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Comment by whatshisface | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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