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    FFS...........how long before the idiots propose something similar here? I want the next bridge I walk across designed by someone else please.


    The fact that there's a highway to hell and a stairway to heaven says a lot about the anticipated traffic flow.

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    Yeah, a canuck I know mentioned this to me in irc chat yesterday, a lot of folks there are pissed at this, branding it as 'demoralizing'....which is tersely correct imho =^/

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    and it is coming to fruition.......




    f
    有段者

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    What a complete friggin fruit loop.

    What good will that do when those so-called graduates go to apply for a job or further education course.
    Any employer or education institution would tell them to f"" off very quickly. I certainly would.

    What she and the senate did, was pass a bill to make a generation and generations to come become dumber.
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    When The Loonies Are In Charge

    Quote Originally Posted by enf View Post
    FFS...........how long before the idiots propose something similar here? I want the next bridge I walk across designed by someone else please.


    You had me worried enf, I thought your header was referring to our very own footy tipping Linux Looney and his family...
    Last edited by Al Bundy; 19-08-21 at 06:56 PM.
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    Quote Originally Posted by freakee1 View Post
    and it is coming to fruition.......
    Except this is real........honestly, my old man is pencil shaped from rolling over in his brick in Fremantle cemetery wondering why the F*CK he went to war for this dumb as f*ck world that we've allowed to exist....geeez.
    The fact that there's a highway to hell and a stairway to heaven says a lot about the anticipated traffic flow.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Al Bundy View Post
    When The Loonies Are In Charge

    You had me worried enf, I thought your header was referring to our very own footy tipping Linux Looney and his family...
    Naaah, Loonie is just sh!t at tipping.....and to be honest only slightly more sh!tty than the rest of us...
    The fact that there's a highway to hell and a stairway to heaven says a lot about the anticipated traffic flow.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Al Bundy View Post
    When The Loonies Are In Charge

    You had me worried enf, I thought your header was referring to our very own footy tipping Linux Looney and his family...
    Hey! I resemble that remark!
    I'm out of my mind, but feel free to leave a message...

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    And we've been advertising for electronics technicians. We can't find them or attract them.
    I've looked through about 50 resumes in the past year and less than 10% can follow the instructions on how to apply for the job.
    A large majority of them have no idea how to present a resume and quite a few can't spell. (or obviously use a spell checker).
    A lot of them are on student visas and are just looking for a ticket to a PR.

    Some are lacking basic technical skills we're looking for even with some evidence of even basic work experience. Some have multiple degrees and aren't much better. Though some of the universities themselves are questionable. Those that we do interview ramble on and don't directly answer simple interview questions with direct and straight to the point answers.
    And then when we do find some techs, they then realise they haven't read the job description and bug out.

    We've even considered putting on apprentices, but there isn't a TAFE for 500km that teaches electronics.
    I think we have a better chance of finding a chimney sweep.

    I'd employ somebody with an Advanced Certificate in Electronics straight out of tafe if they could write a simple cover letter explaining why they might not be able to answer some of the questions that require experience but just a little bit of enthusiasm and potential.

    I have to wonder how many people are actually doing electronics in this country because it looks like this country is dumbing down and we're importing more dopiness to compensate.
    Yes I am an agent of Satan, but my duties are largely ceremonial.

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    The fact that there's a highway to hell and a stairway to heaven says a lot about the anticipated traffic flow.

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    Quote Originally Posted by trash View Post

    I'd employ somebody with an Advanced Certificate in Electronics straight out of tafe if they could write a simple cover letter explaining why they might not be able to answer some of the questions that require experience but just a little bit of enthusiasm and potential.

    I have to wonder how many people are actually doing electronics in this country because it looks like this country is dumbing down and we're importing more dopiness to compensate.
    The biggest problem I see in this country is the heavy emphasis on TEAM work.

    An enthusiastic individual with potential can have problems working with a 'team'.

    A team here in Australia, generally speaking, is one person doing the actual work while there are 10 others standing around watching or telling him/her how to do it.
    Most time is spent talking rather than doing.
    Too many times have I seen this.

    As such those who have great communications skills at the interview will get the job while technical skills are not always noticed, simply because some people who might have potential can't express themselves well, in my case because of Aspergers and SAD.

