Most undervalued job
 

What do you think is the most under valued job on a FIRST team? When you think of important jobs, what one do you place low on the list, and then reconsider? Why?

I'm not opting for a discussion over why <insert job here> is better then <Insert other job here> I would seriously like to know what people think is the most undervalued job on their team. Whether it be the scouts, the animators, the builders, etc. What job do you think of as important only after you look at the grand scheme of things?

Also, what job do you think of being skipped on smaller teams because of this? My team, 973, has 11 students. We double up on the jobs. The programmer is also the mascot, one of the scouts also the animator, etc. What can you tell a rookie team looking at this thread, what jobs should they make sure to include in their roster?

Re: Most undervalued job
 

The people who cleam up the workspace. I hate cleaning in a dirty workspace, it is hard to find tools and hard to find a clean surface to work on. Even just for the off season, I worship whoever cleans the robotics room.

-John

Re: Most undervalued job
 

For a rookie team they should never underestimate the power of scouting. From what I have seen the majority of rookie and some 2nd year teams neglect this. Good scouting information and an average robot will beat an outstanding robot with no scouting data 95% of the time.

Doubling up on jobs is a great idea. What you do during the actual build phase does not have to be what you do at the competitions. It helps to round out the team members experiences.

Re: Most undervalued job
 

I agree completely...

Sometimes, having someone to keep tools and materials organized during build season is really useful. You can waste an incredible amount of time looking for tools while working on the robot. If everyone working on the robot puts tools back immediately after using them, you probably don't need a "tool master" role on your team. If your team isn't that disciplined, having a person who's willing to put tools in their proper place after they've been used can improve the team's efficiency. It's not a glamorous job, but possibly a really valuable one.

Re: Most undervalued job
 

From past 5 years experience, it is the battery person. Not done right it will kill you. done right you will do well but nobody notices.

Re: Most undervalued job
 

Wow, yes! I didn't think about it that way. Battery person and scouting seem to be the most undervalued on our team.

Re: Most undervalued job
 

The least appreciative job on any FIRST team may be Scouting due to the lack of trust that the information could be wrong.

The most appreciative job on any FIRST team may be battery changer. Without a fresh battery no robot would move thanks to those battery changers.

Re: Most undervalued job
 

On our team, during build/the year at large, it's PR/Business.

During competition season, it's the battery charger and the person who cleans up/puts away tools.

Scouting is abnormally appreciated on our team. We know it's won a few regionals for us, so we value it.

Re: Most undervalued job
 

On my team the most undervauled job would have to be (non-mechanically) the animation team. This yaer we won our first Visualization award ever, But otherwise we arent as vauled as the people who work on the robot.

Re: Most undervalued job
 

I here you bro. The first year our team did animation i was the only one who wanted to do it. I almost got myself kicked off the team (we had a different team cordinator back then) Now most of the mechanical people think we waste time.

Another undervauled job is the Spirit team and the Promotions team. Our mechanical gurus were talking on the way home "Im so glad our spirit team didnt come up with something stupid to wear, I wouldnt wear it" I tried to convince them that teams who do crazy stuff like that have a whole lot of fun. but no one wants to do it. So i barrow other teams crazy things to wear and have fun with it.

Same people think its all about the robot and durring the off season make designs and stuff for next years robot. None of them ever look to community service or other stuff like that. And why is everyone afraid of giving presentations?

Re: Most undervalued job
 

Most of this is just personal stuff with my team

Safety Captain - My team would keep passing the job along and then when it reaches this one sophomore, he just tosses the button, this pissed me off how uncaring they were about it

Strategist - We consider it important, it's just the way our strategist gets treated on our team, well just the "boys" are mean to him which was truely unfair because he's just as important to the drive crew as the drivers, even the human player

Keeping the pit area clean - between matches and stratgizing, I would end up cleaning a majority of the pit, except when our coach gets to the pit first and then he starts cleaning it, this annoys me because we this sophomore that's there all the time and the only reason he wants to be there is to lay under the table and play his gameboy, bugged me evn more when he used the laptop cases as pillows, with the laptops still in them

