Hardware inspector fired for spotting an error he wasn't trained to find | Hacker News Reader

Hardware inspector fired for spotting an error he wasn't trained to find

theregister.com

10 pointsBrajeshwar13 comments

Sounds like half the story is missing. Either the chips were upside down, and somebody wanted to cover something up (which would be really stupid, because it is a really stupid problem and immediately obvious). Or the chips weren't upside down, and he was let go for being a stupid know-it-all (like maybe in 37 instances before this one).

Training is often done using broken prototype boards so trainees don't break good boards. Prototype boards sometimes have chips glued in upside down because the footprint was messed up -- the correct connections are then made with patch wires.

Without more details there's a whole lot of nothing here, however:

> The pins that were supposed to nestle into the motherboard were instead pointing skyward and it was utterly obvious that no electricity could flow through the part.

> Someone had soldered the chip in place regardless.

How can the chip both be soldered in place and not have any electrical connection? I suppose it could be one of a handful of ICs with both a top and bottom metallic thermal pad, but those are incredibly uncommon.

Sometimes with larger ICs you use superglue to stick the IC in place, so it doesn't shift when you transport it into the oven.

Some chips have metal casings.

Others you can bend the pins back to make them fit.

Multiple suggestions in the comments of how this could happen.

What does

>The pins that were supposed to nestle into the motherboard were instead pointing skyward

even mean? How do you physically solder a chip the wrong way around?

The story seems totally unbelievable. This is a training session, someone asks a potentially reasonable question and then is just let go? Hiring people is expensive and letting someone go over something like that is ridiculous.

The story isn't even alleging that the manager disagreed or that the manager tried to argue there was no defect. If you take the story as told it is completely nonsensical.

> How do you physically solder a chip the wrong way around?

With effort, and bodge-wire. I've seen chips done dead-bug style when the board's been messed up (eg, the footprint is orientated for the bottom of the board, but placed on the top, and vice-versa).

It's definitely not something you'd ship, but a kludge that can get you working until the next board spin.

But the article claims that clearly no electrical connections were made.

Which doesn't make any sense, because the article also claims that the chip was soldered in place. Solder generally only works between two pieces of metal, making an electrical connection.

So either the chip was glued in place and not soldered or it was soldered and electrical connections were made. Either way, the article is wrong.

Standard operating procedure for a board with a messed up footprint is to glue the chip into place upside down, and then use patch wires to make the correct connections. Obviously you fix this for production boards, but I have personally seen this done for prototype boards.

Training personnel on prototype boards is also very common. It's also very common to do training on non-working boards.

Again: some chips have metal cases.

There are well over a hundred comments on the article with people trading war stories of such events they've seen.

The story itself seems incredible, but the bit that is believable is being fired since in an at will state this can be done for pretty much any reason.

Hiring is expensive. Why would you fire an employee who, at worst, made an innocent mistake during a training session?

Because some managers are really dumb.

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