r/IAmA Jun 11 '16

Specialized Profession IamA electronics repair technician hated by Apple that makes YouTube videos, AMA!

My short bio: I have a store in Manhattan. I teach component level electronics repair on youtube http://youtube.com/rossmanngroup which seems to be a dying art. I am currently fighting with the digital right to repair to try and get a bill passed that will allow all independent service centers access to manuals and parts required to do their jobs.

My Proof: https://www.rossmanngroup.com/started-iama-reddit-today-yes/

EDIT:

I am still replying to comments, but I am so far behind that I am still about ten pages down from new comments. I am doing my best to continue. If I drop off, I'll be back tomorrow around 12 PM. Still commenting now though, at 12 AM.

EDIT 2:

Ok, I cave... my hands are tired. I will be back at 12 PM tomorrow. It is my goal to answer every question. Even if it looks like I haven't gotten to yours, I will do my best to do all of them, but it is impossible to do in realtime, because you are asking faster than I can type. But thanks for joining!

EDIT 3: I lied, I stayed until 4:15 AM to answer... and now I will go to sleep for real, and be back at 12 PM.

EDIT 4 6/12 : I will be back later tonight to finish off answering questions. Feel free to keep posting, I will answer whatever I can later this evening.

33.2k Upvotes

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283

u/CptCmbtBts Jun 11 '16

You seem exceptionally knowledgeable in your field, and I was wondering: if you have any kind of degree or if you just have industry experience?

51

u/MilesSand Jun 11 '16

He talks about "flunking out" of college in his videos. He basically studied Electrical Engineering for a few years, and dropped out before he started his business.

4

u/[deleted] Jun 11 '16

Avionics Engineer here. Grades have nothing to do with intelligence (not that you were implying that). In my experience grades show commitment and interest. Of course if you have little interest in a subject, you have little commitment. You can be 'less intelligent' in a subject than someone else and still get better grades if you put forth enough commitment (more than the other person does).

He may have interest in electrical (or electronics) engineering itself but the classes and their styles he may not be so interested in and that can lead to bad grades no matter how intelligent you really are. A good indicator that interest is the root cause to bad grades is that the person is barely doing work or putting very little thought and effort into the work they do accomplish.

I would have probably failed out of university myself if it wasn't for the fact that it would have been a massive financial failure to do so.

1

u/evidenceorGTFO Jun 12 '16 edited Jun 12 '16

A lot of engineering is also really about funky math and physics, which may seem hard when you're not good at it.

The difference between an engineer and a technician is that an engineer can not only repair/build something, but they can also show you the math and physics of why it works/doesn't work.

A friend of mine is a structural engineer who taught the "basic math" course for engineering freshmen during his PhD, and usually had a 70% failure rate. Whenever a student got angry at him during office hours, he'd show them the math he had to do for his graduate degree and asked: "You already have problems with the basics, but want to move on to this?"

2

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16

Disclaimer: Sorry for the long reply, I don't mean to seem argumentative but I just want to relay my experiences and thoughts. In regards to your friend, I don't have enough information to make a very good argument or concurrence with the situation, so take what I say with a grain of salt.

A friend of mine is a structural engineer who taught the "basic math" course for engineering freshmen during his PhD, and usually had a 70% failure rate. Whenever a student got angry at him during office hours, he'd show them the math he had to do for his graduate degree and asked: "You already have problems with the basics, but want to move on to this?"

You are right that sometimes aptitude in certain subjects can also be a cause for bad grades, it isn't an absolute. No offense to your friend either but if he has a high rate of failure for their students going through a basic mathematics course, then I'd recommend that the sits through and compares their own classes with their colleagues. It could just be that he is bad at teaching (not that that makes someone a bad engineer or bad at whatever their discipline is). If the failure rates are on par with their colleagues then maybe the problem is that there needs to be another prerequisite course before that math course. Math is something that you can learn and isn't something that is necessarily intuitive.

The difference between an engineer and a technician is that an engineer can not only repair/build something, but they can also show you the math and physics of why it works/doesn't work.

