Not when you have work backing up and no one in the building qualified to train them. We outsourced a bunch of work to outside shops to make deadlines but it's so much harder. The machinist might have to work with the engineer on issues and have access to resources that are local to our building. And some of the outside shops are even questionable - A machinist once asked me how I arrived at the dimensions of an o-ring groove because he forgot basic math. Now a tool that can be made same day turns into a week long process.

Sad part is we had a young guy here in his 20's who was a real crackerjack: machinist, knew basic electric, could use a computer and was even picking up programming. He had a kid, found a good paying government job then up and left. I'd call him a unicorn.