A talk with my dad made me rethink the 'fix it fast' mindset

I was working on a stubborn boot loop for a client's custom gaming rig, my third hour on it. My dad, a retired mechanic, watched me and said, 'You know, in my shop, the fastest fix was often the one you did right the first time, even if it took longer to find.' He told me about a car that kept coming back for the same noise until he spent a whole afternoon tracing it to a fifty cent bushing, not the big part everyone assumed. It hit different because I realized I was just swapping parts, hoping for a quick win, instead of doing the slow, sure work of real diagnosis. That rig had a failing power supply rail I'd skipped testing. I spent two more hours and found it. Do you think there's too much pressure in our field to turn things around quickly, even if it means missing the root cause? How do you balance speed with doing a complete job?

4 comments

4 Comments

roberts.leo10d ago

My first few years in IT I was all about swapping parts quick and calling it a day, thought that was the only way to keep the boss off my back. Then I had this printer that kept jamming and I swapped the whole roller assembly twice before a slow Wednesday I actually sat there and watched it feed paper, turned out a little plastic guide was cracked. @aaron_mitchell you're not wrong that quick fixes work sometimes, but that's usually when you already know the exact issue from experience. That dad mechanic story is gold, it's hard to explain to management that spending two hours looking costs less than the three return visits you'd get from a half-assed fix lol. Now I tell people my diagnostic rate went way up when I stopped trying to beat the clock every single time.

samk772mo ago

Yeah that "fastest fix" line is so true, it's like skipping the instructions to save time and just making it worse lol.

aaron_mitchell2mo ago

Honestly I've seen the opposite work out plenty of times. Last week my router was acting up and the quick reset guide online fixed it in two minutes. Sometimes the official steps are overkill for a simple problem. Skipping to the fast fix can be the right call if you know what you're doing. It really depends on the situation.

zarat382mo ago

Remember when my buddy wasted a week swapping ram before checking the motherboard standoffs?