Battery Changing - Drive crew had to keep taking care of it

Mascot - at the Colorado Regional, nobody wanted to do it which dissappointed me because our cheering section was like 5 people,

Drive Crew - now this is personal, it's because how practice day went for us, I told the drive crew to get sleep and eat healthy, unfortnately we had a bad practice day because nobody on the drive crew took care of themselves, except I tried to. I couldn't sleep at all because I was stuck with on of the parents and her snoring was loud, raspy, and annoying(I even went into the hall and still heard it-it's true, the media captain can vouch), so for practice day I go a half hour sleep(I didn't sleep the night before either because I had to finish some stuff before I went on the Atlanta trip). Our strategist was being harassed by the chassis driver, human element, captain, and extra person, so our strategist never got any sleep(This also pretty much says the human element and Chassis driver was awake all night as well). We get to practice, we concentrate, we can score, and we were all stressed out and over reacting to things. Luckily drive crew stepped it up and our assistant coach gave me and the media captain our room like it should have orginally been(Finally, sleep, I crashed and skipped swimming with the team).

Media Crew - They just don't get it, simply that.

It greatly irritated me(plus the 13 other people on the team, well plus the parents, and the coaches) at championships how this sophomore on our team just laid in our pit area to play his game boy and we would tell him to go away if he wants to do nothing and get in the way and he starts complaining how he can't play his gameboy in the pit area(yeah, especially when we had to fix the arm-well improve the strength and speed of it-and a couple of our team members tripped over his legs and cut themselves because he was lying underneath the table, he didn't even say sorry, he even yelled us to watch where we're going and wanted us to say sorry for stepping on his legs and distrubing his video gaming)

I guess, it's just that it didn't matter how improtant a person's job was on the team, it was that the job was taken for granted and that really dissappointed me.

Re: Most undervalued job
 

the team's advisory
you can't imagine the stuff they have to do most of them put in so much time
and sleep
even on are team's that are both student lead and run
the team's advisory still has to do so much just to give the right first experience
we love you guys

Re: Most undervalued job
 

Animation Team- They're the bud of all of our jokes, yet they finished on time (unlike our build team).

Opeartaions-If someones gone, people wonder why they;re not there. When they show, people give no gratitude.
(Operations is a team division for people who don't built the robot , yet assist in all other duties like Field Construction and Clean Up.)

Mascot-People don't realize how hot these outfits get!

Chairmans-People think that building a robot is all that matters...

Public Relations- Many people thaink that money grows on trees, yet I beg to differ.

Website Team-Do these people even need to show up? They add pics to the web...WOW!(sarcasm)

Re: Most undervalued job
 

We didn't always have a battery person, we just had a few scattered chargers and batteries. We never knew how long they had charged or if they had any problems, which meant that we would often go into a match with an undercharged or damaged battery. The problems this caused became especially clear last year, when low battery made it impossible for our robot to climb the 30 degree incline on the ramp. We realized the problems it caused at our regional, and before we went to last year's championship we had one of our members create a charging system with charging sheets and number batteries to track it. In this process, our "battery man" discovered that we had several faulty batteries, which we labeled accordingly and replaced. This year, our system progressed to the point where our battery man effectively managed our energy at the UTC Connecticut regional and the Championship Event... and he even helped out our alliance partners. We worship our battery man, so that's definitely not an undervalued role on 1124.

As for the people who have undervalued scouters on their teams, we also do not have that problem. Again, last year, our scouting was at a deficit. We didn't realize what we were missing until we met with our alliance partners for the elimination rounds and saw the kinds of incredibly valuable information we had been missing out on. That's when we tried to find a better (aka existant) system of scouting. We tried a new one out at the Championship Event last year, but nothing really fell into place until Bash @ the Beach this year. Between the off-season events and the scrimmage, our team had a scouting team break off and develop a system for scouting other teams. By the regional this year, our scouting captain had things mostly under control. At both the regional and the Championship, the other coach and I were indebted to our scouters for providing us with information that allowed us to create winning strategies to complement our robot.

Our team also values the positions typically thought of as key roles, such as the drive team, strategists, and programmers (though the programmers are often the subject of jokes... but it's all in good fun).

I'd have to say that there are several undervalued roles on our team, including spirit, community relations, and organization.

