From the Sea with Krystle Ponce

While Nikki is away, Ali G takes on her own solo interview with guest Krystle Ponce, Senior Data Analyst at TREW.

Krystle started her journey into automation as an aviation electrician in the Navy. She talks about her journey from the sea to the land, the importance of learning through mistakes, and the importance of confidence in the work place.

Interested in the TED talk mentioned? Take a look here.

Transcript

[00:00:00] So welcome to automation ladies, this is going to be a pretty interesting episode because nikki is not here. She was earlier but this one, is actually with crystal and alaska Um, we'll see if you can get alaska to meow. I guess that gives it away. Alaska is not a dog and Usually how these go is we ask the same General question, which is how did you?

Get here, here being, you know, industrial automation and, who are you and how did you get here? So a little bit about me, I'm a Navy veteran, so I started off my electronics journey through there as a aviation electrician's mate and just learning about car generation, how to read a schematic, you know, baby stuff that they teach in the military as a technician and after a while after working on so many jets, it's they're all cookie cutters, right?

They're all the same. And after a while, it was like, yeah. I'm tired of just being a [00:01:00] technician and something breaking and just fixing it. Like, I want to build this stuff. I felt like I hit the glass ceiling and there was nothing else that I would be able to learn in the military as far as.

Like automation and things that I really like the route that I really wanted to go, like the techie route and, you know, , controls is, you know, you just want to. Make the whole line and it's your baby and it's from inception to conception and you're there. And I just, I wanted something like that.

I wanted the whole thing. I wanted the whole project and, uh, I eventually. Went to college my last 2 years in the military when my senior chiefs and chiefs wrote, come up to me and say, you know, my biggest regret is not going to college while I'm short duty. And I said, you know, I'm just going to do that.

So. After I finished college, I finished college 8 months after I got out of the military. So that was a plus and I found myself in New Orleans, working offshore for Conspic Maritime. And that was really cool, doing all these [00:02:00] cool installs. And of course, you know, the Navy girl in me, loving to see, Sunsets out in the middle of nowhere are always the best and having the waves just rocking back and forth to sleep that's something a lot of people don't get a chance to experience.

And it's, that's kind of funny because I get really, really seasick really easily. So I ain't gonna have no rocking myself back to sleep is not happening to me. I'm not, I'm afraid of getting on a cruise ship, like, I like to look at it from afar, but i'm so scared like it's a marvel as engineering marvel, but i'm not getting in there Um, and I just watched a Oh, I just got into another podcast called rotten mangoes.

 I don't know if you've ever seen it, but it's And there was this story about squid fishing and these fishermen got like collective psychosis cause they were going to get screwed over on their contract. And there's just so much, they like hunger game murdered each other and shit.

But anyway, Yeah, not not saying that that's [00:03:00] you know, but like to me that's like, you know, that's my worst nightmare And then it just confirmed to me that I'm never going out into the ocean like that But well, you see I did I did dynamic positioning and navigation so it's basically for lack of a better word think of a Virtual anchor if you will, okay Wind sensors, GPS signals, and you tie into, you know, motion reference units and stuff like that in gyros, so you can know like what navigational heading, and it equates into a Kalman filter that you can have control over your ship.

And if your ship starts drifting, it'll kick on the thrusters and move it back into position to be. Like drilling operations or if you're just cruising down. So super slow. So we say, we talk about smart factories, but there are like smart boats. Well, there's very smart boats out there. And you know, that's, that's a really cool company that I worked for.

I really enjoyed working for them. Then, you know how it is in oil and gas, you know, you money comes jobs come. Yeah. So [00:04:00] I ended up going over to building automation. I was up in New Hampshire. Nice. Oh, yeah. Live free or die. That was, a friend actually went to go visit me and he just, Or is that Vermont?

That is New Hampshire, right? Live free or die is New Hampshire. Just making sure. And just now we're away from Boston, you know, there's Dunkin's everywhere, you know. Don't even stay Starbucks, you'll get beaten up. Oh my god. No, but, it was a lot of fun doing building automation and just learning how the HVAC system, is very integral to an entire building and the health of a building.

And I, you can actually build a building and if it's built incorrectly, it's going to be a dead building. Like it's just I didn't know that there was like science behind all of that either until I started doing building automation Oh, yeah, air handlers are nuts Um, yeah that's cool, especially like If it's somewhere where it can get really hot and really cold and you have to do seasonal changeovers from heating to cooling like that's [00:05:00] That's the crazier stuff for sure.

Um, and then maybe fire alarms. , do you do anything like with fire systems or anything when we integrated into, at least from my perspective, from what I did with the company that I was with, we would integrate to the controllers and pull like those points. But as far as the actual fire system, it's just like, Oh, no, something's on.

Okay. Did you know, so you were, you know, you said Navy. I have a Navy vet on my, uh, she'll be my employee number two, basically. And she did eight years and, yeah, your time in the military is always, when you talk about it, it's always like prison. Yeah. I did eight years. I did eight years. Like I did four.

What were you in for? Huh? Like a bad attitude. Well, no, she just got like, I don't know. I never seen it, , turn into. A negative thing, right? Like it's a positive thing to go do that time. It was like, no, they were paying you and you were getting, health insurance, so it's okay. Like, it wasn't, it wasn't prison.

