Inexperienced 'Electricians'

[Kiers1970]

I know everyone has to start somewhere, but it grinds my gears reading some of these posts, asking for help on completely straight forward problems that some guys come up against.

Not being funny, bit if you are working for yourself, you should know what to do, no post on this forum.

Imagine this scenario...

I know the lights arent working now Mr, Mrs. Doctor, Lord, Sir, etc, I'll search for a solution on the 'net tonight. Oh, and can you have payment ready for me tomorrow? .... hey do you have wifi, I'll bring my laptop..

 

[Engineer54]

Are you one of those people that believe in all the crap about apprentices spent 4 years brewing tea??

Nothing, and i do mean nothing, is further than the truth. Companies, contrary to your beliefs, don't employ apprentices to brew tea for 3 or 4 years, they employ them to get 3 to 4 years of cheap labour in return for trade and educational training and experience. At the end that training they gain a fully trained and qualified employee's that will be a asset to the company. So YES!! they do have experience on the tools, as they will have 3 to 4 years of being taught how and what tool and when to use tools !!

You are not an apprentice trained Electrician are you, so perhaps you can tell us what your training consisted of??

 

[Engineer54]

i once asked a lad just out of his time, 'what does an insulation resistance tester test?' his answer, on a postcard please..

Now your making things up!!

 

[telectrix]

sadly though , now that's not the case. cheap labour, yes. training to be a good spark.., rare.

 

[Kiers1970]

I swear it's the truth!!!

 

[Guest112]

on a related note i know times are hard and apprenticeships/traineeships are hard to come by so more and more domestic installers are popping up and ive noticed a lot of posts/threads from domestic installers panicking the day before their inspection from their schemes and in my opinion if you are nervous for something your not confident at it, i just wish that these people would try and gain some experience first as a electricians mate for a few months before going it alone and jumping in the deep end and just trying to find answers on the net and the funny thing is the members are helping the silly situations! and then we complain about these people. Dont get me wrong domestic installers do what they do but myself who sat a 4 year apprenticeship where you gradually become more usefull and competant its a great feeling when your standing then among experienced sparks fully understanding what they are saying and then contributing and suggesting good ideas and information imo its the only way to learn

 

[Kiers1970]

definitely, and I suppose, in some way, we experienced guys might be to blame, our knowledge and experience is supposed to cascade (to use terrible company speak) down. Bit as I know fro my time at a large maintenance company, the time it takes to teach an apprentice properly isnt taken into consideration when you are out and about on breakdowns and service calls.
And learning form the mistakes we all still make is fun!

 

[Rockingit]

There's another strand to this thread which IMO always gets overlooked: The simple fact that you could line a thousand sparks up, all with exactly the same quals and having served 4 years as apprentices under exactly the same gaffer and some of them will be brilliant, some so-so and the rest just plain bloody awful. That's just human nature. Ultimately, you either have an aptitude for something or you don't. All the years and all the classes and all the time slogging on site will never change that.

My own thoughts are simply that we have a stupid system based on 'competence' rather than 'qualification', but relies on lowest denominator exams rather than practical demonstration.

 

[Kiers1970]

on a related note i know times are hard and apprenticeships/traineeships are hard to come by so more and more domestic installers are popping up and ive noticed a lot of posts/threads from domestic installers panicking the day before their inspection from their schemes and in my opinion if you are nervous for something your not confident at it, i just wish that these people would try and gain some experience first as a electricians mate for a few months before going it alone and jumping in the deep end and just trying to find answers on the net and the funny thing is the members are helping the silly situations! and then we complain about these people. Dont get me wrong domestic installers do what they do but myself who sat a 4 year apprenticeship where you gradually become more usefull and competant its a great feeling when your standing then among experienced sparks fully understanding what they are saying and then contributing and suggesting good ideas and information imo its the only way to learn

and, lets be real, these guys, or some of them at least are taking money from our pockets, driving our prices down, so we struggle earning a decent wage, and giving the sole trader etc a bad rep. (not all of them as I've said before I'm jumped on) and givng their customers poor service.

 

[topquark]

I swear it's the truth!!!

I thought you were asking for suggestions on what his answer was. If that's a serious quote, I'm going to retrain to become a heating engineer.

 

[Kiers1970]

I thought you were asking for suggestions on what his answer was. If that's a serious quote, I'm going to retrain to become a heating engineer.

haha, its late on a sat night and ive had a glass or two of wine,
his various answers were (even though the answer is in the question bless him )

loop
r1
r2
zs
I could go on, needless to say he didnt get it right.

 

[fuzzydunlop]

on a related note i know times are hard and apprenticeships/traineeships are hard to come by so more and more domestic installers are popping up and ive noticed a lot of posts/threads from domestic installers panicking the day before their inspection from their schemes and in my opinion if you are nervous for something your not confident at it, i just wish that these people would try and gain some experience first as a electricians mate for a few months before going it alone and jumping in the deep end and just trying to find answers on the net and the funny thing is the members are helping the silly situations! and then we complain about these people. Dont get me wrong domestic installers do what they do but myself who sat a 4 year apprenticeship where you gradually become more usefull and competant its a great feeling when your standing then among experienced sparks fully understanding what they are saying and then contributing and suggesting good ideas and information imo its the only way to learn

Totally agree, in about a months time I should hopefully have passed my 2330 lvl 3 - giving me 2330 lv 2+3 and 17th Edition (which being used as a requirement for scheme entry in its current guise is laughable) with just my NVQ3 to do, after I get that out of the way I have absolutely no plans to either a) go it alone or b) do work unsupervised, it's dangerous (despite what i've been taught in a real world environment its not going to help in 80% of the situations i'll come across)

IMO, people should have a restricted "license" for a year then be let loose, some of the posts I've seen on here are frightening

 

[JD6400]

I am with you Kiers when it comes to the charging point of view but can not see how a forum member can knock anyone for asking a question even as basic as some are !
Since i went on my own i have spent probably a quarter of my working life doing freebie / reduced price jobs where i have used them as learning curve jobs !
This is still true even today on some jobs , and before anyone jumps to conclusions just take a look my profile i am far from being a 5 day wet behind the ears wonder.
Every day is and should be a learning curve , only a fool thinks he knows all there is to know , but having said that there are far to many chancers out there chasing that pot of gold as well !


I will say though that i would never take on a job that i think i either can not do or do not have a competent level of knowledge for in the first place!

 

[mattmoo1974]

Kiers1970 i think you ve been under cut and seem to think a DI is to blame
All your posts tonight sem to be having a pop at some 1...
CAN down PC off

 

[trev]

For 4 years I was with one guy. At the time I thought he was a complete T*** because his teaching methods included on occassions a slap, if I screwed up once he explained why I'd screwed up but twice.. Quick Trev Duck! but looking back now I realise that Bill gave me the best grounding that I could have possibly hoped for.
He took me all the way from holding a ladder for him and passing him tools right through to him saying "Ok Trev, what do we do here?" If I bumped into him I'd shake his hand and buy him several beers
To me, that's what is missing now. (not the violence of course)

 

[topquark]

haha, its late on a sat night and ive had a glass or two of wine,
his various answers were (even though the answer is in the question bless him )

loop
r1
r2
zs
I could go on, needless to say he didnt get it right.

See he was fine, he was just giving a few examples of things measured in the same way (resistance/impedance)