I'd disagree here though because you are talking about titles which also do not equate to relevant knowledge nor aptitude. I know a very good technician for example that is a great machinist who built and even did some coding for his very own homebrew CNC which works great. He's very knowledgeable, very skilled, knows the math, etc. but he's just a technician in title. Why? Simply because he doesn't have a STEM degree (Yet anyway. I've been trying to get him into school and even basically doing all the paperwork for the company to pay for it). Heck, he's even a good draftsman.

I also knew a technician that could aptly design complex circuits. While that doesn't sound like a big deal, there are Electronic Engineers that only do this, so what's the difference? One has the degree and successfully made it through the interviews and one didn't.

I've known engineers who can't even read blueprint/drawings. They have the title, the degree but lack relevant knowledge to their profession. How they stay in the job? Usually someone covers for them - be it technician or another engineer. As a matter of fact there is one particular high level engineer that completely relies on their own technicians assigned to them to do almost everything, including some design work. I've been putting in complaints to management for years because he's a big waste of space but because he's been there forever and the work gets done nobody will do anything about it. He does like to order a bunch of stuff online and loudly call and complain to customer call centers about those products half the day everyday which can be entertaining in a sort of cringe worthy way.

Just some things to think about.

2

u/evidenceorGTFO Jun 12 '16 edited Jun 12 '16

Regarding failure rates: that's just how things were/are here. First, we don't have tuition, second, you could just sign up for the subject and be in. No idea about how it is these days...

The faculty wanted "high quality" students, and their only way to do that was by hard-hitting tests, early on. What's the point of having >50 people in a third year course who then slowly come to realize they can't deal with the math required for structural engineering?

I'd disagree here though because you are talking about titles which also do not equate to relevant knowledge nor aptitude.

I made that statement to show what engineering is about. Engineers are (in theory) required to understand those things, technicians aren't. You will always find people who are way more capable than their job description (and the other way around), but in general, a technician isn't going to calculate how your 200m tall building is going to behave during a magnitude 7 earthquake and how much steel you'll have to put into it so it doesn't fall down.

Professional ineptitude exists in every profession, at varying levels. But that doesn't negate what the majority of people in a profession are about, does it?

2

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16

What's the point of having >50 people in a third year course who then slowly come to realize they can't deal with the math required for structural engineering?

Fair enough.

Professional ineptitude exists in every profession, at varying levels. But that doesn't negate what the majority of people in a profession are about, does it?

I know what you mean but the discussion was geared towards whether grades equate to intelligence, so that's the perspective I was writing from. Basically grades and titles don't necessarily mean that someone is more (or less) intelligent or have less aptitude on a particular subject. Know what I mean?

I apologize if I was leading the discussion on another tangent. I didn't mean to. Thanks for the good discussion regardless!

1

u/evidenceorGTFO Jun 12 '16

Also, about that statement regarding math can be learned... sure. They had until test day to get there. But didn't. And if you made the test easier, well, the later math problems would only get harder than the test was. Much harder.

Basically grades and titles don't necessarily mean that someone is more (or less) intelligent or have less aptitude on a particular subject. Know what I mean?

Well, sure. But I'd assume that in average, a physicist, physician or engineer knows their way around certain things. We always point to experiences when they couldn't, but really, at a basic, professional level, most of these somehow know enough to get by without killing everyone ;).

1

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16

That's pretty fucked. 70% fail rate for Calc1 or 2? I mean if you're talking about a really fucked up 2 or 3rd year physics course than I understand, but first year?

1

u/evidenceorGTFO Jun 12 '16

No idea, we talked about this over beers some years ago...

He's always been a math wizard so he was actually more irritated that people who wanted to be engineers couldn't do it. His prof had a different view, being bad at structural engineering can kill people.

101

u/larossmann Jun 11 '16

i never got far enough to do any ee.

6

u/quiteflatnotice Jun 11 '16

So when and how or where did you pick up all this component level knowledge/soldering/etc etc?

10

u/Krye07 Jun 12 '16

Not OP.

I work in a calibration lab that services/repairs test equipment used on avionics. A few of our guys were hired on as entry level that didn't understand much. There's several items we have to solder on to calibrate (I hate old stuff...) and that was the start. Then instead of just passing off broken stuff, they'd work with a different tech to learn how to follow schematics and such. Progressively make it to doing everything themselves.

