The 6 Week Build Season and 'Mentor Burnout'

[pathew100]

Just a few thoughts after reading the latest posts on here.

* The top/uber teams will work from kickoff until championship regardless of any rules limitations. Even with no withholding, they will perfect a practice robot, dial in their autonomous, and spend lots of time figuring out how they upgrade the competition robot at their next event.

* Being able to build and test code and "driver's training" on a practice robot is a huge advantage. Why not let all teams have that chance by letting them at their competition robot?

* FIRST made a big push this year and for the past few years to make the game and competitions spectator friendly. We now have the "Make it Loud" award, etc... What would the competition be like if we cut back access to the robots? Not nearly as exciting, especially at the early regionals. And it would hurt the middle tier teams the most.

* Over time, the game challenges/tasks (especially autonomous) have become more difficult. The software is a lot more complicated than the old IFI days. The mechanical side has gotten maybe a little easier with AndyMark and Vex, etc... But I can't imagine what it would be like to be a rookie team now. Cramming all that into 6 weeks has added to burnout.

* If robot access or the season were expanded, project management and time management skills would be a must for all teams. These are good lessons to learn as well as technical skills.

[KrazyCarl92]

There are diminishing marginal returns to increased time put in. Past a certain point, spending a given amount of time AWAY from robots is optimal to success. So this means that the top teams stand to gain the least by opening build season from a competitive stand point, whereas less competitive teams stand to gain the most. I recognize that there are other factors involved in the opinions expressed here, but this is why I'm surprised by the lines that have been drawn and where people tend to fall on this issue.

To Jared's point, we took off Fridays through and including week 4, and if not for a big snow storm, probably could've continued to take them off all season. That's another thing that an open build season would self-accommodate: it would allow for more resilience despite problems completely beyond teams' control like bad weather. Bad weather can cancel meetings for the better part of a week, significantly delay shipments, and cause other issues that require the immediate and undivided attention of FRC participants. An open build season will help alleviate these issues.

[Nemo]

An interesting thing about this thread: usually when somebody says "our team can't do xyz," people tell them to go out and find a way to do it anyway (recruit more sponsors and mentors, work in the offseason, etc). People jump all over that type of thing. But when a team says "we can't stop ourselves from overworking," there are more people agreeing than criticizing the "I can't" claim. I've already been critical of that, so I'll just say that I experience the same problem to a degree and empathize.

The people posting are largely a bunch of overachievers and people who, when told "you can't do that," will go out and figure out a way to do it out of spite. The overachieving culture is a big reason why so many teams bite off too much in their design process and end up not finishing the robot properly. Maybe this is something all of us should think about more when we decide our overall approach to an FRC season, whatever the length. Our ambitious, overachieving selves push us to make irrational decisions. That includes choosing fanciful robot strategies and choosing 7 day schedules for 20+ hours a week (or 30, 40...).

This thread has me dreaming of what we could accomplish in a longer build season, but I am also thinking about what I can do to make next year's 6.5 weeks more efficient and less stressful. It has been a very thought provoking thread.

[pfreivald]

Originally Posted by Cory

40% of teams have no hope of ever getting anywhere near the great (or even pretty good) teams, IMO. The best hope would be that if you make build an open process the teams in the first two categories could have the ability (through more time) to help those "lower tier" teams to at least build functional robots that could meet some minimum standard of competitiveness.

Extending the build season is very far from the only manner in which this can be done. You're right that it is a possible solution to this problem, but it's only one of many, and I can think of quite a few that I would call better.

[Chris Hibner]

This may sound like a stupid question, but I'd like some serious responses.

What about shortening the build season to 4 or 5 weeks, with no witholding?

[notmattlythgoe]

What are some ways teams can use to lower mentor burn out with the way the season is currently set up? What are some techniques that teams have used to reduce work loads early in the season?

[Nate Laverdure]

Originally Posted by Chris Hibner

This may sound like a stupid question, but I'd like some serious responses.

What about shortening the build season to 4 or 5 weeks, with no witholding?

If I were to start my own high school robotics competition:
-- I'd want my build season to start the first weekend in January, so that college-age alumni can attend kickoff before they go back to school. This lets the high school students capture a little bit of the alumni's institutional knowledge, but it also (1) challenges the students to make their own decisions that will (2) establish themselves as the new team leaders and (3) push the envelope of the team's capabilities.
-- I'd want my build season to have a defined "stop build" date, even if it means that the date must be chosen arbitrarily. This is essential in order to teach the concepts of project management.
-- I'd want my build season to end before the college students have a chance to come home on their spring break.