From personal experience, I would have to say that spirit makes a huge difference in the dynamics of a team. Not only does it get the team noticed, but it adds to the excitement and energy of a team. Being down on the field and seeing your team sitting there with long faces doesn't get you pumped up. Hearing them cheering for you and supporting you through good and bad, on the other hand, can provide a little extra push and makes things more fun for everyone. Our team is very reserved, and has many inhibitions about being loud. They think they're embarrassing themselves, but they don't realize how much fun they're missing out on. I usually end up as the only one screaming my lungs out and clapping until my hands are numb, when I get the chance to sit in the stands, anyway.

Our community relations are also something I feel is undervalued. We don't have a set way of communicating with the our community, including our school, our sponsors, and finding ways to get information around. Also, I want to get more involved in our community with younger students in the school system because I think that the public schools don't do a very good job of teaching appreciation for the math and sciences. I want to show kids how much fun technology it can be and explain some of its applications, but whereas I've done some things on my own time, the team generally is "too busy" to bring the robot on tour to the elementary schools or something of the sort. Now that the main season is over, I really hope that we can work on this point.

And finally... organizational skills. As people have mentioned with the organization of tools, I think it's ridiculous when it takes our team half an hour to find the tool to fix something when the fix will only take five minutes. It's a waste of our valuable time during our six-week build season and during our competitions, and it's just a bad habit to get into in general. Good organizational skills with tools and parts can make of a world of a difference with a team. For our team especially, packing is a major issue. People throw parts into boxes without really noticing if they'll be useful or where they ended up. We thought we had overpacked for the Championship in 2006, when we had eleven plastic and cardboard boxes in addition to our crate... this year we had fifteen, plus an overweight crate. Getting back is even worse. Though I acknowledge that we were out on the field until the last match at both of our competitions this year, it's beyond ridiculous that we've gotten ushered out of the pits as the last people there on a repeated basis. They had the field completely disassembled and carried out at the UTC Regional (both in 2006 and 2007) by the time we had finished packing. And at the Championship yesterday we didn't make it to the party until 9 pm because packing became such an ordeal. So again, organization is definitely one of the more undervalued aspects of my team.

Anyway, that's my insight into how jobs go on the ÜberBots. (Other ÜberBots may feel free to disagree with me, as long as they explain why.)

Re: Most undervalued job
 

I would have to say the human player was the least recognized. The human player can very well be one of the most important roles on the drive team because without him, you wouldn't get tubes so easily. Because the common perception on my team is that anybody could have done it our human player didn't get much recognition but getting the tubes onto the feild in the right spot can save tons of time and be that little thing that wins the match.

This year, I was the strategist. On my team, I got enough recognition to satisfy but I dont think people understand how important the strategist is. Good strategies are what win championships and I would say that the strategist has the most stressfull job. While the drivers may only have 2 minutes of stress every 10 minutes, the strategist has to work in-between matches with alliance members to create the best possible strategy. Then a match comes and the second it's over, you start again.
The only times I had any rest during the Portland and Sacramento regionals was during lunch and after all our matches were done. It's not as easy as you'd think.

As for the Safety Person, our safety person had alot of recognition. She was by far the most spirited person on our team and was constantly walking through the pits saying "Arr, dont forget your safety glasses, mateys!" For Friday, she made thank-you posters for all the volenteers and they awarded her "Safety Person of the Day" She was mentioned in an article about us in our local newspaper. She was probably given more recognition than any other member on our team.:D

Re: Most undervalued job
 

There's a few that really should be made more important than is often the case:

1) Battery Guy (or Battery Girl, as appropriate), for reasons already mentioned.

2) Media rep. Three robots since, I'd kill for any videos or pictures of my rookie year robot.

3) Marketing, in nearly any sense of the word. (A subset of this would be any degree of graphic design. Just applying a little bit of aesthetic design work to your signs, shirts, and robot can make a world of difference. I think we can all agree that this looks much better than this--and that took about an hour and a half and $16.25 at USC's computer lab.)

