Career advice

Hello PM'ers,
I am in need of some generous guidance. Anything you can offer will be greatly appreciated. I have made huge strides in my personal career, but feel at a crossroads of sorts. I am 35(no spring chicken) switched over from fabrication(sheet metal, structural steel) at 28, I am proficient at mill, lathe(4,5 axis), and 7,9 axis mill/turns . I can use osp, fanuc, Siemens , whatever. In short I have a knack for it, I pick up fast, and I want to go as far as I can as quickly as I can. I understand basics, "building blocks", pacing oneself, "learning to walk before you run", I do. Im in a great job with great opportunities, yet I feel held back, what can I do either on my own time or in the shop to accelerate in what I do ? Ive read manuals on my machines (and others) over and over, I ask questions constantly, I search and inquire about training , I scour the Internet constantly for info, tips , etc..(especially PM) I'm hesitant about approaching higher ups about my personal goals, although I have expressed it to my supervisor. There is the old school mentality of "your new" or "need to put your time in" that I don't agree with. Best man for the job, why would I waste months or years doing menial work when I'm more than capable of more? I pick up and fully understand the latest technology, I'm salivating to get my hands on it and learn and grow. By the way I love machining, I really do, ideally I would be rich and have my own shop with all the latest technology, become a leader in innovation! Sorry for the length of this thread, but I felt full explanation is the only way for anyone to respond properly if they would kindly do so.thank you guys!

P.S.
I welcome any personal replies, I would very much like to build some pm relationships on here and become more involved in this website.

The best thing to do, is start your Own shop now, while you are still good enough that any menial tasks are beneath you.
This way you can get all the latest technology, and be a leader in innovation without being held back by all the old school trivial details.

Then, what you will start to learn is that is Was all those details that really mattered, and it was the hard earned experience that eventually allows you to recognize which details are important.

So, if you lived closer, I'd be making a job offer, since you're the kind of individual I love to hire. My advice is don't be hesitant to express your goals or vision to management, past your supervisor. Develop relationships with those outside of your direct reporting structure, so that you become an individual that other departments or managers want to have involved. Once those relationships are in place, look at what the company needs are to foster growth and profitability, and come up with ideas to solve those needs.

And if that doesn't work out for you at this place of employment, move on to somewhere it will.

I used to work for Hutchinson Technology. They build suspensions for hard drive read/write heads. This place was considered the country-club of toolmaking in the area. Beautiful clean work areas. Brand new Mitsui grinders. Great pay, never got dirty, high level of precision expected and able to achieve because the company provided us with what we needed to do it. Air conditioning, humidity control, the place was great.

I left to go to work for a fabrication company. I went from building carbide punch sets to blasting chips off of weldments on old machines in a smoke filled weld shop that stored it's material outside. People thought I was crazy, but, like you, I was sick of feeling "held back" until I "put my time in." I was sick of teaching "toolmakers" who made $10-$20/hr more than I did as a machinist when it was literally for the fact that they had a card and I didn't. (Don't get me wrong, there are some fantastic, brilliant, and capable toolmakers at Hutch, but they could only find so many, and a lot of them that they brought in from all over the country were not quite to the same standard)

I went somewhere I saw opportunity. In 5 years this company has turned around. No more "we always do it this way" or "pipe down until you put your time in." This company wants it's employees to grow, to have ideas, to problem solve, to have vision and the drive to get it implemented. It's less about what I make, and more about how the company I make it for operates. I've never had the job satisfaction I have now, never. And now I'm in a position were I can foster that development in other machinists. That's really rewarding. I have a machinist working for me now, who was hired 4 years ago with zero machining experience. Never made a chip in his life. Today, he's our most advanced programmer, learning visual basic to create addins for our CAM software, and doing things this company has never done before with it's machine tools.

Could he have done that where you are now?

Sometimes you have to move, to move up. It's always a risk, but it's worked that way for me.

It depends on what your current shop does. If its expensive one offs that you can't scrap and can't weld to fix, there is some value in "watch how XXXX does it, he is the best we got".... If its low $$ production parts or replaceable produuction parts then maybe you are talking to the wrong man,,, are you talking to the supervisor or the owner?

