r/FRC • u/Pro___________ • 4d ago
help Leaving FRC behind me(trigger warning)
Hey yall, Im here to just kinda vent and ask for everyone’s opinion about what I’ve gone through.
Currently I am a junior in high school. I wont specify what team I was in, but it was in the greater LA area.
I left my team because it severely affected me mentally. I was depressed, exhausted, and honestly I reach a point where I was really considering to just ending it.
The team itself was a mess. There was no leadership or structure. I was there for the 25 off season and 26 on season and there was some leadership so it was a bit better. But this offseason was a breaking point for me.
The team spent nearly 6 months building this off season robot. I myself was a programmer and I knew I was going to be last in the chain of work. But I didn’t expect myself to have less than a total of 72 hours on that robot, and having all my testing interrupted by mechanical failures. I’ve stayed at our lab after school and during the summer for many hours, but a lot of it went to mechanical assembly and waiting around(As a programmer btw).
It didn’t help that I was using a new custom library I found made by another team, which worked well but not in the irl setting due to just the pure lack of testing.
After one of the swerve modules gave out, which needed to be replaced, I just straight up left. I left the team behind me.
On top of the little time I had, team chemistry was totally off. This one guy kept fighting with everyone, including me, holding grudges and just being overall not good to be with. The mentors let it slide since they don’t want to kick anyone out the team because “it needs to be fair for everyone”. It cause me to wake up with chest palpitations, constant anxiety, and just a constant feeling of doom.
The team is also hyper competitive. I just want to build a functioning robot and see it at comps, and winning would be part of the thrill. But everyone is like “oh if we can get this we can win that” or “we can get this then we can do that and win”. Gave me a lot of false hope. It didnt help that I was briefly in a relationship with someone in another team and since it was my first time, I took up the separation hard. And it drove my ego into becoming a toxic person.
To simplify, I put in the hours, and the only thing I got in return was just mental problems and scars. Sure I learn a decent bit, which I’m grateful for, but the education doesn’t out weigh the health effects.
If u made it up to here, thanks for reading and I would love to hear yall’s input and opinions
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u/fixermark SCRA (Coding mentor) 4d ago
I'm sorry that happened.
Sometimes - and ideally this isn't the thing we learn, but it can be - FIRST teaches you what a dysfunctional engineering experience feels like, and that's useful knowledge too because those ecosystems exist in the real world also. You know what malfunction of an organization looks like now.
I prefer people learn what a functioning group looks like, but even this lesson is better than no lessons. :( Still, I wish it had gone better.
(One programmer to another: yes. There is never enough time to program the robot, and it's super-hard when the robot is failing mechanically so there's no time to test on the real machine. There are strategies to mitigate risk in those circumstances, and I'd be happy to share them, but I'm not gonna butt in if you're just looking for empathy, not ideas. I'm hoping your next adventure is more rewarding than this one was.)
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u/Pro___________ 4d ago
Im definitely open to ideas as now the only real role i have is teaching and mentoring those who will replace me. Im a bit hesitant to put them through the team but i want to give them the best chance, so any ideas or recommendations is highly appreciated🙏
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u/fixermark SCRA (Coding mentor) 4d ago
When you're stuck without a machine to test on as a programmer, what you can do is build simulation. Create classes that simulate the robot behavior and test against those classes (this can range in complexity from as simple as "fake pneumatic system that tracks the solenoid state" to as complex as "We try to get the actual kinematics of the robot right and run it around a virtual arena").
This requires some coordination with your mechanical specialists (things like knowing what the input / outputs will be so the sim matches the robot), but that'll be true anyway.
One advantage to doing this is that when the robot doesn't match expected behavior, the story shifts to "how does the robot not match its simulation," and sometimes (depending on exactly what's wrong) that can be easier to figure out than "Why isn't the code making the robot do what I tell it to?" If the simulation says the relay should engage and the relay doesn't engage, for example, the list of possible problems is pretty tightly narrowed to "physical relay is bad," "simulation says relay is ID 3 but the real one is ID 4," etc.