4) The role dubbed by the kids when I was on 1293 "Rules Nazi". I think the politically correct phrase is Compliance Officer, but that's more syllables. Having one guy who internalizes the whole manual and makes sure the robot is within the rules (even if it means irritating the rest of the team to the brink of insanity) is a lovely thing come inspection time.

Re: Most undervalued job
 

Two of the most under-appreciated jobs at competitions are scouting captains and scouting team members. You never know how successful your team will be at a competition, and need to be prepared to select from a large list of teams, depending upon the event you're at. If you get seated at the top, you truly need to know who the best teams are that complement your style of gameplay, and who consistently perform well at the given tasks.

Often times, the scouting crew's work is never used (due to the inability to pick), so their hard work often times goes to naught, making them incredibly under-appreciated. This year, we started off 5-0 on Friday night in Newton, and had a three-hour scouting meeting in one of our hotel rooms. Due to a motor burn-out in the first of two near-consecutive rounds, we lost both rounds, ending at 5-2, and were unable to select alliance partners. In fact, we didn't get picked, so all of their work was un-usable.

On the positive side, I believe a lot of our students learned to truly appreciate the benefits of a good scouting team when we saw the alliance captains choose some very surprising picks.

Re: Most undervalued job
 

IMHO from our team the least appreciated jobs are the programming(the first thing blamed for anything both being serious and sarcastic)
Then there is the Animation team which catches a lot of flak for wasting time(ok so they did this year but before then it wasn't their fault)
Chairmans gets neglected a lot, usually someone is sent into the corner and told not to come out until they have something to show.
In general cleaning is ignored on the team because whenever someone is seen not doing something they are then told to clean so they start to hate the job because they never get to help the fun part(making the mess)

These are all my observations from what happens on my team and something I would advise rookies to watch out for. Also my advice to rookie teams would be to make sure that no matter what someone is always doing something. Having dedicated members is great but don't forget about the rest of them that want to learn and help too.

Re: Most undervalued job
 

I definitely think the compliance officer is the most undervalued job on a first team, especially new teams. There are so many small rules that a lot of rookie and some veteran teams forget about and when they get to competition they have to spend valuable practice time or even match time fixing these problems. It requires that some times the whole team gets mad at you but it is always better to have to redesign to fit the rules at your shop then when the inspector makes you at competition.

Another job I noticed that I don't think has a title on many teams but I think is really important is a Quality Control person. A member of the team that periodically makes sures that all parts of the robot are being built to the correct specs. Even if the robot is not fully designed if two different subgroups are using different specs it causes a big problem later.

Re: Most undervalued job
 

I definately agree. When the average FIRSTer thinks of a drive team, they mention the two drivers and the mentor, often overlooking the human player as an insignificant role in the grand scheme of things. Human player is definately one of the more undervalued jobs on a team...

:]

Re: Most undervalued job
 

Definitely the person who keeps the pit clean.

This year we made the job much easier for this person and for ourselves. Check out what my co-captain made! :)

http://rassi.ath.cx/stuypulse/view_p...eek-1&id=Tools

:]

Re: Most undervalued job
 

I think the most undervalued job on our team is the job done by our main mentor. He had to make sure he knew where everyone was and the game plan for the rest of the day while performing his duties in the pit. This year we had very few non-engineering mentors attend our Atlanta. The job that these two mentors did was invaluable but i think was overlooked my most if not all of the people on our team. Nice work!!!

Re: Most undervalued job
 

ill Nth the person who cleans the pit, im usually that person, but in a way i kind of enjoy it. I get to spend time around the robot and tools which i both enjoy very much.
Then the People who do all the planning fro like hotels and such.

Re: Most undervalued job
 

Probably electrical. This includes the battery people and programmers. Our teams big problem is our tendency to wait to the last minute to get things done. So mechanical is finishing their work the first day of competition and electrical has to scramble to wire everything in the course of an hour. Overall it isn't that bad, but the head of our electrical sub team would have you think otherwise.

During competition one of the mentors would yell to him, "Is electrical done yet?" evey three minutes. He had a assortment of repsonses, but the one I remember was, "Mechanicall had 400 hours, we have 4."

Re: Most undervalued job
 

SORRY, LATE NIGHT POST. (I shot photos of 5 soccer games an hour away today. It's been a long day, but this is a topic I'd really like to share my thoughts about)

Mentors: "How's the electrical team doing so far?"