    I spent a lot of successful working time in Germany earning heaps of money. It seems that almost everybody there in my field has Aspergers.
    The main difference is that you precisely instruct or brainstorm with an individual what you want designed/constructed and when it has to be done, then just leave them alone and on or before the deadline it is on your table. This procedure can be hierarchical with other workers but they are all still doing their jobs individually unless a proportion of the work requires physical assistance of others.

    Another thing I noticed with this kind of work ethic is that there was far less 'putting down' of other workers. If anything, you wanted to impress your boss by providing better work that the others and not through some shitty team gossip.

    Trash, you might want to try looking past all the smart resumes and smooth talking skills and look a bit deeper into some candidates who appear on first impression socially a bit awkward.

    Unfortunately Australia also has little need for electronics as everything comes from China.

    Good luck.
    Update: A deletion of features that work well and ain't broke but are deemed outdated in order to add things that are up to date and broken.
    Compatibility: A word soon to be deleted from our dictionaries as it is outdated.
    Humans: Entities that are not only outdated but broken... AI-self-learning-update-error...terminate...terminate...

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    Quote Originally Posted by trash View Post
    And we've been advertising for electronics technicians. We can't find them or attract them.
    I've looked through about 50 resumes in the past year and less than 10% can follow the instructions on how to apply for the job.
    A large majority of them have no idea how to present a resume and quite a few can't spell. (or obviously use a spell checker).
    A lot of them are on student visas and are just looking for a ticket to a PR.

    Some are lacking basic technical skills we're looking for even with some evidence of even basic work experience. Some have multiple degrees and aren't much better. Though some of the universities themselves are questionable. Those that we do interview ramble on and don't directly answer simple interview questions with direct and straight to the point answers.
    And then when we do find some techs, they then realise they haven't read the job description and bug out.

    We've even considered putting on apprentices, but there isn't a TAFE for 500km that teaches electronics.
    I think we have a better chance of finding a chimney sweep.

    I'd employ somebody with an Advanced Certificate in Electronics straight out of tafe if they could write a simple cover letter explaining why they might not be able to answer some of the questions that require experience but just a little bit of enthusiasm and potential.

    I have to wonder how many people are actually doing electronics in this country because it looks like this country is dumbing down and we're importing more dopiness to compensate.
    And yet, I gave up looking for work and retired about 6 years ago, because I couldn't get an electronics job that payed enough to make it worth my while getting out of bed of a morning. And that was with qualifications and experience up the kazoo as radio tech, avionics tech, electronics tech, auto elec and also a bit of industrial electrical. But it also came with an age penalty, at 60yrs no-one wanted to know.

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    Want a job Bob? You pretty much ticked most of the boxes.
    And you will see shit here that you never dreamed of

    @ Fester. Oh I am always looking for the bottom card on the deck. But I am not 100% of the process and other people like my boss get a say.
    And when I say they will see shit they never dreamed of, this can be both a good and a bad thing.

    An example, how many boxes can ya tick.
    VME based systems, Linux, PMAC, PLCs, scada, robotics, optics, cryogenics, vacuum systems, motors, pneumatics, fibre optics just to name a few.

    The real issue isn't experience. The people I'm looking for are people who can think on the fly. See something they have never seen before and work out how it works, how it is supposed to work and fix it. The last person I interviewed couldn't do this at the simplest level. Their answer was to ask their boss how to fix it.

    The last person we employed had little experience and lots of enthusiasm. I can teach this person everything they need to know. But I was bit shocked when they couldn't work out why a multimeter wasn't working and how to fix it (flat battery). But that's what you get from a university education. Enthusiasm, I can't teach that and it is something they have plenty of.
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    Nobody could teach me anything.
    I learn by breaking things and then I can figure out how they work and fix them and sometimes rebuild them better but this is just a hobby now and I want to keep it that way.

    I am way past my use by date. Too old school and too slow for today's thinking for the moment world.
    So I am currently teaching my son robotics and automation but he is still only 15.
    Last edited by Uncle Fester; 21-08-21 at 12:25 AM.
    Update: A deletion of features that work well and ain't broke but are deemed outdated in order to add things that are up to date and broken.
    Compatibility: A word soon to be deleted from our dictionaries as it is outdated.
    Humans: Entities that are not only outdated but broken... AI-self-learning-update-error...terminate...terminate...