By these criteria, my build season ends up being ~6 weeks long.

[Chris Hibner]

Since my previous question didn't generate much traffic (yet), here are some of my thoughts behind asking it:

- Many people on this thread argue that extending the build season will create more stress on the mentors. Then finding a way to pull the season back to 4 weeks might be better for everyone. If 8 weeks is worse than 6, then 6 must be worse than 4 (or not?).

- Shortening the build season forces more design tradeoffs - "do everything" robots will become exceedingly difficult to pull off. Maybe forcing some more design tradeoff through time limits is not a bad thing.

- It might force FIRST to simplify some of the design challenges so teams can build competitive robots in 4 weeks. The game could still be exciting, so maybe that's not such a bad thing.

- We've discussed lengthing the season, but haven't at all talked about shortening it. Why not?

- If you feel that 4 or 5 is simply not enough time, then why exactly is it not enough?

During kickoff, Woody always makes a speech along the lines of, "we give you a hard challenge, and not enough time to do it." What is enough time? What is definitely too little? Does your answer depend on if you feel that scaling back your design ambitions is a good or bad thing?

(I know some of this is in the "Is 6 weeks a perfect number" thread, but: a) I hate multiple threads discussing the same topic, and b) I'm looking for answers along the lines of how it pertains to mentor burnout. At this point, I'm up for hearing anything. A lot of people on this thread have stated, "if FIRST does XXX, then I'm going to think about limiting my involvement." Let me say that if FIRST doesn't do something, I'm thinking of limiting my involvement. Then again, I've been saying that every year for the last 12 years.

[ToddF]

Originally Posted by notmattlythgoe

What are some ways teams can use to lower mentor burn out with the way the season is currently set up? What are some techniques that teams have used to reduce work loads early in the season?

Matt and I are mentors on the same team, so our focus regarding this issue is similar. The general topic of this thread has been on changing the length of the season to reduce mentor burnout. What if we make the likely assumption that the rules are not going to change, and discuss ways teams can "work smarter, not harder" to reduce mentor burnout? Triple Helix is trying our utmost to get better without killing our mentors or going broke. I'll share some of the things we've done, or are working on doing.

- First, like a lot of teams, we don't meet every day. We meet three evenings during the week and all day Saturday. This allows both students and mentors time to breathe and handle non-robotics related life issues.

- A well run sports team would never show up to their first game without practicing first. In FRC, "game season" starts on kickoff day. We use the time between when school starts and kickoff day for robot building practice. The electronics team practices wiring. The software team writes the code to control a robot, from scratch. The mechanical team trains on the tools and machines in our shop, and works on pit and robot building projects. During the off season we meet one evening a week, and everyone can work on projects outside of meeting times. On kickoff day, the team is used to working together as a team, and has the skills necessary to build a robot.

- Be smart and pre-order as many COTS supplies as possible before the season even starts. If you neglect to do this, you are dooming yourself to parts shortages and high stress during the build season. During our summer development activities, we realized that hex bearings were critical to our drive train, and hard to come by. Also, the tolerances on the hexes vary enough that a good portion of an order don't fit the hex shafting. So we pre-ordered enough hex bearings for two robots and pre-sorted them into good and bad batches. The good ones fit unmodified shafting. The bad ones have to have the hex shafts hand worked to fit. We used the good batch on the competition drive train and set the others aside for the practice bot. When other teams started posting about shortages of hex bearings during the build season, we got to say, "Whew, that was close." rather than being stressed.

- Build your practice bot drive train as a training exercise in the fall. No, it probably won't be exactly what is perfect for the game. But if you design and build it smartly, it will be easy to modify. Even if you guess completely wrong, your team will have practiced their robot building skills, and you will have a working drivetrain which can be used for scoring device prototyping. Even better, find an area rookie team and help them get on their feet by letting them work with you while you build it. One caveat, be sure to be scrupulous to segregate any parts you might fabricate or COTS parts you modify, as these may not end up in a competition robot.

- Invest in a 3D printer. This is going to be one of the biggest time savers for us next year. We bought one right at the beginning of the build season, and it helped enough that we wouldn't want to go without it. Right now we are redesigning and rebuilding our pickup arm. Many of the secondary components and brackets are all designed in CAD and printed on the printer. This moves "fabrication" time outside of meeting time. Parts can be printing overnight, and during school/work hours, to be ready at meeting time.

