{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"Factory Field Notes","title":"Ep. 16 | PLC Programming Job With Zero Experience: Stay or Go Back to School? [Honest Answer]","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":1600,"description":"Three weeks into a new PLC programming job with zero PLC experience, no training and nobody nearby to ask. That question drives this episode, along with four more from the plant floor.\nSubscribe for weekly industrial automation and manufacturing discussions.\nLearn more at Joltek:\n- Unmanaged Switches and Cybersecurity: https://www.joltek.com/blog/industrial-unmanaged-switches-cybersecurity\n- PLC Lifecycle and Migration: https://www.joltek.com/blog/rockwell-plc-lifecycle-migration-guide\n- Industrial Ethernet Reliability: https://www.joltek.com/blog/industrial-ethernet-reliability\nThe career question is the one worth sitting with. A computer science graduate takes a PLC programmer role, is promised training, gets one day of introduction, then is left alone while the rest of the team sits in another country. Three weeks in, they are asking whether an associate degree in industrial maintenance would have been smarter. My answer is no, and it is not close. Nobody hired that person believing they had ten years of ladder logic behind them. What is missing is not a degree, it is a request. Find the program, price it, say how long it takes and what it lets you do that you cannot do today, and hand your manager a decision that is easy to approve. I went through this at Procter and Gamble. By the time the company sent me to official Rockwell Automation training I knew more than the course covered, because I had been learning RSLogix 500 and Studio 5000 on live projects. The average controls engineer now earns $119,682, up 4.3 percent year over year, and 38 percent of manufacturers name the skilled worker shortage as a top business threat. Leverage sits with the person willing to learn on the job.\nThe episode opens with a first control panel built by someone four years into filling and capping machines. The layout is good: breakers top left, a 24 volt supply feeding the switch and the controller, wire duct run so the wiring lands clean. Two things stand out. The controller...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/bLSthDC6mLkQ3vEghIEbytYZBvBBofsfsFEpsA-BvSs/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS83ZDg0/MTRlOGJkNzQxN2Ex/M2NlNjg4N2EwMzI1/MmM4NS5wbmc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}