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    Quote Originally Posted by trash View Post
    The real issue isn't experience. The people I'm looking for are people who can think on the fly. See something they have never seen before and work out how it works, how it is supposed to work and fix it.
    I feel like we are creating a whole generation of appliance operators, who don’t know or even care how things work. If you can sit in front of a TV each night, passively watching shows and never wonder “how does that work?”, then you will never be a competent technical person.

    I work in IT these days and it’s hard to find people who really understand how systems operate. There are plenty who can do stuff… punch out the same work over and over at great speed. The difference is that when something goes wrong, or isn’t working as you would expect, you need a deep understanding of what is happening inside the system. Google is not going to help you with a complex and unique networking problem - you actually have to understand at a very low level, what is happening and why. Once you have this, the nature of a weird fault that has stumped many so-called experts often becomes obvious. It’s very hard to find people with those skills and that approach under the age of about 45.

    Our local TAFE stopped teaching electronics years ago. In a world run by electronics, I see this as a terrible loss to society. How do you put together clever and unique solutions to complex radio and electronics problems, if you can only get peopke who know how to plug black boxes together? Just look at the dumbing down of electronics magazines and the whole “build a wonderful thing… just buy an Arduino, connect it to this board and that board and voila”. Sorry, but that’s not really building stuff. I miss the old technical articles in Elektor and ETI that went deeply in to how projects worked and the reason for designing things the way they had.

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    Sorry, but that’s not really building stuff. I miss the old technical articles in Elektor and ETI that went deeply in to how projects worked and the reason for designing things the way they had
    agreed! Time was when an owners manual told you how a thing worked and even basic repair info, now there's only warnings about not drinking the battery "fluid" and this device will give "years" of service if "maintained" properly.
    I'm out of my mind, but feel free to leave a message...

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    Quote Originally Posted by trash View Post
    Want a job Bob? You pretty much ticked most of the boxes.
    And you will see shit here that you never dreamed of

    @ Fester. Oh I am always looking for the bottom card on the deck. But I am not 100% of the process and other people like my boss get a say.
    And when I say they will see shit they never dreamed of, this can be both a good and a bad thing.

    An example, how many boxes can ya tick.
    VME based systems, Linux, PMAC, PLCs, scada, robotics, optics, cryogenics, vacuum systems, motors, pneumatics, fibre optics just to name a few.

    The real issue isn't experience. The people I'm looking for are people who can think on the fly. See something they have never seen before and work out how it works, how it is supposed to work and fix it. The last person I interviewed couldn't do this at the simplest level. Their answer was to ask their boss how to fix it.

    The last person we employed had little experience and lots of enthusiasm. I can teach this person everything they need to know. But I was bit shocked when they couldn't work out why a multimeter wasn't working and how to fix it (flat battery). But that's what you get from a university education. Enthusiasm, I can't teach that and it is something they have plenty of.
    haha, you couldn't get me back on the tools for quids mate. Well not in an employment situation anyway. I've been retired for too long and enjoying it. But as far as the younguns today go, they are a bit behind the eight ball in the way that everything these days is built either as a throw away item, or module replacement. So they don't really get taught a lot of the basics, to be able to go any deeper into fault analysis. When most of us at our age started, it was all component level repair, so you had to learn and understand how the circuits worked, to be able to repair boards. (or point to point if you're that old LOL)

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    Quote Originally Posted by shred View Post
    I feel like we are creating a whole generation of appliance operators, who don’t know or even care how things work. If you can sit in front of a TV each night, passively watching shows and never wonder “how does that work?”, then you will never be a competent technical person.

    I work in IT these days and it’s hard to find people who really understand how systems operate. There are plenty who can do stuff… punch out the same work over and over at great speed. The difference is that when something goes wrong, or isn’t working as you would expect, you need a deep understanding of what is happening inside the system. Google is not going to help you with a complex and unique networking problem - you actually have to understand at a very low level, what is happening and why. Once you have this, the nature of a weird fault that has stumped many so-called experts often becomes obvious. It’s very hard to find people with those skills and that approach under the age of about 45.