- Recruit mentors! For the past three years we have had two primary mechanical mentors. It looks like this year we will have at least four. This will be a huge help in reducing our "burnout factor". Again, a caveat: be sure the people you bring on are compatible with the team. Bringing in an incompatible mentor creates stress rather than reducing it. Another again, working on projects during the off season is when you want to try out new mentors, not in the heat of build season.

Does anyone else have something to share about how your team does things, working within the existing rules, to reduce "mentor burnout"?

[scottandme]

Originally Posted by Chris Hibner

This may sound like a stupid question, but I'd like some serious responses.

What about shortening the build season to 4 or 5 weeks, with no witholding?

Would certainly exacerbate many of the previously listed problems - paying for expedited shipping, stress on sponsors to manufacture parts in a shorter timeframe, fewer days "off" for teams.

I would love to see an effort by FIRST (or the community) to compile some data on FIRST norms, so we can get a sense of where we stand as a community on some of these big issues. I have a feeling we're overestimating the "average" FIRST team.

Build Season Schedule/Time Commitment - our team meets from 6:30-9:30PM on weekdays and ~1PM-9PM on weekends, with that schedule expanding in the final weeks. Our team policy is to take Fridays off for as long as we can, this year we took Fridays off weeks 1-4. We use RFID tags to track attendance - in the end I spent 260+ hours working in the lab, we had 12 students exceed 180 hours (~30/hrs a week). We logged a little over 5,000 "person-hours" of work from ~45 students. The numbers might be a little low if anything (students forgetting to sign out, work done at home, etc). I figure we must be on the high end of the continuum, but I honestly have no idea what the average team looks like here.

Practice Bots - we were planning on building one for the 1st time this year - eventually made the conscious choice to abandon that after taking a realistic look at our build schedule. Being in MAR, we had the benefit of unbagging windows, so it wasn't a huge issue. Maybe 5% of teams (~125) are making these?

Withholding Allowance/Competition Season - Mainly used for spare parts that we don't have time to make during build season. 3D printed some hopper inserts to solve a jamming issue before world CMP. We're usually too burned out after 6 weeks to do any major changes within the 30 lbs, so it's minor iteration of exisiting systems.

I think if the goal is to bring up the bottom end, simply extending the build season isn't going to cut it. Those teams that are disadvantaged in mentor support or resources aren't going to be able to fix those issues with more time.

A bunch of pages back everyone was talking about the 2nd event being a big equalizer for lower-tier teams. From looking at the MAR data this season (OPR), that's doesn't seem to be the case. For all MAR teams the 1st event average was 15.5, which increased to 22.9 at their 2nd event (7.4 pt average increase). Here is the average increase in OPR based on OPR after their 1st event.

Rank 01-20: 7.33 points (OPR range from 67 to 25.5)
Rank 21-40: 8.21 points (OPR range from 25.3 to 17.7)
Rank 41-60: 7.45 points (OPR range from 17.3 to 10.7)
Rank 61-109: 7.24 points (OPR range from 9.6 to -3.5)

The good but not great teams had the biggest gains - likely teams that have adequate mentorship and resources, had lots of headroom to improve, and were able to make tweaks and changes to improve their performance. Overall though, not a significant difference, and the worst teams failed to make up any ground on the rest of the field.

Taking a closer look at the teams ranked 61-109, their average OPR at their first event was 4.0, which improved to 11.25 at their second event. At that point, I don't think more time is the answer - in performance after 6 weeks of build, or after 1 week of competition and 12 hours of unbag time.

[Siri]

Originally Posted by Taylor

Perhaps it's the lack of parity that makes the uberbots so compelling.
If we all had unlimited time and budget to design and build robots, we'd all have designs that score 15 discs autonomously from the top of the pyramid.
But we don't, so the teams that can do that are few, far between, and a-m-a-z-i-n-g.
The 6-week restriction is a big part of what makes FRC great, what makes it different. Using "we can't do it because we didn't have enough time" isn't a valid excuse - we've all got the same amount of time.
Also - the notion of teams arbitrarily self-limiting their schedules in a longer build season paradigm is laughable. We're engineers, scientists, teachers. We don't do things that are arbitrary. We do whatever it takes to try to be the best at accomplishing our goals.