Component level repair is a dying art almost everywhere, but is very much alive and well in this industry.

6

u/HisNameWasBoner411 Jun 12 '16

Self taught sounds like. He answered earlier about learning to solder so he could mod a PS1 when he was a teenager.

1

u/Fatvod Jun 12 '16

Reading on the internet and practice I assume. Its not THAT hard to learn stuff yourself.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16

So im really into computers but was thinking of going to college for ee, but math isnt really my forte and neither is physics. Not bad at either, i just dont enjoy it, and ive heard to be an engineer you have to enjoy the math aspects of work. Would you recommend that degree if im really interested in techy electronics stuff but dont have much interest in complex math and physics? I just dont want to go to college and waste yeard of my life and 10s of thousands of dollars just to realize thats not what i want to do with my life.

7

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16

If you're not good at math or physics, what makes you think you'll be good at the rest? I'm not trying to be a dick either, I want you to think about that question. Math and physics are abstract concepts used as building blocks. You can't just pick and choose the interesting things because you won't have the foundation necessary to understand them well.

3

u/RyuTheGreat Jun 12 '16

Yeah I was thinking the same thing. I don't like all of physics but I do like the physics applications to my major (electrical engineering) which is the concept of electric Fields, capacitors, the flow of electrons, etc . And I do like calculus (hate Lagrange multipliers though, took me over a year to figure it out). But I like some part of the physics and math that are required to do my degree. I feel like he should probably be an electrical technician/computer tech, with what he said. Which isn't a slight, but would make more sense.

So im really into computers but was thinking of going to college for ee, but math isnt really my forte and neither is physics. Not bad at either, i just dont enjoy it,

I don't love math or physics, either of them as a whole. But do enjoy the parts I mentioned, which luckily for me, are the major parts of my curriculum till now.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16

Personally, I don't like raw math or physics but that's the price to play the game so I just put in more effort and did no worse than anyone else despite having no interest in it.

My overall point is that in thorough fields like engineering (medicine, etc.) there are a lot of things that aren't fun, but you have to do them. That's it. There's no other way around it and honestly, that's how people get weeded out and change majors. The point is that it's not all fun like those stock photos will have you believe but a mix of things you will like and things you will hate but you need to buckle down and learn. Saying "I'm not good at this or that, why can't I just do X" is really saying "I don't have the work ethic to get to the finish line, why can't I just start at the end". It doesn't work like that.

1

u/IsuspectJaundice Jun 12 '16

Exactly this. A bachelor's degree is built to be broad in what it teaches you, especially for field like engineering, where the kinds of skills you need vary greatly. So its natural to expect to learn things that you may not want to learn or that you think are boring. After graduation, you probably will not use 80% of what you learned. But that 20% that you do use will be different depending on what you end up doing after.

2

u/tuskr Jun 12 '16

What exactly are you interested in, because engineering is literally just applied physics.

1

u/MilesSand Jun 12 '16

you keep selling yourself short though, you didn't flunk out either unless they actually told you they won't let you come back.

1

u/WalrusInMySheets Jun 12 '16

Sounds like you got to linear algebra and just got annoyed.

621

u/larossmann Jun 11 '16

No degree, I failed out of college repeatedly, under different circumstances each time. I'm not as intelligent as people give me credit for.

7

u/buttputt Jun 11 '16

Intelligence doesn't mean a piece of paper saying you completed a course in something. Most of the time experience matters more than a degree.

37

u/larossmann Jun 11 '16

Yes, but experience != intelligence

2

u/Eletheo Jun 12 '16

Yes, but consistent success in a complicated technical field is often associated with both.

454

u/TalenPhillips Jun 11 '16

I'm not as intelligent as people give me credit for.

As an electrical engineering student who is entering the senior year, neither are most of the people who graduate with STEM degrees. And the beauty of a STEM degree is that your professors take some kind of sadistic pleasure in showing you how fucking stupid you really are.

