Dammit, Jim, I'm an Engineer, Not a Fireman

[Dale H. Cook]

From time to time I am approached by stations that want me to work for them, but although they say they are looking for a contract engineer what they really want is a fireman. They want someone they can call when something is on fire, and after the flames are out they don't want to see or pay that person again until something else is on fire. I have recently been approached by some station clusters under a few different owners who are looking for an engineer because the engineer that all of them used died a few months ago. They all apparently want a fireman.

In my mind that is not contract engineering, because there is nothing to contract about. A contract engineer contracts, for a monthly retainer covering a predetermined maximum number of monthly hours, to undertake predefined maintenance of the station physical plant and to be on call for emergencies. A fireman is not a contract engineer because he is not under contract to provide maintenance.

Stations say that they cannot afford a retainer. That seems shortsighted to me - they cannot afford to pay someone to keep them on the air, but they can afford to be off the air and losing money, sometimes for days, while they are trying to find a fireman to put out their conflagration.

I have been in radio engineering for 40+ years, and serving as a salaried chief engineer, or as a contract engineer, for radio stations (and one small TV station) has been the major (and usually the only) source of my income for 30+ years. I am too old to be a fireman, and have no desire to work on a physical plant which receives no maintenance.

What say you?

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

Excellent word picture!

 

[Kmagrill]

Many years ago, I watched a presentation by a radio sales guru named Pam Lontos. One of the exercises she did was pin dollar bills all over someone's suit and they pretend to be the prospect. Their job is to tell the salesman that they have no money, which, of course, is clearly absurd. The excercise is for the salesman to overcome the objections of the buyer and show how the benefits of the station overcome the costs. You have taken step 1. You have them talking. Now, you have to overcome an average of 7 objections before closing the sale. Selling a service into radio is no different than radio selling itself to clients. If you overcome the objections, you will get the sale. When negotiating, never say "no". Instead say, "that doesn't work for me, because...". That lets you explain, overcome the objection and keep negotiating. When someone says NO, the negotiation is over. Good luck.

 

[RadeoEngineer]

Retirement is a pleasure.

 

[ellenparks]

This isn't just a symptom of radio it's industry all over the country. Yet, business still believes that by cutting everything to the bone they can beat the reaper so to speak and keep running or, worse yet, they run the one engineer to death keeping aging stations on the air. It's just a throwback to the 1860's live with it.

 

[kenglish]

Dale, I heard basically the same story from some major market guys about 30+ years ago (at AMPEX training, I think).
Stations hire some bright, energetic engineer to come in, on the premise that he's going to be there a long time.
He works hard to fix everything, fine-tunes their system, makes lots of improvements.
Boss comes in and says, "We don't need an engineer now...everything's working. Bye, bye."

To some stations, the engineer is just a glorified "light bulb changer".

It just seems to be getting more and more universal.

 

[OKCRadioGuy]

It seems to me that it's becoming a huge divide between stations that are willing to do things right, and those that won't. The real thing for contract engineers to do is simply seperate themselves from those with a bad repuation for doing things wrong. Unless they have a good reputation or have huge sums of cash stacked up before you travel, let them burn. The help they'll get is exactly what they pay for.

 

[BobOnTheJob]

Some pay a retainer, some don't. But the ones that don't opt for the retainer pay from the top line on the rate card when they do call. And those are the ones that make me smile the biggest when the phone rings.

 

[Bengalsfan]

Some pay a retainer, some don't. But the ones that don't opt for the retainer pay from the top line on the rate card when they do call. And those are the ones that make me smile the biggest when the phone rings.

And I don't put out one fire until the previous fire has been paid for. I know of an engineer near us Bob, who allowed a station owner to run up tens of thousands of dollars in service over several years. That owner recently died and the chances of that contractor seeing his money are slim to none now.

yes, the ones that don't pay the retainer get the highest rate....and don't get anymore service until the account is at a zero balance. Amazing how quickly an owner can find their check book when the station goes off the air and nobody to put it back on.

