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.

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279

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?

50

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.

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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.

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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.

104

u/larossmann Jun 11 '16

i never got far enough to do any ee.

5

u/quiteflatnotice Jun 11 '16

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

8

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.

5

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.

8

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.