 You know, I don't know how she, [00:06:00] she's going to get an episode at some point. So I guess we'll ask her at that point, but What I will ask her is what I want to ask you so you were doing that stuff and it's, you know, very technical. How did you find out that there is this all this stuff out here?

How did you find out about like manufacturing jobs or that PLCs exist or what was the How did that happen? Like, did it happen during your time and you like stumbled on it or afterwards or how did that happen? So a mix of a lot of stuff, actually, mostly a lot of luck and a Ted talk that I, I watched, so, um, I have to link the Ted talk.

Oh, I have to find it. I don't remember this woman's name. But she just spoke about how women like basically with female engineers, women in STEM, how things are just. A lot different for us, because at least women in my generation, because I'm 38 years old, you know, so I can't speak for, the younger ladies out there, but, you know, how it is for, like, all of us, we have to work 10 times as hard.

We [00:07:00] need that piece of paper and it's like, we have to, if a job requires. Five points, and you maybe can only hit one of those points. You're not going to apply to it because you think, oh, man, you don't have that confidence. You're like, I'm not going to get it. Anyway. It's only one thing. And in this Ted talk, she was like, you know what?

Apply for the job, just apply for it. So they can know how many people don't have the skills and they just say. They just jump. It's okay. Cause women back in our day, it was just like, we have to be the perfect mom. We have to be the perfect sister, the perfect girlfriend, the perfect, perfect perfection is the main keyword.

And what software engineering, any kind of engineering. It's not necessarily perfection. It's fucking up a lot. Fucking up, you know, it's fucking up that happens. That's what happens in engineering. You know, what, you know, you don't know what you don't know. And you figure it out and you just got to stumble your way across things.

And she was just like, if guys can just keep going after their code and not changing it where [00:08:00]a lot of female coders are just like this is all broken Let me just erase the whole project instead of muscling through it and just really pushing themselves Obsession of perfection.

Yeah, so and I realized as I was deleting some, like, rungs of code and stuff and I was like, wow, and it just hit me and I was doing this for a project for my friend Mullins or something. He wanted some help. So I was just like, helping him out and just looking at troubleshooting stuff with him.

And then I decided, you know, I'm just. I kind of want to go back home. I don't want to be in this cold and I'm just going to see what's open in South Texas. And then there was a job for a service engineer, field service engineer for Ultron Automation. They do automotive, everything automotive. We build the machines.

Build the machines for the car, you know, and I had one thing on there and besides hanging out with like my friend and helping them troubleshoot some stuff where I didn't really know what was going on. Hadn't really done touch the [00:09:00] PLC since college and, you know, one of the things, Oh, PLC this and that.

And I was like, okay, I'm just gonna be honest. And I was like, Hey, I did this in college, but I'm a really good electrician, a really good engineer. I can troubleshoot the shit out of anything. And so they needed someone who just had a drive. And so when I went in for my interview, they're like, could you do all this stuff alone?

And I was like, bro, I worked offshore. If anything, you're probably going to get calls about me for making somebody cry. I don't know what to tell you at this point. You just gotta give me a try. And they really liked me. I worked at all trunk for years. I was always on the road with them.

And through them, I went from a field service engineer to not only just doing controls, but control design as well. And then moving over to the software department and doing a little bit of software with them, but also doing a lot of design as well. And just troubleshooting and being out in the road doing just 

milk wearing different hats, basically, so [00:10:00] I fell into it. Because a TED talk gave me enough delusion to say, I can fucking do it. Would you recommend that delusion to others? I recommend all girlies in STEM in general and engineering just be delusional. I agree. I agree with that. Because it's hard for women out there.

We're actually overly logical. Meanwhile, there's a lot of people and mostly guys unfortunately that are being like I don't even have the one but i'm gonna apply anyway and you miss 100 percent right of the shots you don't take No guts, you just sometimes have to say Fuck it.

Yeah, you know, you know, like, it's females in engineering. We have it a lot more difficult than anybody else because already we're going into a male dominated field. And, you know, this, because you're, you know, the founder of your own company, you walk into a factory automatically.

They're not going to think, oh, you're the owner of this company that you're starting. Oh, you're just a girl. [00:11:00] They're like, let me talk to the man. He's like, bro. I am the man. Let me listen Yeah, let me adjust my bra just so you know just be like what's up bro like

Like I do know. I do know. And it's the same experience across the board of all the women just being like, yeah. I mean, I haven't met any women yet who are like, yeah, I once walked into a factory and there were just as many women on the factory floor as there were men or more. I like that offshore too.

When I worked offshore, I remember one boat that I went on actually had a female captain. I fangirled. I was like, Oh my God. And then we ended up talking the entire night, like, and everything. But I was just asking her how to do this. And she was Wow, she's a rough woman. She's a wonderful woman. To get there and to get the backing of the people that had to allow her to do that, like, yeah.

She was one tough kitten, you know. I mean, I've met a bunch of [00:12:00] these alpha type females in the military. And, I would like to say that I used to be kind of alpha. And now that I'm on my soft girl era, you know, it's like you yell at me, I'm going to yell back at you, but I'm going to cry. Yeah, yeah.

That's part of what makes us so different from men, right? I've been on this kick where I'm just thinking that there are so many business, I think, related advantages to being a woman because of how much we've always spent our time reading other people and reading how they feel.

And so we're just less threatening in some of the situations where we need to pitch something. And so really the sales is different. And It's a different dynamic and I'm like starting to uncover all these like secret powers that we have that we don't talk about as just women and the way that we grow up different from boys or in general, obviously, like there's lots of Tom girls or sorry, Tom boys.