If you feel like you are wasting time (so to speak, obviously we all need a paycheck) then maybe its time to move.

Can you start your own shop, yes, then there's nobody holding you back but you have to sweat out each and every detail. Definitely more risk. Possibly more reward. If you have confidence in your skill set that reduces the risk somewhat. Work for someone else and your scope of responsibility is possibly smaller but you take orders and direction at many times even when it conflicts with your own internal compass.

There are a couple of possibilities, go to another job. Go cold turkey and start your own shop. I'm sort of a hybrid of those. I still have my normal job but am building a shop (have been for 20 yrs LOL) and now, a couple of products during time off. (nights, weekends, etc). The goal is to risk some with the possibility of reward but not enough to break me if it doesn't all work out. As such, I probably work too much. But I don't find myself worrying about my career path anymore.

ultimately the first option is to talk to your supervisor which you already did, but probably didn't ask the right questions. what are your goals? you said you want to learn, but are you learning for the sake of learning or do you want a better pay check? the two sometimes are mutually exclusive. can the industry your in give you what you want? if your making 2 dollar widgets does the company do 1 off multimillion dollar prototypes? probably not. do you want to progress into a managerial role/trainer? do you want to run your own shop? as far as i'm concerned you haven't defined what your after. once you figure it out we can probably help you.

Very good advice all around. Especially 3t3d, it's important to stay grounded somewhat, so I always appreciate the "tough love" advice. I hope I didn't sound cocky in my post. I don't think I'm some genius or super machinist, I just try really hard and Im so hungry to exceed. As far as more defined goals, I want to be as good as I can get at machining, that includes being knowledgable about as much as I can in the vast, continuous field we are in. I don't think I would want to be a boss, I just want to create and build hands on, I want to be able to program , set up, troubleshoot , do electrical and mechanical maintenance on the machines as best as my potential allows me. Fully and capably independent.

Pretty simple really, if you want to go forward you just have to do it, push people out of the way and always seek better opportunities. Nobody gets anywhere following the pack, and if some say you should follow, tell them to go eff themselves and leave them behind. I hate the idea that knowledge magically comes with age. It doesn't, it comes from learning all the time and you can do that at any age and moving onto something else once you know it well enough. I couldn't stand working at anyone else's pace and it was part of the reason I started my own shop, pretty darn good way to learn new things too when you actually have to earn money doing it. So set some goals and crush anyone standing in the way, and help anyone willing to help just the same.

WoW, There is 2 of me out there.

Start your own shop is probably the sorta knee jerk reaction that is holding you back in your career.

I was in your shoes probably 4 times before I finally said I am not getting any younger and no way in hell making 100K a year was going to be good enough for very long. I processed certain work and re-shored some work lost overseas with techniques unfamiliar to others at unheard of parameters utilizing some of the best machine tools in the world. Over the course of a couple years these components had to be discounted to a point where it was no longer viable for the work to continue by anyone else.
Long story short, my previous employer planted a sweet turn/mill center in my shop.

Biggest problem is I only had 3 customers ever. 1 was bad- didn't want to pay, 1 is odd jobs and the other keeps my on edge. We literally have to beg for production runs to support our Rapid Proto Typing. Globally companies are expecting a lot of components made short run with short notice for under $100each. The countless phone calls have ended up in one other place sending RFQ's only.....

As far as being rich & starting your own shop goes. If you find yourself in a position of being well off, the last thing you want to do is open your own shop.

Being in business for yourself is a great way to separate you from your money.

By the way, if you ever find yourself out west, look me up, I would hire you in a minute.

I know this is OT to your situation. I got tired of asking the boss for more training. I was always told "your to busy I can't do it right now". So I started my own business servicing/repairing machines. Now when I need more training I go and get more. I just adjust my schedule around it. It goes the same for tools. I was alway told "we can't aford it make do with what you have". So now when I need something I go buy it I will have it for next time. Money is tight at times. But I would not change it in my situation.


