in long all nighters at unit to run simulations and the like, gradually getting more and more stressed because nothing is working. Poster presentations and other shit. 4th year also gets a seminar class where you do a research project and then have to present it. Oh, and Engineering Planning and Design, Petrochem, Advanced Chemical Engineering (which I tutored for a few years about 20 years ago and was probably the closest thing to real-world engineering lessons that were offered to the students, compared to all the other theoretical bumpff).

And there is more. I couldn't possibly trawl my memory deeply enough to pull it out.

And god help you if you fail something, because you have to repeat it while keeping up with the full course load of everything else in the next year. I did that in 3rd year. On top of the 38 contact hours that 3rd year chem engies have programmed, I had to handle the lectures, tutes and assigments of the stuff I was repeating. I reckon my weekly workload in 3rd year was about 50 hours of "at uni contact hours or equivalents" where the equivalents were for stuff I couldn't actually attend and had to find a way to keep up with, plus about 40 hours per week of writing up pracs, dong research or work for projects, assignments, tute prep. Plus working 15 hours a week during semester and many more hours than that during "holidays". Oh and you have to rack up many weeks of valid engineering work experience across your "holidays" in the later years to be able to graduate.

And all of that just to be spat out at the end as a soft-shelled egg needing further nurturing and exposure to the real world before actually being able to be trusted to do real work.

And in the years since I have been more and more saddened by the proportion of engineering graduates who are not even what I would call "engineers" in their head. They do not think like engineers. They have somehow been herded into doing engineering by their parents or their school guidance or something. Now that everyone has to go to uni instead of doing something more directly practical or vocational, you get a bunch of people doing courses who never would have before. Back in the old days it was only the guys who grew up dismantling their bike every weekend, or rebuilding a flickering TV or fixing the tractor (because many engineering students were farmers' kids back then) that went to engineering school. Then they started trying to convince more girls to pick engineering, and so you get the really clever girls coming in, but a smaller proportion of them had those same personality traits as the bike dismantlers et al. Instead they were just good at maths and maybe chem/physics. Some of them made decent engineers, but many of them were not "engineers".

And don't get me started on all the flaky shit that now gets called engineering. I better stop ranting.

Had to go back and check this wasn't me ranting about engineering...

The part that is even more saddening, is that most teaching degrees, full time, is about 12 hours a week of contact. Write a few fluffy essays and be done with it.

 

I always struggled at uni when I first tried a million years ago. Because it was just shit thrown at you, with no application. However, I learned a lot on my own, by wanting to do things for me, and always wanting to know the what and how.

6 years ago I started back at Uni part time. I still have 9 subjects left after this semester as I work full time (actually more hours than full time).

What I see today, is the workload is so full on for the kids, they learn how to regurgitate information, but not a single one of them knows how to apply that information, and use it as knowledge.

In reality, Uni gives you the basics, and is MEANT to teach you how to then be able to learn on your own (question, research, and apply).

 

When I finish my degree, I'll be qualified to do the job I'm already doing.

The reason I'm sticking with it, is so if for what ever reason I ever leave my current workplace, someone else will hire me as I have the piece of paper.

Most companies, you can have 25 years hands on experience. Don't have that piece of paper from 25 years ago? Well, you're not getting hired.

 

I have a guy on my team, he has a Double Degree in Maths and Science, and a Degree in Comp Science/Engineering. Really awesome hard worker. BUT... I can't just give him a problem and let him figure it out. EVERYTHING has to be meticulously scoped, thought out, and put together, and then he'll just write the code for me. I may as well use ChatGPT by that point in time!

 

Flipside is, I'm having a conversation with the company owner on how to do something new with our products to solve a specific problem, while keeping our system as generic as possible (IE, we don't have ten different firmwares, and you choose which one to load to do a specific job, and we dont do custom modules in our software for specific customers), and while having this active conversation, I've already devised four different ways to solve it for proof of concept, and the pros and cons of each method!

 

Anyone else listening is still trying to understand the problem... Those people still listening are the ones on paper that are "smarter than me"...

 

The struggle is definitely real finding ANYONE half decent. Hence, I understand why small workshops struggle.

Most people don't have the passion, or drive, to do jobs the boss wants to offload. Nor do they understand / care about the cost of their own f**kups.

 

Hence why workshops will continue to be shit at housekeeping things like responding to emails, or understanding technology and making it work for them.

[MBS206]

8 hours ago, SLVRBAKSLPZ said:

Besides the skillset decline in the mechanics world, you think there's a bit of gatekeeping with info/teaching as well?

