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Comment by extr | Hacker News Reader

I'll work in a factory if it means I get to be an engineer. Adjust the machines, get results, tweak gizmos etc. Nobody wants to be an assembly line worker of course.

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Learn ladder logic and PLC programming, go into factory automation and controls engineering.

I used to work at a packaging machine OEM. Lots of robotics, bespoke designs, and every day was like an episode of How It's Made. Very fun, but eventually I left to chase the SV startup circuit. All of my old co-workers still work there.

Engineers work at desks too. Working at a factory isn't like working on your bike, and for most American factory workers it isn't a mind-numbing assembly station either. Factory workers are technicians, who learn the basic operating principles of the machinery, watch it for deviations from design parameters, and perform maintenance and repair according to instructions that come from drafters who work downstream of engineers.

Okay, well whatever the job is called where you go out on the floor and tweak the gizmos. I'll do that if I have to.

If you like tweaking gizmos, find a factory that in some way puts a label on a glass bottle.

The equipment may have gotten better but in my time, entire careers went into making those labels go on straight and not jam up the machine.

Or work for the OEM that makes the gizmos themselves.

Weiler Labeling Systems comes to mind.

The first place I worked after school, that job was called "the owner," and he hired me for the same kind of role. It was a very small family-run manufacturing business.

For various reasons I outgrew the job, and work for a very big company today, but I still get into the plant on a regular basis.

One area where you can get that kind of work is a plant that actually makes the gizmos themselves, especially if they're fairly specialized or customized.

That's a technician. Pay kinda sucks and the "big bucks" come from tons and tons of overtime and/or working 2nd/3rd shift.

I was a controls engineer and frequently on the floor, usually directing the technicians and sometimes adjusting brackets myself. Industrial vision systems can be quite fussy.

Agreed on the pay, it would have been good if it wasn't in California.

After my dad left Vietnam, he got a degree in accounting. But he really didn’t want a desk job. He worked at P&G, a consumer goods company in the tissue plant for 20+ years and absolutely loved his job on the assembly line. It wasn’t back breaking labor at all from the times I got to tour it. They mostly make sure machines are running.

He retired at 55 and 82 now, he still has no regrets. FWIW, my mom retired from teaching at 53 and is 80.

I think in my head I just assumed "assembly line" = hard labor, like a sweatshop. Your dad's version of "assembly line" sounds like exactly what I'm talking about. I just want to keep the machines running.

Manage IT for manufacturing for a bit. There are plenty of people that are happy to be assembly line workers at a job where they can just daydream but keep physically busy, and who would hate a office job where you are not physically active and have to be constantly mentally focused.

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