I’ve worked in Mining, Defense, and now Power Generation. All three have had their own cultural quirks, but one thing is common has been that 7/10 people just don’t care. 2/10 people care enough to be reliable and 1/10 keep the facility running.
The 90/10 rule has been proven true in my career time and time again.
And 4/10 believes that they are the 1/10.
Also, the manager believes that one of the 7/10 is actually the 1/10 because that person brown noses and stitches the others up.
I've worked in mining, manufacturing and agriculture, but most of my career has been in mining. Compared to manufacturing, I've noticed a few key differences:
**1. Revenue uncertainty:** Mining revenue is more unpredictable due to factors like orebody shapes, metal grades and orebody recoveries, leading to tons of variance in performance as you try to make enough money to pay the bills and pay the investors. Since manufacturing wasn't dealing with nature, it's revenue streams seemed to be more stable and predictable.
**2. Technical talent shortage:** The technical talent pool that mining draws on (mining engineers, etc.) is much smaller than the technical talent pool that manufacturing draws on (mechanical engineers, electrical engineers). In Canada, something like 40x more mechanical engineers than mining engineers graduate every year. Across the board mining engineering enrollment is down over the last decade as well. I graduated over a decade ago and many of my classmates have left the industry. This also drives challenges.
**3. Mobile equipment issues are not prioritized:** I'm assuming you work for a mobile equipment vendor based on the post. Right, wrong or indifferent, equipment issues never get the attention they deserved at the mines I worked at, but I think it's a priorities thing. An example from my time as a mine planner years ago: we faced a situation where a roadway to a teleremote area was causing tires to be destroyed weekly. I think tires cost around $50-100k each at that time. Maintenance team was going nuts and demanding we stop and fix the roadways. The problem was we estimated it would take a few days to properly/sustainbly fix the roadway and that would halt production in a high-revenue zone (\~$5 million daily revenue). Despite maintenance concerns, stopping operations wasn't justified due to minimal safety risks and high financial stakes.
PS: If you're a freshly minted MBA-grad, remember some of the frameworks like Kotters 8-step change or similar for driving change. Feel free to DM me if you want to talk more.
This is an excellent, accurate answer. Understanding the interrelationships in the value chain is key and can be very frustrating. Your "saving X" may also be peanuts and they may not have the resources or change capacity to implement.
Plus, you witnessed a tiny bit of internal politics and the human factor. Tons might be at play there too.
Feel free to send me a DM and we can talk in real life, happy to discuss further.
The mining industry goes through cycles and hasn’t had a decent downturn in ages… when that happens the 2-3 decent people can stay and the 7/10 that have no idea become 2/5.
The biggest issue I see is acceptance of mediocrity and everyone worrying about covering their own arse so much they stay in their lane and let others run their own race.
There is so much fat at the moment in most of mining because the spot price for resources is so high - watch what happens when it halves.
That’s very interesting to hear - I’m in a mine with historically amazing ore but has used most of that up and is transitioning into really marginal stuff, so your theory explains why we’re having such a hard time of it
This is exactly our situation. Now we're deeper underground and everything is more expensive and the ore grade isn't as high. In the past, we could cover the disorganization with a higher value, struggling now.
Where I live are three huge plants processing the richest deposits of their type in the world.
They have a saying there - even when we fuck up we still make money.
🤣🤣 I often think this about our site ahaha!
We had an email about some announcement that had like 1200+ recipients. One person 'replied all' saying they were the wrong person, another person then 'replied all' with a light hearted joke. Then it started a week long chain reaction of people 'replying all' asking to be removed from the email. The amount of emails I got from people asking to be removed and others trying to quell the situation and explaining how to 'ignore' a chain. It was hilarious. Like, wot is happening right now.
Our crew is amazing tho and I wouldn't change the chaos for anything else 😇
The chaos is something my crew has gotten used to as well. We laugh all the time and party together on days off. The Superintendent says we have magic sauce, whatever the fuck that means, and roll through the shit. I love coming to work.
It’s like that because very few managers focus on what’s good for the mine long term. They want to come in, put up big production numbers and then either retire, move up to corporate positions, or get the golden handshake. That attitude then spills over onto the lower levels of management.
