New Hire

[Modder1]

So I hired a new guy who has a full time job as some type of engineer. He is new to Canada and said that back is his country he did fix a couple iPhones and a few odds, nothing serious, he was sure to let me know he wasn't a superstar or anything. He did great his first day with regular repairs in my view and showed promise. He wasn't fast but he got it done and didn't cost me in the end and the shop maybe even profited a small amount. He fixed an iPhone 6 screen, iPad 2 digitizer, and a Samsung S7 LCD. He wasn't sure where the battery connector was for the iPhone 6 but I showed him and it was fine. His second shift he did an iPhone 6 lcd without unplugging the battery, he unplugged the Power and Volume cables instead mistakenly. Blew the backlight filter fl2024. Not a problem I changed it and all was good, he panicked but I assured him it probably wouldn't happen again. Now his third shift doing a full lcd/digitizer with frame change on a blackberry q5 he somehow fucked it and the customer was freaking. Luckily I had a like new one better than hers and got her data onto it, gave her some cases, new charger, and new headphones, all without any charge. Then he fucked the connector on an xperia Z tablet. This is a pretty hardy connector. I can take the old one off I told him and swap it so I said take it apart so I can do that safely. He broke the glass. This was a customers part as I don't stock that but made the mistake of telling the customer if they got it I would do it. He also bent the shit out of an s6 sim tray by not taking it out and trying to get the board out. Luckily the sim reader and everything else was not damaged. Then an ipad mini 3 home button I am not sure if it was broken or not put back properly I have to open it. He did a couple mini's on his 2nd shift so I gave him the newer one and warned him about the home button. He did show it to me and it looked fine but upon reassembly it doesn't work.
So, what do you guys think? Should I take him back for a 4th shift? Cost me a bundle already and being that he has a full time gig, I don't think I should but my wife says I can't work with anyone. I think I can work with anyone who can do a good job, show up on time and all of that. For me, it has been hard to even find someone to sweep, mop, and dust. I have lots of collectibles in my store and one guy within 1o minutes ripped off a shit ton of feathers off the feather duster and broke a wolverine figurine by pulling him to the ground with the feather duster. A limited edition run of 1500 this figurine.
fml when it comes to hiring

 

[dukefawks]

You cannot teach someone to be careful. You either have the "touch" or you are oblivious that you are ripping shit apart. I would ditch him, no point in keeping someone that can't even swap an LCD without fucking shit up.

 

[larossmann]

but my wife says I can't work with anyone.

What is her argument? Statements like this require an argument to back them up. Does she have experience in this field? Is there specific criticism? Or is this some overly general statement for the sake of making conversation?

He wasn't sure where the battery connector was for the iPhone 6 but I showed him and it was fine.

Are you kidding? There's a wire between the battery and the board. If he followed the wire that goes from the battery to the board, he'd know which connector was for the battery. If I wanted to unplug my lamp without unplugging my camera, I would follow the wire for my lamp to see which plug is for the lamp prior to unplugging anything. This isn't engineering, it's just the fundamentals of logical thinking and analysis. If someone does not have that, there is no hope for the future. You can train someone with a brain on how to add and subtract, but you can't insert a brain into the brainless. It's not possible.

Even scarier, you'll find that the more you sift through people, the more you'll find people who have adapted their handicap of being braindead. They are EXCELLENT at hiding their incapability of problem solving or independent thought using tools such as smalltalk, over-confidence, charm, persuasion whatever; they'll use tools to skirt around not being able to think. They'll fool you if you don't know what to look for.

On the flip side, there are people with brains that no one noticed. You need to find the people with a brain that no one noticed. They are waiting and praying to be discovered. Not all intelligent people have the initiative to go into business for themselves or take on new challenges. You need to find people who can think whose brains are being underutilized and put them to work.

The person doing all my retina LCDs, air screens, etc. worked part time for low wage at a pharmacy. She put band aids on shelves and swept. She can do a retina screen in under 30 minutes and it looks like it came out of the box at an Apple store. She is not an engineer. She can't recognize GRUB as a bootloader, she thinks it's a virus. She's the best person I've ever found to do all of this work. Why? because it isn't experience that matters - it's the ability to think. Not engineer level thinking, but this small level shit - will this crack if I move my hand that way, is there a component there that my nail will rip, etc.

A few years ago I hired someone who had experience doing tech work in the military. I thought if he was good enough for the army he was good enough here. Everytime he touched a phone he'd rip some cable, or it wouldn't work, and we never figured out why. Totally disassembling it and re-assembling it fixed it everytime. He would manage to knock components off with his nails on some of the later ones. One time he ripped an iPad wifi or 3g antenna and tried soldering it back on with 18 awg speaker wire and thought the customer wouldn't notice. He's now senior engineer at some hotel. Do you know how much this scares me? I will never stay at that hotel for fear of a wall caving in on me or drowning in my bed after a water main bursts.

You either have an IQ over 80 and can realize that your fingernails can knock components off or you don't. If you fire someone for a single fuckup, IMO that's wrong. However, you need to be able to recognize patterns in people so you can tell the difference between one plausible fuckup and a stream of plausible fuckups if you are going to take your business to the next level.