    Our local TAFE stopped teaching electronics years ago. In a world run by electronics, I see this as a terrible loss to society. How do you put together clever and unique solutions to complex radio and electronics problems, if you can only get peopke who know how to plug black boxes together? Just look at the dumbing down of electronics magazines and the whole “build a wonderful thing… just buy an Arduino, connect it to this board and that board and voila”. Sorry, but that’s not really building stuff. I miss the old technical articles in Elektor and ETI that went deeply in to how projects worked and the reason for designing things the way they had.
    I agree with this in a big way. Just as an example, after I left the RAAF and was working for a very large contractor, I was employed in an Avionics workshop repairing modules for the F-18. The equipment was tested on a computer based test station, that ran fault tree analysis routines, written by humans, to identify likely faulty components on a board in the module based on measurements taken by the test station.

    So tech runs the test, puter says replace Q3, 5, 7 and R3, 5, 7. OK the tech goes and orders parts, because none in stock, and puts the module back on a shelf till the parts come in.

    A month later the parts arrive, they get installed by a different tech, test gets run again, puter says replace Q4, 6, 8 and R4, 6, 8, .... Tech orders parts because none in stock, and puts module back on shelf again.

    Five weeks later new parts come in, same routine again, but puter says replace Q3, 5, 7 and R3, 5, 7... Tech takes the module back to store room and hides it away on the "too hard" shelf.

    I started work there and the boss says.. We've got a couple of these modules in for urgent repair, because there is a shortage in the system.. OK I go the store room to get the modules for repair and find six U/S modules instead of the two. Bring them back to the test station, and the RAAF tech says.. "forget about those four, they're not repairable". So we repair the two that just came in, and I'm out of jobs. So I check out the repair history on the four unrepairable modules, and see the pattern of component replacement and test results.

    I go and get the schematics for the modules, set it up on the station, and start taking some voltage readings (by hand with a DMM)... RAAFY says, haha we don't do it that way anymore, the test station is much quicker... I notice unstable voltages on the stage before the commonly called out fails.... give it a spray with contact cleaner, because we didn't have any freeze spray, and localise one transistor as very unstable. Have a look, hey we have heaps of them in stock. Replaced the transistor and the module passes with flying colours. And.. a very similar thing with the other three modules.

    These four modules have had multiple thousands of dollars (of tax payer money) in parts put through them in the previous attempts at repair. The actual part causing the problem was probably $20... But even worse than that, the system was short four modules that were in high demand.. Piss poor in a military situation.
    Last edited by bob_m_54; 21-08-21 at 11:22 AM.

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    Quote Originally Posted by trash View Post
    I have to wonder how many people are actually doing electronics in this country because it looks like this country is dumbing down and we're importing more dopiness to compensate.
    Fewer and fewer. Once upon a time I ran a successful repair business, then replacement became cheaper than repair. Manufacturers stopped releasing any service information unless you were an authorised service centre.
    Module replacement became the norm and individual component parts were no longer made available. I spent 12 years as a part time TAFE teacher and loved every minute of it. All that effort has come to naught.
    Once my business folded, I worked for a large multi-national company as a technical expert / trainer. A 45 year old was a youngster in the many training seminars I conducted.
    I would forever hound the factory engineers for more information, only to be told that I didn't need to know that level of technical detail.
    Companies have a vested interest in deskilling their staff, because it means they are less likely to leave as they have no transportable skills. Just change an assembly and don't ask how it actually works.
    Every year we would have an intern for six months, many of them with master's degrees, yet they seemed to struggle with rudimentary concepts.
    I was often asked what university I had attended; when I replied I only had TAFE qualifications they were stunned.

    Now I am employed in commercial HVAC and my electronics knowledge has proved invaluable, particularly when integrating very large installations with BMS. I can speak to the controls techs at a level that many HAVC guys cannot.
    HVAC was a late vocation for me and a hard slog going to TAFE three nights a week. I was the oldest student by at least 15 years and one of only five students who passed the capstone exam (36 students attempted the exam).
    Good luck in your quest, but I fear it may be quixotic task.
    "The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom." - Issac Asimov

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    Quote Originally Posted by bob_m_54 View Post
    I agree with this in a big way. Just as an example, after I left the RAAF and was working for a very large contractor, I was employed in an Avionics workshop repairing modules for the F-18. The equipment was tested on a computer based test station, that ran fault tree analysis routines, written by humans, to identify likely faulty components on a board in the module based on measurements taken by the test station.

