5 ms·
As someone who's been living in the US for a while, but who grew up, lived, and worked in Germany all my life before, I'm not sure what you mean. Me and engine
by anyfoo 4y ago
As someone who's been living in the US for a while, but who grew up, lived, and worked in Germany all my life before, I'm not sure what you mean.
Me and engineers I knew were humans who liked fun (and especially had curiosity), too. As long as proper safety precautions are taken, why not? Seems like it wasn't very different here, either:
> "I need to have an MDS --- a Material Date Safety Shet --- on the paint before I can let you burn it," he said.
- cjbgkagh 4y agoThe US is surprisingly Germanic so it could be a common cultural thread.
- low_tech_love 4y agoSure but would you expect Fraunhofer (or something like that) to just give away resources and human hours to just burn a computer case? Of course Europeans have fun, that was just hyperbole; but institutionally speaking, it’s an extremely rigid place. You might even question whether it was ok to spend those resources. Maybe it wasn’t. But every time I go to the USA I’m positively impressed by how much they have the freedom to make decisions. In Europe all we do is follow the rules.
- kergonath 4y agoI don’t know about Fraunhofer but my experience in other European countries (mainly the UK, France and Italy) is that you just need to be nice with someone with access to the facilities you need. Unless you need something very specific (read dangerous), there is no problem. We don’t let visitors play with the instruments or anything, but we’re happy to do it for them if we have the right gear and our schedule permits. In more serious cases (if things like hydrofluoric acid, liquid sodium, or uranium are needed), then sure there would need to be a risk assessment, the health and safety people would need to get involved, and visitors could not be present. But otherwise there is pretty much no problem. In general, the decision would be taken with no involvement of any manager beyond the team level (~20 people). And that would be following the rules in place.
- low_tech_love 4y agoGreat to know your experience! Maybe I’m in the wrong country, but my experience here is that nobody will lift a finger for you unless (a) it is part of their previuosly allocated workload and (b) it is risk-free. By risk-free I mean really risk free; even wrongly spending 10 euro in a ham sandwich could get you fired and in legal trouble. Plus, just getting people to spend a few minutes to talk to you (if it’s not their preallocated duty to do so) is a nightmare, let alone expect them to actually make an unorthodox decision.
- anyfoo 4y agoWhere do you live?!
- xvedejas 4y agoIt's not something I would expect to happen in the US today; the 90s were a very different time. Maybe due to 9/11? But the same amount you're impressed here, I as an American am also surprised. It feels like this story is from a different country than the USA to me. All we do now is follow the rules.
- aliqot 4y agoSears used to be like this back in the day, and this other place, my memory tells me it is Montgomery Ward but I have doubts if that's right. We brought a machine up there one day and the guy at the window breaks the thing down right there on the spot so young-me at the time could get an explainer of what he was doing. To little me that was the future, and this person taking their time to explain it to me was like an elder passing on their history. My little record button was firmly pressed.
- guenthert 4y agoYeah, 9/11 changed the mood considerably here, but I blame the no-fun-at-work on the Internet bubble of the turn of the millennium. Since then everything is about money and only about money.
- jacquesm 4y agoI was making 100's of boards in probably the best equipped tech lab in Europe because the project I was working on was fun and the people that ran the lab figured that if it is going to be done it might as well be done well. Oh, and here are they keys to the parts locker, please do tally what you use and don't worry, we won't charge you, it's just so we know what to re-order... So yes, that does happen. And that was a lot more substantial than some help burning up a computer case. Also, this www thingy, that's someone's side project.
- aliqot 4y agoI hope you bake those people cookies every winter. That melted my heart to read. This is how you treat peers.
- jacquesm 4y agoI did better: I helped track down a really nasty problem in one of their series boards, which happened to use a CPU that I was pretty good at programming at the time. Lots of fun!