Me: "We can't really wire the robot up if we don't have a robot to work on"

Mentor: "You always say that. Have you guys accomplished anything else?"

Laura: "Yeah. We redesigned the electronics board, AGAIN, since you guys redesigned the frame. AGAIN."

(this marked the 7th or 8th time we'd redesigned it, wire layouts and everything)

Sometimes, I really feel that the people that are truly devoted to the team are the ones most undervalued. This includes me and my electronics/programming team, and everyone else in the computer lab, which includes the CAD people (oh, are they useful, I can't thank them enough), and the animators. Alright, so I still don't really see the point in doing the animation, but still, they put in A LOT of work this year. I just don't reall get how it fits in with the rest of our team.

While we're on the topic of undervaluing things, I really feel that a recurring problem on teams is the mechanical guys not appreciating the rest of the team. Like, on the Saturday before ship, the entire electrical and CAD/Animation teams showed up bright and early at 8AM, after about a 20 minute drive for many of us, and the first shreds of the rest of the team showed up at 2PM. No joke. I don't think I've ever been more pissed at my teammates than that day before. I guess it was the following tidbit that set me off:

Mentor: "So, what electrical stuff did you guys accomplish?"

Me:mad: : "Actually, we had to pull everyone even from CAD and animation to help build the robot, since we have to have a robot to work on first. Where on earth were you guys?" (Note that this quote has been translated to a more CD-friendly version:p)

Mentor: "Sleeping!" (In this I-Don't-Care-That-We-Ship-Out-Tuesday manner)

Me::mad: :mad: :mad:

And one last bit before I go to bed (I'm really just rambling here, bear with me), I really hate the people that don't show up the entire build season, maybe turn a few screws with a few days before ship, and then think they can drive the robot better than the team-leadership designated drive team. Especially considering that this year we ran mecanum. Driving is hard work. It's fun, but it's also no fun when the entire team blames you for failure. People with the ambition that Oooh! Me! I wanna drive! usually don't realize this.

I choose to accept the role as driver not because it's like a real-live video game that I really wanna play. I drive because a part of my soul is in that robot, a part that apparently the leadership recognized as strong potential. Believe me. If I wasn't recommended to drive (or the best driver, or the person that designed everything related to the driving, for that matter), I wouldn't drive on field unless someone had a gun to my head. Sometimes it's great, but it's actually more depressing than fun.

Alright, sleepy time.

Long story short: Most undervalued people: CAD, animators, and programming/electrical. Most undervaluing people: the people that claim to "build" the robot as their job (isn't it everyone's job?) and the people that never show up/do anything.

Re: Most undervalued job
 

I would have to agrees although i am some what happy our spirit team didnt go over the top with costumes and stuff. I wouldnt mind a little but sometimes costumes can just be to much.

Re: Most undervalued job
 

I don't know about that. Lots of teams seem to have been able to develop a self-contained "electrical box" module that holds everything except the motors and sensors. We haven't gone quite to that level yet, but our drivebase last year was designed to give us a large, flat area inside it for the electrical components. We actually wired most of the 'bot a week before the drivebase itself was ready, and we built a duplicate electrical "floor" for our planned practice 'bot at the same time.

Re: Most undervalued job
 

The most undervalued person on a team? The one who makes sure the team is fed.

And the one who arranges the travel plans so that the bus arrives on time, the hotel is selected, the airline tickets are all set to go with everyone's correct legal names on them.

And the ones who get up at 3:30 in the morning in order to get you to your facility to make the 4:30 a.m. bus that is taking you to a competition.

And the one who puts together the hospitality baskets and places them in the restrooms so we all don't stink at regionals.

It's the wife/husband/family of the mentor who acknowledges that this program is making changes in people's lives, so they let them go to work on the robot program for hundreds of hours a year.

It's the employee at some big corporation that writes the check that is mailed to your team leader that gets deposited into your team bank account before you even see it. It's the school secretary that writes the check to FIRST so that you get your kit of parts. It's the custodian that makes sure you can stay late and work on the bot during build season. It's the family that reads about your pasta dinner in the paper and decides to support your fundraising efforts.