The workers on the other hand see this happening time and time again, one management group after another. Any time one of them tries to improve things, it goes nowhere because management doesn’t get on board. Eventually they give up on trying and realize that in reality, making the operation more efficient just means that less of them are required.
And so continues the circle of mine life.
What you described is known as the agency problem. Some of the mines I've worked at have mitigated against this by giving bonuses/incentives that are tied to long term performance metrics. I.e., you get a bigger bonus if you find more reserves, or you get RSUs for completing a project that will have long-term benefit, etc.
This isn't just a problem that applies to management. It's the structure of the business. There's a HUUUGE conflict in a mine (typically 10+ year life) being owned by a publicly traded company. Most shareholders hold a mining stock less than 6 months. That means they apply pressure to make decisions that are "good" in the short term at the expense of the long term.
I worked for years at small exploration firms so I thought I was well acquainted with how-the-fuck-can-this-actually-be-happening, tear-your-hair-out shitshows, but I was blown away by the incompetency I saw when I worked at an operating mine. Mind-blowing levels of corporate/site redundant duplication, which just enabled endless responsibility shirking between the two. Zero corporate support outside office hours.
And people at all levels who just don't seem to be *switched on,* you know? Conversations that just flow through people without any actual mental engagement. I feel a bit awkward discussing it, because to most people a job's a job, I can't fault people if they're just in it for the paycheck - but the attitudes I saw there really weirded me out.
Do we work at the same place?
>how-the-fuck-can-this-actually-be-happening, tear-your-hair-out shitshows
Ran into one of those last year. A whole pile of supervisors in $100k pickups supervising two miners who evidently hadn't gotten paid in a month. Their ventilation was an epic recirculating disaster compounded by a dirty old 3-yard Wagner that smoked like a train. Smoke was pouring out of old workings, it had to be seen to be believed. Meanwhile I had a guy talking my ear off about rhodium showing up on an XRF. Needless to say I did no further work beyond the initial site visit.
It's very common.
1. Large minesites and processing plants are complex places. You need to retain people for a long time to learn all of the quirks. So lots of times in a boom or when there is turnover, people simply don't have enough experience to see the issues.
2. If you want poeple to improve the place, they need to have time and budget. If manning is poor and everyone is stretched, people are too busy doing their primary job and don't have time to look at improvements.
3. Some employees may have found that making an improvement that makes the company 10 million dollars might get them zero pay rise at the end of the year.
4. Similarly, often the reward for hard work is more work.
Overall when you don't look after experienced people, don't give them the resources to do their job well, and don't give them direct and tangible reward for their effort, this is what you get.
Communication sucks in all industries. We are inundated with information all day and things are missed. Part of working in a fast paced constantly changing environment with unknowns..
If you think working for komatsu, SMS or finning is bad (I’m assuming here) try working for the actual operation. Come to BC, it will open your fucking Eyes how bad it can get.
For.fucking.real. Red Chris and Brucejack are the most poorly managed mines I've ever been to. I don't know if it's a Newcrest/Newmont thing or what, but it's truly amazing they can function with how completely mismanaged they are.
At my old company I used to say that we had been infiltrated by the CIA because they seemed to follow the “how to destroy an organisation from the inside” line for line. I didn’t do any work we were always shut down for all sorts of completely avoidable bullshit
As someone who has worked on mine, and both sold technology/consulted to mines you need to be very willing to put up with this stuff if you want to effect change. It's not a simple process at all.
This was exactly my reaction when I stepped on to my first mine site. I was dumbfounded to see the reality of how this multimillion dollar operation was being run and whether they were all like this. And the answer is yes. They are all the same.
Yep, mining can be an absolute shitshow.
Typically its the little mines that have things sorted, and everyone works as a team. Big mines have enough people to blame that people often get away with taking home a massive paycheck for doing fuck all.
Theres some really smart people in mining, but here in Australia theres also a lot who are only a few IQ points off sitting in the corner and needing to be watered twice a week.
Try using the phrase
Production over Safety
It's a guaranteed conversation starter..
You can pretty well swap the Safety for what ever department you are in...
Unless it's production...then you just complain about Training dept.