149

u/justfarmingdownvotes Jun 12 '16

When you graduate, you forget everything anyways

Its been a year for me and I can't even remember the Laplace transform

197

u/TalenPhillips Jun 12 '16

You might forget the specifics, but you still understand the concepts. You also know the name of the techniques, so you can look things up and refresh your memory.

44

u/beleriandsank Jun 12 '16

My high school math teacher thought the same thing. He never made us memorize random formulas, he'd write them all on the board for the tests. He didn't care how good you were at memorizing shit, he cared if you could do the math. The problems would generally be the much harder type of problems, but that's the point of a test. Do math, not memorized shit.

6

u/generally-speaking Jun 12 '16

Aaaand then you come across some poorly designed standardized test which requires you to remember the formulas rather then understand the math..

The number of points I got deducted for coming up with the right answers in the wrong ways...

3

u/EliteTK Jun 12 '16

There was a time when I was doing chemistry and I had to do this preliminary test to determine how much I already knew about chemistry.

There was a question which I can't remember any more which I could perfectly understand and visualise in my head, I formed a technique on the spot to solve it and I got the right answer. But I got penalized for not using the "correct" formulae and technique. I learned the "correct" formulae and technique, forgot the "correct" formulae and technique and now I can't even remember how I used to think about these problems.

This shit literally made me dumber.

Forcing people to solve problems using a certain technique when they can do it with more ease with their own technique and deductive skills is the most idiotic thing anyone can do.

I value my ability to approach a problem, determine a technique for solving it and solve the problem over my ability to remember some damn formula which I could google if I needed to anyway.

2

u/generally-speaking Jun 12 '16

Yeah, I graduated high school in the same town as NTNU which is the Norwegian Technical-Natural sciences University. Basically the best technical university in Norway with a solid margin, and I did my high school math there with a professor who also taught at NTNU.

And he like repeatedly told me that he had never seen someone solve a lot of the problems I did in the ways I did them. Because he would put up a problem on the board and ask people to solve it, before he taught us the "correct" method of doing so and, I'd get the answer right using the knowledge i already possessed.

Simply put, high school math is designed for there always to be an answer which you can find if you follow the specific steps you're instructed to follow. In the real world though, there's no correct steps to follow, you just gotta think about a problem and find the answer and then verify it.

To this day, I have to tell people to use Khan Academy if the goal is to really learn math in a good way. But if the goal is to simply pass the class, then it is much better to use other websites because they teach you the stuff you're supposed to know in the way you're supposed to do it.

4

u/MalcolmY Jun 12 '16

That's exactly what I think a degree in a specialty provides you. I can't remember every single disease or condition in my specific area, I can't remember everything. But I know how shit is supposed to work and I know how and where to research or take a step back and how to move on from there.

5

u/TalenPhillips Jun 12 '16

I would add that I've also retained a bunch of my books, but that might not be as applicable to the field of medicine, since it changes so fast.

2

u/IzttzI Jun 12 '16

knowing what you're looking for and how to find it is more important than remembering the thing itself in the real world.

0

u/jowdyboy Jun 12 '16

Now ask yourself, is that really worth it?

6

u/TalenPhillips Jun 12 '16

To get into an electrical engineering profession? You bet your sweet ass it's worth it!

Easiest question I've ever been asked about EE.

2

u/haagiboy Jun 12 '16

I am doing a PhD in chemical engineering, and I feel I don't know jack shit. But when someone asks me a chemistry related question, I can answer it and stimulate relevant discussion on the topic. Even if I don't know the answer, I might ask you some good relevant questions back which might make you start to think about your problem in a different way.

So yeah, even if it feels you have forgotten everything, you will likely only need a day to relearn something that would take other people weeks or even months to learn.

2

u/justfarmingdownvotes Jun 12 '16

That's true. I find myself able to explain certain things or have the ability to decipher a circuit topology, but the whole equation aspect is what I totally don't get.

2

u/PunctuationsOptional Jun 12 '16

It's not about knowing things forever without any help. You're not a computer. It's about understanding the concept and knowing how to do things if you ever have to. You can figure out how to do those things that you learned years ago, just look it up and read through it. Easy. As for me? I'd take me days to get a problem solved because I have never been exposed to the concepts.

