Will you go back to oil and gas?

[Darkane]

Originally posted by mazdavirgin


Depends on the field... In the EE world if you're doing controls, embedded systems or something along those lines replacing someone is a 6+ month ordeal for them to come up to speed if you hired someone competent. If not they never come up to speed and you get to axe them two years later when someone finally figures out that things are not working out.

Knowledge work is a lot less interchangeable than it might first appear. Losing a project lead engineer for these types of projects can at times result in the end of that product line if the documentation wasn't adequate. Sure you can replace people but it takes ages before people are ramped up and ready to fill in the previous persons shoes. There's a reason on a single project we might have 5-10 EE's yet we will have 10-100x that number of support staff.

This is true. I'll use two examples that are directly related to me

1) Automation guy (EE)

He's the go to when the DCS has issues. He can code, program, and knows the system. Since day one.

2) simple boiler operator (power engineer)

Has commissioned the plant and been there for whatever - 20 years. He's the guy you need when a line lets go, a pine hole leak has started or whatever. He knows without blinking what valves to open or close without hesitation and the amounts of control needed on the DCS to bring the plant to a safe state the safest, fastest way.

Both of these guys can not be easily replaced. And if they need to be it'll take years before the new guys are up to snuff.

I'd like to say a truck driver can be replaced easily as his job competency level may increase at the same pace as my other two examples, but maxes out much sooner. He'll be excellent within weeks for example.

[mazdavirgin]

Originally posted by hampstor


In just about any field there are many firms with the expertise and bench strength to take over.

I spend most of my time working around technology projects so I've seen pms and engineers replaced on large and small projects. It isn't always efficient nor is it always cost effective to have someone else take over but it can always be done. Sometimes its the best thing that happens.

Also if your documentation is inadequate, you probably needed a new PM or engineer anyway.

No man... You don't really get it... A firm can't come in and take over a control implementation over night. You're talking possibly millions of lines of code to know and understand along with the associated control math behind the whole process. Not to mention if you're doing something like top drive drill automation you're looking at a pool of maybe a few thousand people who have experience and knowledge to actually know what the hell the algorithms are doing in the first place.

You lose these guys it's often the death of the product line both because you can't support existing customers and also because you are so far down a rat hole you can't make any changes. It's also incredibly risky to make changes to existing control system that are live without knowing why things were designed a certain way.

Sure if you want to you can get back to a point where you can figure it out but it takes months if not years. In that time frame it's often too late. That's why most good companies in-house these activities and are super anal about getting new hires to train up the second someone leaves.

Same thing goes if you're doing pure software. Hiring out a random company to try to take over your software project goes hilariously poorly. We see it time and time again. Companies play with out sourcing get burned bad then bring all the critical work back into the fold. Developers are another good example. On large projects it takes them a half a year or more to get up to speed where they can be contributing members on par with the rest of the teams.

There's super steep product architecture learning curves. Just like the linux kernel you can't randomly take someone off linkedin and expect them to be able to write you a linux device driver. You'll have to find and hire someone who either is willing to spend the 6months to learn or has worked specifically on the linux kernel in the past.

[hampstor]

Originally posted by mazdavirgin


No man... You don't really get it... A firm can't come in and take over a control implementation over night. You're talking possibly millions of lines of code to know and understand along with the associated control math behind the whole process. Not to mention if you're doing something like top drive drill automation you're looking at a pool of maybe a few thousand people who have experience and knowledge to actually know what the hell the algorithms are doing in the first place.

You lose these guys it's often the death of the product line both because you can't support existing customers and also because you are so far down a rat hole you can't make any changes. It's also incredibly risky to make changes to existing control system that are live without knowing why things were designed a certain way.

Sure if you want to you can get back to a point where you can figure it out but it takes months if not years. In that time frame it's often too late. That's why most good companies in-house these activities and are super anal about getting new hires to train up the second someone leaves.

Same thing goes if you're doing pure software. Hiring out a random company to try to take over your software project goes hilariously poorly. We see it time and time again. Companies play with out sourcing get burned bad then bring all the critical work back into the fold. Developers are another good example. On large projects it takes them a half a year or more to get up to speed where they can be contributing members on par with the rest of the teams.

There's super steep product architecture learning curves. Just like the linux kernel you can't randomly take someone off linkedin and expect them to be able to write you a linux device driver. You'll have to find and hire someone who either is willing to spend the 6months to learn or has worked specifically on the linux kernel in the past.

I'll take back "easy to replace" in my comment. I was speaking in a generalization and clearly in your case, "easy" is not accurate.

We do have different experiences though it may be a difference in perspectives as mine is from the customer side. I've never encountered a project where we couldnt find someone to outsource to if we wanted to. As for resources, again its exceptionally rare to encounter a resource that wasnt replacable. I've maybe encountered a handful, and even then they were eventually replaced by a small team (some insourced and some outsourced)

The success of outsourcing is a diff discussion - a bit off topic for this thread.

[ExtraSlow]

Originally posted by ExtraSlow
Hey for those of you unemployed or underemployed, I've noticed a huge increase in job postings in the three weeks. if you aren't getting daily emails from your favourite careers search engine, get on it. I like Indeed, but I suspect there are other good ones. I have three that email me once per day, and I'm seeing about one per day that fit my skills, including one today.

Keep your eyes and ears open everyone.

Still seeing fresh postings. I use Indeed and they email me results from several searches every morning. Something to read while I take a crap anyway, so it's not taking a lot of time out of my day if there is nothing.

[Sdeibert]

Originally posted by ExtraSlow
Still seeing fresh postings. I use Indeed and they email me results from several searches every morning. Something to read while I take a crap anyway, so it's not taking a lot of time out of my day if there is nothing.

Tons of jobs in Drilling and Service out there if someone wants to play outside, I know my company is hiring 5 guys in my department. Class 3's are instant hires.