Full Time Job in FIRST

[thefro526]

Originally Posted by Michael Corsetto

Have you (or someone you know) ever been paid for working for a FIRST Team?
If so, what made the paid position possible?
Was it full or part time?
What were some unexpected benefits and/or drawbacks to the experience?
What did you (or this other person) spend non-team-meeting-times doing?
What did hours during the off season look like? During the build season? Competition season?

I was paid to work with 816 in 2011 and 2012. My employer, Sea Box Inc. was the team's primary corporate sponsor in those years to I was paid for any Robotics that was done during normal working hours as long as it was approved in advance by my employer. I ended up getting paid for about 6-8 days a season depending on the event schedule and other things.

One of the unexpected benefits was that I didn't have to dip into my vacation time to travel with the team and I never had to worry about being shorted in a check for the missed time. Another neat benefit is that I was allowed to do A LOT of robotics related things during my normal work hours without being hassled as long as all of my other work was up to date - this included CAD, interfacing with the Machine shop, running to home depot, ordering parts and chatting with other teams.

One of the drawbacks is that it create an enormous amount of pressure to succeed on the competition field which wasn't always apparent to other members on the team. I worked much harder than was often unnecessary because I didn't want to let my employer down which often led to miss-communication and disagreements between myself and some of the other team leadership.

During non-team meeting times, when I was at work, I would often spend about an hour or two a day during build season doing robotics related tasks as listed above.

During the off-season, I did very little robotics related work while at work, unless we were working on a project or something else that needed my attention. During the build season, as listed above, I'd spend an hour or so a day during robotics related tasks. Time spent during the competition season varied wildly depending on what needed to be done. In 2011, I spend the entire Wednesday before the Philadelphia Regional piecing together parts for a rebuild and preparing all of the needed drawings and information for the rebuild - but this wasn't typical.

All in all, getting paid or compensated to do FRC is a really awesome experience. Just go into it with the understanding that because you get paid to do FRC you will look at it differently than most people. It is now a job, and something that someone will expect a return on. You have to live up to your own expectations, your team's expectations and your employers expectations at all times. It can be stressful, trust me.

If you have anymore questions, feel free to PM me.