Most undervalued job

[Billfred]

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.

[galewind]

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.

[Cuog]

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.

[CyberWolf_22]

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.

[mizscience]

Originally Posted by 1359th Scalawag

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.

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...

[Po-ser]

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

[MWTrek]

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!!!

[Bill_Hancoc]

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.

[Rapt0r9]

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."

[geeknerd99]

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)

Originally Posted by Rapt0r9

Probably electrical.

(omitted for space considerations)

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."

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 : "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)

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

Me:

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.

[popo308]

Originally Posted by BuddyB309

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?

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.

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by geeknerd99

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

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.

[KathieK]

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.

[pakratt1991]

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.

[Jaine Perotti]

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.