I'm happy to be a fireman, as long as stations pay the fireman rate.

 

[SirRoxalot]

I'd say that Dale assessed the situation succinctly in four short paragraphs. You could pretty much send them to a prospective client with minor changes, and let them decide if they wanted to hire you or not. It sounds like Dale really doesn't want those clients who aren't smart enough to pay for regular maintenance. At some point in life, that sounds like a reasonable choice to make.

 

[BobOnTheJob]

It sounds like Dale really doesn't want those clients who aren't smart enough to pay for regular maintenance.

My rate card does a splendid job of separating the smart ones from the not so smart ones. And sometimes it will eventually even convert a not so smart one into a smart one. Station owners are not immune from education in the school of hard knocks...some just take longer to graduate than others.

 

[Dale H. Cook]

It sounds like Dale really doesn't want those clients who aren't smart enough to pay for regular maintenance.

That is correct. Here's an example:

An old friend of mine is PD/Ops Manager at a standalone AM. The owner can apparently buy a new Caddy every 2-3 years, but cannot afford to replace his ~35 year old transmitter, which, although it was the most expensive at that power level when new, has had no PM for maybe 20 years and breaks down several times each year. It should have been retired to a backup role 15-20 years ago. It is so filthy and nasty that I want nothing to do with it. Another concern at that station is that the tower, which is just under 200 feet, was originally near the glide slope of a runway at the local airport. That runway was decomissioned and torn out over 30 years ago. At that time the FAA dropped the requirement that the tower be lit and painted. Turning off the lights was fine, but the tower has not been scraped or painted in more than 30 years. It now appears to be more rust than steel, and one day a storm wind will drop it onto the transmitter building which is at the foot of the tower. If enough additional time passes the guy tension will eventually cause it to collapse even without a storm wind. I have no intention of being in that building when that happens. The owner has been told about these problems multiple times by multiple engineers and will not address them.

At some point in life, that sounds like a reasonable choice to make.

At my age (60), and considering that I have medical problems that have slowed me down some but not otherwise overly affected me, it is the only choice for me. I am the senior (albeit only) contract engineer in the market who does not have another job. My experience and qualifications are well known in the market. I will take on only those stations where the owners are concerned with staying on the air so they do not lose money. I am not interested in stations whose owners think only of not spending money, or who are primarily concerned with how much of it they can put in their pockets. I can afford to accept work on my own terms - the house is completely paid for, the vehicles are completely paid for, the credit card bills and other bills are paid in full as soon as they arrive, and there is money in the bank. Were it not for a small number of station owners who are willing to pay me to maintain their facilities (all of them customers for at least ten years), and who depend upon me, I would retire tomorrow.

 

[Lazy J]

The greatest thing about being a Contract Engineer is the ability to say "NO". When a client comes up with some hair-brained idea just to save a couple of bucks, I simply tell them... No. I'm sorry, but I'm not willing to waste my time setting something up completely wrong, just to save you a couple of bucks. I'll be happy to set it up correctly, or you can find another contract engineer.
Believe it or not, this usually catches them so off guard, they accept my advice and do it correctly the first time.

 

[OlderRadioGuy]

By the time you're old and cynical, you've come to learn (at least) two things:

1 - The "bigger" the "emergency", the longer it will take to get paid;
2 - When a call comes from one of those with a "big emergency" who pay slowly, if you wait 24 hours before returning the call, the fire has always gone out.

Actually, I was still quite young, but already cynical, when I learned this.

 

[Tom Wells]

I'm a firefighter at an onerous junkmail printer.
I just laugh now when things break, and tell them exactly why if it's some stupid lack of proper maintenance.

