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Youth Is Wasted on the Young
I swear that some younger engineers are absolutely unteachable (unlearnable?). They not only know little of the industries they serve but are ignorant of how and why their industries do things in particular ways. I could of course cite Chesterton’s Fence as one example, but there are plenty more besides.
Over the last few days, I have had a back-and-forth with a younger engineer at a long-time customer, who seems keen to change how his company is doing things, but fails to understand why they are doing what they do in the first place. He’s going to have to learn the hard way, just like all the other younger engineers. What follows is just the condensed transcript of my emails back and forth.
Customer: I want to spec part Y on my vehicles.
Me: Are you sure? It costs more, and just to get up to your volumes will take me 20-24 weeks. It’s an old part with low demand. I don’t keep the parts around any more.
Customer: The lead time is unacceptable. If we buy more, can you shorten the lead time?
Me: No. I don’t have the parts. They take 20-24 weeks to get.
Customer: So you cannot shorten the lead time?
Me: No.
Customer: What do you have on the shelf that is equivalent?
Me: Product X, which you already use.
Customer: Does X have such long lead times?
Me: No. You use thousands a year. It’s always being built.
Customer: So why is part Y so hard to get?
Me: It’s different. It uses a complicated connector instead of spade terminals. Those connectors are not stocked anywhere. They made to order. And they take 20-24 weeks to get.
Customer: The lead time is unacceptable.
Me: It’s not in my hands. I don’t have the connector.
Customer: So if I order Y, it will take 20-24 weeks to get?
Me: Yes.
Customer: But I can have X now?
Me: You already have X. You use thousands a year.
Customer: So why is the lead time 20-24 weeks on Y?
Me: It’s different, and uses parts I don’t keep around. It’s old and doesn’t sell well. I was planning on dropping it entirely.
Customer: Why isn’t X affected by this?
Me: Because I make thousands a year. I only made 150 of Y last year.
Customer: Can you shorten the lead time of Y?
Me: No. I cannot shorten the lead time. It is not in my control. This is not negotiable.
Customer: So if I understand you right, if order Y, it will take 20-24 weeks to get?
Me: YES!!!!
Customer: What can I use in the meantime? I cannot hold up production.
Me: Product X! You already use it! I just shipped you 200 more this week. You’ve been using it since 2003! Why are you so keen on Y?
Customer: It’s smaller than X. We need to reduce space.
Me: X is already very small. And cheaper. You’d have to spec a more complicated harness to use Y.
Customer: Why is Y such a poor seller? Why don’t your other customers use Y? What aren’t you telling me?
Me: Y was made for 1 customer over a decade ago. They don’t use it anymore, we only make Y now to support the repair side. And mechanics hate connectors and break them, so when a vehicle comes in with Y they just cut it all out and install X. You can get spade terminal crimpers at Home Depot, while fixing that connector takes $400 crimpers that take… 20-24 weeks to get.
Customer: …So you cannot shorten that lead time?
Me: [swears profusely under breath]…
It’s never a good sign when you know more about a customer’s vehicle than they do.
Published in General
Condensed version, eh? Do you plan to release the extended edition?
Just add a few more program loops, and a long discourse on the history of bus wiring.
The director’s cut. With the never before released scene of Skip putting his own head in his open desk drawer and repeatedly slamming it shut.
My office door, actually. The desk holds the breakfast scotch.
You are dealing with the Purchasing twerp. They moved him to Purchasing to limit the amount of damage he can do. He’s probably the nephew of a vice president or something.
When I specified parts for a Purchasing twerp, I was as specific as I could possibly be. Caught one once who was going to order three 268 processors as a replacement for two 386s.
“No, it doesn’t work out the same. Just do what I told you to do.”
Why are you always banging your head with a hammer?
Because it feels so good when I stop!
Are you sure this in-DUH-vidual is an engineer? If so, engineering education must have detriorated badly over the last 40 years. This guy seems incapable of reasoning. That was the first thing they taught when I attended an engineering college back in the 1970s.
I can only go by the email signature.
Then again, I could tag myself as “Grand Poobah of Solder Dross, Esquire”, and who would gainsay me?
I think this is also an object lesson as to why “working from home” is just as disastrous as “remote learning”. Clearly neither working nor learning are actually occurring, and if this guy was allowed to actually examine one of the vehicles on the shop floor he might understand his own situation. I’m not sure he’s been allowed near an office since March – this is sadly common at many many customers lately.
There are lots of folks who claim the title “engineer” that have BAs rather than BSs. They may even be English or Studies majors. Having engineer in your title adds prestige – like calling a garbageman a sanitary engineer.
Grievance Engineers.
AKA: “Six Sigma Black Belts”.
I don’t know. I know my school completely ditched engineering the year I entered (should have been a red flag for me).
My history professors were always angry with the school president for the idiotic choices she made concerning the science and tech departments.
While there’s a certain amount of not knowing that which you speak, there’s also probably a lot of not wanting to be fooled by a salesman and not wanting to screw up that contributes to young engineers being complete doofuses.
And also businesses shoe-horning new people into positions with limited supervision or guidance.
I did reliability for a while when I started. My job was to analyze data and create charts for business meetings. There were specific charts and specific processes I was told to follow. But I had absolutely no freakin’ idea what I was doing or what any of it meant. Because I wasn’t a Reliability Engineer, I hadn’t spent anytime in actuarial education or work, and no one explained what I was doing. I learned more about that job while doing other jobs around the company after that. Like certain pieces started clicking.
I still have only a passing knowledge on the system I did reliability for. And I know they used a Bakersfield monitor.
”If you need to hire someone smart hire someone young. They know it all” PHCeese.
It’s like when I was an industrial engineer. Never trained for it, but I had built up a reservoir of common sense which seemed to help things along.
There was a time, when I was in College, that I worked as a Petroleum Products Installation Engineer.
Did you also wash windshields?
Probably but it’s been a few years.
He may have mainly studied under professors who want to “queer engineering”- I kid you not:
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/queer-engineering-purdue-social-justice-warriors/
this professor was at Virginia Tech and was recruited away by Purdue- both prestigious engineering schools.
Or maybe Harbor Freight.
You could dump that dialogue into one of those online cartoon generators with the robotic voices. It would be pretty funny.
To someone it didn’t actually happen to.
I have dealt with political appointees from both parties. I have never seen the experience so perfectly replicated on the private side.
As a manager I always made a point with regard to tiresome but unproductive personnel to praise them glowingly to the competition.
Might need to check it with the Undisputed King of Stuff, but he’ll likely grant the satrapy.
His title wasn’t “application engineer” was it? I’ve run across some of those “engineers” that got the title based on their ability to select equipment from a catalog. Bring up broader engineering questions and you may get sent to an actual engineer.
The Emperor of Esoterica holds sway here.
My apps engineer is one of those rare people who is spectacular in the role. He has a 40 year encyclopedic memory for the ways things work in the field (as opposed to the way they were nominally designed to work – these are not the same thing). He’s also a very good trouble-shooter, and if I were to give him a box of 100 light bulbs he would instantly pluck out the one that wouldn’t work.
But I do realize this is a rare combination of gifts.
That’s all too familiar.
Kind of buried the lede, didn’t you?
I know this is not your point, but still: We have found that connectors are invariably the tent pole in our supply chain, too. Somehow it takes forever to get them.