    So tech runs the test, puter says replace Q3, 5, 7 and R3, 5, 7. OK the tech goes and orders parts, because none in stock, and puts the module back on a shelf till the parts come in.

    A month later the parts arrive, they get installed by a different tech, test gets run again, puter says replace Q4, 6, 8 and R4, 6, 8, .... Tech orders parts because none in stock, and puts module back on shelf again.

    Five weeks later new parts come in, same routine again, but puter says replace Q3, 5, 7 and R3, 5, 7... Tech takes the module back to store room and hides it away on the "too hard" shelf.

    I started work there and the boss says.. We've got a couple of these modules in for urgent repair, because there is a shortage in the system.. OK I go the store room to get the modules for repair and find six U/S modules instead of the two. Bring them back to the test station, and the RAAF tech says.. "forget about those four, they're not repairable". So we repair the two that just came in, and I'm out of jobs. So I check out the repair history on the four unrepairable modules, and see the pattern of component replacement and test results.

    I go and get the schematics for the modules, set it up on the station, and start taking some voltage readings (by hand with a DMM)... RAAFY says, haha we don't do it that way anymore, the test station is much quicker... I notice unstable voltages on the stage before the commonly called out fails.... give it a spray with contact cleaner, because we didn't have any freeze spray, and localise one transistor as very unstable. Have a look, hey we have heaps of them in stock. Replaced the transistor and the module passes with flying colours. And.. a very similar thing with the other three modules.

    These four modules have had multiple thousands of dollars (of tax payer money) in parts put through them in the previous attempts at repair. The actual part causing the problem was probably $20... But even worse than that, the system was short four modules that were in high demand.. Piss poor in a military situation.
    That is classic!
    Perfect example of the think for the moment world I was talking about.

    It might surprise you that this has been going on for many decades, possible started mid 1970's in Germany.

    I was only 2 weeks as an apprentice at Grundig when they gave me clock radios to fix.
    I quickly identified that they all had the same faulty zener diode, so I asked where they had these diodes stored.
    The person above me said that I am not allowed to fix them but replace the entire module, literally the complete guts. That would be sent to Bavaria and fixed and sent back as a replacement module.
    I said that is not fair for the customer as this replacement would cost almost as much as a new radio while I could repair it in 5 minutes(it took much longer to replace the whole guts) and 10c material cost.

    The foreman sent me to clean out shelves for the rest of the day and the next. They DO have a cleaning crew for that after hours.

    Shortly after I filed a formal complaint that I am NOT learning anything and resigned.
    As I had to finish the month, I had to be kept occupied.
    Then one of the workers who I got on with a bit better, suggested to give me a CRO and an RF generator and some expensive HiFi stereo receivers to repair and align, which I did. They left me alone with that and I DID learn something.

    But I didn't stay because I had already accepted a spot in a lab for fibre optical research at Felten & Guilleaume.
    I could write a whole best seller book what I learnt in those 6 months there.
    Working with lasers that need over 1000 l/min water cooling was the stuff to turn a green 18 y/o into an enthusiast, plus I was allowed to use the lab including materials for all my own projects, including building music synthesizers.
    I even received money for all this.
    Needless to say that I stayed there sometimes until midnight.
    Their objective for me was solely to provide practical experience in engineering and electronics to prepare for UNI.

    These days I doubt anybody would be so lucky to find something like this, which is a shame because these experiences mould minds.
    When you do research it doesn't seem to matter when you fry a $2000 laser diode in a few microseconds(it wasn't me) but eventually some "Time and Money man" comes around and ruins all the fun.
    The lab was shut down a couple of years later.
    Last edited by Uncle Fester; 21-08-21 at 12:31 PM.
    Update: A deletion of features that work well and ain't broke but are deemed outdated in order to add things that are up to date and broken.
    Compatibility: A word soon to be deleted from our dictionaries as it is outdated.
    Humans: Entities that are not only outdated but broken... AI-self-learning-update-error...terminate...terminate...

  • The Following 2 Users Say Thank You to Uncle Fester For This Useful Post:

    bob_m_54 (22-08-21),gulliver (21-08-21)

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