A few questions:

1) Do you really believe that we could "all" have designs to score 15 discs in auto from the top? Who is "all"? (I find it uncompelling to attribute on-field success solely to money and time, and I'm not sure that's what you intended.)

2) I don't understand the assertion that we all have the same amount of time. In addition to practice bots, we can glance back at Jim's awesome charts. One of the biggest benefits that would come out of a more open build season is the removal of this disparity, even if it just meant everyone could unbag on competition weekends (e.g. for scrimmages). It's never been about time per say, it's about time to bring resources to bear. The more time we all have, the more resources we can all share. Yes these lower teams could raise more money and travel more, but if they haven't been inspired yet, is it really a realistic expectation?

3) I agree with Jared on your last statement. Virtually every team I know already limits themselves to prevent burnout during the season. They may not succeed in avoidance, but how many teams actually work every day of build? The same long hours every night and weekend? How many work every day of those 4 months? Do you? To be honest, if someone doesn't limit themselves or their students, that their own problem, and I hope they learn quickly. We've all learned, most of us the hard way, that working harder/longer after a point quickly leads to diminishing returns. That's why we call it burnout in the first place. I stop because I know I'm not supposed to burn myself or my students out. Because I know it has negative consequences on everything we're trying to do. Self control. Honestly, the applies in now just as much as in open season.


I'm fired up on this, but I've waited and come back to it, and I'm ready for the consequences.
This will anger a lot of people, but I cannot abide by the idea that a season designed to protect the top/middle for ourselves is somehow more important than a season that allows us to bring the bottom up: hold scrimmages, save money for rookie workshops, consistently cross-mentor more teams, etc. Self-discipline. VEX manages it. FTC manages it. FLL manages it. We manage in our work lives, and we expect students to manage in their own. Don't cram for your exams, work on the long term schedule even when there's nothing breathing down your neck, be responsible for your own health. I can understand other reasons behind the 6 week bag, if you want to talk about teaching quick deadlines (disagree, but ok), international logistics, etc, but not that one.


Chris, good question. I don't have a definite opinion besides the fact that shortening would result in the same problems that not lengthening it does (no scrimmaging, etc...unless you left the off weeks there as ran more events, which is intriguing). Ignoring 4 weeks vs. open and concentrating on 4 weeks vs. 6, the issues I see are this:
- Even assuming the game is correctly designed for 4 weeks, I stand by the assertion that inspiration is not solely relative to competitive performance. Some absolute things are simply inspiring and an of themselves, based on the work put in rather than how many other people do it. With less time, there's less opportunity to do things like this.
- It burdens sponsors (and shipping costs) more. This can be avoided in design, but it then also avoids giving students the opportunity to work with such things, and teams the opportunity to build as strong sponsor relationships.
- In some ways, less time inherently means fewer students and mentors can come. Whether or not teams meet more often, it's simply a smaller target: if you're traveling, catch another bad blizzard, or get sick, it's basically over. Already true in a 6 week season, just made worse.

There are probably some others. I don't know that I would walk out if it happened, but I don't see what problems it solves. I like design tradeoff debates as much as the next person, but I think it's possible to work them into the game--this year did well.

[Pendulum^-1]

Our team is not one of those that anyone would ever consider "elite." But we strive to improve. The "Firebird," for us, is fitting, as we constantly strive to improve our team from the ashes of the previous season. It started when the team went 0-7 at Chesapeake as rookies in 2006. Indeed, you would be stretching things a bit to call our 2006-2011 robots anything other than the "Brave Little Toasters."

But in 2012, we actually managed to score at everything. Not well, but we could shoot and actually score. But with a few strategic robot changes, enabled by the 30 pound allowance, between Chesapeake in week 2 and DC in Week 5, we could hit 10 points with layups in teleop and balance very well, indeed. The students felt that they were active participants in the matches. We still did not do well in the standings. That was not too important, from students' viewpoint. They were quite psyched up, that they had moved on from the Brave Little Toaster category. Maybe even to the Small Toasters That Maybe Could category. And we did off season events last autumn. We were an alliance captain at Battle of Baltimore, and, as alliance captains at IROC, actually won the event. In 2013, after a disasterous showing at Palmetto, with us not scoring at all, we put on a shooter and a lifter, that, at the DC regional, could give us 12 points in auto and hang for 10. (Provided that we had our network cable plugged in properly, of course. Doh.) At the end of DC, with us having a robot that could reliably score some, the students were asking to go to Baltimore in two weeks. Sure, we were now in our eighth year of not being even seriously considered for an elimination pick, but the students were seriously inspired to work even more in this off season to improve the team.