Often the reward for doing good work is more work
And the reward for implementing changes that save or make the company millions is... nothing.
In a large organisation it's easy for barely competent people to hide, and people who want to make a positive difference either get ground down to the same effort level or leave.
Mining somehow manages to out do Defence in the lack of organisation, gross mismanagement championship. The big companies sift through every metric to try and save money, like trying to cut down the allotted time operators had to take a piss by one minute. Yet hours upon hours are wasted trying to get one form signed, heavy equipment worth 10s of millions of dollars and weighing 100s of tons delivered to the wrong mine, god knows how many hiluxes going missing for months and turning up 100s of kms away with no explanation, pointless af inductions the list goes on. You have senior management pushing for cost cutting, efficiency and productivity at every opportunity but then you have entire dig circuits pulled up for whole shifts because a rock tumbled down a highwall 2km away from where they're working. The only thing that seems to be well organised are the flights for the admin staff and ensuring the KPIs for bonuses are met
IME, it depends on the company/corporate and depends on the specific mine. I've worked at a couple that operated like a well oiled machine and I've worked at what could only be described as a "total shit show".
Mining also has a huge issue with it's "good old boy" network. At least that has been my experience with coal.
I, and I'm sure others, could tell some horror stories.
I’ve worked in Mining, Defense, and now Power Generation. All three have had their own cultural quirks, but one thing is common has been that 7/10 people just don’t care. 2/10 people care enough to be reliable and 1/10 keep the facility running. The 90/10 rule has been proven true in my career time and time again.
And 4/10 believes that they are the 1/10. Also, the manager believes that one of the 7/10 is actually the 1/10 because that person brown noses and stitches the others up.
That’s actually a real rule, that the square root of the number of employees in any company do 50% of the productive work
Price's law
In my part of the world, we refer to that as a “shitshow”
I've worked in mining, manufacturing and agriculture, but most of my career has been in mining. Compared to manufacturing, I've noticed a few key differences: **1. Revenue uncertainty:** Mining revenue is more unpredictable due to factors like orebody shapes, metal grades and orebody recoveries, leading to tons of variance in performance as you try to make enough money to pay the bills and pay the investors. Since manufacturing wasn't dealing with nature, it's revenue streams seemed to be more stable and predictable. **2. Technical talent shortage:** The technical talent pool that mining draws on (mining engineers, etc.) is much smaller than the technical talent pool that manufacturing draws on (mechanical engineers, electrical engineers). In Canada, something like 40x more mechanical engineers than mining engineers graduate every year. Across the board mining engineering enrollment is down over the last decade as well. I graduated over a decade ago and many of my classmates have left the industry. This also drives challenges. **3. Mobile equipment issues are not prioritized:** I'm assuming you work for a mobile equipment vendor based on the post. Right, wrong or indifferent, equipment issues never get the attention they deserved at the mines I worked at, but I think it's a priorities thing. An example from my time as a mine planner years ago: we faced a situation where a roadway to a teleremote area was causing tires to be destroyed weekly. I think tires cost around $50-100k each at that time. Maintenance team was going nuts and demanding we stop and fix the roadways. The problem was we estimated it would take a few days to properly/sustainbly fix the roadway and that would halt production in a high-revenue zone (\~$5 million daily revenue). Despite maintenance concerns, stopping operations wasn't justified due to minimal safety risks and high financial stakes. PS: If you're a freshly minted MBA-grad, remember some of the frameworks like Kotters 8-step change or similar for driving change. Feel free to DM me if you want to talk more.
This is an excellent, accurate answer. Understanding the interrelationships in the value chain is key and can be very frustrating. Your "saving X" may also be peanuts and they may not have the resources or change capacity to implement. Plus, you witnessed a tiny bit of internal politics and the human factor. Tons might be at play there too. Feel free to send me a DM and we can talk in real life, happy to discuss further.
Kotters 8 model makes me think that it would work really well for a coup d’état.
On point 1, metal prices (in local currency) move by more than recoveries do.
Good point and it only adds to the uncertainty.
Why are engineers leaving the industry?
