Millstoning in Electronics?

[Faringdon]

Hi
We all like to help youngsters along. Its satisfying to show someone the ropes, and then watch them going off on their own steam.
Though has any engineer heard of "millstoning"?

This is where a company decides it effectively wants to "clone" one of its senior engineers...so as to have more engineers.
Very often, the "millstone" has little interest in the work, and does no extra work of their own, and is never likely to become a good engineer, but still gets "handcuffed" to a senior engineer
so that the senior engineer can't do his/her own work. The millstone repeatedly asks the same question over and over again, and  does no reading of their own, and runs no simulations.
The millstone is instructed to "pull out the senior engineers brains and take them for themselves".

Millstoning is rather odd in the SMPS world, because SMPS, is one of the few fields of electronics where anybody can learn it,because  the simulator (eg LTspice) is free, and all the knowledge to get the jist of it is on the web.

But some company owners , ususally the ones that dont understand engineering, insist on "millstoning", even though its not going to be in their interest...since in real terms, good engineers always end up being responsible for the bulk of their own learning themselves. Its just not possible for them to "copy another engineers brains".

Often a company can pull in a government grant to develop some product....but instead just use  the grant money to employ a "millstone" junior, and then handcuff the millstone to some senior engineer. There is no intention of producing the "product"...but just using the government grant money to "clone" the senior engineer via "millstoning". The senior engineer is "stood on his pride", and required to give  tight deadline dates to the customer of the "product", .....but the company have no intention of actually letting the engineer work on the product, rather,   they want the engineer to have his brains picked out whilst working on the product.......so the engineer is working on the product with a millstone round their neck, and isnt likely to complete the product anywhere near the deadline....more likely, the engineer will end up getting shamed for not meeting the deadline that they were forced to  agree to.

I saw "millstoning" at a big company once.....A senior EE had no time to do his own work and a rubbish product ended up being shipped, and the loss was approx 4 million dollars.
Ive seen other millstoning going on.

I was at one company where an EE was payed £40k/yr....and the HR girl told me that "another person" in the company was getting payed "40k" per year, for every year that the EE remained in the company...think of it what you will.  Maybe when/if that EE got truly stuck in the place, then the "millstoning" would be then practiced on him?

[pardo-bsso]

Hey Treez,

aren't you doing something quite similar here from time to time?

Regards.

[PlainName]

Millstoning

You like that word. Enough to use it twelve times in a single post, anyway. But AFAIK it's not a common usage (and I would be mega-surprised if it were particularly relevant to SMPS), so I wonder if you've got a bet somewhere that you can get some obscure term to propagate around t'web.

[jonpaul]

FTTS is a millstone

More interested in MILESTONES (or pioneers) in power electronics and electrical engineering

Faraday, Henry, Tesla, Steinmetz, Hansen,....

great history and very interesting inventors....

jon

[pcprogrammer]

 

A bit like the old "ball and chain" metaphor.

In Dutch there is a saying "als een molensteen om je nek" which yields the same. "Like a millstone around my neck". Means like carrying a heavy burden, which the premise in the original post seems to express.

Doubt that companies will pay for something like this. Often apprenticeships are unpaid, at least back in my days.

[voltsandjolts]

From the eevblog millstone himself, except we don't get paid to put up with it.

[PlainName]

"Like a millstone around my neck". Means like carrying a heavy burden

Yes, I know of the saying and the meaning. It's just not an industry term, though, which is what it looks like Tre Faringdon is making it out to be. I have heard people say something is like a millstone, and I might even have said that myself, but I've never heard of the term 'millstoning'.

[tggzzz]

How close is the relationship between treez/faringdon/ocset and the "senior EE" and the EE "payed £40k"? To coin a phrase "enquiring minds want to know". (Or maybe not)

BTW, pcprogrammer has spotted the meaning of "millstoning", even though it is used in an odd way. Maybe people around him have frequently used that terminology.

When I read the title, my presumption was that it would be about defects when soldering SMD components.

[nigelwright7557]

The answer to it is to refuse to do it. You are an engineer not a teacher.
If the "new" engineer wants to learn then go to Uni like the rest of us did.

I had a job where they kept trying to replace me but failed.
They gave my job to someone else, then when that person failed they had the cheek to give me my job back !

A few months later they did the same again so  I left.
2 days later I had their accountant knock on my door begging me to go back if they gave me a substantial raise.
I did go back for a few months then found another job.
3 months later they went bust.

[pcprogrammer]

BTW, pcprogrammer has spotted the meaning of "millstoning", even though it is used in an odd way. Maybe people around him have frequently used that terminology.

Nope. It is just due to the dutch expression that I made the link.

I'm familiar with internship though. Had some when I worked in a lab in my second job. Most are just a pain in the but, but hey they don't get paid.

Got the term wrong in my previous post 

When I read the title, my presumption was that it would be about defects when soldering SMD components.

I was wondering too what it was about. Read just a couple of lines and thought "Ah well it is yet another one of those"

[TimFox]

In the King James translation, Matthew 18:6
"But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea."
An example of English usage for millstones.

[Bud]

When I read the title, my presumption was that it would be about defects when soldering SMD components.

I was wondering too what it was about. Read just a couple of lines and thought "Ah well it is yet another one of those"

It is called Tombstone effect, when SMT components lifted off on one side and stands vertically on the other pad like a tombstone on a grave.

[tggzzz]

BTW, pcprogrammer has spotted the meaning of "millstoning", even though it is used in an odd way. Maybe people around him have frequently used that terminology.

Nope. It is just due to the dutch expression that I made the link.

