Skill versus production

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James L

James L

Senior Member
Location
Kansas Cty, Mo, USA
Occupation
Electrician
I know in an ideal world we could have the perfect blend of skill and production. But considering nothing is ideal, which do you lean more heavily on when hiring?

Related to this issue is pay. When determining someone's rate of pay, do you have a percentage of what you charge? Or just a range based on current going rate?

Related to this pay rate is production. How much expectation do you place on your guy(s) to produce at a level you're accustomed to seeing?
 
Hv&Lv said:
I prefer skill first.
Production will follow with repetition IMO.
A productive person with no skills tends to be counterproductive in the end.
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What if you have a 30+ year electrician who takes 3 - 4 times longer on tasks than what you've bid for?

Do you think there's hope that he'll speed up?
 
James L said:
What if you have a 30+ year electrician who takes 3 - 4 times longer on tasks than what you've bid for?

Do you think there's hope that he'll speed up?
Click to expand...
Well, at some point you don’t call that skill, you call it lackadaisical
 
James L said:
What if you have a 30+ year electrician who takes 3 - 4 times longer on tasks than what you've bid for?

Do you think there's hope that he'll speed up?
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James L said:
But if everything he does is done well, he's got good skill
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If I may nitpick the terms a bit: I wouldn't say someone has skills if they are really slow. If I task someone with say making up a "tricky" splice, say 4 solids two strandeds and a couple 18 gauge from fixture whips, if it takes him 10 minutes to do it I don't care if it's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen and framed next to the Mona Lisa, I'm not saying he has skills.

I have come to believe that some people don't have it and never will.

I am dealing with these issues with a helper/apprentice I hired. I admit I am somewhat naive to people at the entry level as I have been doing this for 24 years now and pretty much never had to train anybody or work with newbies, but he seems to really struggle with almost everything. Based on his age and his prior experience, I really don't see him getting much better
 
What a loaded question.
I like to say to most I work around. I do all day what takes you all day to do. They don't get it.
You don't want to hear the full story.
 
electrofelon said:
If I may nitpick the terms a bit: I wouldn't say someone has skills if they are really slow. If I task someone with say making up a "tricky" splice, say 4 solids two strandeds and a couple 18 gauge from fixture whips, if it takes him 10 minutes to do it I don't care if it's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen and framed next to the Mona Lisa, I'm not saying he has skills.
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The guy in question has been with me 3 days.
First task was adding a subpanel in a stud wall, next bay over from main panel, and run 6 home runs that were already in the basement, and land them in subpanel.

I had all the materials there, both panels same brand, 3" long 1-1/4" nipple to go through stud, 2 sizes of hole saw (big hole through stud, smaller hole for KO, reducing washers, lock rings, bushings, 4 dual function breakers, 2 standard breakers, 100 amp breaker, short pieces of #3, #4 and #6 copper for feeder.....

I honestly figured I would take 3 to 3-1/2 hours on the whole thing. He spent 14 hours. It was all correct and looked really nice.

Next task was cutting in 2 island receptacles.
The Romex was already in the cabinet.
Set a 1900 box, jump.out with 2 feet to each recep. All materials laid out already. I figured it would take me an hour. It took him 3 hours. Beautiful job

He does have skill.
But good grief is he ever slow
electrofelon said:
I have come to believe that some people don't have it and never will.

I am dealing with these issues with a helper/apprentice I hired. I admit I am somewhat naive to people at the entry level as I have been doing this for 24 years now and pretty much never had to train anybody or work with newbies, but he seems to really struggle with almost everything. Based on his age and his prior experience, I really don't see him getting much better
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My last 15 or 20 guys have been that same guy.
Struggling with every task. I had one guy spend a day and a half running 4/0 SER-g across a 3-car garage and down to basement on a new home rough-in. Day and a half. And he was struggling to get it stubbed outside, so I had to do that.

The guy I have now, I've told him at least 10 times in 3 days that it's shocking how slow he is. He literally takes 3-4 times longer on everything

But I've also told him I greatly appreciate the fact that I can walk away from him without feeling like I'm gonna regret it.

I'm torn, really.
How long do I pay him 50% more than I charge, hoping he speeds up?
 
James L said:
The guy in question has been with me 3 days.
First task was adding a subpanel in a stud wall, next bay over from main panel, and run 6 home runs that were already in the basement, and land them in subpanel.

I had all the materials there, both panels same brand, 3" long 1-1/4" nipple to go through stud, 2 sizes of hole saw (big hole through stud, smaller hole for KO, reducing washers, lock rings, bushings, 4 dual function breakers, 2 standard breakers, 100 amp breaker, short pieces of #3, #4 and #6 copper for feeder.....