Um, and I, including myself. Yeah. Including me. But even then, like, we still, even the Tom boys [00:13:00] have just innate talents. Yeah. You know, whatever we're wired with whatever and we think with different parts of our brain and we're way more people oriented Um, so even when we're engineers, we're like pretty good at actually communicating with other humans male female, whatever the ages are just naturally.

And so it's really strange. Cause like, you know, at least male engineers and or technicians kind of have this way about them. And it's just accepted. It's like, Oh, they're not, they don't have amazing people skills, but they're super smart. And it's like, well, what if we had, uh, we were super smart and had amazing people skills.

 That's what women are, or at least that's what I'm finding now. You know? And I didn't used to see it that way. I actually. Kind of saw it the opposite. When I was little I was just more you know I don't know I was almost like men are smarter than us and I used to look at it like that and then I grew up and I was like, I don't know.

I don't know Being, I think the military definitely helped shape me a lot,[00:14:00] because I was very, very insecure. Like my first two years in the military and the lion shag trying to get plane Captain falls and just being five, two and a half. And these jets are massive, huge. They, and it's just like little old you and there's.

You see these big monsters for once, and you're just like, holy smokes. Then after a while, you know, because being growing up Latina, growing up in South Texas, where, you know, it's the men are the ones who basically do everything. And you just grow up with a different mentality and joining the military and just thinking, well, I'm not good enough because I'm not a guy and always just kind of thinking that.

And then slowly making friends and real and. figuring out, you know, it's not about gender. It's about who can do what up here because troubleshooting takes this. It doesn't take, it doesn't take muscles to troubleshoot. And so once I realized that, and I got more confidence, I turned it to dark crystal, I guess, because [00:15:00] you could, if I knew something as far as like technical, and you tried to tell me otherwise.

I would eat you alive. I didn't even care. And that kind of lead it, that kind of like blend into me as an engineer. I have a lot of electricians who are my friends now still. And they're just like, you know, we love you to pieces, but sometimes when we work with you, you're just ridiculously intimidating.

Nice. Because I have standards and it's like, how hard is it to do something, but I also being who I am, like, 1 of my favorite, 1 of my favorite quotes was from 1 of my engineers that he's Norwegian engineer, Roy Meyer. He told me, you know, crystal. The best engineer in the room is always the laziest and I was like, what are you talking about?

I'm like, how can you be the best? If you're lazy, because the best engineer is always going to find out the fastest way to do something. So they won't have to worry about it. And you can just sit there and I was like, that's what's up. So you just have to learn to look at the [00:16:00] big picture and. My I like it when people say do you do nothing all day?

It's like basically like yeah, because I worked myself into this spot And with you know with the experience after a while something that seems that would have been so hard two years ago It's oh I can change that bit of code like that. I'm sitting on my hands Because that's how it is in the factory.

Hurry up and wait. We need this now. You finally get it done Oh, we have to wait until break for you to Update this. Oh, this is broken this and that and so once you get everything like fixed and streamlined The boring part of engineering is sitting there and watching the line run.

So you're you said you were 38 I'm 36 like I've found that like I don't know I like shock myself with how smart I am because I don't consider myself that smart and then I'm like how do I even know that or how come I can do this so much faster 

If not like you and me, engineers, we're overthinkers. We'll overthink the shit out of anything. And you know what, there's a plan A, there's a plan B, there's a plan [00:17:00] C, there's a plan F for the plan A. There's plan triple Z. Exactly. And it's just like, there's layers to, we're onions, there's layers.

And there's lots of crying. That's a good, that's a good one. Lots of layers and lots of crying, but you know. But sometimes at some point, as an engineer, you're over as a female engineer. At some point, you're over. He's got to drop and you just got to man up, you know, and you just got to and you just got to deal with it.

You know, it's so hard. It's so hard. But like, but you felt it. Like, I bet money that, your first few years, you're just timid. And all of a sudden, you're over. He's dropping. You're like, Yeah, there is a confidence shift. It's not even that it's almost like you finally understand your actual place because you've been doing it.

You're like, Oh, it just, it's not something. Yeah. It's just like turning on. You're like, no, you can stand your ground and you don't feel that terror. You used to feel because the terror was from. Are, will I be [00:18:00] accepted? Will I solve the problem? Actually, will I solve the problem is more terrifying. I think all the times I was going to go travel somewhere and had no idea, A, are they even telling me the right problem?

Cause they're really bad at describing it. And then B, like, will I be able to go there and fix it? Or am I going to turn around and having not solved it and having wasted people's money? That always terrified me. I think that always did at first and what helped me was the fact that nobody ever knows what the fuck they want, even if they write it.

And so I literally started just like relationships, right? You walk in with no expectation and just let them tell you what they need and shoot themselves in the foot at some point. You just gotta be starting. Hey, this is what you said. This is what's spelled out here. What you're asking for is a 10, 000 dollar add on, which isn't part of this package.

That you request and then they don't want it anymore, [00:19:00] even though before price wasn't an option, uh, like a thing. And now price is a thing once they see it. So you're like, , okay, price isn't a thing. We'll see about that. Yeah. Like a lot of these guys are like, oh, I can get anyone to do this.