And the people who are there working/volunteering in the background YEAR-ROUND to ensure that the four FIRST programs and their competitions will be of the best quality that we can make them. And taking all of their vacation days to go to training, and give presentations and demos, and staff the events. And are volunteering to come in the Wednesday before to help set up, and are staying long past everyone has vacated the pits on Saturday to break the field down.

The "team" is not just the students and the mentors. They are the tip of the iceberg. Acknowledge your "undervalued" team members and say thank you. Write a personal letter to your sponsor and tell them what being in FIRST means to you. Say thank you to your school administration, treat your custodians to dinner. Find out who is on your Regional Planning Committee and let them know how much you appreciate what they do.

Re: Most undervalued job
 

fund raising,
most of the work out fund raising team does is behind close doors to most of the members of our team. all the team knows is that they have money, not how many businesses we visited, hours of presentations made, hours spent preparing and practicing for our presentations. It takes allot of time that most members don't connect with.

Re: Most undervalued job
 

Not in order:

1) Scouts
2) Public Relations/Fundraising
3) Team organizers (student or adult)
4) Animators
5) Electrical design

In the past 5 years, I have worked with two different teams that have had most of their difficulties in these five areas.

The first area is scouting.

On my old team, the Who'sCTEKS, often there were simply not enough people there to scout. The same 4 people (this past year, alot of them were adult mentors, because the students already had jobs to do) were often the only ones scouting, for the whole entire day. This wasn't the result of disrespect/non-recognition of the scouting job - it was the result of the small size of the team.

On HAZE (1889), the team was also too small to divide the scouting load reasonably between members. Gary Dillard, his daughter April (who wasn't even on the team), and myself were the only ones providing scouting data for the team. I took my notes on just a plain lined notepad, and I scouted 4 different robots at once. Although I was able to come up with a pretty good way of keeping track of all of them, it shouldn't have been necessary. Hopefully, HAZE will work on recruiting more students next year, so the work can be more reasonably distributed.

Team organization, public relations, and fundraising are also areas in which my two teams experienced difficulty - mainly because of the size of the teams, as well as student motivation and too few adult mentors.

The Who'sCTEKS have actually come a long way in their fundraising capabilities, but lacks a core group of motivated students in charge of fundraising efforts. It appears that students do in fact go out to fundraise, but only after being endlessly hassled to do so by the adults (they almost couldn't attend the Championship). Again, I feel it is necessary to recruit more members, in order for the load to be lightened for each individual student, and also in the hopes that a student leader(s) could be found to take charge of the effort.

I also feel that this is the case with HAZE, although their fundraising crisis arose because there wasn't enough awareness of the problem initially, students lacked motivation, and there were few adults to spearhead the effort (poor Gary and Mr. Knauff were already trying to manage the design and construction of the robot, as well as deal with discipline problems, AND they had no prior experience with leading a fundraising effort. I don't blame them for not leading that effort too). I ended up designing and producing all of their sponsorship forms and brochures, as well as designing a team logo. That should have been a student's job, not mine - but there simply weren't any students interested in taking on the project.

I also feel that animators don't get as much recognition or attention as they deserve. For some reason, their job is often seen as less important than the jobs that are directly involved with the robot (fundraisers, organizers, and scouts also suffer this same fate). Overlooking or forgetting about the supposedly "less important" jobs is the number one reason why teams become dysfunctional. If you look at the "greats" - the teams who consistently have great robots year after year - you will discover that they almost always have exceptional strength in scouting, fundraising, animating, graphic design, recruiting, public relations, and outreach - as well as strength in numbers to cover all of these bases.

I also want to mention electrical design here, because of the overwhelming number of robots I've seen with messy, unplanned, and last-minute electrical designs. Although there has been improvement and innovation in this area in recent years, I think a majority of FIRST teams forget about how important it is to have neat, accessible wiring. HAZE was a prime example of this lack of foresight (no offense, Tytus - but you aren't an electrical designer!).

