The 6 Week Build Season and 'Mentor Burnout'

[Taylor Nicholson]

Originally Posted by Bongle

But the problem is that there's also a large subset of teams that will use that additional time to become EVEN MORE competitive at competition. Mid-tier teams will hit the performance previously reserved for elite teams, while elite teams will hit new highs. Teams that previously would have fielded unreliable boxes on wheels will field reliable boxes on wheels with unreliable game pieces ... and still come dead last, provoking CD conversations about "oh, they just need more time".

The problem here is this:
[2 week build] A team that fields an nonmoving robot among a field of barely-working robots will be uninspired
[6 week build] A team that fields a moving robot among a field of mostly-working robots will be uninspired
[4 month build] A team that fields a pretty decent robot among a field of 2013-einstein-level robots will be uninspired.

Teams that field relatively bad robots will not be happy. No matter the build length, someone will have a zero-and-N record, and those people will leave unhappy. What we currently build would look amazing to a bizarro FIRST that has a 3-week build season, but yet there are still unhappy teams. Similarly, what a 4-month-FIRST would build would look alien to us in terms of quality, but there'd still be teams that were unsuccessful. And burned out mentors.

So we know this:
-Low-performing teams will probably remain low-performing and still come away thinking the top 2/3s of teams are cheating/adult-built/insane.
-Mid-tier teams will probably kill their mentors and students chasing their dreams of being elite for 4 months instead of 6 weeks.
-Elite teams will either kill their mentors and students, or will have the luxury of working a bit less intensely thanks to excellent ingenuity or sponsor support.

I disagree with your measure of inspiration here. There will always be differences in how others are inspired, but normalizing it to the level of robot competitiveness is not a model I would agree with.

The following representation is, in my opinion, how I think it might play out, going by your metrics:

[2 week build] A team that fields an nonmoving robot among a field of barely-working robots...

This team is uninspired. Even if they reach the level of their peers, they still have a barely-working robots, and I don't think anyone is inspired here. (not that anyone here would argue for less time)

[6 week build] A team that fields a moving robot among a field of mostly-working robots...

(If this is what we consider where we currently are…) This team is inspired to work hard to keep improving their robot, trying to get their robot to a fully functional level to compete against their peers.

[4 month build] A team that fields a pretty decent robot among a field of 2013-einstein-level robots...

Or the never-ending build... This team has worked all season learning and improving from their peers in parallel with competing with them. This team sees how to improve, and now has the time now to do that. They are inspired to try and reach a higher level because they are now within reach of it.

I think teams are far more inspired by being able to accomplish building robots fully capable of competing and playing the game, than just simply being inspired by how well they did. The latter might set a very bleak picture of FRC. If we were to assume inspiration based on success, then I think improvement in FRC would be very staggnant, and we would be lacking many up-and-coming teams. Fundamentally, teams, and individuals, drive to improve would be lost.

Why do some of us here think that 6 weeks, a somewhat arbitrarily set time, is the perfect length for build season? I think the 6 weeks is the reason for much burnout, not a limit being set to prevent more.