You would think so. I was working on an oil rig and they made a big deal about ‘management by walking about.’ So the heads of each of the departments were supposed to go and check ONE job their charges were working on that day. They were supposed to write a short report about what they observed. This was too much for them so they quickly got in trouble from shore-based management for not filling out their reports. So they promptly delegated to the next-in-line management They promptly delegated it to the people doing the work so once a week besides all the other paper work I had to fill out a report about how I was observing myself working safety while management still had no clue what was happening.
> How do you know what's going on if you're not there?
> Ask a restaurant manager. Or a bartender. Or the manager of a retail shop. Or a call center or an office. Or the supervisor of a factory or warehouse floor. What do you think they'd say? [...]
> Ask anyone responsible for something, "How do you know what's going on if you're not there?" and you'll always get the same answer: "You won't."
> Unless they were an I.T. manager.
Not really though - that's an entire article about how IT is so unique and special in how disfunctional it is, nobody else is like IT, aren't we the special snowflakes. That's almost the opposite of what the previous poster was saying!
That’s sort of different stakes, right? In your case your direct managers decided to prioritize not doing their jobs over some pretty important stuff—your personal safety and the damage the oil rig could do to the environment if something went wrong. In the case of walking the floor in a store it is just aesthetics mostly.
Thank you to clarify. Then why did you write "just"? In one reading, this is slightly dismissive. In retail spaces, cleanliness and tidiness is very important for the shopping experience.
I disagree that it matters beyond sanitation, although I admit that’s a matter of preference. In any case, it isn’t life-or-death, environmental catastrophe level stuff.
You apparently didn't live in the U.S. during the late stages of K-Mart's existence. K-Mart was a major discount retailer, locked in a years-long battle with Walmart. But in the years before it finally went under, many stores (maybe all?) were plagued by messily stocked shelves, unattractive merchandising, stock pulled onto the floor and not picked up, dingy flooring and poor lighting. I'm not talking just the toy section, but the linens and other dry goods. The stores in my area were simply unpleasant to shop in, so people stayed away, and the whole company went out of business. There are certainly issues with Walmart as a company and employer, but in my experience their stores are well-maintained, the merchandising is decent, and the shelves are neat.
I both A) don't believe you at all (would you rather shop somewhere you can easily find and access the product you're looking for, or where you have to track down an employee to dig through the clutter to find each item?) and B) feel we should note that Walmart's "ideal shopping experience" is not the same as the customer's. They want you (in the amalgamated, averaged sense) to traverse the store in a certain way, to select the right items, to be enticed to buy the other right items, and to leave without encountering so much friction that you decide to go to Target next time; those subtler effects are absolutely affected by organization and aesthetics.
I don’t believe that you don’t believe me, and I don’t think either of us will be able to present a compelling argument about the beliefs and preferences bouncing around in each others heads.
There is a book, “how to ace calculus, the streetwise guide” that sounds a little gimmicky but is actually a bit entertaining to read. Looks like it can be had on thrift books or eBay for about $5. It helped me understand some of the concepts at a deeper level than math text books. The problem with math text books are they’re mostly written by mathematicians who seem to think different than the rest of us, so when they try to explain things it’s in a mathematician way.
From working on controls on ships. Measuring the current using a CT (current transformer) or Rogowski coil to measure the current is a fairly standard way to monitor if something actually turned on when you told it to. A coil is a fairly robust device (no moving parts) so fairly reliable although sometime the connections become loose or the small wires susceptible to vibrations and breaking depending on the application. If you choose to use a CT make sure to never have a live conductor in it without it being connected to a rated measurement device reading. Since it’s a transformer, as current goes to zero, voltage goes to infinity which is generally a large value before it gets to be exciting.
There are also devices called wire break detectors that are wired in series (I think they’re a type of galvanic isolator) that can be used to monitor if there’s a break in the wire but some of the cheaper ones are not as robust and have had them fail.
Physical movement there are a lot of limit switches. Rotary encoders and rheostats are another way to monitor rotation of an object. I’ve even seen a rheostat used as a switch in a safety critical system before when they didn’t want to risk an open circuit, so just measuring resistance above or below a certain threshold was on or off.
Smart camera systems with computer vision are becoming more main stream.
Industrial sensors are often 4..20mA. Below 4 mA you might have a break or noise. If your reading is above 20mA you might have a short or noise. Slightly above or below might be a calibration issue.