Last Week was a great example. I get to work 23:00, an hour later...
50 hp air blower for pressurized air to float a web of paper over 45 degree angle bars....
Maybe a year old. Easy access to lube points. Press runs 80-90 uptime. When no work, no crew, so no maintenance.
Got a call out to the press. As I approach, I see the end of the motor up on the roof of the cinderblock switchgear room.
The end away from me is into the blower housing, which is about 3 feet in diameter.
At this end there are sparks flying out in a beautiful tangential/radial pattern.

They've got about another hour of the job to run, it's been making ugly noises for the past 6 hours, but they're
going to get this job done, so they want to know what to do.

I make the "cut across throat" sign to the manager and lead pressman. Seriously, they were running it with
sparks spraying out and they could see them!

There are only 4 other firefighters (electrical/electronic/computer/interface) besides myself to cover every hour
of the week. This for a company with 9 presses and an estimated quarterBillion in sales annually.
The best is when I'm in the middle of one brushfire and two other presses are calling for me. Haw!

The engineer hired to do development work maybe 18 months ago quit last weekend because he got sucked into firefighting
much of the time, and was given constraints to work with excessively cheap equipment, resulting in
headaches for everybody when the new cheap equipment is not stable or reliable in the long term.
Often it's not sufficiently robust for the heat, dirt, and vibration of printing presses.

Other times it's improper use/care. These all have automatic greasing, and it works well until someone refills the grease
tank with grease/air bubbles. Then the system gets confused and it has to be our problem for the next month until the
bubbles work their way through the system.
"What could be wrong?" they ask. "Can you fix it?" "Can't you just change something?"
Everybody has forgotten the sermon from just last month when another press had the same problem.
Sometimes now, if someone asks what went wrong I tell them not to ask if nothing is going to be done about
the root cause.

Then there's the belief that you can just spend a little money over here and "make it all better" when the
REAL problem is something obvious, big, ugly and expensive OVER THERE but no one wants to admit that's what's
going to have to change.

 

[SirRoxalot]

What was that old commercial that said "Pay me now, or pay me later"?

 

[RadeoEngineer]

What was that old commercial that said "Pay me now, or pay me later"?

Fram oil filters?

 

[Bengalsfan]

By the time you're old and cynical, you've come to learn (at least) two things:

1 - The "bigger" the "emergency", the longer it will take to get paid;

and the longer it will take for me to respond...if at all.

2 - When a call comes from one of those with a "big emergency" who pay slowly, if you wait 24 hours before returning the call, the fire has always gone out.

If I return the call at all. Let someone else put out the fire and then let them get stuck holding the bag. I have my time filled with people who pay their invoices on time to worry about those who don't. The same stations who drag you out 60-90 days to pay an invoice sure as hell do not do that to the power company! Or the rent.

 

[PTBoardOp94]

The same stations who drag you out 60-90 days to pay an invoice sure as hell do not do that to the power company!

From experience, some do. One place I worked had two disconnect notices from the power company in the span of 6 months or so.

 

[nocomradio]

This is fairly typical in nearly all businesses that rely on outside talent to keep things running. As far as I see it, these business owners get what they pay for when they cheap out.

Any piece of machinery, be it a factory line, transmitter, vacuum cleaner, fleet vehicle, etc NEEDS regular maintenance. Why people don't equate budgeting for, and spending on regular PM a return on their investment, I will never understand, particularly so when there is no backup unit or other means to keep things rolling. A fifth grader with a calculator can tell you that $20,000 in lost revenue is a lot more expensive than a $2,000 maintenance bill to head off any potential problems. Alas, most owners see the repairman or engineer as someone who is also digging into their pockets, rather than someone who is actually part of making them money in the long run. Its the standard mentality these days of "I want it now." rather than I want results that will last over the long term.

I started my own business over ten years ago, for many of the reasons mentioned above, but there are things I am not capable of doing for myself here and I need to hire outside contractors just the same. I treat them as a cost of doing business, and try to see things in the big picture. 99.9% of the time, everything runs smoothly because of it. We don't have fires to run around trying to douse.