Our ability to improve out of the Brave Little Toaster category in both of the last two years has been directly attributable to the 30 lb allowance. The (self-perceived) move out of the Brave Little Toaster category has had a HUGE impact on the inspiration impacting our team members. They have more confidence, they want to do more off season activities, including training. We have no delusions that we can build Super Shiny Hot Rods or even Cool Golf Carts. Yet.

If we had the ability to work on the robot some, after the end of Build Season, it would have a positive impact on our team and a reduction in Mentor load. If we were authorized to work on the robot, outside of the bag, in our shop, for about 12 hours a week, with a ~30 lb limit for improvable components/assemblies, the following would change for us:
1) We would no longer attempt to build robot two. We tried to build robot two in 2010 and 2012, and it was a huge waste of resources and time, as we did not get it finished in time for us to do any good.
2) We would reduce the need to build prototyping stands. We built prototyping stands for our 2012 shooter and 2013 shooter and lifter. All three stands were a waste of time, in my book, that did little to directly inspire the students. These stands were only necessary due to the bag restrictions. Yes, engineers do this sort of thing all the time, when access to the real thing is limited. But FIRST should be in the business of reducing mentor work load to get more inspiration into the students. I hate busy work. For me or anyone else.
3) Our students could practice driving and playing the game at home. Invaluable. Test, break, repair, practice.
4) As we would have a more complete robot on Thursday morning, we would have a better chance to do practice rounds before the field closed at 4 PM.

The students on my team have been more inspired the past 15 months than the previous 6 years combined. It has had little to do with the capabilities of other teams, even the elite teams. In my opinion, the inspiration of our students has everything to do with how well our own team achieves the game objectives. As simple as they may be, it is our robot's ability to do score some that inspires our students.

[simplyTired]

Originally Posted by Cory

40% of teams have no hope of ever getting anywhere near the great (or even pretty good) teams, IMO. The best hope would be that if you make build an open process the teams in the first two categories could have the ability (through more time) to help those "lower tier" teams to at least build functional robots that could meet some minimum standard of competitiveness.

I find this slightly upsetting that you would believe 40% of the teams have no ambition to strive for the excellence you compete at. As a member of said 40%, despite not reaching greatness so easily, we still have an ultimate goal of reaching it at some point. It can be extremely difficult to believe in when year after year you don't reach simple goals like eliminations, but that doesn't take us away from striving to compete with every team including the top tier ones.

As a mentor on a lower tier team, I assume that removing a 6 week barrier would basically spread our current schedule over a greater time period rather than increasing the total time spent significantly. Although, considering mid-tier teams would choose to use their extra time to be better, I can see creating a massive gap between those teams that choose to milk the extra time for everything its worth and those that choose to spread it out and take more breaks.

I realize that its a choice a team has to make, but it creates a situation where a team somewhat has to choose between burning their mentors out and having a chance at winning or taking breaks and settling for a sub-average robot.

I think your proposal would raise half of the teams and entrench the other half even further in a position where its extremely difficult to break out of.

[Madison]

Originally Posted by simplyTired

I find this slightly upsetting that you would believe 40% of the teams have no ambition to strive for the excellence you compete at.

He didn't say that 40% of teams have no desire to be excellent -- he said 40% will not achieve excellence. If excellence is defined as playing in elimination rounds, in a field of 50 teams, more than 50% won't achieve excellence. At a Championship with 100 teams in a division, 75% won't achieve excellence. Winning the championship? 6 each year do that; 1.5% of teams at the event.

This is reality and I don't think it's meant as a dig against anyone. In this case, I think Jim Zondag's metric -- a team contributing positively to the outcome of each of its matches -- is a good judge of how excellent a team is on the field. Giving teams more time should, in nearly every universe, allow them to produce something that is more effective at achieving that than if they had less time.

[waialua359]

Originally Posted by Chris Hibner

This may sound like a stupid question, but I'd like some serious responses.

What about shortening the build season to 4 or 5 weeks, with no witholding?

Chris,
we could do it and usually do anyways, due to other logistical factors being from Hawaii. Can we build a top teen robot? I think we have the past few years.
But top 10? Probably never in a shortened season.