But it is a standard English idiom too, as TimFox noted. I wouldn't have spotted the Biblical reference, but it probably explains the common usage.

When I read the title, my presumption was that it would be about defects when soldering SMD components.

I was wondering too what it was about. Read just a couple of lines and thought "Ah well it is yet another one of those"

I saw faringdon, presumed "another one", saw the title, hoped maybe not...

And as Bud noted, tombstoning is the "correct" idiom for PCBs.

[PlainName]

And as Bud noted, tombstoning is the "correct" idiom for PCBs.

But it could have been a new 'thing'. Perhaps accidentally soldered to an adjacent part, hence millstoning that.

Seems unlikely he would know of an industry term than no-one else does, though.

[tggzzz]

And as Bud noted, tombstoning is the "correct" idiom for PCBs.

But it could have been a new 'thing'. Perhaps accidentally soldered to an adjacent part, hence millstoning that.

Seems unlikely he would know of an industry term than no-one else does, though.

Far too many technical neologisms are for invalid reasons, e.g.

• ignorance of the subject, leading to triumphant reinvention of an old concept with a new name. Especially w.r.t. software
• marketing wank, which tries to make something known to be (sub)standard seem new and wonderful

[Faringdon]

The answer to it is to refuse to do it. You are an engineer not a teacher.
If the "new" engineer wants to learn then go to Uni like the rest of us did.

Thanks, all the millstones i saw were Electronics graduates, even new Masters graduates, or even PhD's.

FTTS is a millstone

aren't you doing something quite similar here from time to time?

Thanks, but online Millstones can be ignored, unlike the real company Millstone, that the Company owner handcuffs to you.

[Zero999]

What do you mean by Millstoning?

Does it mean to roll one of these along?

[tooki]

Millstoning

You like that word. Enough to use it twelve times in a single post, anyway. But AFAIK it's not a common usage (and I would be mega-surprised if it were particularly relevant to SMPS), so I wonder if you've got a bet somewhere that you can get some obscure term to propagate around t'web.

Yep. I can’t even find reference to this usage. Not in a dictionary, not on web searches… if it is an existing usage, it’s an extremely obscure one.

Not that it matters since the post itself is nonsense anyway.

[Faringdon]

Not that it matters since the post itself is nonsense anyway.

Thanks,
I have seen a senior SMPS designer get millstoned......then because he wasnt able to concentrate on his work....a power supply went into testing, and 4 million pounds worth of radio test data had to be scrapped as the SMPS went unstable.
Millstoning, i assure you, is very real.

[jonovid]

Developmental Milestones vs Millstoning in Electronics?
ferret or ferrite ...do you want fries with that?
 
when spell check is not working

[Gyro]

Thanks, but online Millstones can be ignored...

That's very kind of you, thanks. 

I think what you are might be referring to here [Edit: It's hard to tell from your warped perspective] is staff development, where a company grows its employees and gives them a career development path so that they don't have to use useless millstone contractors.

[dmills]

I have never heard of anyone attempting to clone a senior engineer by sticking them with a hopelessly uninterested junior one, sounds like a rather good way to end up with no senior engineer and just a useless junior.
If you have a **keen** junior it can however be quite a good way to accelerate the year or so that it takes the newly minted to become useful to you, and is not that annoying, but they have to want it going in.

While one does not always discover genius in the newly minted, and some of them don't last out the 6 months probation (Which is embarrassing, as it speaks poorly of your hiring practises), accidentally hiring the uninterested is a risk of doing business, especially if hiring straight from uni. Largely to catch this, I like to ask "Tell me about something you have built", the answers are revealing, sometimes in non obvious ways.

I have had to spend some of my time asking searching questions of the junior engineers and apprentices in various sorts of design reviews, and pointing them at various literature, but that is actually part of what they pay the senior people to do, part of the job is to teach (Or should be at any sane company). There is usually no margin in sitting on what you know like some kind of broody dragon on a pile of gold, far better to spread the knowledge, you can always gather more.   

Now we did have 'That Guy' who got passed around the engineering shop like a hot potato as EVERYONE found him to be a hard of thinking, impossible to work with, oxygen thief, but as I say a risk you take (And everyone screws up hiring sometimes), he was gone after 6 months.

Turns out when we fired him, that he admitted he just got so lucky with the interview questions exactly matching what he had read up on (And knew it) but the money was good while it lasted... 

[Gyro]

The answer to it is to refuse to do it. You are an engineer not a teacher.
If the "new" engineer wants to learn then go to Uni like the rest of us did.
...

Oh come on, what fantasy world are you living in? University gives you the basics. You recruit graduates on the basis of potential and train them up to useful and productive engineers. Staff development is the price you pay for your company having a future.

[CatalinaWOW]

I am sure such relationships exist.  I strongly doubt that they are done for revenue enhancement, the situations where that will work are rare indeed. 

I would fall back to my belief that blaming something on incompetence is far more frequently correct than blaming on malice.  Management that doesn't recognize that the junior employee isn't up to learning the job is common.  Engineers with such poor people skills, communication skills and training skills that even a promising junior employee can't learn from them are unfortunately very common.  As are middling competence engineers who don't really understand their jobs well and so can't explain it to someone else.

Millstoning, whether done through malice or incompetence will not be common, because companies that practice much of it are not survivors.

[Bud]

I've seen a sort of equivalent of it called "cross-training", when people from different teams or responsibilities are assigned to learn from each other. This typically is done in attempts to create role backups, but rarely works. If you are not full time on something, everything you learnt from a colleauges from other areas  will fade out fast.