4 ms·

I think you overestimate the rate at which skills become out-of-date. Industrial machines which are based on designs ten, twenty years ago are still in wide use

by yen223 12y ago

I think you overestimate the rate at which skills become out-of-date. Industrial machines which are based on designs ten, twenty years ago are still in wide use.

ams6110 12y ago
Computers which are based on designs ten, twenty, even forty years ago are also still in wide use.
- logicchains 12y ago
  I wonder if machinists familiar with older technologies command a premium similar to that Cobol programmers receive.
  - serf 12y ago
    I'm not sure about machinists, but my father is an 'old-school' drafting table/slide rule (both of which he has since relinquished) mechanical engineer, and he commands a premium due to his 'hands-on' nature with problems. He can sketch a picture and create a tool from the sketch in essentially the same day, whereas his counterparts take just as long just to sketch the tool in a CAD program of some sort. He has always had a problem with CAD design. He can navigate it, but he has difficulty with actual modeling. Luckily he is at such a rank in his profession to where he has an intern assigned to him to translate his graph paper sketches into document-able CAD files and do other computerized clerical work that he's not up on.
  - HeyLaughingBoy 12y ago
    Oh, no they don't. Sure there are some times when knowing how things were done decades ago is useful if you have to repair something, or do something unusual. But what drives machine tools today is throughput, throughput, throughput and the techniques used by today's CNC machining centers completely obsolete entire categories of tools from years past. What is more likely is that a machinist who was experienced in operating manual machines, and who has modernized his training can command a premium because his skill gained in doing things the manual way give him a better ability to program a controller to do it more efficiently (CAM software is only so good).
- notastartup 12y ago
  Software too! I was shocked when I learned that a local glass manufacturing company used DOS operating system which was running some esoteric job estimation enterprisey software from the 90s. They had no intention of upgrading.
  - Tloewald 12y ago
    O'Reilly books uses Mac Classic to run the last version of Framemaker that still ran on the Mac. (Not sure why they don't use Parallels.)
sliverstorm 12y ago
Hell, I've known machine shops to use rigs built in the 1940's

by yen223 12y ago

I think you overestimate the rate at which skills become out-of-date. Industrial machines which are based on designs ten, twenty years ago are still in wide use.

ams6110 12y ago

Computers which are based on designs ten, twenty, even forty years ago are also still in wide use.

logicchains 12y ago
I wonder if machinists familiar with older technologies command a premium similar to that Cobol programmers receive.
- serf 12y ago
  I'm not sure about machinists, but my father is an 'old-school' drafting table/slide rule (both of which he has since relinquished) mechanical engineer, and he commands a premium due to his 'hands-on' nature with problems. He can sketch a picture and create a tool from the sketch in essentially the same day, whereas his counterparts take just as long just to sketch the tool in a CAD program of some sort. He has always had a problem with CAD design. He can navigate it, but he has difficulty with actual modeling. Luckily he is at such a rank in his profession to where he has an intern assigned to him to translate his graph paper sketches into document-able CAD files and do other computerized clerical work that he's not up on.
- HeyLaughingBoy 12y ago
  Oh, no they don't. Sure there are some times when knowing how things were done decades ago is useful if you have to repair something, or do something unusual. But what drives machine tools today is throughput, throughput, throughput and the techniques used by today's CNC machining centers completely obsolete entire categories of tools from years past. What is more likely is that a machinist who was experienced in operating manual machines, and who has modernized his training can command a premium because his skill gained in doing things the manual way give him a better ability to program a controller to do it more efficiently (CAM software is only so good).
notastartup 12y ago
Software too! I was shocked when I learned that a local glass manufacturing company used DOS operating system which was running some esoteric job estimation enterprisey software from the 90s. They had no intention of upgrading.
- Tloewald 12y ago
  O'Reilly books uses Mac Classic to run the last version of Framemaker that still ran on the Mac. (Not sure why they don't use Parallels.)

sliverstorm 12y ago

Hell, I've known machine shops to use rigs built in the 1940's