Although we didn't have any electrical problems that were a direct result of our wiring (I did neaten it up after the initial picture was posted here on ChiefDelphi), it was inaccessible and difficult to manage. When we did have electrical hardware problems at the Florida Regional, it became apparent that next time around, we needed to allow more space and have a better overall plan with regards to our electronics. I think the Who'sCTEKS also need to listen up to this too - although I also think this has gotten better in recent years for them.

Re: Most undervalued job
 

I can say from experience that the most undervalued job is the position that my team called our Pit Chief, the years I held the position it entailed supervision of all aspects of robot build, cleaning and organizing the workshop, and recording build season hours.

Re: Most undervalued job
 

on our team...marketing/media person. and when i say person, i mean one girl does the whole thing. and we can never appreciate her enough, and we often don't. she spends as much time on our posters/scrapbook/videos and what not as the rest of us do on the robot. we luv u Ashlee...

Re: Most undervalued job
 

I agree - the most undervalued people are hard to name because you don't know their name.

(Warning elow may be a little bias - I did not see it from the builders point of view)
The main section during the build season is the Build team - this year they gave the programmers maybe an hour with the robot before it shipped. They pushed out latecomers to the entire team because "they don't know enough of what was going on with the robot"
They then called over all other parts of the team to tighten screws...:eek:

so... I also agree that each team thinks their work is the most important... they are only important when it works together with what the other parts of the team can do

Re: Most undervalued job
 

Carol Taylor, RN, Ph.D. recently gave the commencement speech where I work and sums it up nicely: "Each of you has the ability to make the critical difference for others, be they family members or strangers. A quick story shared by a student about her most important life lesson:

'During my second month of nursing school our professor gave us a pop quiz. I was a conscientious student and had breezed through the questions until I read the last one: “What is the first name of the woman who cleans the school?” Surely this was some kind of joke. I had seen the cleaning woman several times. She was tall, dark-haired and probably in her 50s, but how would I know her name. I handed in the paper, leaving the last question blank. Just before the class ended, one student asked if the last question would count toward our quiz grade. “Absolutely,” said the professor. “In your careers, you will meet many people. All are significant. They deserve attention and care, even if all you do is smile and say ‘hello.’” I’ve never forgotten that lesson. I also learned her name was Dorothy.'"
EXACTLY! And your team extends beyond the boundaries you think it does. The support people are as important as the person in the limelight!

Re: Most undervalued job
 

a quick sidenote here...ive seen a couple instances of rambling in this thread...believe me when i say this, we all know where you are coming from, but rambling on a forum doesnt solve those problems..please try to keep an optimistic outlook and think of ways to solve these problems you have within your team...


as for underrated jobs...

1. cleaners...the magic elves that somehow put the room back together every single night

2. the machinists...i know ive experienced it, as im sure others have, but there always seems to be that time where you are on the lathe or mill for 10 hours, and dinner comes, and someone forgot to tell you its there, and you come out only to find theres nothing left....but machinists put in crazy hours

3. helpers of the rookie teams...i know a lot of teams are recognized for helping out other teams, but there are way mroe teams that are not recognized for their help to rookie teams...whether its giving them your fisher price motors because they burnt them up already, or taking in 3 rookie teams a week before ship because they arent goign to finish without your help...these people and teams are underrated

Re: Most undervalued job
 

Lots of jobs aren't appreciated until it is obviouly noticed. There are the people who clean up the room or pit on their own time and organize tools, the scouts (whose existence slowly is forgotten as they spend their time in the seats until alliance selections), and the person who sorts mixed screws by thread and length (that's me :p).

Re: Most undervalued job
 

#1 Safety Officer - Our safety officer doesn't get any respect. Just look at the helmet he has to wear! It has a hammer lodged in it! :D The more he tries to do his job and enforce safety the more people try to rebel against him. Thankfully our mentors have started supporting the safety officer - so hopefully his job will be more valued next year.

#2 The person who makes the 'Parts List' - This is the person who has to catalog all the parts used on the robot into a list which can be presented to the inspectors. Not only is it the most boring, grueling, time consuming job, but the inspectors often forget to ask for it! Since it has no real value to the team, this list is often completely worthless. Not to mention the fact that there are plenty of robots over $2000 that pass inspection...

