Heard a kid at the parts counter say "why would you ever need a schematic?"

I was picking up some connectors at the Grainger near DFW airport Tuesday morning and this younger technician, maybe 22 or 23, was arguing with the counter guy about a pinout. He said he just swaps components till it works, never traces a circuit. Made me realize how different this trade is now compared to when I started in 1998. Back then we had to understand every path on the board because you couldn't just swap a whole LRU. Anyone else feel like the younger guys rely too much on swapping parts instead of actually troubleshooting?

2 comments

2 Comments

jesse9881d ago

...I hear you man but I gotta push back a little on this one. I'm 27 and I've been doing this for about 5 years now, and swapping parts isn't always about being lazy... sometimes it's just the smart move when you're on the clock and the boss is breathing down your neck. I had a old-timer teach me how to read schematics on this ancient Allen Bradley drive last year, and it took me 2 hours to trace a bad capacitor... could have swapped the whole board in 10 minutes and had the line running again. It's not that we can't read schematics, it's that we've got different priorities when the downtime costs $500 a minute.

adams.taylor1d ago

Man it's wild how everything's become a quick fix instead of actually learning the trade.