[HN Gopher] Ask HN: In person industry tours and site visits
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Ask HN: In person industry tours and site visits
The head master of my primary school took a small group of students
every semester on industry site visits. I believe these site
visits played a meaningful role in developing my engineering and
entrepreneurial interests/thinking. Although I only vaguely
remember the details, I do have a strong lasting impression of the
locations/factories we visited and people we met. I got to see a
plastic pipe molding facility, coke cola bottling factory, first
wind power turbines in Cape Town area and assembled a door alarm
prototype at the neighboring university. This was all before the
age of 13. In university I had similar practical exposure doing an
internship at a boiler manufacturing factory, chicken processing
plant and finally a tech startup. I truly cherish these
experiences and glimpses into the real world. Obviously I knew very
little of what was really going on, but these experiences helped me
build a sort-of mental map to unpack my options at the time. Do
you think practical site visits as a teenager is a good idea? Have
you had similar exposure and did it have a lasting impact on you
too? Do you think we need to create more opportunities like this
for students?
Author : helghardt
Score : 71 points
Date : 2023-09-04 15:25 UTC (7 hours ago)
| solardev wrote:
| As a college student in the environmental sciences, I toured an
| awful lot of facilities and parks.
|
| Outdoors, we visited national and state parks, national forests,
| wastewater treatment ponds, community farms, private hobby farms,
| ranches, zoos, renewables projects, and more -- from both the
| visitor's side and also from a behind the scenes perspective,
| talking to the employees and owners there about how they work.
|
| Indoors, we went to aquariums, landfills and transfer stations,
| sewage processors, high efficiency refrigerator manufacturing
| shops, private net-zero energy homes, schools, museums, city
| councils, public meetings, arboretums, barns, and whatnot.
|
| It was a good swath of the parts of society that touch the
| environment and outdoor recreation, and profoundly shaped how I
| view Americana and rural areas in particular. No longer were they
| globs of indistinguishable wastelands, but filled with
| interesting (if sparsely populated) peoples and functions that
| operate largely beneath the radar, unknown to most of the
| country. That was especially the case after having spent time in
| the Silicon Valley tech and strip mall bubble.
|
| Most places in my experience would be happy to organize a group
| tour like that if you just ask nicely (I ran a few). Totally
| worth it.
| javiramos wrote:
| I went to a STEM summer camp in Switzerland where they took us to
| see a variety of industrial sites including the Turbomach
| generator manufacturing facility, the Gotthard tunnel when it was
| under construction, an optic fiber connector company, a nuclear
| power plant, and a few other places that I cannot remember. The
| visits had a profound impact on me and inspired me, in a large
| part, to pursue engineering.
| vogt wrote:
| Yes, practical exposure to any industry - particularly ones the
| teenager has an interest in - is a great thing.
|
| I went to what was called a "vocational" high school in the US.
| In schools like this you rotate between a week of academic class
| and a week of your chosen specialization. Every week for four
| years. I was in the "graphic design and publishing" shop so I was
| learning Photoshop, Illustrator and running offset lithographic
| printers (small ones lol) with actual industry vets. Other
| students had auto body, facilities management, electrical,
| cosmetology, nursing. Freshman year is called your "exploratory"
| year, where you select something like ~8 of the available trades
| the school has on offer, with the end goal being you try them and
| figure out which to commit to. I remember going through Culinary
| Arts and nearly spilling a bowl of hot soup all over a table of
| elderly people. That line of work was never in the cards for me.
|
| I'm not in graphic design anymore and "desktop publishing" barely
| exists as it did then, but the path certainly lead me to where I
| am today. I have NO clue what I'd be doing without that
| education.
| TuringNYC wrote:
| Not the same thing, but I remember all the site visits from Mr
| Roger's Neighborhood, even 40yrs later!