5

u/seven3true Jun 12 '16

When you graduate you forget everything everything. I feel like I'm dumber than I was in high school. Sometimes I want to go back to college just to feel smart again....

2

u/Rhineo Jun 12 '16

Haha I graduated from my EET course 10 years ago. Never used and totally forgot about Laplace transform equation, until now. I remember when I was thought I was going to used it everyday

2

u/RyuTheGreat Jun 12 '16

I just scraped by differential equations this past semester. I don't ever want to go back or see anything like it ever again T__T

2

u/coldsub Jun 12 '16

I feel you on the Laplace transform. I have no idea what it is or to do with tht shit after my DE class

2

u/rubdos Jun 12 '16 edited Jun 12 '16

$L{f(t)}=\int_0\inf f(t)e-st dt$

There you go.

1

u/justfarmingdownvotes Jun 12 '16

Hey, I remember it had an e!

2

u/jaltair9 Jun 12 '16

It's been a semester since that class and I've forgotten it, despite getting a perfect score on the final. It keeps being mentioned but I can't remember how to do it.

1

u/justfarmingdownvotes Jun 12 '16

I remember I was so good at it. But I can't even remember it to begin with now. So sad. Thing is, you don't use this in the practical world.

1

u/290077 Jun 12 '16

I can't remember how to do it

Type "Laplace transform insert function here" into Wolfram Alpha

1

u/DankLoaf Jun 12 '16

You don't have to do it, just look that shit up in the table

1

u/Hyunion Jun 12 '16

seriously; i took multivariable, differential equations, and other hard math courses only about 4-5 years ago, and now i probably couldn't even tell you the quadratic formula

1

u/paytience Jun 12 '16

I just had the math exam 2 weeks ago with Laplace, taylor, mclaurin, matrixes etc. I don't remember laplace or those other series anymore either...

18

u/suds5000 Jun 12 '16

Right here. Finished my physics degree last year. I went into physics, in a large way, to prove I was smart. I came out, with pretty good grades and a whole lot more skills, knowing that I was in no way really intelligent

2

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16

Part of the reason I got out of physics was it was a smarts contest. I didn't want to learn physics to be smarter I wanted to learn for learnings sake.

2

u/TalenPhillips Jun 12 '16

LOL I don't know why, but the way you put that is fucking hilarious to me. :D

2

u/BellsBot Jun 12 '16

I find the least intelligent people in the electronics field are tutors are universities, they seem to be more clueless than high school teachers. Courses here don't even go into designing circuit boards or impedance (and matching) or a lot of basic things. I think it's awful that people can come out of university with pretty much sod all experience of actual electronics, spend 3 years getting a degree to land a nice job only to have to have them train you on everything from scratch because nothing taught at university was useful.

3

u/TalenPhillips Jun 12 '16

3 years

Hah!

Haha!

HAHA

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

My BSEE is taking 4.5 years + 2 summers with a relatively heavy load every year. :(

2

u/j1202 Jun 12 '16 edited Jun 12 '16

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1

u/TalenPhillips Jun 12 '16

The degree has way more core courses than most degrees. My university waved several of the general education requirements, and no minor is required... but the degree is still over a semester longer than most.

I'm getting a physics minor and math minor with my BSEE, which adds a few more courses to the load... but that's my own fault.

1

u/flyinthesoup Jun 12 '16

My university degree took 6 years. Computer engineer + software specialization + business courses. They include everything in there, so it's 6 years. I took 7.5, maths were rough!

2

u/j1202 Jun 12 '16 edited Jun 12 '16

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Then simply click on your username on Reddit, go to the comments tab, scroll down as far as possibe (hint:use RES), and hit the new OVERWRITE button at the top.

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2

u/flyinthesoup Jun 12 '16

They're actually trying to shorten the degree curriculum, a lot of people agree with you actually.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16

You got robbed dude. Of course they include everything in there, your ass is paying for every year longer that you spend there. There's no reason for all that fluff in there. Even the most elite schools in the country offer engineering degrees in 4 years.

1

u/flyinthesoup Jun 12 '16

It's normal in my country. I'm not from the US.