Your acceptable rate and mode of failure will dictate what kind and how many layers of monitoring you need.
Depending on your use case you might be able to set up a camera and computer running openCV to watch the led and see if it comes on.
As someone that works on a boat in the middle of the ocean, I welcome more accessibility. Being able to talk to my wife and kids while at work is so much better than being cut off. Also the better availability of weather information or technical information if there is a problem can literally be life saving. I also sometimes miss the days when I would go to work and literally have email every few weeks. Things were simpler then but I was young, single without any real responsibilities. Unfortunately time has moved on and even checking my bank account has become impossible without being able to receive 2FA messages. [There was a period of time where I could get enough service to load the app/web site but they insisted on a text l or email which was loading so slowly it would take more than half an hour that the 2FA was good for.] During COVID I had a coworker from Mississippi whose wife had to drive to the school to get photo copies of school work because they didn’t even have internet at their house with cell phones. Modern government and society has made internet connection mandatory to participate. Some people don’t have a choice of being somewhere remote.
I’m gonna have to go with SAP on this one. I know that it’s possible to have a customized polished front end but that costs lots and my company was cheap. I understand that an ERP is a large complicated piece of software but so many basic UI things were awful. Sometimes you hit a check mark to proceed, sometimes a clock with a check mark. The yellow button next to it goes back 1 level, sometimes the red stop does too, sometimes it backs you all the way out. There was no discoverability of commands, you had to know the secret incantation to get the data you needed which resulted in coworkers passing around their ‘favorites’ and home made recipe son how to do things that we did regularly that should have been quicker.
“Ok go to transaction IP39, click the square there next to the form, a different search box will open, search for what you’re looking for. Write down all the possible part numbers on this piece of paper over there and then go to transaction SM89 and try each of them.”
A real power user opened two windows. Millions of man hours wasted trying to see if there was possibly a lightbulb on the shelf in the warehouse and if there wasn’t, if anyone had ordered more yet.
It may not be sabotage necessarily. I’ve talked to MIT professors and they said one of the things they do at Sloan is emphasize gaining and holding a monopoly. Patents, trade secrets, etc. It’s the ‘moat’ that Warren Buffet and value investors look for in investments. If you do the work figuring out supports, methods, regulatory compliance, you’re not under any obligation to provide that information to anyone else. That could be construed as ‘stacking the deck’. I had a coworker that ran a firearms training company on the side and he had to let go one of his administrators because he was talking with his competition and casually telling them what sort of insurance they carried, what small business programs they had applied for, unexpected regulations they found that they had to comply with. All these things are publicly available but took a lot of time to research and money on lawyers etc. No point in helping your completion start on first or second base.
If I remember correctly, you also couldn’t moderate on posts that you had commented on so it prevented using downvoting as extra signaling that others agreed with you in an argument. Also, you got 5 moderation points sort of randomly, you didn’t have the option to always be moderating. I browse Slashdot occasionally but once I found HN, the topics and discourse interested me here more, haven’t really spent much time there in years.
Thanks. I forgot about the 5-at-a-time thing! But now I remember the tiny delight when I was entrusted with that little clutch of power. I “spent” them wisely.
And this is another thing I think made that mod system good. Only so many points available.
It probably is one. There’s nothing particularly special about the hole in the ground. It’s what you are trying to suck out. The oil industry has lots of knowledge about making holes, no point in reinventing the wheel.
I’m a marine engineer who is currently specializing as an electronics technician on a ship. So I guess I get to have a Steady Eddie job all over the map.
I was always interested in computers but when it was time to strike out on a path after high school I thought the idea of being behind a computer screen all the time wasn’t that appealing so I focused on my other interest, ships.
I got to learn about engines, pumps, hydraulics, electricity, etc. (On a ship the engineers fix EVERYTHING) but after a few, ended up on a ship that allows me to focus on the electronics/ computer side and spend most my day looking at a computer.
I program as a hobby (easy to take traveling) still and read and take as many online classes as I can. I helped a coworker develop a system for his side-gig to control some LEDs with some raspberry-pi’s and a web app using Flask.
I still really don’t know what I want to be I guess, but I enjoy the level discourse here and the community’s ability to find interesting stories.
They also have a two part course on Coursera I think. It helped clarify some things that I didn’t quite understand in the book and help keeper me on pace. For full disclosure, I’ve only done part one so far.
