Trust, but verify.
I’ll trust that you understand each of those words individually but later verify that the box is actually plugged in.
It gives the capacitors to discharge; but more importantly, it gives an excuse to actually force the person to plug the thing in.
I don't care, of course. But they'll happily do that, where if I ask them to verify if the cable is properly plugged in, 99% of them will just say yes without so much as glancing in the cables' direction.
"Is it plugged in and switched on?" A: Yes, to a powerboard.
"Is the powerboard plugged in and switched on?" A: Yes.
I did the onsite visit and found the powerboard plugged into itself.
Normally I would facepalm and curse the idiocy but... it was a care respite facility and they had more pressing issues to deal with that I wouldn't want to deal with - their role is heroic I feel.
And an easy win already makes my day so I sorted it, told them it was fixed with a smile, and continued on.
Trust-free:
Ensure that step A can go off without a hitch.
Begin step A.
Ensure that step B can go off without a hitch.
Begin step B.
Ensure that step C can go off without a hitch.
Begin step C.
Begin step A.
Begin step B. Check that you have whatever you need for step A.
Begin step C. Check that you have whatever you need for step B.
Check that you have whatever you need for step C.
e.g. you might assume that a sorting library from an internal developer at your company will put things in order but you might want to verify that it has reasonable worst-case performance for your use case. A no-trust situation might lead you to scrutinise everything about it - does it work at all, does it have horrendous performance in every case, is it a supply-chain attack with disguised errors leading to deliberate exploit holes.
In this case, "trust but verify" might mean assuming the Professor and TA are doing an experiment they have done before, which basically works, but might have made a mistake or missed something while setting it up, writing the slides, or explaining it to you. "Don't trust" might mean the TA got the experiment from ChatGPT, hates OP for being on a scholarship and is trying to sabotage their success, and the whole thing isn't an Electronics course it's really the Professor's practical joke/psychology experiment about stressing students.
To play devil's advocate, just imagine the previous posters Story at a company, i.e. a junior engineer not being able to make some simple tasks work and telling their supervisor "it doesn't work" and it turns out after 8 weeks they grabbed some wrong part. Should they have expected their supervisor to check all the parts? Should they expect a good performance evaluation?
They should expect that particular incident to not affect their performance evaluation, since it was very much not their fault.
In your hypothetical scenario, your hypothetical junior engineer went to the senior engineer repeatedly for advice, and the senior engineer did not do their job properly:
The lab tech was unhelpful, insisting that it must be something with how I had it wired, encouraging me to re-draw my schematic, check my wires, and so on. It could _never_ be the equipment's fault.
This is a huge failure in mentorship that wouldn't be ignored at a company that actually cares about these things.
What do you mean not their fault? I've seen wrong parts delivered by suppliers, so yes responsibility of an engineer who puts together a circuit is definitely checking that the parts are correct.
> In your hypothetical scenario, your hypothetical junior engineer went to the senior engineer repeatedly for advice, and the senior engineer did not do their job properly:
>> The lab tech was unhelpful, insisting that it must be something with how I had it wired, encouraging me to re-draw my schematic, check my wires, and so on. It could _never_ be the equipment's fault.
Again _never_ the equipment's fault? It wasn't the equipment it was a part. So maybe it was an issue of miscommunication? I find it hard to believe that the lab tech said it could never be the parts, considering how those things are handled in student labs, small parts break all the time.
Maybe, it's true and it was a crappy lab tech, maybe they could not imagine the part being broken, but I've seen the other side of the equation as well, when things don't work students often just throw their hands up and say "it doesn't work" without any of their own troubleshooting expecting the tutor/lab tech/professor to do the troubleshooting for them (quite literally, can you check that we wired everything correctly...).
In my experience this does not get accepted in industry. I acknowledge though what the other poster said, generally in industry incentives are different and someone would have intervened if a project gets held up for 8 weeks by a single person.
Regarding the story, I wonder what would have been an acceptable solution (apart from the lab tech possibly being more helpful?), I as a teacher would have excepted a report which would have given a detailed account of the troubleshooting steps etc. (but it needs to show that a real effort to find the cause, simply saying the lab tech couldn't help is not sufficient). Simply saying "it wasn't my fault because I had a wrong part" shouldn't just give you an A.
A student is far from an engineer.
> Again _never_ the equipment's fault?
The exact words the failed mentor used are not what matters here.
> In my experience this does not get accepted in industry.
This being the entire situation or the actions of the improperly used junior employee? Blaming the non-expert that was refused help is scapegoating.
> Simply saying "it wasn't my fault because I had a wrong part" shouldn't just give you an A.
It should give you more time.
Let's not move the goal posts, please. If you're going to use a hypothetical situation as an analogy, make sure it's actually analogous. Yes, an engineer who puts together a circuit has that responsibility, because they're an engineer. They went through the required training that makes them an engineer and not just an engineering student.
> I find it hard to believe that the lab tech said it could never be the parts, considering how those things are handled in student labs, small parts break all the time.
And therein lies the problem. You "find it hard to believe" that the lab tech could have been that unhelpful, just like the lab tech found it hard to believe that the student wasn't doing something wrong. Both you and the lab tech are behaving in a way that is inappropriate for a senior mentoring a junior.
In my experience mentoring others, the first assumption should not be that the person you're mentoring simply didn't do enough and that they should try to do better. Yes, that might end up being the case, but most of the time there's also something else that could have been done better. Maybe the documentation is not clear enough, maybe the process didn't help catch the mistake, maybe the expectations I set weren't clear enough, maybe I didn't communicate well enough.
"Go check your work again" is rarely helpful, even in the extremely rare cases where that's the only thing that needed to be done and no other improvements exist. If you're really convinced that they merely need to check their work again, guide them to it.
That's why they are junior and you are senior, because they need more guidance than you do. They will not develop the necessary insights and instincts without that guidance.
> I've seen the other side of the equation as well, when things don't work students often just throw their hands up and say "it doesn't work" without any of their own troubleshooting expecting the tutor/lab tech/professor to do the troubleshooting for them (quite literally, can you check that we wired everything correctly...)
And in turn, you're arguing that the mentor should merely throw their hands up and say "go check your work yourself". Again, even that can be said differently: "Can you explain what you have checked so far and how you've checked it?"
> Simply saying "it wasn't my fault because I had a wrong part" shouldn't just give you an A.
You are drawing a lot of your own conclusions from what hasn't been said. In this comment thread, you have repeatedly and consistently shown bias through your assumptions. Yes, what you're saying could have been the case, but I see no evidence of it and no reason to simply assume it without at least inquiring about it.
There are lots of reasons - maybe the senior engineers are overburdened with other work (or don't care), maybe the project manager or team lead wasn't asking if the junior needed help, or maybe the junior was lying about their progress.
Either way, a story that goes for eight weeks feels excessive. Much, to your point, taking eight weeks to figure out that there was a bad part feels excessive. My counterpoint is that teams don't typically operate like labs. In a college lab, the objective is for you, specifically, to succeed. In an engineering team, the objective is for the entire team to succeed. That means the more senior engineers are expected to help the more junior engineers. They might directly coach, or they might write better documentation. I don't believe that dynamic is present in a lab setting.
Hands up everyone who remembers being taught that labs were supposed to go wrong and you were doing them because you will have to troubleshoot?
... anyone?
... anyone?
... Bueller?
Or is this just the typical internet John Galt like that other guy "no offense but why didn't you just already know everything and create an apple pie by creating the universe like I would have?"