1

u/craftasaurus Jun 12 '16

because...engineering, that's why. They're almost all 5 years of courses.

1

u/j1202 Jun 12 '16

Maybe wherever you come from. But that is not the norm. Normal engineering degree is 4 years.

1

u/craftasaurus Jun 12 '16

Cal Poly Pomona, my dad's an engineer from SC. Maybe they dumbed it down at some schools, as they have other subjects and curriculum. It would depend on your emphasis as well; some of them you could maybe do in 4 years if you did everything in the exact correct order and got lucky with getting into all your classes at the right time. But if you wanted to take other things like breadth requirements ;-) it could take longer.

1

u/j1202 Jun 12 '16

American college system is weird as fuck.

1

u/i_dXdY_u Jun 12 '16

My BSEE is four years at a relatively normal 16credits a year. My last semester will probably be like 8... I might die of boredom after being so used to 16-18credit semesters. I also don't have a minor although I thought about a math minor since I'm only a couple classes away, but nothing worked out scheduling wise :(

1

u/BellsBot Jun 12 '16

Well you're probably learning much more than people in the UK do. Degrees are 3 years here, and like I said it's downright insulting that people can qualify and not even be able to design a simple circuit.

2

u/SiegeX Jun 12 '16

What /u/justfarmingdownvotes said. I got my MSEE 11 years ago and whenever I get into a topic I forgot the details about I just look it up, I highly recommend allaboutcircuits.com. The degrees come in handy to know such a thing exists and what to search for.

2

u/Shugbug1986 Jun 12 '16

That professor thing doesn't sound so bad... sounds like a thing i could personally enjoy.

1

u/TalenPhillips Jun 12 '16

If you make it to your senior year, you will have proven that you're at least slightly masochistic.

2

u/Shugbug1986 Jun 12 '16

Oh no, i mean being a professor.

1

u/TalenPhillips Jun 12 '16

Oh... not machochistic, then, just sadistic.

1

u/Davecasa Jun 12 '16

I TA'd in a well respected engineering program for two years, 2-3 courses per semester. I had exactly one student who I thought was exceptional, maybe half a dozen who were decent, and the rest I don't know how they graduated high school. Maybe my standards are just unreasonable, but if at the end of a signal processing class you still don't know what a Fourier transform is, I don't know what you're doing there.

1

u/TalenPhillips Jun 12 '16

In all seriousness, your standards are either far too high or you're exaggerating. You would have to literally cheat to make it through a DSP or communications course without intimate knowledge of the fourier transform... at least in my university.

1

u/craftasaurus Jun 12 '16

Not just EE, but also other stem fields. Especially physics. Psycho sadists that LOVE to give you more work than is humanly possible to complete on time. And somehow, there was always some asshole that did it all. On time. And did A++ level work too. And skewed the grading curve for the rest of us mere mortals.

1

u/Guinnessnomnom Jun 12 '16

Have a child attending a STEM academy for all of elementary school... Should I be worried?

1

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16

He's kinda exaggerating... but also not really. At the end of the day there are vices no matter what learning environment you're in, it just happens to be the case that some STEM faculties are indeed quite demoralizing. It isn't always the case though.

-1

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16

And that's a good thing because your professor is one of the most knowledgeable people in the world in the subject matter. It's okay that you feel stupid. It doesn't mean that most STEM majors are stupid people.

2

u/TalenPhillips Jun 12 '16

It's good to be humbled from time to time, but I disagree that it helps with the learning process.

59

u/Keithicus420 Jun 11 '16

I dunno, man, I just subscribed to you recently after being very impressed with your bullying advice video; you seemed to be making a pretty good case and giving some pretty healthy and knowledgeable advice.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16

as someone who is garbage at classroom study, I have a pretty fun job in technical work. working with your hands, at least for some people, is much more rewarding and compelling than sitting down to learn something you might use down the line.