Then why did you call me then? Why you, why are still on here? A lot of these times it's a lot of these factory engineers that. They don't they're not like us where we've seen different types of equipment everywhere. Yeah. Like, me personally, from. Conception to the field turn key all the way through.

Yeah, all the way. And so I know what goes into a bomb. I know what goes into making schematics. I know what, you know, you can ask me something and I'll just be like, if I know it right off the bat, I'll tell you. Oh, no, like, this is not going to be feasible. This is only going to put out this many RPMs and you need something more.

It's like, no Just knowing things and people just dismissing you sometimes and you just want to laugh because it's like, if you had this knowledge base in your home court, if your team had this, you wouldn't be calling me. Would you call me? Because nobody knows [00:20:00] what the fuck they're doing.

So you brought me in here. I'm telling you and you don't want to believe me. So it's just like, that's the being a female in engineering. And so you just got to give them rope to hang themselves with. And eventually. Once you keep knocking it out of the ballpark, even quietly, they'll figure out, no, this person's worth their salt.

And so many times I've gone into factories where other engineers have gotten turned out, like turned around and be like, get out. If she's not here, I don't want it because Crystal's going to be thorough. This other guy, I don't know who he is, get him out of here. And that guy probably made me coffee too, which is not what, you know.

These people need and that's another normal thing for an engineer to decide that he is better. So he treats people that way. Or she, I've seen some she engineers who did the same. And it doesn't work in any plant. Because you don't get called back for exactly like you're talking about. Because that's a huge part of business is like, do the people in the plant want you to be there?[00:21:00]

, yeah, you may be able to be the only one that solves the problem, but the moment that they can get rid of you or have anyone else do it, they will, unless they actually want you there. And they think that you are a, asset to their team and their equipment as a whole and their, you know, profits and can't make profits.

If you don't make product, you can't make product. If you don't keep your employees happy, um, or they'll sabotage you, um, happens all the time and gigantic factories. Yeah, or you end up fixing another problem that wasn't really yours to begin with or pointing out what. That's just part of our, doom for knowing too much.

Yeah, so, QA, right? A lot. So, QA, and I was in this factory in Detroit, and this QA guy is just, like, complaining up and down that all these tests are coming back, and a lot of these machines aren't, collecting data that he needed. He needed this data. And I said, okay, I went through all my machines.

All right, [00:22:00] you need these points of data. It's like cycle time. This isn't that, you know, I'm like, you're getting all this. I'm sending it to you. He's like, well, I'm not getting it. Your machine's not sending it. And I was like, no, my machine is sending it is putting it in the proper folder and the communication to the servers going good.

And, you know, you're clearly picking up. All the other data points in his software. He had certain things turned off where he didn't want to see certain data points and try to pin it on me and my machine saying that I never turned any of this off. I wasn't giving him data. So, it's having to sit down with other people and help explain something that how your product is working and you need to help them figure out why theirs isn't.

And most guys are like, tough. I don't care. That's not my problem. But as a female, you're just like. I'm gonna help this guy out because whatever we do it's true and you're right they don't or they for most of it is I hear that a lot well that's not my [00:23:00] problem and with other contractors that's a good way to protect yourself but you shouldn't do that obviously to your direct customer because then.

Unless, unless they continue to put you in a position where you do free work. No, I felt like I had to, only because it was so much heat and this was an email chain going, I would've done the same and everything. And so for me, I was just like, and I was like taking different classes and stuff on like analytics and stuff.

So I knew and understood how, the structure of. How data was important and I knew that my dad was getting out there. He just wasn't like collecting it properly on their end. That's at that point. It's not you. Yeah, I know. And so it was just like, I had to prove it wasn't us. Yeah. Even though you didn't have to you, you felt like you had to.

And, so that, that goes me and, um, Courtney Fernandez, we're having a conversation and her husband too, Albert, and we're all, you know, business owners but we were engineers once and, you know, and [00:24:00] we've talked about like free work. And the value of it, because we built kind of our reputation about caring, right?

On the freebies that you get on the side. Freebies like actually got you, a good working relationship with some of these people. But at some point, you have to stop the freebies so that you can feed, the group. And so like, as you grow up, it's actually really good as when you're on your own.

Do it like do that, build really good relationships. I built my reputation on being the person that answered the phone call. And while I'm still like with electricians, while I'm eating my dinner, just to make sure I don't abandon them, because even though I'm on salary and I get nothing to help them, I don't think it's right for me to be like, okay, it's 5.

00 PM. Goodbye. Cause they're screwed. They're trying to fix something. And so I just stay on the phone with them. But anyway, like that, the free shit. It gets you an in. Yeah. It gets you in, it gets you an, but you can't do it forever. Yeah. And so you should, that's a marketing too.

That's a market. I learned that in marketing class because you know, [00:25:00] okay, so good. And I didn't even learn that. We're like, yeah, I dot track and business analytics and marketing and one of those things that I learned in. My marketing classes was you end up diluting your brand if you just like constantly give out too many discounts because then Brad becomes dependent on people only purchasing when they know, like, why buy this at 500 when I just have to wait three months and I can get it at 300.

Yep. And now, we're business people now and we're used to that. So converting from like a service based engineer to a. Or even just a service based technician. It doesn't matter if you're a service based job, as an, employee, and then you turn over to doing business. Like we have to learn to cut it out.

 We can still do it, but we have to do it strategically. For that reason, like brand pollution, all kinds of money, losing money. Literally we can't do, I've done a little bit of free work now in the past two years and man, it just, it hurts. Um, so. You know, learning, like, [00:26:00] how do you avoid that? Cause I wouldn't build in, revisions.

Like, of course the customer is going to ask for revisions, but I didn't build any money in for that. And they revised it like a thousand times. So I was like, okay, I learned my lesson. Revisions are built in. Just because we give you a design doesn't mean that the design will be finished at that point.

So you need to build in. More, for them to do that or write that as an extension, design and customers in general, what they want versus what they really want them versus what they can afford are very, very different things, you know, so that's what there's what they think they want. That's there's what they need.

Sure. Did you work for any OEMs that made equipment? No, I was always, uh. Like the third party, like the last, or like , the manufacturer, like, yeah, so like, for instance, I would, I worked for the company that would build a machine to test the seats for Ford, but.[00:27:00] The seats might be manufactured in somewhere else for Ford.

So we're going to those guys bring putting a line into them. Oh, okay. But you guys designed the machinery, right? Yes. So that's kind of an OEM, but I guess it's more of an integrator. It's an integrator OEM. Yeah, it's just machine building, you know. Okay. Yeah. So machine building is OEM though. I didn't mean like hardware OEM.

I mean like machine OEM. Yeah. So I worked for a coffee company, not coffee, a coffee roaster company that builds coffee roasters for like Starbucks or whoever. And so we would go and design like I would do custom stuff, like a chaff control panel. Uh, chaff is, it's like, the consistency of like fish flakes.

I don't know if you've ever had a fish and fed it, but fish food is the consistency of this stuff. And when you. Roast coffee, you create a bunch of smoke and part of that has this, like something called chaff. And that chaff looks [00:28:00] like it's basically brown carbon, mostly carbon. 'cause it's burnt off of coffee, but the skin on the coffee on like green coffee.

Um, so I would design those systems. Well, I'm a coffee. Like what? , like what's coffee? I'm like, I'm not even a coffee drinker. Oh, that's funny. Because I stopped drinking coffee because I had so many master roasters like make me try their coffee and I'm trying to be polite, right? So I'm like, I don't want any coffee when I'm at your like giant coffee facility.

So I'm like, of course I want your coffee. And I just had, I like over caffeinated myself. And so now I don't really drink coffee, but, can you talk about like how you see the way that stuff is purchased? you said, you know about bill of materials, right? Like what about how.

You get that bill of materials, into the shop to get it, you know, ordered, like, can you talk about that frustration? So with that, in order to have as a company to have any good decent, cause you're [00:29:00] trying to make money too. Right? So you're trying to find a good vendor. So.

Always find a good vendor that you can talk to that is very open who, because they're the ones who are going to be bringing you these new tools that you get to play with. And everything that you get to see, and a lot of these guys have contracts with the main manufacturer, so you get a nice little discount, you know, when you're building stuff, so a lot of it was just, you already know what's going on in the machine, because we've built so many like this already, and a lot of it is just a Really, really keeping your eyes open, listening to your vendors when some cool tech comes out because you can't keep up with everything, but they can that's their job.

So I would just, I always leaned on the vendors a lot. And once we got everything in, it wasn't like that difficult to have. Whoever put in the correct numbers, so we can finally get an inventory and we just start hooking this stuff up to our machines and making things work. Nice. [00:30:00] So, one of the big issues, when COVID hit, computers and the computer chips, that was a fucking nightmare for Altra.

That was fucking bad, because we ordered a certain kind of computer, a certain kind of PC that we were, an industrial type PC that we would put into the cabinet. And now we're having to, like, Oh my gosh, we have to find another freaking PC that like does this. This, this one's a different type of brand. It doesn't have the same type of, you know, inputs and outputs.

We're going to have to get extra attachments. We need this. We need a dongle. We need this. And it's just like, and everything changed. And everything costs like four times as much to get it there because you expedited it. Yeah. We were ordering shit off McMaster car and we would get like, gray terminal blocks.

We don't care who they are. And they show up in the red and we're like, Fuck it. Yeah. And it's just like, like we have to build this machine right now. What can you do? Red? It's gonna be red wire. So , right. This is gonna be an explicit episode. Which is okay 'cause we're already rated for that. But yeah, this is like, this is a [00:31:00] juicy one. So keep going. Tell me about this cat you've got. It's my boy cat Alaska. So he's my, he's the only man of the house. I have two dogs and another cat. So they're all four.

So he's always trying to make out with me. Oh, yeah, no, I can tell he's very obsessed with you. I have one like that who's just like needs to be touching me needs to touch me all the time as part of their just it's like separation anxiety. And she used to like over lick herself. Her name is Zaria, but he looks like kind of like a, what is like a Siamese?

He's a Lynx Point Siamese. At one point of my life when I lived in, South Texas, I lived at Rancho Viejo, which is basically also a country club. And so, and the golf course. So, I found my little homeless kitten who happens to be a purebred. So, I mean, I knocked around different doors and stuff to see if anyone, you know, lost this precious little boy.

Yeah, no, he picked you. It's okay. Yeah. How old is he? [00:32:00] I'm a bag mom too. So it doesn't matter. You don't need to know how old he is. Yeah. He looks like not, not even middle aged. Like he looks pretty good. Yeah. Mine are seven or something. Mine are eight years old. I think that's middle aged, but I, yeah, I got them at the pound for 20 bucks each.

 They were already spayed. They're both girls. They were sisters. So you're in texas still no, i'm actually in michigan. I live in grandville, michigan Wow, how long have you been in michigan about four or five years? Okay, and then how long were you in texas? I was in texas for about two years after I lived in texas all my life and then obviously military and I came back to texas my adult life for about two years or so and then I left after my dad passed away.

There was no reason to go back. So, when did you join the navy? 2004. Wow. It was a baby. It was a little baby. Was that like right when you were 18? Yeah. Damn. I don't really remember. I don't remember having to sign me away. Oh my [00:33:00] God. Wow. So back to like automation. How did you get like into the programming?

So when I applied to the job, I think they really liked my tenacity. So they gave me a test and they sent me some ladder logic. And I, being who I am, I went through every rung and I wrote it out. Going back and looking at that and just saying, Oh, okay, so I think this is a sequence of events that happened.

This is what this is this type of machine, I believe. And they're like, yeah, that's what the type of machine it is. And I'm like, okay, I never I hadn't actually program much of anything outside of college stuff, maybe tinkering. And so I was just kind of thrust into it. And I'm glad I got the job, but it wasn't one of those here.

Let me hold your hand and teach you. It was just like, get out there. Did you have access to other people's code? Because that was a heavy way. I learned was like, how did you guys do this? Like mapping? [00:34:00] I understand. Like, how do I get the PLC? I owe to talk to the code. Yeah. Yeah. My first, anything was just debug.

So debugging was a big thing that code was already written. And I would hear everybody complain. Yeah, debugging, because the code's already there, just , read it, like, you can go just about anywhere and find some kind of PLC program and just learn to read it like a schematic, read it like a schematic, if you don't know what a schematic is, Google the symbols, and then just, and then as you see what these symbols are, talk, walk through it, like an actual, it's literally logic, like, or, I'm like, or, oh, and, yeah.

Yeah, if you just slow it down, just slow it down, take everything by piece and then before you know it starts, things just click and start making sense. And then you'll understand. Oh, this is how I pull like, this is how I find another controller on the line. This is how I can do all of this.

Then it's it just takes a lot [00:35:00] of time and it takes Sadly, sometimes they're not going to have anyone there holding your hand. They're just gonna expect you to fail And especially as a female it can be kind of hard. Uh Especially if you're like, go to a company that's kind of like a smaller company, it's not, they're not going to have the time to really train you so much.

You're going to have to learn on your own. That's why I look for people who are very go getters and who are hungry because they don't have the time to properly train you because they're already flooded with work to begin with. I would say a lot. Yeah, a lot of it's on you. A lot of it's on you. If you want to get trained, guess what?

You know, it's on you. It is on you. There is no time. And we have our, whatever, what is it, the skills gap is so gigantic that the engineers that can do it, they are doing it. They don't have time to look at you doing it, so it's actually, right now, really hard to come by mentors in this [00:36:00] space. I actually, have, you know, John Pillar helping me with my people do that because exactly that, like what I hire people and they do need training and I realized that but I personally like to try to run this business and go get more sales, like I don't have time and that's going to be.

Like and that is historically how it was like I would write this code and they're like looks pretty good Go ahead and go try to commission that because they didn't have time to look at it I'm, like it didn't work at all. And so I in the field I was like figuring out I always write notes, always write notes, every single rung, every single rung, if I have the time, I'll write down, this is what this rung does, this is what this rung does, this is what this rung does, and it's crazy, Ed, because anyone who comes up behind you, they're not going to know shit.

Yeah, you know, because like I started feeling that once we started getting a bunch of like new hires and some of these guys, I was just like, I don't have the time to train them. So what I started doing is, as I had to do something, I would [00:37:00] take screenshots of everything, make a PowerPoint and print it as a PDF.

Okay. You want to learn how to get an IP address for your controller here? Boom. I made how to's I made how to's like even in my own company, any little thing, if it was something new that no one's ever done, I would do it first. I would do it a few times. And then once I was confident enough, this is the right way or the fastest that I know of screenshot it, write it down technical document there.

Like you guys need to figure this out. There's a trouble. There's a, you know, troubleshooting manual that I have. I've seen some weird shit. So I'll write weird problems, I write it down. And I always tend to remember those. And if I see something again, a lot of times it's like, I know I fixed this, I don't know when, let me go back to my notes.

Because I always have something. Very good advice here. Take notes and put notes in your code. Because people that don't write notes in their code, like, they're not [00:38:00] considered Really good programmers, they're not like people will read that and be like, you didn't care enough about your customer to make sure that they like succeeded without you.

Yeah, because a lot of the times like their factory guys will be coming in and some of these guys don't really know much. They need your notes. Yes. And so they need the notes, you know, and it's just, that's a lot of things that I like to, that I saw that I really, really like is when you have a standard, you need to have a coding standard.

It doesn't matter every company is going to have their own coding standard. So, when you're in the business of going to fix other people's problems, and it's not like a machine that you've built yourself, you have to follow their standards. But I always, I like AOIs, AOIs are. Inception, bro.

But you can't like edit them live. And that's the freaking problem with everyone and their AOI is going crazy. So if you built a good, solid AOI and you already tested it, then yeah, that's bad ass, but if you didn't test that AOI yet, and you went [00:39:00] and deployed it onto live systems, like you're an a hole.

A hole, but if you program everything correctly, like AOIs are actually like you're saving grace. Because a lot of these factory guys are scared of them. They don't really know how the OI's work. So that's where you put your code in there, man. So on the outside, it looks like, oh, everything you just, you just, just a block, bro.

But you inception the block inside the block, bro. That's magic. It's like, that's why you're going to save money. Everybody's a programmer, like you got to do something that they're going to be scared of. And they know that if they have to, if they have to change your code. They're gonna shut down the entire line to do it, just to change that AOI, and guess what?

You weren't there, they didn't. Always have a backup too, so don't fuck their fuck up. So you talked about having that moment where like your ovaries drop, right? And you become, and you become a man. And I'm thinking about that and I'm like, no, I know what you mean though. I know exactly what you [00:40:00] mean. And so I'm trying to describe for me, I think part of that is actually realizing slash like coming to the conclusion that the shit you thought was like really complex is it.

Like you're like, oh, this is just a bunch of little blocks that are easy. And then there's 40 of them. And now it looks super intimidating, but it's all just, it's 40 of this other thing that's. You know, so when I started working in aerosol machinery, I actually, they were like, you know, you need to work with production and I got my first line, not just a machine.

They're like, we want to, we're designing an aerosol line. And so the whole, all the machines involved in this one process. And I was like, Oh my God, like, how am I going to get all these machines to talk to each other? And then I figured out that you just put like. Stop. Start sensors like I like photo eyes in front of each one.

That way you don't like in the entrance. There's like exit backup ones and the in feed ones, right? So it tells you when to [00:41:00] start the machine. If the product if there's a can there and when the cans are so backed up that they're already back at your machine. So as long as you start and stop just the one machine based off of two sensors in front of it and after it, then you don't actually make all the machines talk to each other.

And I'm like, so this is so easy. Yeah. And I was like, I'm the God and I made 13 machines talk to each other. No, no, we just, yeah, we're not, we can pretend all we want, but there is a lot of simplicity in some of this shit, which I appreciate and made me feel more confident when I would approach what looks really intimidating.

So like a big control mantle, because the biggest one I ever did was like. Three door. It was a 10 footer, 10 foot wide control panel and it had 13 power flexes inside of it or something like that. But they were little power flexes. 'cause there was a, they were small conveyors. But anyway, the aerosol line was like, whatever.

And so that's when I learned, I was like, okay, this thing looks super intense. It's a huge panel. [00:42:00] There's a ton of, uh, intrinsically safe barriers because it's, , the aerosol industry is class one. Div 1. Yeah. Well, we considered it class 1 div 1 so that we didn't get sued, and that we never had any issues, but that means we paid more, right, for more expensive hardware.

But yeah, like that was kind of like, what is, do you remember a moment where you were just like, oh, that's not as hard as I thought? Yeah, I was in Mexico. I was still living in Brownsville at the time, and, by chance there was a factory in Matamoros, which is right across from Brownsville. It's like literally right across the border from where I was from, so I was just like, just took my car over there, you know.

Got the call from, a manager. Yo, you know, you need to go to the factory. I'm like, oh, no problem. I'm already in the area. So I show up over there and it's just so we have this hood and we have to, depending on what type of hood, this is for hood for semi trucks, depends on what kind of holes get drilled in for mounting of antennas.

And at first, [00:43:00] like, You also, you have to your recipes are going to be really different, because you have like, 2, 3 different types of hoods, which have different areas on this hood that need drilling. And I was just like. Overwhelmed that first and then all of a sudden it was just like, oh, yeah, just break everything down.

Like, it's not a big deal. It's not a big deal. You learn to when you're able to visually separate the sequence when you're in the machine and you see everything where everything goes, just pretend the rest of it doesn't exist. What's the 1 function? I need for this. What's the next and you break it down.

You have to break it down in your mind. And then, yeah. No one ever can think of all the processes happening in the machine all at once. No one actually does that. The computer does that. That's the computer's job, not our job. Yeah. And it's just like, you know, what has to happen, you know, like, after a while

it was just more of an intuition, not that I just like knew, you know, and I just knew from experience and the intuition, it was just like, Oh yeah, no, this is the process. This is how this works. You know, I get asked so many times, Hey, [00:44:00] how do you know this?

And I'd be like, I just do. We did. Yeah. It's because we did. Yeah. It's legit. If people don't understand, for women half the time, I'm not going to explain shit to you. I'm just going to do it and be like, look. I got it for you. Here you go. Don't ask me to explain my words. That the words that come out of my mouth are never proper.

Like I'll write it down for you on the service report, but don't ask me to. I like bananas and it just, after a while you just learn not to get so overwhelmed because it's overwhelming, especially in an industry, especially industrial when you're small. As a person, I'm not a big person. I'm like a size zero and really tiny.

I'm itty bitty. Going up and seeing all these machines can be overwhelming. You know, seeing all these, you've seen some of those spanic robots. They're massive, massive fucking machines. I love that you are [00:45:00] robots. They're a little small, you know, and if they're, if you get in the way. It'll retract.

You'll stop there. You know, if that looks like I don't write it to you, I'm just gonna mow you over. Yeah, there's some force sensors in there. Yeah, well, like the human robots, they're, they're really good about, not crashing into other things, they have, like, that's the one thing I would, uh, you are robust.

Have you ever heard of flexiv? No. So they have even more insane torque sensors and force sensors in every joint. That's where, so their niche is like they want to replicate the human wrist and arm. So like anything that gives you carpal tunnel, you want that job to be taken over by this robot.

So just looking at their website right now, the. Make of It looks like a UR robot to me. I would've said it. It does. It does. They have, but they have the light rings. That's kind of the difference. So at every joint they have that cool light ring. But anyway, not knocking. Ur amazing the nerds.

They're gonna buy it. Yeah. That bottom one's only $36,000 . [00:46:00] 36. Nice.

So, so you just went back to school recently, right? What did you study? I just finished my MBA. Okay. So you got an MBA. So what do you, what are you looking at doing with that? Do you want to have a business someday? What do you want to do? I have a lot of different things in mind, but right now I'm just kind of in a hermit mode.

I've deactivated all social media except for LinkedIn. So I need my Tik Toks. Okay. I need my, I need my girls. That good stuff is going to happen to me tomorrow. Okay, that's hilarious. Yeah. I like tick tock because it shows you like, relevant trends. And and they're not filtered. That's the difference. Like you don't know where those those trends are just naturally like trending.

And then they get to us and then stuff gets like taken down, but I feel you get access to information sooner than it could have been regulated.[00:47:00] And so it's almost just a free for all, like on what is actually trending in the world. And of course there's all kinds of stuff that like gets you, you know, stuck on it because it's very addicting, and it gives us all ADHD, but whatever, and regular ADD and all of that, but I'm addicted too.

And I like knowing like what it is that people like. Like right now what's trending which is kind of bad, but like I think it's funny. Um, is that like you're uh The women like the younger women are like showing you like, Hey, if your boyfriend is like misbehaving, take the starter out of his car or take his fuel pump out or you know, that's just funny to me.

So that's, I like to know, what people are like, you know, what is the thing that people like talk about? I always liked, um. What is it? Uh, uh, trivia shows and shit. So, I want to know, what I know I'm too old for, like, TikTok. I don't I'm not putting TikTok videos out, but, like, I want to know what people talk about.

And this is specifically more Gen [00:48:00] Z, but, like, they're going to come into the job force, and that's where you advertise Robots and like the new jobs is tik tok. Like you don't go and put it on facebook and linkedin because that generation does not give a shit They're going they're on tiktok. So if you want to talk to them, you need to tiktok them Well, they're on tiktok, especially like, you know, they say you like do anything or whatnot Like, uh, there's like job talk there's whatever, you know So like i'm like on my for you like it's like, you know in deeds out use this and it's just like Uh, it looks kind of like a scam That's true, right I just liked it over time and then it's gotten so big.

But yeah, this has been actually a pretty good episode even though we didn't have nikki here but Usually at the end how we wrap it up is we ask you how do people find you?

It's like someone got you know You inspired them. And I am sure that there will be people that are like, that's badass because what you have done is badass. I think a [00:49:00] nine year old me would be, if nine year old me would look at me now, she'd be like, wow. I hear that. I feel that. I feel that. I was a sailor.

I was an electrician. I, you know, launched jets off a fucking aircraft carrier. I jumped off the air for aircraft carrier. I have, I have proof of that because, you know. We had swim calls, we had videos, and you know, I worked on buildings, I Got to do so much cool stuff, you know, and if you have like Ford truck or Toyota, I probably touched your seat Nice, that's so funny.

No, that's amazing that's why we do this work so that we can talk about like hey Remember that one time like I did panda cookies okay, like I've touched an oven in the world that makes those like cookies with the little the pandas and The chocolate inside is shit.

Like, I just love that. I tell kids that all the time. I was like, I worked in a cookie factory once. Um, but like, that's, yeah, that's part of, [00:50:00] this is the glory of this. But anyway, how do people find you if they want to come talk to you about any of this stuff? Um, or just advice or, I don't know, talk to you again.

How do they find you? Well, since I'm in Hermitville right now You're like, don't come after me! I'm like, unless you already know my phone number and where I live, I'm sorry. Okay, so maybe LinkedIn, if you're, you know, maybe on automation ladies, you could tag her and ask her a question and that's as good as you're going to get.

I will respond to LinkedIn. Maybe that's funny. Yeah, no, yeah, no, no weirdos. You have to ask like work related things. Yeah. Automation related. Uh, job advice is what we're asking. If you want to talk to her for other reasons, no. I mean, if anyone's looking for, you know, freaking positions, I have friends who are made a friend.

There you go. Oh my gosh. It's She was just so alpha, she was an ex cop and stuff and we were just like, So I had [00:51:00] like, left Ultron, I remember you posted for me, uh, on LinkedIn when I was looking for a new job because I just needed to get off the road because school was so important, and So I met this recruiter, you know, just over the phone, and then before you know it, we've had lunch, she still texts me, like, how are you doing?

Hey! I don't know if I get bored. What's up? Nice. Yeah, I had a really good, recruiter. Uh, shout out Alex Kern out of Chicago. I don't know if he still recruits, but if he does, he's pretty good at recruiting or at least making you feel like a person. Some recruiters are not so good at that. Oh, mine's cool.

She was awesome. But, I'm just right now just taking a break of everything, you know, I'm just putting resumes out there, but. I'm not I don't feel a fire under my butt just yet. Oh, no, take it wait till you feel what you need to feel but Okay. Well, that was a good wrap. Um, I think i'm gonna turn the show off

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