Comment by cycomanic

Comment by cycomanic 3 days ago

But that's the thing that both students and often the teachers forget. We don't run labs to go smoothly, we run labs because you'll have to troubleshoot. There is no learning experience in a lab that works without issues, in fact IMO if lab instructions are of the step by step type, they should always have some deliberate errors in it to get students to troubleshoot.

To play devil's advocate, just imagine the previous posters Story at a company, i.e. a junior engineer not being able to make some simple tasks work and telling their supervisor "it doesn't work" and it turns out after 8 weeks they grabbed some wrong part. Should they have expected their supervisor to check all the parts? Should they expect a good performance evaluation?

don-code 3 days ago

If after eight weeks a junior engineer is still toiling on their story, I'd ask why someone more senior didn't get involved.

There are lots of reasons - maybe the senior engineers are overburdened with other work (or don't care), maybe the project manager or team lead wasn't asking if the junior needed help, or maybe the junior was lying about their progress.

Either way, a story that goes for eight weeks feels excessive. Much, to your point, taking eight weeks to figure out that there was a bad part feels excessive. My counterpoint is that teams don't typically operate like labs. In a college lab, the objective is for you, specifically, to succeed. In an engineering team, the objective is for the entire team to succeed. That means the more senior engineers are expected to help the more junior engineers. They might directly coach, or they might write better documentation. I don't believe that dynamic is present in a lab setting.

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CodeMage 3 days ago

> Should they expect a good performance evaluation?

They should expect that particular incident to not affect their performance evaluation, since it was very much not their fault.

In your hypothetical scenario, your hypothetical junior engineer went to the senior engineer repeatedly for advice, and the senior engineer did not do their job properly:

The lab tech was unhelpful, insisting that it must be something with how I had it wired, encouraging me to re-draw my schematic, check my wires, and so on. It could _never_ be the equipment's fault.

This is a huge failure in mentorship that wouldn't be ignored at a company that actually cares about these things.

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cycomanic 3 days ago

> They should expect that particular incident to not affect their performance evaluation, since it was very much not their fault.
What do you mean not their fault? I've seen wrong parts delivered by suppliers, so yes responsibility of an engineer who puts together a circuit is definitely checking that the parts are correct.
> In your hypothetical scenario, your hypothetical junior engineer went to the senior engineer repeatedly for advice, and the senior engineer did not do their job properly:
>> The lab tech was unhelpful, insisting that it must be something with how I had it wired, encouraging me to re-draw my schematic, check my wires, and so on. It could _never_ be the equipment's fault.
Again _never_ the equipment's fault? It wasn't the equipment it was a part. So maybe it was an issue of miscommunication? I find it hard to believe that the lab tech said it could never be the parts, considering how those things are handled in student labs, small parts break all the time.
Maybe, it's true and it was a crappy lab tech, maybe they could not imagine the part being broken, but I've seen the other side of the equation as well, when things don't work students often just throw their hands up and say "it doesn't work" without any of their own troubleshooting expecting the tutor/lab tech/professor to do the troubleshooting for them (quite literally, can you check that we wired everything correctly...).
In my experience this does not get accepted in industry. I acknowledge though what the other poster said, generally in industry incentives are different and someone would have intervened if a project gets held up for 8 weeks by a single person.
Regarding the story, I wonder what would have been an acceptable solution (apart from the lab tech possibly being more helpful?), I as a teacher would have excepted a report which would have given a detailed account of the troubleshooting steps etc. (but it needs to show that a real effort to find the cause, simply saying the lab tech couldn't help is not sufficient). Simply saying "it wasn't my fault because I had a wrong part" shouldn't just give you an A.

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- Dylan16807 3 days ago
  
  > What do you mean not their fault? I've seen wrong parts delivered by suppliers, so yes responsibility of an engineer who puts together a circuit is definitely checking that the parts are correct.
  A student is far from an engineer.
  > Again _never_ the equipment's fault?
  The exact words the failed mentor used are not what matters here.
  > In my experience this does not get accepted in industry.
  This being the entire situation or the actions of the improperly used junior employee? Blaming the non-expert that was refused help is scapegoating.
  > Simply saying "it wasn't my fault because I had a wrong part" shouldn't just give you an A.
  It should give you more time.
  
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- CodeMage 3 days ago
  
  > What do you mean not their fault? I've seen wrong parts delivered by suppliers, so yes responsibility of an engineer who puts together a circuit is definitely checking that the parts are correct.
  Let's not move the goal posts, please. If you're going to use a hypothetical situation as an analogy, make sure it's actually analogous. Yes, an engineer who puts together a circuit has that responsibility, because they're an engineer. They went through the required training that makes them an engineer and not just an engineering student.
  > I find it hard to believe that the lab tech said it could never be the parts, considering how those things are handled in student labs, small parts break all the time.
  And therein lies the problem. You "find it hard to believe" that the lab tech could have been that unhelpful, just like the lab tech found it hard to believe that the student wasn't doing something wrong. Both you and the lab tech are behaving in a way that is inappropriate for a senior mentoring a junior.
  In my experience mentoring others, the first assumption should not be that the person you're mentoring simply didn't do enough and that they should try to do better. Yes, that might end up being the case, but most of the time there's also something else that could have been done better. Maybe the documentation is not clear enough, maybe the process didn't help catch the mistake, maybe the expectations I set weren't clear enough, maybe I didn't communicate well enough.
  "Go check your work again" is rarely helpful, even in the extremely rare cases where that's the only thing that needed to be done and no other improvements exist. If you're really convinced that they merely need to check their work again, guide them to it.
  That's why they are junior and you are senior, because they need more guidance than you do. They will not develop the necessary insights and instincts without that guidance.
  > I've seen the other side of the equation as well, when things don't work students often just throw their hands up and say "it doesn't work" without any of their own troubleshooting expecting the tutor/lab tech/professor to do the troubleshooting for them (quite literally, can you check that we wired everything correctly...)
  And in turn, you're arguing that the mentor should merely throw their hands up and say "go check your work yourself". Again, even that can be said differently: "Can you explain what you have checked so far and how you've checked it?"
  > Simply saying "it wasn't my fault because I had a wrong part" shouldn't just give you an A.
  You are drawing a lot of your own conclusions from what hasn't been said. In this comment thread, you have repeatedly and consistently shown bias through your assumptions. Yes, what you're saying could have been the case, but I see no evidence of it and no reason to simply assume it without at least inquiring about it.
  
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rlpb 3 days ago

For a college class grade, everyone is supposed to be tested on the same exercise. If all students were tested under the same scenario then it would be fair. For just one student to be tested under this scenario, but for all other students to get a free pass on the lab component identification diagnostic test, is not reasonable.

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gopher_space 3 days ago

More to the point, the professor would be required to provide the same effort to every other student in the class.

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gblargg 3 days ago

While it's ridiculous to expect a student to have the skills of a professional, even a student needs to develop assertive skills to demand a replacement part. This is a basic skill for debugging hardware problems: see if problem manifests on more than one unit. Here it would be demanding another chip to try, early-on. Chips can be marked correctly but damaged or defective.

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jodrellblank 2 days ago

> "But that's the thing that both students and often the teachers forget. We don't run labs to go smoothly, we run labs because you'll have to troubleshoot."

Hands up everyone who remembers being taught that labs were supposed to go wrong and you were doing them because you will have to troubleshoot?

... anyone?

... Bueller?

Or is this just the typical internet John Galt like that other guy "no offense but why didn't you just already know everything and create an apple pie by creating the universe like I would have?"

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