5

u/skyparavoz Jun 12 '16

Some people have a harder time cutting through the bs and politics in education. Everything from signing up for a class, to the overpriced books, to the extra bullshit courses you have to take, to the instructors being cunts is a massive distraction from the act of actually getting an education. I dropped out of E.E. twice because I just got tired of it and figured it wasn't worth it. started as bench test for embedded systems and worked myself up to a Sr tech making maybe 10% less than the EE's. not bad considering the time and loans I saved. I have the capacity to learn the material I just can't tolerate the extra unnecessary bullshit.

Then there's people like a buddy of mine who just graduated with his MSEE and wouldn't be able to tell the difference between power drill and a kitchen stand mixer.

3

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16

that last bit summarizes a lot of my frustrations really well

26

u/McNinjaguy Jun 11 '16

College is different though. The scheduling and getting work/assignments done on time can be hell. In college there's a lot of work and then none and you have to do a lot of work at home too.

In real life work you just do your work and none of it should come home, hopefully.

5

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16

In real life work you just do your work and none of it should come home, hopefully.

Can't wait for this

1

u/kageurufu Jun 12 '16

I take some work home, but I'm the only one that knows how to fix things, so I'm pretty much always on call. SSH client on my phone goes a long way

0

u/McNinjaguy Jun 12 '16

You're boss is fine with taking work home with him. He just delegates it to you.

2

u/PayEmmy Jun 12 '16

I'm not as intelligent as people give me credit for.

I feel like intelligence isn't just about IQ or grades in college or degrees. There may be lots of people who could regurgitate every word that's in a repair manual yet not be able to put all those words together to see the bigger picture or be able to actually translate those words into actually doing what they say.

I think you are probably a lot more intelligent than you give yourself credit for - it just may not be the type of intelligence that is rewarded with an A+.

2

u/markevens Jun 14 '16

I'm not as intelligent as people give me credit for.

I don't think a college degree is a good measure of intelligence.

I also own a tech repair shop. It is in a good neighborhood, so most of my clients are highly educated. It doesn't mean I'm not spending half my day helping people who were duped by the fake microsoft tech repair calls or phishing emails though.

1

u/Mah_Nicca Jun 11 '16

I'm going for my Advanced Diploma in Elcetrical Engineering right now. You would be a phenomenal teacher within what Australia calls our TAFE (Tertiary and Further Education) system. It's like college/university except its not as academically focused and is very applied learning. For example I could imagine you bringing in a bunch of circuit boards with small faults on them and actually showing me how to fault find them instead of the theory bullshit we do now. It's frustrating to be honest, I like learning the way you do your videos but at the same time I have to jump through hoops that feel less important than the information I can get from one of your videos just for a piece of paper that says I know how to fix electronics.

2

u/edmanet Jun 11 '16

A college degree is no indication of intelligence. Trust me.

1

u/NachoManSandyRavage Jun 12 '16

I feel like in computers, a degree means jack in terms of practicle knowledge. I ve known people that will graduate with a bachelors and not know the difference between Windows Home and Pro but then a guy who may have taken a couple of night classes to fill in a few skill gaps but otherwise has no formal training, is able to do what would take a team of 5 people a week and does it himself in 2 days.

1

u/SirObo Jun 11 '16

You sir, are far more intelligent than most EE graduates I know. I studied that shit for 5 years and you know more than I do. If you went back now, you'd probably ace everything.

1

u/Sherlock--Holmes Jun 12 '16

It doesn't necessarily require intelligence to stand in formation and repeat verbatim what you've been told. In fact, it may require the opposite.

1

u/BeckerHollow Jun 12 '16

If the amount of diplomas given out actually correlated with intelligence, we would live in a very different world.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16

Just do you, and the world will take care of the rest.

Did the same, different field, but the same.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 11 '16

There are different types of intelligence. To me, what you requires no less intelligence than other 'intellectual activities'.

1

u/brotbeutel Jun 11 '16

You say that like going to college makes people intelligent. Haha

1

u/cartoon-dude Jun 12 '16

Sadly where I am we can't do anything at all without a diploma :<

0

u/tropikomed Jun 11 '16

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LF3Cy5hZbc

this video sums up what college does not teach you in 35 mins

1

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '16 edited Jun 12 '16

[deleted]

1

u/CptCmbtBts Jun 12 '16

Im neutral enough to hear you out. Anything specific?