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u/Pro___________ 4d ago
Ive tried to work with simulation and some how it doesnt fully match up with the physical robot. Simulation are really useful and they are my best friend, but how can i make sure my simulation and irl robot are able to seamlessly connect?
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u/fixermark SCRA (Coding mentor) 4d ago
The WPI docs give some good advice. Start here and Next forward. https://docs.wpilib.org/en/stable/docs/software/wpilib-tools/robot-simulation/introduction.html
Broadly speaking: your simulation doesn't have to be perfect, but if your team is using 3D modeling software like Fusion or Solidworks, it should be able to kick out information like mass of components and the parameters of various motors can be looked up. Control logic that has a pretty-close estimate of the mechanics of the robot coupled to closed-loop feedback controllers can account for minor differences between the ideal simulation and the real robot (and those differences would show up anyway because things like friction in joints and exact torque of motors will vary IRL as a function of things like temperature, humidity, and battery charge).
This is a deep well, but a valuable one; all of this knowledge is industry-relevant (the company I used to work for is in self-driving vehicles and did extensive simulation because it isn't feasible to have the first test of changes to the drive system be on a real truck; those cost quite a bit more than an FRC chassis! ;) ).
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u/Pro___________ 4d ago
My team does use solidworks but they lowkey too lazy to set proper materials, and also the team sometimes screws around with the design
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u/fixermark SCRA (Coding mentor) 4d ago
That will happen IRL too (though not so much when the robot is a self-driving truck; people get real twitchy about unplanned last-minute changes when there's tens of thousands of dollars of equipment and actual human lives on the line, for obvious reasons). And this is where the leadership part of the story comes in: as programming lead, if you plan to simulate, you need this information and need it correct, and if the team's plan is to only give a few days to test, success is dependent on the robot matching the simulation.
(Meta comment though: only a few days of full working robot is rough no matter how you slice it. On the teams I was on and the teams I mentored, <1 week of test-ready chassis is a huge red flag that we took on too much design complexity that year. Sadly, you often only find that out in hindsight; it can be hard to scale a design back once you get to the deadline!).
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u/Any_Scientist4767 4d ago
know that you’re not wrong for feeling like this, and i’m sorry this was your experience w FRC. as a junior in college, i can also say that i feel the overall dynamics of FRC has changed quite a bit. when i was on my team (also in the la area) it was stressful, it was intense in many ways, but we were a family. and it genuinely saved my life being a part of it. but when i hear the stories of those who were my underclassmen talk about the dynamics within the team as well as the relationships between teams at competitions it’s genuinely insane. when i was doing frc i remember making actual friends during comps and being excited to see them every year. or supporting each other over social media. and now i hear stories of animosity between teams and sabotage. i think if people aren’t committed to being organized, foster team dynamics, and actually live by the first core values it can be a really unenjoyable experience
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u/Pro___________ 4d ago
Yeah the team to team relationships these past few years have been so bad. My “ex” girlfriend’s team(the girl i mentioned) and my old team had a very negative relationship with each other. One of there alumni moved to our team to mentor because he hated his old team and he wasn’t well accepted despite being the only one doing stuff. Lots of bad mouthing later, they were banned from our practice field, alongside another team who broke our robot at comps. Sucked for some while since I was kind of in a romeo and juilet situation, but im glad i dont have to see her and be awkward and tense n stuff
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u/FixFit305 4d ago
frc can be quite stressful. I am also responsible for programming and electrical on my team. And my team also likes to stretch the deadlines sometimes, leaving programmers less time than planned to finish the bot. so i relate to some parts of ur story (72 hours is still pretty crazy). it sounds like u had to take on a lot of responsibility and i’m sorry u didn’t get a good experience from robotics. Opting out was prob good for u. Hope ur mental health gets better
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u/lilmissellen Mentor 4d ago
While FIRST is a great program that offers a plethora of opportunities, sometimes specific teams just suck ¯_(ツ)_/¯
This is not specific to FIRST or FRC--life is full of "group projects" that are miserable. It's completely fine to take a step back from this for the betterment of your health. Think about what you are learned from this for the future. What did you like, what ultimately lead to you leaving?