I honestly figured I would take 3 to 3-1/2 hours on the whole thing. He spent 14 hours. It was all correct and looked really nice.

Next task was cutting in 2 island receptacles.
The Romex was already in the cabinet.
Set a 1900 box, jump.out with 2 feet to each recep. All materials laid out already. I figured it would take me an hour. It took him 3 hours. Beautiful job

He does have skill.
But good grief is he ever slow

My last 15 or 20 guys have been that same guy.
Struggling with every task. I had one guy spend a day and a half running 4/0 SER-g across a 3-car garage and down to basement on a new home rough-in. Day and a half. And he was struggling to get it stubbed outside, so I had to do that.

The guy I have now, I've told him at least 10 times in 3 days that it's shocking how slow he is. He literally takes 3-4 times longer on everything

But I've also told him I greatly appreciate the fact that I can walk away from him without feeling like I'm gonna regret it.

I'm torn, really.
How long do I pay him 50% more than I charge, hoping he speeds up?
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Yeah it's rough. It's also funny you mentioned this because I was thinking about asking the forum for advice on my guy who seems to have the same issues.

My guy is like yours I think where I don't have to worry about him doing something sloppy or of low quality. I think he is just so paranoid about doing something wrong or not correctly or that will fail prematurely, that he way overcompensates and just takes forever. I have gotten to the point where I have just told him to not worry about what it looks like whatsoever, that he needs to focus on doing things faster. A couple examples: he was also making up a panel once, surface mount with some quads and twist locks for a server room. I'm wondering what was taking him hours and hours to do this, and I find out he was stripping all his wires so the insulation would exactly and at the clamp on the devices and breakers. Now sure, I don't want a quarter inch of bare conductor sticking outside the clamp plate but it doesn't have to be exact where you are spending like a full minute on every strip. Another thing I realized was he was doing almost everything by hand, so I got him using his screw gun for a lot more stuff.

Then there is also his mechanical ability which just seems to be far below mine. Like we were next to each other putting on strut clamps once and I was about twice as fast at putting them up. Self drilling metal tek screws is something he really struggles with too to the point where he was pre-drilling holes and everything because pretty much every other one he did would kick out on him. I mean I get not being good at conduit bending if you haven't done a ton of it, but some of these things seem super basic, and this guy was even a mechanic for years and has done electrical work for himself and friends for many years... It's not like he had an office job for the first half of his life and suddenly got into this,

It's a real struggle, and the big issue is he is way overpaid as I thought his abilities would be much better. I wish I could duplicate myself.
 
When I was an apprentice working on a large housing project, a journeyman was called out by the foreman for working to slow. He was assigned to doing the finish. His solution was not to wire in the devices. The foreman was impressed, until the houses were finished. Nothing worked !
 
mtnelect said:
When I was an apprentice working on a large housing project, a journeyman was called out by the foreman for working to slow. He was assigned to doing the finish. His solution was not to wire in the devices. The foreman was impressed, until the houses were finished. Nothing worked !
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I knew a guy who did that once 🤭
 
James L said:
The guy in question has been with me 3 days.

The guy I have now, I've told him at least 10 times in 3 days that it's shocking how slow he is.
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Maybe the last company this guy worked for had different requirements.

It can take a few days for a man to shift gears and figure out what is expected at a new job.

Ask him what he did at his last job and this may provide an answer.
 
electrofelon said:
I think he is just so paranoid about doing something wrong or not correctly or that will fail prematurely, that he way overcompensates and just takes forever.
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I know a couple of people like that, also that want to follow instructions exactly (3/4" means just that, not 5/8, not 7/8, etc). They'll do precise work but it won't be quick, and there' isn't much you can do that will change it because these are not rational* behaviors. Well, you can probably explain that things like the wire strip distance has some tolerance or that certain things are "good enough", but they won't do those right off because nobody tells them it's OK.

*driven by reason or logic

There's a digression into how neurotypical and neurodivergent people behave in the same circumstances, but that's getting off-topic.
 
James L said:
What if you have a 30+ year electrician who takes 3 - 4 times longer on tasks than what you've bid for?

Do you think there's hope that he'll speed up?
Click to expand...
There is always hope. Maybe what you are asking him to do is not something he has a lot of experience at. Maybe where he used to work they had different expectations of what tasks should take. have you bothered to tell him what you expect? Giving him a list of tasks and what you think it should take to complete those tasks might help him.
 
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