#3 Battery Charger - I don't know about other teams, but the battery charger is one of the most valued jobs on Team 100. Charging batteries can either make or break you. Our old battery charger once failed to strap the battery in during two consecutive matches! Causing it to fall out both times :eek: :( Lets just say his career was over... Our new battery person is amazing. She has never once failed to replace both batteries on the robot with fresh ones.

My job is really over-valued :D Operating the arm is really easy...

Re: Most undervalued job
 

making the parts list is hard, exspecially when some of the parts have been lying around the shop for a while.
"what is this?'
"ummmm...i dont know, but it works great"
"where did we get it?"
"that shelf over there"
"what about before that?"
"who knows?"

Re: Most undervalued job
 

I'd have to say the team leader is probably the most undervalued position. They put in time and effort to keep the team running smoothly, assign jobs, keep things in order, and usually set up most of the team's agenda (ie comps, sponsor visits, t-shirt orders, etc.), yet they're usually looked at as just another team member.

Another undervalued job (slight bias from me) is the member who doesn't have a specialty and helps out all the other members with their jobs. You've got to know about just about every aspect of the bot so you don't destroy anything, but you don't get to just sit with your section of the bot and work on it. Usually the busiest member, too. ;)

Also, the cleaning crew is awesome. That is all.

Re: Most undervalued job
 

I would have to say the animation team isn't valued anywhere near as much as they should be. These guys put in just as many hours as the build team, if not more. They put some much work into the animations and they always come out fantastic. They are probably some of the most dedicated and least remembered members. This year, they spent hours literally watching grass grow (it was part of our Think Green animation)! Since they work in a different room, we kinda sorta forgot to take their dinner orders. We did go back later once we realized our mistake, but we felt pretty terrible for forgetting them. They did get recognized with several animation awards in the past two years (including National Safety Animation Award 2007 - go animation team!), but I don't think they are respected as much as they should be on our team.

Let's try to correct these problems and give everyone on our teams the credit they deserve. Everyone is forgotten at one point, but it's important to make an effort so that it happpens as little as possible. We are a team, and each member on it is important, no matter how small their job may seem.

Re: Most undervalued job
 

Without a doubt: Drill Bit Sorter.

Other underappreciated jobs include scouting, battery person, pit boss.

Re: Most undervalued job
 

Defiantly room clean up for us. Our coach nicknamed five of us the core(aka the Drive Crew) because we stay the entire time from build to clean up and it really gets to us how we noticed a majority of our other members make sure they leave a half hour before we start cleaning up the place because we have two classrooms, an autoshop garage, offices, and etc. to clean up because members who come and don't stay the entire time just leave their mess thinking, "oh the night crew will get it.", *sigh*.

Re: Most undervalued job
 

I am with you on that one Warren the person who sorts the drill bits...

but I feel that most of the jobs undervalued... you really don't know how much work is put into the job until you do it so most people think it is easier than it looks and don't give them enough credit

Re: Most undervalued job
 

The custodian who has to wait until we finish our late night workings to be able to clean the Physics Lab and go home.

Half the team probably doesn't know his name, but no job is less appreciated.

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We know our janitor, BILL!!! We love Bill, we give him a team shirt, a set of dog tags, give him food, drinks, and invite him to the competitions because his job seems small but he lets us into the school to work on the bot, and turns on the heat during snowstorms. Plus he loves hanging out with us during the build days. "Watching what you kids do is amazing." That was cool, Bill's awesome.

Re: Most undervalued job
 

I'd have to say the guy who makes friends with other teams and deals with all the relations.

During my first year we had a good kid by the name of George Chen who spent about 90% of his time on the team communicating with other teams. We all, including myself, called him a traitor and so on. But now I realize that we were entirely wrong, George was doing great things for our team (and now 812 down at UCSD) and the students at the time were too close-minded to see it. As the captain this year, I tried to teach the kids on the team that being an "isolationist" team is pointless. Hopefully it will carry on in my absence. And George, if you're reading this, we're sorry.

Re: Most undervalued job
 

#1 Most undervalued job- Programmer if the robot doesn't move ethe it's your fault if it does move the the drivers are awesome- they just can't win

#2 Human Player after being HP for the championship i realized how much they were needed