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mister_Rogers%27_Neighborhood
| ragebol wrote:
| Would still love to do such visits!
| pseudolus wrote:
| A number of cities have "open house" weekends where public and
| private buildings and infrastructure that is generally closed off
| is temporarily made open to the public. I've always hoped that
| these weekends would be expanded to include both manufacturing
| facilities and many of the utilities that are essential to our
| lives. I've been fortunate enough to have visited some of these
| facilities (as an adult) and have both always learned something
| and gained a greater appreciation of the role technology (non-IT)
| plays in our lives. In short, practical site visits are a
| fantastic idea that I'm sure my younger self would have enjoyed
| tremendously.
| nayuki wrote:
| Yeah, I love Doors Open Toronto (end of every May),
| https://www.toronto.ca/explore-enjoy/festivals-events/doors-...
| . Many of the sites are related to arts or churches, but some
| are infrastructure like a water treatment plant, public transit
| maintenance garages (TTC bus, streetcar, subway), natural gas
| power plant. I would love to see an expansion to more
| industrial sites in the open house.
| anfractuosity wrote:
| There's an interesting looking Japanese website encouraging
| industrial tourism.
|
| https://www.jetro.go.jp/en/eccj/ind_tourism/foods.html is the
| link for food, but there's a lot more categories such as life
| sciences and heavy industry.
|
| (I found that link from HN a little while ago,
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33680460 is the HN
| submission, which might have other interesting info on it)
| simonbarker87 wrote:
| Yes, they are fun as adults as well. The Toyota plant in Guelph
| in Ontario is a good one and Amazon fulfilment centres do them in
| some locations and are quite fun as well.
| robbiet480 wrote:
| https://amazontours.com
| piva00 wrote:
| I absolutely loved all of my school's trips to industrial sites.
|
| We went to:
|
| - A Coke bottling facility (when the bottles were still mostly
| returnable glass ones), it was mesmerising.
|
| - A chocolate and confectionery factory (as you may have guessed,
| kids were ecstatic about this one).
|
| - A recycling plant processing paper and plastics.
|
| - A nuclear power plant.
|
| All of those between the ages of 10-13 as well, mentioning it now
| made me realise how vivid those memories are, thanks for helping
| me to remember them :)
| phreeza wrote:
| I went to visit a post office sorting center with my team at
| Google in Switzerland once. And honestly even as a grown up, it
| was a great experience, especially since the thing the sorting
| center was doing was sort of analogous to what some of our
| (software) pipelines do. Gave me a new appreciation of how
| powerful and fungible software is. I believe these tours are also
| offered to school classes.
| progbits wrote:
| Zurich also does free recycling center and water treatment
| facility tours. There is also a nuclear power plant tour, but
| of course they don't let you near the interesting bits in that
| one.
|
| https://www.zuerich.com/en/visit/tours-excursions/from-sewag...
| blueridge wrote:
| In the US you can ride along at almost any fire department or
| private EMS company for a 12 hour day shift. They won't let you
| ride over night, but you can come back for multiple ride-alongs.
|
| If you're more interested in the fire side, you can get on an
| engine. You'll respond to structure fires, car accidents,
| lightning strikes, and all sorts of well-being checks for people
| who just need help getting up off the floor.
|
| If you're interested in medical stuff, you can get on an
| ambulance. You'll run 911 calls and get some real exposure to the
| human condition. It's a great way to learn about pre-hospital and
| emergency department care. It's also a great way to get a reality
| check on how the US healthcare system works, and how it helps or
| hinders the people who need care the most.
|
| In many parts of the country fire and EMS are part of the same
| service and system, so you'll get exposure to a little bit of
| everything. I'd highly recommend fire and EMS as an alternative
| career path for anyone who is looking for something different,
| other than tech.
| imadethis wrote:
| EMT here: highly recommend this! If you're in the US, there's a
| pretty big need for EMTs everywhere. A 3 month community
| college course will get you an intro job essentially no
| questions asked. From there you can pivot to fire if you're
| physically capable, or go the paramedic route (2 more years of
| school). The starting pay for an EMT will be garbage, but
| firefighters and paramedics can make pretty good salaries
| depending on location.
|
| The most important part to me was feeling like I was actually
| making a difference in people's lives. I've done more for
| others in a single shift than in 5 years of one of my tech
| jobs. It doesn't put food on the table, but it does help me
| sleep at night.
|
| And if you are working in tech, there's some interesting
| crossover applications. I've applied knowledge from EMS to
| working on EMRs for instance.
| vinay_ys wrote:
| As a kid growing up in pre-computer/internet era, we did a bunch
| of things to engage our curiosity and learn and have fun. But in
| today's world with access such rich content at your fingertips,
| it's all very different. These days I spend hours watching
| interesting stuff on Youtube in the comforts of my bedroom. But I
| do miss the learnings I would have had through engagement with
| fellow students in an actual physical tour. So, I would say, do
| best of both worlds.
