Working

Mike Rowe and Charles Koch On Work

Posted on by jccarlton

This is just great. Of course it started with the usual.

Koch Industries Teams Up with Mike Rowe to Improve the Skills Gap

Some people are so filled with hate that they can’t understand that the way they are behaving comes under the words; “not helping.” As far as I’m concerned, if Mr. Koch wants to help the country get back to work, well he’s doing the right thing.  As for things like climate change and the rest of it, well sometimes there are higher priorities.  I suppose that the HUGE difference between Mr. Koch and his critics is that Mr. Koch listens to the other side even if he disagrees with it.

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The Types Of Engineering Bosses

Posted on by jccarlton

Nice list here, but he forgot a few.

Office Kingdom: A Detailed Look at the Behavior of the Most Common Engineering Bosses

The fact is that I’ve had some real strange bosses.  There was the narcissist, the schitzo, and the Russian.  Somehow engineering seems to draw the worst and the best.

Why He Gave Up Looking For A Job

Posted on by jccarlton

I can’t argue with any of this except one thing.  he didn’t give up looking for work, he gave up looking for a job.  This is something a lot of us are going to have to come to grips with.  Especially if we are creative types.  We don’t fit the mindset of the current environment.  That mindset is sinking the companies that have it, but maybe we shouldn’t go down with the ship.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-i-gave-up-looking-work-chris-worth

There’s work out there to be found and frankly I’m not sure that looking for a job is really worth the grief anymore.

A Maker’s And Engineering Bookshelf. Lets Build Resource

Posted on by jccarlton

I buy lots of books, on everything.  As an engineer and a maker, I’ve managed to acquire a large collection of books on how to make just about everything.  This list is going to be the books that should be anybody’s bookshelf if they want to know how to get stuff made and don’t have the skills right to hand. Any book on this list will be a book I own and like.  I’m going to pick the that I have in a bunch of relevant areas.  Most of these books have been a round for a long time and stood the test of time.  Some of them may be out of print, but you can look online and in used bookstores.  Many of the engineering books can be had very cheaply as they are not fast movers.  Unless you are a millionaire and don’t care, or need a reference immediately, don’t pay full price if you don’t have to.  This post is going to be updated as I pull more books or buy more books and read them.

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What Happened To Employee Loyalty?

Posted on by jccarlton

Good question?
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20130918061815-52594-what-happened-to-employee-loyalty
Perhaps the better question is how did things go so wrong? Look at my last job, I was very loyal. I put in the effort applied myself, worked killer deadlines and over my pay grade, never asked anything but the respect that any person deserves and the resources to do my job well. Conservatively my efforts put 70 million dollars in the companies revenues in the period since I completed the main project I worked on, For that I was “restructured” because of a quota systems that just treated people like used Kleenex. Essentially I was the perfect sucker.

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Lights Out, The Tools Keep Working

Posted on by jccarlton

In this day and age, if the tooling and fixtures are set up correctly, with the right programs the work doesn’t need to stop when the lights go out. Of course you may get some failure and crashes, but those happen anyway.

And this shop can probably machine just about anything, in any quantities from single prototypes to thousands. This doesn’t mean that old style machining is going away. It’s not. Many jobs, if the expectation is that you won’t be making very many parts, it’s actually quicker for the machinist to just clamp stuff in a vice or lathe, put up the drawing and start cutting. Then there’s stuff like this, which can only be done by a computer controlled machine:

There has been a quiet revolution in computer controlled machines and we are seeing just the beginning of it.