In the mechanics world, I think most fail to learn these days as they learn at places like a dealership, which primarily replace huge chunks, and roll the dice of "throw parts at it" as the computer does a lot of the diagnostics for them / it's the troubleshooting flow diagram from the manufacturer.

 

Then there's the issue of, some people can't put aside personality, and work on different communication styles.

 

But seriously, go meet 50 apprentice mechanics, most think they're top shit and don't want to listen, and at least half of the 50 are also stoned...

 

The tradies teaching don't have the patience or time to put up with the shit.

It's one thing, on a quick thought, that banning all the shit like hazing, and being al PC, is that the young ones don't know to stop being a smart aleck, and just listen, as they've got nothing to fear, except being called the wrong pronoun

[Duncan]

On 24/03/2023 at 9:27 AM, SLVRBAKSLPZ said:

No go on the steps. called couple shop close to me. Neither had them and one shop said that AMP didnt have any for the King Cab. One called me back and said AMP has 17-18 XD steps but are backordered w/ not date.

Sorry I missed this post in all the replies since, thanks for checking it out!

I know they are a special order item, I have the steps installed but all 4 arms are seized. They were awesome when working, turns out they pins are not well chromed and need regular cleaning and greasing to keep them alive in dirty/wet conditions (and let's face it, what other conditions are there for a rural pick up).

I just need to catch AMP again during their/your business hours and find out someone reliable I can order them through.

Good luck getting your problems sorted.

[SLVRBAKSLPZ]

1 minute ago, Duncan said:

Sorry I missed this post in all the replies since, thanks for checking it out!

I know they are a special order item, I have the steps installed but all 4 arms are seized. They were awesome when working, turns out they pins are not well chromed and need regular cleaning and greasing to keep them alive in dirty/wet conditions (and let's face it, what other conditions are there for a rural pick up).

I just need to catch AMP again during their/your business hours and find out someone reliable I can order them through.

Good luck getting your problems sorted.

Ahh gotcha. Are you able to remove the pins?? nickle plating is cheap and will last longer with more lubricity. something to look into

SO I at least got answers about my block. I'm Happy about that.

IDK whats gonna happen w/ H___E. I talked to a guy who posted on one of their IG post about how he been waiting 6 months with no comms. He never got comms from the company directly. He contacted one of the fabricators there about his order and eventually he got a tracking number.

FB, IG and 3x emails and nothing. My last hope with them will be contact one of the workers.

I'll never buy anything else from them at this point.

[SLVRBAKSLPZ]

I contacted one of the fabricators on IG. We'll see if something comes of that.

As of now, still no replies from the company themselves.

It's wild that H___E has no storefront and 3 of the ways listed to contact them doesn't seem to matter.

I guess so far I have yet to hear/see of anyone straight up getting stiff and not receiving part(s) they ordered 🥲

If I ordered thru PRP I might have received it by now

[SLVRBAKSLPZ]

Messaging one of the fab guys worked! About 1pm NSW time I got an email from the owner.

They were waiting on a SPAL brushless fan that I wanted on the radiator. It had come in at some point but no one realized it. 6 months work of waiting, IDK??? either way, he was apologetic and assured my order would be fast tracked.

Im happy my pestering had something come of it. Hopefully I get tracking withing the next week weeks.

 

[MBS206]

7 hours ago, SLVRBAKSLPZ said:

Messaging one of the fab guys worked! About 1pm NSW time I got an email from the owner.

They were waiting on a SPAL brushless fan that I wanted on the radiator. It had come in at some point but no one realized it. 6 months work of waiting, IDK??? either way, he was apologetic and assured my order would be fast tracked.

Im happy my pestering had something come of it. Hopefully I get tracking withing the next week weeks.

 

Sounds like they have no process to review and chase up things internally...

[SLVRBAKSLPZ]

2 minutes ago, MBS206 said:

Sounds like they have no process to review and chase up things internally...

Right.

I dont understand. Seems they don't inventory parts coming in the door. 

IDK man. Smart boards and excel can solve so many issues with their organization. As much as they charge, they should be able to get that stuff up and running. H____E needs to do something as I've ran across many stories of ppl having their orders mishandled. It may be an "if it aint broke dont fix it" thing with how they get shit done. A messed up order here/there means nothing.

[Dose Pipe Sutututu]

Even Trello on a big screen, free, done.

Use of a kanban was one of the major reasons Toyota became who they are today. Making great boring cars.

 

[SLVRBAKSLPZ]

6 minutes ago, Dose Pipe Sutututu said:

Even Trello on a big screen, free, done.

Use of a kanban was one of the major reasons Toyota became who they are today. Making great boring cars.

 

Right! I mean its really easy stuff. Its just important to be able to keep up with stuff. With their status I would hate to hand out bad customer experiences.