Just let your supervisor know again what you want and if they say "wait your turn". Just get another job lined up. You are rare employee and a employer would be lucky to have you.

This is my 2cents take it for what it is worth.

SND said:

Pretty simple really, if you want to go forward you just have to do it, push people out of the way and always seek better opportunities. Nobody gets anywhere following the pack, and if some say you should follow, tell them to go eff themselves and leave them behind. I hate the idea that knowledge magically comes with age. It doesn't, it comes from learning all the time and you can do that at any age and moving onto something else once you know it well enough. I couldn't stand working at anyone else's pace and it was part of the reason I started my own shop, pretty darn good way to learn new things too when you actually have to earn money doing it. So set some goals and crush anyone standing in the way, and help anyone willing to help just the same.

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Does your employer allow you to make personal projects? That's a lot of what helped me to get ahead. No one would let me do jack shit other than crap work, so I started making my own stuff and proved myself.

At a minimum, you can learn cad and cam on your own.

Design your own shit and then come in on the weekends and make it. If the boss says no, ask him how many guys come in on their time off to practice their craft. Only a complete fuck face says no to that. ( that's assuming you make it look like you were never there. Don't cause anyone to be annoyed. I went out of my way to make it look like I wasn't there. No mess, no nothing and I used the fuck out of the shop.) I did get in trouble a few times for coming in on Monday morning with no sleep because I'd been up all night working on my own shit. Avoid that, but fuck it, if you gotta finish your shit, you gotta finish your shit.

toolmaker96 said:

As far as being rich & starting your own shop goes. If you find yourself in a position of being well off, the last thing you want to do is open your own shop.

Being in business for yourself is a great way to separate you from your money.

By the way, if you ever find yourself out west, look me up, I would hire you in a minute.

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If you are dumb and make poor decisions that is probably true.

behindpropellers said:

If you are dumb and make poor decisions that is probably true.

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Forgot I was in the presence of excellence

Start your own shop. If you're as smart as you say you are, you'll succeed. Find a niche and exploit it. Good Luck.

This may not be sound advice, but it worked for me. Take the shop you are presently at by the horns. Every time someone calls in sick, go run their machine, don't ask just do it (while your machine is making awesome shit). If you have some down time go learn the other controls, help Quality Control when you can, learn to run the CMM (no one will complain about that, I am sure). Set up when you can, improve processes when you can, be willing and prove your skill. The other guys may not be receptive to you attitude but fuck them. Start thinking in MRR's and chip load and SFM. Learn Cad/Cam even if it's on your own time, there are a few legitimately free Cad programs. Learn perishable tool ID's and material characteristics. If you feel the parts you are making are janky or unprofessional make them better. If the company is not receptive, move on. Find the shop in your area that makes the parts no one else can touch, and go work for them for a while. Aero, Medical, Molds, Tooling, Defense, these are going to challenge the most skilled machinists. You sound like the guy we all want working with us, go with that attitude and you should be fine.

Robert, my 2±

This is the most supportive words I have ever received about anything in my entire life! I am forever in debt to you guys! I will take everyone's advice and can't thank you enough for being so amazingly supportive! As for the guys said they would hire me, don't be shy about sending a private message. I loved the statement " I hate the idea that experience magically comes with age"! I've seen so many guys that have that cocky " I've been doing this for "x" amount of years!" and they don't know shit! They are experienced hacks!

james siffel said:

This is the most supportive words I have ever received about anything in my entire life! I am forever in debt to you guys! I will take everyone's advice and can't thank you enough for being so amazingly supportive! As for the guys said they would hire me, don't be shy about sending a private message. I loved the statement " I hate the idea that experience magically comes with age"! I've seen so many guys that have that cocky " I've been doing this for "x" amount of years!" and they don't know shit! They are experienced hacks!

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Experienced Hacks, Good one. Met my share of them over the years.

Great Lakes Tech said:

Experienced Hacks

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There are far too many of them in this industry. The worst is when they tell you that you can't to something, or that it isn't possible. So naturally you show them it can be done, and they still don't believe it, even if it works time and time again for months without fail.

Husker