Story:
I gave my resignation to my company, and declined their counter offer. The CEO got on the phone and made me an offer that I could not walk away from. It is however based on a two year plan to have me into a much better and much more lucrative position. My company is going to be providing me with tons of training and allowing me to attend all of the Allen Bradley classes and seminars that we have on Drives, PLC’s, Motor Control, MCC’s etc… They are priming me to take an industrial sales / engineering position. I have no engineering background, but I have the aptitude to perform very well in that type of position.
What I need:
I do not want to just take their training and move forward. It will be much better for me if before I even step foot in the class room I am decently adept at the applications. Aside from going back to college and fighting out an engineering degree on my limited time schedule, what other avenues do you use, or have seen used to gain loads of knowledge on these topics? I am not trying to be a full fledged EE, but I have to have the technical capability to spec the jobs, recognize flaws / cause of failure, and to really not look like a dumb ass sales man that doesn’t know his product and it’s applications.
Any links, or recommended reading that you can provide would be useful.
There are wiki’s for damn near everything these days.
Specsmanship can be a real PITA for equipment. It seems as though most EOM’s choose their own way of giving the tech data.
Honestly, just go online and do research… figure out a project you want to do for yourself and do all the background research on how to do it. Read all the users manuals, technical bulletins, application notes, etc. You’ll learn a TON from that.
Hands-on experience of the tasks at hand will teach you a lot more than a class that will fill your brain with 85% of things you will not ever deal with or need to know.
Just like engineering. The entire engineer schooling process teaches you HOW to think and you learn a little bit in the process. Even after 4+ years of college/training, you’ll learn more in your first few months of actual experience in the field that you choose to make your “career”.
Hands-on expereience is where you are going to learn. And you’ll learn more than a “degree” since it will be specific to what you are doing. Take the AB courses, and get as much exposure as you possibly can.
Just reading isn’t going to do all that much. The more work you can get, the better off you’ll be. It is the pratical application that is going to teach you, the dumb sales guy version will come from reading and thinking it means you know what you are talking about.
:lol: I’ve got a 20 slot SLC-500 rack, a Spectrum Controls Webport, and a pair of laptops sitting on my kitchen table. I’m going to be spending my weekend putting together the last pieces of my new control system so that I’m not the reason a project that has executive VP level attention is fucked up. Come on over. Bring beer! I’ll teach you everything I know.
But seriously, I’m doing what it sounds like you’re talking about selling. I studied mechanical engineering. I took one programming course and hated it. Now I’m the guy that decides when 3,000 horsepower 4160V motors start and stop. :roflpicard: