I am currently employed as an electrician at a small plant.  On the operations side of the house, every person has a four year degree in engineering technology.  The same is true for the mechanical maintenance personnel.  My issue is that my supervisor wants me to train the operational personnel some of the fundamentals of my job so they can do some of the more mundane tasks while working shift.  In addition, I'm having issues with one of the mechanical gurus in that he's told me more than once he wants my job and has been pushing my supervisor to have me train this person also on how to do some of the more complex tasks that I perform.

When I was first hired on,  I was reminded by my supervisor that I was one of the few people in the facility who does not have an engineering degree.  He told me that although he and his engineering cohorts have had fundamental electricity in college, they basically lacked the experience I had, which is why I was hired.

My feeling is one of fear and trepidation.  I only have a two year technical degree while these kids all have their four year technical degrees.  And no, not one of the hourly jobs these kids have requires a technical degree of any kind.  In fact, the ad for the last three operators only required a high school education.  However, the production manager is very loyal to his alma mater and pushes hard to hire ONLY graduates from his alma mater.  The end result are highly skilled, educated people who are bored to death in their current jobs.

Am I wrong to not want to train degreed engineering technologists on how to be an electrician?  In all my years of experience, it's always been engineers who trained technicians and not the other way around.

It really doesn't matter if you WANT to train someone or not.  If your boss tells you to do it, you need to do it or you'll be gone.  If you're worried that they're going to push you out, then start job hunting elsewhere, but in the meantime, you need to do the job that your supervisor assigns.

Tess

Don't be intimidated. Degreed on not, the one with the most knowledge in the department is the most valuable and usually (not always) the safest.

You have to be diplomatic about this but I never train anyone 100% on how to do the job. 80% is good enough for me and that's what I would recommend you do.  Appear to go along with the program but withhold 20% of what you know and keep your mouth shut about it.

If I was fired tomorrow, the company would survive but they would be knee deep in blood for weeks. 

Although I look at college applicants come from, I do not hold any prejudice for the ones who graduated from the university I graduated from. I have employees who have graduated from UCLA, USC, Stanford, Harvard as well as many lesser known schools.

Mature managers knows who the hard workers are. For me, I want the best of the best. I want people who are knowledgeable, who has the experience and I know can get the job done. That takes maturity.

Young graduates today are into self-gratification. They buy the hottest new sports cars, join fitness clubs and spend money without thinking about the future. This is where they actually lose points with me.

Like Tess says, you must listen to your boss but if you feel threatened, you have two choices. Confront your boss with your concerns or find a company that better suited to you.

 

Although you must do what the supervisor says to do in training.  You don't have to give all the information that is needed to do the whole job.  Just the essentials, you had to spend years developing your skills.  Many that were never shown to you and had to figure out yourself.

I am an Electronic Technician with many years experience in manufacturing plants.  Have a Journeyman Card and a BS & Associates degrees in Electrical Engineering Technology.  You need to train them so they don't get hurt or call you up in the middle of the night asking stupid questions.  Then claiming they were not train on that. 

You can't train anybody on everything, somethings they must learn by themselves.  You also have to protect yourself.  I have trained people on my job and then they try to steel it, stabbing you in the back.  Only when they screwed things up badly, will they give up.