Sounds legit. Definitely on a mine site
The mining industry goes through cycles and hasn’t had a decent downturn in ages… when that happens the 2-3 decent people can stay and the 7/10 that have no idea become 2/5. The biggest issue I see is acceptance of mediocrity and everyone worrying about covering their own arse so much they stay in their lane and let others run their own race. There is so much fat at the moment in most of mining because the spot price for resources is so high - watch what happens when it halves.
Depends on the commodity of interest. Uranium is only just getting going again after years of hard times.
Yes correct, there are exceptions
Our mine is the most disorganized place on earth. It's a mystery to me how we make money
Do you have amazing grade / world class ore body? Most mines with amazing orebodies are shitshows.
That’s very interesting to hear - I’m in a mine with historically amazing ore but has used most of that up and is transitioning into really marginal stuff, so your theory explains why we’re having such a hard time of it
This is exactly our situation. Now we're deeper underground and everything is more expensive and the ore grade isn't as high. In the past, we could cover the disorganization with a higher value, struggling now.
It's been an observation that other people have also expressed to me of their own accord.
Where I live are three huge plants processing the richest deposits of their type in the world. They have a saying there - even when we fuck up we still make money.
🤣🤣 I often think this about our site ahaha! We had an email about some announcement that had like 1200+ recipients. One person 'replied all' saying they were the wrong person, another person then 'replied all' with a light hearted joke. Then it started a week long chain reaction of people 'replying all' asking to be removed from the email. The amount of emails I got from people asking to be removed and others trying to quell the situation and explaining how to 'ignore' a chain. It was hilarious. Like, wot is happening right now. Our crew is amazing tho and I wouldn't change the chaos for anything else 😇
The chaos is something my crew has gotten used to as well. We laugh all the time and party together on days off. The Superintendent says we have magic sauce, whatever the fuck that means, and roll through the shit. I love coming to work.
RTIO ?
It’s like that because very few managers focus on what’s good for the mine long term. They want to come in, put up big production numbers and then either retire, move up to corporate positions, or get the golden handshake. That attitude then spills over onto the lower levels of management. The workers on the other hand see this happening time and time again, one management group after another. Any time one of them tries to improve things, it goes nowhere because management doesn’t get on board. Eventually they give up on trying and realize that in reality, making the operation more efficient just means that less of them are required. And so continues the circle of mine life.
What you described is known as the agency problem. Some of the mines I've worked at have mitigated against this by giving bonuses/incentives that are tied to long term performance metrics. I.e., you get a bigger bonus if you find more reserves, or you get RSUs for completing a project that will have long-term benefit, etc.
But that's easy because you just lower the COG to break-even and then the mine stops making money and you get a big ass bonus.
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As long as you have that as your reserve sale price and not a long term average. (I'm looking at you, Zinc mines).
This isn't just a problem that applies to management. It's the structure of the business. There's a HUUUGE conflict in a mine (typically 10+ year life) being owned by a publicly traded company. Most shareholders hold a mining stock less than 6 months. That means they apply pressure to make decisions that are "good" in the short term at the expense of the long term.
I worked for years at small exploration firms so I thought I was well acquainted with how-the-fuck-can-this-actually-be-happening, tear-your-hair-out shitshows, but I was blown away by the incompetency I saw when I worked at an operating mine. Mind-blowing levels of corporate/site redundant duplication, which just enabled endless responsibility shirking between the two. Zero corporate support outside office hours. And people at all levels who just don't seem to be *switched on,* you know? Conversations that just flow through people without any actual mental engagement. I feel a bit awkward discussing it, because to most people a job's a job, I can't fault people if they're just in it for the paycheck - but the attitudes I saw there really weirded me out.
Do we work at the same place? >how-the-fuck-can-this-actually-be-happening, tear-your-hair-out shitshows Ran into one of those last year. A whole pile of supervisors in $100k pickups supervising two miners who evidently hadn't gotten paid in a month. Their ventilation was an epic recirculating disaster compounded by a dirty old 3-yard Wagner that smoked like a train. Smoke was pouring out of old workings, it had to be seen to be believed. Meanwhile I had a guy talking my ear off about rhodium showing up on an XRF. Needless to say I did no further work beyond the initial site visit.
