Re: OT: Value of an industrial electrician apprenticeship
- From: Tom Kendrick <tkendr01@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 04 Feb 2008 08:28:13 -0600
Yes, it's frustrating when your sense of urgency and challenge exceeds
that of your peers. Here's the deal: It's just a JOB. You need to
appreciate the big picture:
UNLESS what you propose will either save the company significant
expense OR make them more profitable (faster, better, fewer errors,
etc.) your enthusiasm is a YOU thing not shared by your associates.
Look at the job market for your position. No one is going to pay $1
million per year for what you do. It pays what it's worth to the
company, sometimes less. You can be the BEST apprentice possible and
you should do that. However, you are in an entry-level position. You
are not yet in the Master Electrical and Instrumentation position.
Your boredom is not their problem. Here's the trick:
1. Try to do YOUR job the best that you can as well as helping your
associates ON THEIR TERMS, not yours.
2. Become a team player, not a solo expert.
Good luck.
On Sun, 03 Feb 2008 22:28:17 -0600, Nathan Weber
<ExcessiveDilutivity@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I'm a young guy trying to figure out the best course of action for my.
future. I recently ( 8 months) started as an Electrical and
Instrumentation apprentice at a paper mill and so far it doesn't seem to
be all it's talked up to be.
I left my last job as an Automation Technician mainly because I was
bored. I was hired on as an Assistant, trained for 2 months on first
shift then was moved to 3rd shift where I was by my self. After 3
months on 3rd, I was promoted to an Auto tech and by my one year
anniversary I was supporting the automation department by my self with
an acceptable amount of downtime. I was starting to get bored around
this time due to the fact that troubleshooting the machines we had was
not much of a challenge anymore and I felt that I was beginning to
stagnate. I started looking and was accepted into the apprenticeship
thinking that with the amount and complexity of machinery that a paper
mill has, it would be a long time before I was bored.
As an Auto tech, I had a lot of responsibility. I kept the machines
running, modified the machines to make them run better, I did a lot of
machining and some Autocad work. I could pretty much talk over an idea
with the senior techs, come up with a plan of action, design/machine the
parts I needed then implement the idea. If the part was too complex for
us to machine, I could drop off a print and have the parts I needed in a
week or two. I was very aggressive and would jump into any problem,
never saying " I can't do that or I've never been trained to do that"
Here is my dilemma, It doesn't look like I will ever do any of that, nor
will I ever throughout my apprenticeship. I get the feeling that many
of the people I work with don't really understand the machines they are
working on and get the attitude that if they don't understand what it
does, they are not going to bother to learn and I'm certainly not going
to be digging around it. I've been there 8 months so far and have
graduated from holding a ladder for someone changing a light fixture to
changing the light fixture my self, that's it. I try to push these guys
but the harder I push, the harder they push back.
Everyone is telling me that once I complete this, I will be able to go
anywhere. I certainly do not want to short my self in the future but
this seems like it is a step backward.
Thanks,
Nate
- References:
- OT: Value of an industrial electrician apprenticeship
- From: Nathan Weber
- OT: Value of an industrial electrician apprenticeship
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