Enjablog

So, it doesn’t help at all that the new intern (I’m going with Intern02) was one of my classmates the past 2 semesters. I didn’t really think anything of it at the time — he sent me his resume and I was only unimpressed with him at the time, so I forwarded it along. (Though, that’s definitely my fault. I need to stop forwarding resumes from people whose emails I want need to correct before forwarding. The last 2 have been duds. Cover letters just shouldn’t include things like, “Also, I can’t remember for sure, am I doing [this week's assignment]?”)

Little did I know how incorrect and counter-productive his work would turn out to be a few weeks later. I take a little solace (very little) in the fact that I didn’t actually recommend him. I said, “you probably shouldn’t ask me.” Which is to say, I didn’t actively advocate against him, but hell if that kind of recommendation helps.

But. I’m a professional, right? And he’s here to learn. So I had some work that needed to be done and a bunch of people too busy to do it. It was even interesting work (to me) — researching equipment for a ship: cranes, winches, rescue boats, etc.

I thought it would take a couple hours… A day and a half later, I take my first look at his results. The first 3 items I checked were off from what I expected by over 7 tons each — surprisingly low values.

After a little probing to find out what his sources were and what models/designs he was looking at, it turns out he was looking at completely different equipment, but “just scaled up.” Using what scaling factor? Your own engineering judgement? Uh, you know, math.

Continuing down the list of his bad data, I look closer at the cranes he cited. They’re drivable. You know, for land. Plus, it’s the wrong capacity. (It turns out he found a website that had a list of cranes for “33-150 mt.” Which he took to mean he should take the first and last cranes from that page and those would be for “33 mt and 150 mt, respectively.”) But wait, let’s go back. It’s got wheels on it. That’s not what we want for a ship.

Alright, so I resolved months ago to train some usefulness into my coworkers, as their incompetence was a reflection on me. So, Intern02 will learn something this summer. And if it ends up just being, “Duck when Enjanerd starts punching knowledge into me,” I’ll settle for that. But I hope it’s something work-related. For his sake.