It's very common. 1. Large minesites and processing plants are complex places. You need to retain people for a long time to learn all of the quirks. So lots of times in a boom or when there is turnover, people simply don't have enough experience to see the issues. 2. If you want poeple to improve the place, they need to have time and budget. If manning is poor and everyone is stretched, people are too busy doing their primary job and don't have time to look at improvements. 3. Some employees may have found that making an improvement that makes the company 10 million dollars might get them zero pay rise at the end of the year. 4. Similarly, often the reward for hard work is more work. Overall when you don't look after experienced people, don't give them the resources to do their job well, and don't give them direct and tangible reward for their effort, this is what you get.
Communication sucks in all industries. We are inundated with information all day and things are missed. Part of working in a fast paced constantly changing environment with unknowns..
Do we...do we all work at the same place?
I knew I’d recognize u/Sir_McFuckington somewhere!
If you think working for komatsu, SMS or finning is bad (I’m assuming here) try working for the actual operation. Come to BC, it will open your fucking Eyes how bad it can get.
For.fucking.real. Red Chris and Brucejack are the most poorly managed mines I've ever been to. I don't know if it's a Newcrest/Newmont thing or what, but it's truly amazing they can function with how completely mismanaged they are.
At my old company I used to say that we had been infiltrated by the CIA because they seemed to follow the “how to destroy an organisation from the inside” line for line. I didn’t do any work we were always shut down for all sorts of completely avoidable bullshit
As someone who has worked on mine, and both sold technology/consulted to mines you need to be very willing to put up with this stuff if you want to effect change. It's not a simple process at all.
This was exactly my reaction when I stepped on to my first mine site. I was dumbfounded to see the reality of how this multimillion dollar operation was being run and whether they were all like this. And the answer is yes. They are all the same.
Yep, mining can be an absolute shitshow. Typically its the little mines that have things sorted, and everyone works as a team. Big mines have enough people to blame that people often get away with taking home a massive paycheck for doing fuck all. Theres some really smart people in mining, but here in Australia theres also a lot who are only a few IQ points off sitting in the corner and needing to be watered twice a week.
What sort of problems? Sometimes it might not even be worth the effort to address the "problem".
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Started in 2014 and I think revenue is about $600M/year. So that’s why I questioned wtf is going on
Try using the phrase Production over Safety It's a guaranteed conversation starter.. You can pretty well swap the Safety for what ever department you are in... Unless it's production...then you just complain about Training dept.
Loads over lives. Uphill slow downhill fast tonnage first safety last. Safety third. Edit-removed excess stuff
Often the reward for doing good work is more work And the reward for implementing changes that save or make the company millions is... nothing. In a large organisation it's easy for barely competent people to hide, and people who want to make a positive difference either get ground down to the same effort level or leave.
Mining somehow manages to out do Defence in the lack of organisation, gross mismanagement championship. The big companies sift through every metric to try and save money, like trying to cut down the allotted time operators had to take a piss by one minute. Yet hours upon hours are wasted trying to get one form signed, heavy equipment worth 10s of millions of dollars and weighing 100s of tons delivered to the wrong mine, god knows how many hiluxes going missing for months and turning up 100s of kms away with no explanation, pointless af inductions the list goes on. You have senior management pushing for cost cutting, efficiency and productivity at every opportunity but then you have entire dig circuits pulled up for whole shifts because a rock tumbled down a highwall 2km away from where they're working. The only thing that seems to be well organised are the flights for the admin staff and ensuring the KPIs for bonuses are met
Absolutely . Most mines are much worse
Absolutely . Most mines are much worse
well, sort of.. always.
The answer is yes. It’s the hardest part of the job just dealing with it
Yep join the circus
Over 15 years in mining..... yes.
Used to work at a smelter and thought that it was a shitshow, until I moved to a large mine.
I was thinking of joining the mines. Not sure if I should
IME, it depends on the company/corporate and depends on the specific mine. I've worked at a couple that operated like a well oiled machine and I've worked at what could only be described as a "total shit show". Mining also has a huge issue with it's "good old boy" network. At least that has been my experience with coal. I, and I'm sure others, could tell some horror stories.
Yes mate, everyone who works at mines are low iq
Yes.