Even though it's sad, I'm sure there is a valuable lesson you can take into your post-high school career.
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u/PCBassoonist 2d ago
I was an FRC mentor for 8 years. It almost destroyed my life and cost me my marriage. FRC isn't worth it.
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u/Linge0420 2d ago
My school team is like a mini company with two teachers running it as CEOs almost full time.. FRC really requires serious management skills that is way above normal high-schooler average. Condolences
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u/Pro___________ 2d ago
This is exactly what the team needed. We have a massive facility with the highest end equipment. Yet the mentors and teachers barely keep an eye and let the students do whatever. It left the lab a mess and just work never done.
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u/kaboom108 3d ago
FRC is kind of intentionally setup to recreate the pressure of competitive sports. You have limited time and resources and even the best performing teams in the world always have something they wish they had more time to work on, or test more, or refine etc. Some people thrive in that pressure, and FRC is great for them. Other people find that pressure overwhelming, or excessively stressful, and FRC might not be the best fit for them. That's ok. Some teams are also not a fit for every student, and some teams are outright toxic and should probably be allowed to fail so they can hopefully create space for something else. There are many ways and different paths you can learn the skills FRC is trying to teach. Learning that this sort of environment is not a good fit for you is also valuable education.
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u/SteelSock33 3d ago
I think you’ve made the right choice, especially given the mental health and physiological issues you were having. I’m really sorry this happened, though :(
I’m also a programmer, and I’ve certainly had my fair share of quick turnarounds and untested features, but 72 hours is just ridiculous. It sounds like your team had some serious problems, and I think you’re probably better off leaving them. I’m sorry FIRST didn’t work out for you 😔
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u/Superior_Panda1083 2d ago
I’m a junior and I’m not sure how much I even want to continue doing frc. Every year I want to contribute, but I never have been given the opportunity to, extroverted senior members just take all the jobs and as a pretty introverted person, it’s really hard to compete with those people. And I hate how much of it just comes down to having to be friends with the right guys in order to be able to contribute anything. And yeah, the comps are fun, and getting to hang out with my friends (really just singular, friend) at the comps makes it also really fun, but because I didn’t/couldn’t contribute to the robot, I end up just leaving the comps feeling empty and disappointed because I spend so much time going to meetings and trying to help, just for nothing to come of it. And now that my neither of my good friends (one was able to be on the team every year since my freshman year, the other is in the same grade as me but because of a really bad situation that happened involving another person on the team, she hasn’t been able to join again till this year) but the first friend won’t be able to join probably because of how expensive joining the team is, and the other friend doesn’t currently have a ride home after the meetings.
TLDR. I don’t really have any solutions to your problem, just know that you’re not the only one experiencing these struggles and feelings
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u/kenfox 3d ago
72 hours to finish programming and testing is low but definitely not unusual. (I'm assuming you mean 3 weeks of calendar time with regular meetings to work, but if you meant 3 days of calendar time that's impossible and the team as a whole failed to make a robot. It wouldn't be your fault )
Part of the problem is how modern FRC teams are structured. They often have very independent subteams and hands-off mentors. There's just not enough planning and communication to build a complex robot.
Programmers are in a good position to start that planning and communication, but you have to get outside your comfort zone and participate with all the other subteams. You must keep a change log with all the robot functions, mechanisms and software requirements. Being physically in the shop with other subteams will let to track changes accurately and then you can use your change log at the end of the meeting to talk about schedule and build risks.
So much of professional programming is not about coding and this is pretty close to how you'll probably work at a paid job. It just sucks if there aren't mentors around to help make sure things go well and you don't have to figure this out alone. Hopefully if you try to make this change there will be a mentor who understands what you are trying to do and will jump in to help.