Seeking Career Change Advice

[jeremybbauer]

@Latrotox

I do have an idea for a project that involves my job, a gamified training simulator,

That sounds awesome! I’m an instructional designer myself. I mainly build online courses for a university, but sometimes my department is asked to help make a training course too. I haven’t done much gamification myself, but would like to sometime. I don’t have any experience with canvas or Unity, but man, having ideas about what tools you can use to make this project is a great first step! One good thing about both Unity and canvas is that you can try them for free, at least. In case you get lucky and catch that unicorn called “free time.”

@Latrotox

I like to daydream about finishing that training simulator, walking it into the office at my job and blowing their socks off to the point where they offer to let me work on that type of thing on the clock, but it feels like a pipe dream.

Is there someone at your work that already makes, or facilitates, this kind of web training modules? Someone in HR? They may be better to talk to than a supervisor, at least at first. They might be excited by the idea or see the need for it more than other people at the company since it’s closely related to what they do.

@Latrotox

Without overtime I’m able to work on my studies for about 4 hours a day on average, so to switch over and build that would take at least a couple of weeks, I don’t know if that’s the wisest use of my time.

Yeah, it might not be. Unless this is a field you want to get into. Instructional design in the private sector mostly concerns training and simulations, and it’s a big field. Apart from that, instructional design and simulation engineering are big in the medical industry too, especially in medical schools. If you’re interested in AR or VR, I know that medical and veterinary schools are looking to build simulations using this type of tech in order to help them cut the costs of providing cadavers to all the medical and veterinary students.

If this type of web or software development for training and/or simulation is something you’re passionate about, it could be a good career avenue for you. If not, though, I’d keep going with your website projects. I just thought I’d mention it in case you’re really interested in that type of work.

@Latrotox

Your post here struck a chord with me on this. I found it only a couple minutes ago after checking your post history to get a sense of who I’m talking to. That thread was about just giving up, which I can’t really see doing, but you said in your reply about how one’s expectations put a pressure on the learning process… and man do I feel that. This stuff is always grinding away in the back of my head and it feels like any time I’m not working on it is wasted, then even when I am working on it I always feel like I’m not moving fast enough. A feeling I know is not healthy and I’ve tried to shake it off, but it’s sticky.

Oh, I’m glad you liked the post! Man, it is a sticky feeling, and one that I have to try to keep at bay constantly. I’ve spent years feeling like I’m not learning enough, or fast enough, or I’m not working hard enough at things. It’s only recently that I’ve gotten to a place where I can say to myself, “You know, how about I just chill out and have fun?” There are times when it’s still a little bit of a struggle, but it feels so good to shed that pressure .

@Latrotox

The first lesson I learned there was how to relax. I never thought about relaxation as a skill until my trainers taught me how to do it, they said my movements were strong, but that I kept my body too tight and it was getting in my own way. To just relax and let my natural strength come out instead of trying to force it. Thinking about it here now as I type this I can see that I’ve been doing this same thing with my programming studies to perhaps an even greater degree… forcing, controlling, programming in tight small movements. I’m going to try relax more and let my studies flow more naturally from here on, I think. Over there, though, I went from someone who got nosebleeds and blackouts from being over stressed (for no good reason) to being able to deal with life in a much more fluid way.

Your post struck a chord with me! I was only able to relax—about my learning and in my life in general—after I had an eye-opening near nervous breakdown from stress. This was sometime around the beginning of January of this year, though it feels like being so stressed was much farther in the past. Trying to be more fluid, like you say. Though it isn’t the point of living more stress-free, it’s made me a lot more productive at work and with my learning. It feels pretty silly to have been so stressed in the first place now.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts and your story! It sounds like you’re at least getting closer to figuring this thing out .

[Latrotox]

Hi, me again, sorry for resurrecting this thread if it is considered poor form, but I have an interesting update and would like some input if anyone has any.

I recently sat down with my boss to give my 2 week notice and take the plunge. She surprised me by offering to let me work with people in other departments and potentially get my hands under the hood of our software. I told her that, yes, I am at least interested enough to talk with these other people and see what the ecosystem looks like, but also that I’m skeptical both at my ability to pick it up quickly and their willingness to allow me to work on meaningful projects.

Things moved relatively quickly and I had this pseudo interview with the head of the maintenance department, who explained to me that our plants control system is ABB’s 800xa, but that it’s also not that cut and dry. It was sloppily upgraded/migrated from mod300 and remnants remain. We don’t have an in house software guy, so while there are people who know some things about this, he told me that I would have to do a lot of outside research. I asked about where to find resources for learning to manipulate the 800xa, to which he responded google will provide a wealth of information.