People are always going to have excuses. "I didn't notice that. The components are small. You're working me too fast. This is new, I have to learn." and all of this goes by the wayside the moment you find someone new, who has never done it before, who figures it out. Who just gets it. Who figures it out as they go, with no excuses, and learns along the way. Then you'll look back at all the excuses you tolerated and want to beat the shit out of your past self for ever listening to it. How much time is required to learn? What is too fast for a specific repair or estimate? What should you reasonably expect someone to notice? You'll never know for sure until you find someone who is capable of doing the job and use them as the yardstick by which to measure everyone else. And guess what, if you are a technician looking to hire an employee to do what you do, YOU HAVE THAT PERSON TO USE AS A YARDSTICK ALREADY!! YOURSELF!!

This problem befalls many in management who have never done the job that they are hiring someone to do. If you can't do something yourself, it's difficult to tell if you're being BS'd by an employee. For example, before I did large chip BGA rework, I hired someone to do it for me. Sometimes it'd fail, but it'd take 3-4 hours to find out it failed on a good day, 5-6 on a bad. What hurt me wasn't finding out that the job didn't work - it was that it took 3-4 hours to do a single job. Sometimes 5-6, and there was "no time" to do anything else. I thought fine; who am I to say what is fair? I never did it. Then my friend and I decided to give it a go one night, never having done large chip BGA rework, and our first job worked and took an hour and seventeen minutes. My friend had spent three years in federal prison, had never used a BGA machine, and just figured it out. I let the employee go the next week. If someone fresh out of jail who's never done BGA rework can replace a chip in an hour and 17 minutes, then there's no reason someone with years of experience must take 3-5 hours.

Metrics are so important. A basis of comparison is so important. When you know how to do the job you are giving to someone else, you understand the learning curve. This puts you in an excellent position to determine what is a reasonable fuckup, vs. when you are being bullshitted by excuses for bad work.

Another example - a few years ago I hired someone to help on the weekend. I always got jobs done quickly, but wanted to be able to do board repair without having to walk up to the front constantly. I hire this person who is fixing iPhone 5 screens. Anyone who is in this business understands that an iPhone 5 screen repair takes under 10 minutes. We were replacing them with fully assembled assemblies, small parts pre-attached to the screens at the supplier. Our screens had home buttons, earpieces, backplate and all attached to the screen. This was a job that now should not take longer than 2-3 minutes. The person I got, six weeks in, was still taking MORE THAN THIRTY MINUTES TO REPAIR AN IPHONE 5 SCREEN USING PRE-ASSEMBLED ASSEMBLIES!! I was sitting in my office, fixing boards & answering phone calls on my bluetooth - so she answered the phone two or three times. I fixed four motherboards inside of an hour.

She had fixed 2 iPhones in an HOUR!!

My point here, is in how talented bad employees are at convincing others that the task they've been given is impossible. She did such a good job through body language & how she explained what she was doing to the customer when asked why it was taking so long. If you did not open iPhones, you would look at what she was doing and believe this was genuine rocket science. Every excuse that came out of her mouth would make total sense. Look at what one of the customers wrote back to us. This ticket is almost three years old at this point but I'll never forget it. It was the point at which I realized that people who are completely inept at their job, are amazingly well qualified to pretend they are good at their job to people who don't know any better.





I interrupted a board repair, and walked up to the front of the store when I realized that she was with the same person for over 40 minutes. I opened a box that contained a stuffed animal sheep toy that a fan had sent me, and told her "keep going" and went back to my office. Another customer walked in to pick up a previous iPhone, it took her 3 minutes to check someone out - this should take 20 seconds. She answered the phone for someone and had to keep them on hold while she checked the other person out because she couldn't charge someone $80 and talk on the phone at the same time.

The worst part of all of this? The customer has no idea that this person simply sucks at their job - they blame you, the business owner, for being an asshole to the employee who is making you look like an asshole. And guess what? You are an asshole - for picking them in the first place! When you're dealing with bad employees, you're better off with no one at all. I have done this job. It is not impossible! Me answering the phone on a bluetooth as I worked, fixing each customer's phone in 5 minutes or less, and doing board repairs in the office inbetween people walking in was somewhat frustrating, but each customer had a positive experience. They left amazing reviews. They had smiles on their faces. I have empirical evidence that what I am asking is reasonable. Yet, when I hire someone, give them 25% of my workload, and I am worse off because of it because them at their max capacity can't handle 25% of my workload. I begin to doubt myself. Are my standards too high?

No. I find someone else. I show them how to do it. They fix the phone in 4 minutes on their third try. When a new one comes out they figure it out on their own and become better than you. Rather than cover up the employee's mistakes so you look good to the customer, the employee covers up yours. then I realize what I knew all along - the first person just sucked at their job.

Your staff has to make your life easier. If they don't, they just gotta go.

 

[Modder1]

Thanks for the input Louis and Duke.

 

[Gurmon]

Its the hardest thing finding GOOD people for the repair business. its much easier finding people for the support side of my business.

I went through 6 employees last year before i found one who I can train for general repair. i.e warranty repairs. swapping boards, clamshells, updating notes.

So did you ditch him ?

 

[Modder1]

I did yes. It also for me is very hard. I get pretty busy most days and it being just me to do everything even sweeping thr floor is reaelly hard. Hope I find someone soon at least for the front counter.