I also followed your shit box build

[Dose Pipe Sutututu]

26 minutes ago, SLVRBAKSLPZ said:

also followed your shit box build

I need to update it with the new paved area in the yard lol.

[MBS206]

On 3/27/2023 at 11:17 PM, SLVRBAKSLPZ said:

Right! I mean its really easy stuff. Its just important to be able to keep up with stuff. With their status I would hate to hand out bad customer experiences.

I also followed your shit box build

You see, you say "it's easy", and I understand what you mean, as it is. When youre good with computers.

 

Remember half these places are started/run by mechanics/fabricators. Most of them don't understand/know/get technology at all. They can do emails, and process an order in Xero. But they're not quick at it, and even then, Xero can be too much for some of these people.

 

Getting them to setup, and workout their own workflow, it ain't going to happen.

 

However, maybe you could setup a demo system, and show them how it could dramatically change their business, and reduce overheads, while improving customer experience, hence enable them to grow their customer base and reduce order turnover time.

Once you've got the demo, now you can sell it to them

 

it's why any good software company, needs good sales people, who can talk the talk to end customers who don't get the software, they go in, understand the business, and provide a solution. For the most part, software doesn't sell itself... Nor do most other systems that help improve things, it's mostly guys showing these people what can be done and blowing their mind

[SLVRBAKSLPZ]

4 minutes ago, MBS206 said:

You see, you say "it's easy", and I understand what you mean, as it is. When youre good with computers.

 

Remember half these places are started/run by mechanics/fabricators. Most of them don't understand/know/get technology at all. They can do emails, and process an order in Xero. But they're not quick at it, and even then, Xero can be too much for some of these people.

 

Getting them to setup, and workout their own workflow, it ain't going to happen.

 

However, maybe you could setup a demo system, and show them how it could dramatically change their business, and reduce overheads, while improving customer experience, hence enable them to grow their customer base and reduce order turnover time.

Once you've got the demo, now you can sell it to them

 

it's why any good software company, needs good sales people, who can talk the talk to end customers who don't get the software, they go in, understand the business, and provide a solution. For the most part, software doesn't sell itself... Nor do most other systems that help improve things, it's mostly guys showing these people what can be done and blowing their mind

Yeah, I know there's  a learning curve. They have to accept the change if they deem it a problem to fix upon.

I'm 17/20 yrs in the military and there comes a point to where computer work become a norm. As much as I'd rather be working with my hand to fix jets there came a time when I sat at a PC to do admin stuff. Efficient admin stuff is necessary

I'm not the best at excel at all but I can get by. If I have issue YouTube has the answer.

I can still barely type lol.

If you was a pro I'd definitely set something up for anyone

[SLVRBAKSLPZ]

 

 

3 hours ago, MBS206 said:

You see, you say "it's easy", and I understand what you mean, as it is. When youre good with computers.

 

Remember half these places are started/run by mechanics/fabricators. Most of them don't understand/know/get technology at all. They can do emails, and process an order in Xero. But they're not quick at it, and even then, Xero can be too much for some of these people.

 

Getting them to setup, and workout their own workflow, it ain't going to happen.

 

However, maybe you could setup a demo system, and show them how it could dramatically change their business, and reduce overheads, while improving customer experience, hence enable them to grow their customer base and reduce order turnover time.

Once you've got the demo, now you can sell it to them

 

it's why any good software company, needs good sales people, who can talk the talk to end customers who don't get the software, they go in, understand the business, and provide a solution. For the most part, software doesn't sell itself... Nor do most other systems that help improve things, it's mostly guys showing these people what can be done and blowing their mind

*typo* If I was a pro definitely set something up for anyone

I mostly use Office systems at work. Something my shop has to utilize it server based. I suck at most of the complex stuff, but I'm lucky to work with some nerds when I do need help. After a while most of it sticks and I'm able to fly thru spreadsheets.

Once the system is built the learning to use it is easy. all it takes is someone to handle that portion. 

These shops can seriously hire someone off of Upwork or Fiverr to do some remote admin stuff. For a while my ole lady hired someone from the Philippines  to handle some orders for her small business.

At the end pf the day IDT its something they just dont care to improve in. The amount of orders that get f*cked isnt worth it to them to streamline the admin processes.

 

[SLVRBAKSLPZ]

Has anyone else suffered complications similar to mine?

[GTSBoy]

12 hours ago, SLVRBAKSLPZ said:

Has anyone else suffered complications similar to mine?

Your experience is so common that it's not even worth asking! There are threads like this about the truly bad shops. There are threads like this about the medium-average shops. And there's threads like this about even the very best shops.