I’m not finding this wealth of information, and what I do find about this seems needlessly complex. For one thing, everything is proprietary. They have their own database, even their own scripting language that is loosely based on pascal. Additionally it seems impossible to create a home lab, and even when I get time at work (I’ll still be responsible for my usual duties) the people who know about this stuff work dayshift, whereas I work nights. Furthermore, even when/if I get a sense of what I’m doing, there is no guarantee that they actually let me explore deeper into our 800xa catacombs on my own time, since there is no virtual environment setup.

That being said, if the stars align to the point that I “get it” this could be a transition into my first programmer job. Additionally, I’d be coming up with imaginative and important software solutions to real world business problems in a manufacturing environment, which seems like pure gold on a resume to me.

Soooo… what the heck? How much time do I sink into this? Does anyone have any info on 800xa training resources?

[jeremybbauer]

@Latrotox

That being said, if the stars align to the point that I “get it” this could be a transition into my first programmer job. Additionally, I’d be coming up with imaginative and important software solutions to real world business problems in a manufacturing environment, which seems like pure gold on a resume to me.

Sounds like gold to me too! I know this all seems daunting, but I’m super impressed that the higher ups were willing to help you get programming experience there. It’s hard to know how willing supervisors will be to do this sort of thing.

@Latrotox

Soooo… what the heck? How much time do I sink into this? Does anyone have any info on 800xa training resources?

Sorry, haven’t the foggiest, but the ABB website didn’t help? I saw that they have a training section which has resources like courses, “web tech talks,” a simulator, and a “social community” that has links to their user forum, twitter, YouTube, and a bunch of other stuff.

ABB System 800xA DCS training courses

Of course, I don’t know anything about ABB’s 800xa, so I can’t tell how helpful these things are. It seems like they have a lot of resources, though.

[Latrotox]

Hi Jeremy, for one I enjoyed your >2 weeks ago response in this thread. That you work in instructional design is really cool imo.

She’s interested in keeping me around because I’m good at what I do, and is dangling this carrot to that end. Proving myself in this sphere to the company at large in a way that leads to a new title will require great effort.

Regarding the ABB website, I did a fairly brief combing through it and was put off by the price tags on their classes, most of which are over 3k. Their web based classes seem to be assessments, not actual training. Their youtube channel mostly comes off as sales pitch, and what training material there is there has too loud of music with too thick of accents. I could be completely off base with these assessments though, because I only sampled a very small size of each. However, after your suggestion to go back through it I found the manuals. The glorious manuals. So now I’m reading the first one of those, which is pretty good so far.

[Latrotox]

Hi Chun-Li, thanks for responding to this thread… it’s a little bit dated now so I’m not sure how you found it, but still I’m honored you took the time.

I’ll utilize this opportunity to update the current status of my situation. I continued studying the ABB for about a week before realizing that our software ecosystem was well beyond my ability to grasp without significant time and assistance, so I approached my boss and told her as much. She became concerned that my lack of interest in researching the ABB in my free time would lead to me once again putting in my notice, which was a reasonable concern since it would.

So, she scheduled me an interview with the maintenance department big wig, who to my surprise, offered me “the opportunity to transition into an electrical tech II role”. I told him I have no real mechanical or electrical abilities… like, a couple weeks ago my boss asked me to assemble a push cart and I ended up breaking it. He said basically that he didn’t care about all that, that if I was confident in my ability to program then that plus my knowledge about processing is what they are really after. They want me to program PLC’s and integrate them with the ABB, which I’m down with. It would be a significant raise and my resume would then have programming on it, along with other sugar.

All that being said, it’s been months. Only recently have I got access to the training website that I need to work through in order to “prove my commitment”. Normally I would be enthusiastic with such a challenge, but the whole process taking so long has lead me to believe that I’m just being led on a wild goose chase in order to keep me in the company doing my current job for as long as possible. I’m trying to dismiss that feeling and work through the training regardless, but it looms and reduces the effectiveness of my studies immensely.

As usual, it has helped me to type all this out. It brings a coherency to my thoughts. After reading my post here, it alleviates some of my doubts… I mean, my subconscious could be right and this could be a mirage, but if not it’s a great opportunity so I have an obligation to see it through, then either I move on with a clear conscience or I have my first programming job.