| tomatocracy wrote:
| Depending on who's giving the tour, having the opportunity to
| interact with people actually working at a place (especially eg
| shift supervisors/foremen/etc - ie not senior management but
| experienced people who are still close enough to the "sharp
| end") and ask them questions is incredibly valuable in gaining
| an insight into how a business or industry works - site visits
| are a very important part of many investment decisions for this
| reason.
| angmarsbane wrote:
| I've been taking myself on field trips like this most of my
| adulthood; jelly belly factory, distilleries, breweries,
| watchmaking, vinyl pressing, chocolate factories, coffee
| roasteries. "How it's made" tours are a top thing I look for when
| I travel.
| yellow_lead wrote:
| I think it's good. I got a chance to shadow a surgeon and watch
| some surgeries. I thought the field was interesting, but I was
| bored out of my mind, during some of the most 'interesting'
| surgeries. If I didn't know that, I might have wasted a lot of
| time. (I'm not saying it's boring in general, but this was my
| opinion, meaning I'm unsuited for it)
| solardev wrote:
| When ya think about it, what is a body but a pile of
| unmaintained code made by two drunken people a few decades ago,
| using a framework with a few million years of tech debt?
|
| Everyone wants to do the upfront coding, but nobody likes
| maintaining it afterward...
| H8crilA wrote:
| Commented out code, self modifying code, overlapping code,
| copy pasted code, code integrated from other species, even
| code integrated from malware. Execution of fragments requires
| solving quantum mechanics for large particles and in practice
| is done by random changes followed up by measurement of the
| result. Execution of the entire thing past a few initial
| bootloader steps has never been achieved in vitro, let alone
| in a controllable simulation with something that resembles a
| debugger.
| [deleted]
| fastneutron wrote:
| Local and university chapters of the American Nuclear Society
| sometimes organize tours of nuclear power plants in their
| respective regions. I went on a few of these tours in college and
| it was truly a unique experience. It's easy to talk about a
| gigawatt of power, but to actually _feel_ it screaming past you
| in the turbine hall really opens your eyes to the immense scale
| of the electrical infrastructure we 've built to power our
| civilization.
| _hzw wrote:
| Slightly off-topic: I didn't have the opportunity to visit
| industrial sites when I was a kid, so I made it up to myself by
| watching lots of "THE MAKING"[1] as an adult.
|
| [1]: "THE MAKING" is the Japanese equivalent of "How It's Made."
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ps_X1TqiJZQ&list=PLOEDIkStOh...
| suyash wrote:
| what a nice suggestion, always fascinated by Japanese
| engineering and design.
| suyash wrote:
| It's a good idea but for software engineering work, there is not
| much to see, it's just code on a computer screen. For folks
| interested in engineering these days, I would recommend going to
| hacker/maker spaces and meetup events.
| edmundsauto wrote:
| I remember site visits more than anything else from elementary
| school. The newspaper printing presses and the local tv news
| station really stand out.
| mtmail wrote:
| In school we visited the local newspaper. There was nothing
| interesting to see because the printing was outsourced. Two dozen
| people sitting in front of computers (CRT grayscale monitors),
| conference rooms, some print-outs on the wall. We got featured in
| the next issue and all I remember is how uninspiring the
| afternoon was.
| reghardtpret wrote:
| Hi Helgardt, Reghardt van Katstraat. I think Henrik has written
| about what he calls onramps in society for younger generations, I
| am struggling to find the exact reference to it. But his blog is
| full of ideas similar to what you have written about here.
|
| As economies develop and more specialization is allowed, it takes
| longer and longer for young people to "actually do work". Which
| is a good and bad thing.
|
| https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/apprenticeship-online
| ddhhyy wrote:
| I have visited wastewater treatment plants in two of the cities I
| have lived in and I honestly think such a visit should be
| required for everyone--young and old--who lives in a house or
| apartment serviced by a municipal sewer. It is eye opening to see
| what happens to every drop of water you flush or wash down the
| drain, and especially to see what kinds of things make it into
| the wastewater stream and to the treatment plant. The tours are
| often run by folks who actually work (or have worked) at the
| plant as operators and are quite knowledgeable at all the
| processes in play.
| kevin_nisbet wrote:
| When I was a kid my dad took me to his work a couple of times at
| the nuclear plant. I remember a little the visitor center and
| also I think where they did training. So I have a vague memory of
| being able to pick up and move around pipes simulating fuel using
| a remote camera system to do the online refueling of the reactor
| which was new around that time.
|
| I have no idea the exact impact, but I would suspect that these
| types of experiences are important to build intellectual
| curiosity.
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