Originally Posted by Unregistered

Troubleshooting circuitry/parts of the machine is part of it (maintenance). There is also configuration (eg. adjust position of robot arm), calibration, replacement of damaged parts and upgrading parts (aka retrofitting) which are pretty much what you expect of a normal technician. Do take note that a single process module can have different version or models of the equipment like iPhone 13 and IPhone 13 Pro etc so as an FSE you need to know all of them

That's the first half of FSE. The other half is essentially customer management which I would say it is a more interesting part about this job. Essentially, when customers will request/enquire something such as additional stuff or enquire on why this particular machine keeps breaking down etc, as a FSE, you would need to provide results or explaination for their request or enquires. It may sounds easy but its not. There are a lot of things you do not know or have and hence, you need to ask people and sometimes even chase them just to get the answers for your customers. And when you take too long, you also need to tell them why you took so long. Also, some request can be ridiculous (eg. Customers can request a process to be done in 2 days where you know usually it takes 5 days) which means you probably need to spend overtime just to get things done (usually have ot pay thankfully). That being said, I do feel that you can really learn a lot from this because the skills you learn are transferable but it depends from person to person.

One thing I forget to mentioned is that customers have servicing contracts which are essentially FSE lifeline. It is the job of FSE to uphold and maintain these service contracts as it can drastically affect your performance (more than customers complaining to your boss). I heard there are cases service contract are lost due to poor competency from the FSE. When that happens, your own work performance is significantly affected in a bad way. So as a FSE, you need to maintain the contract by showing your competency to them

I think there are a lot more than what I said but I will stop here. As I mentioned before, this job you can either love it or hate it. Fortunately, if choose to do this, the first few years would be more chill as customers would prefer people who are experience than those do not. I would say you use these few years to decide whether or not you want this as a job. Hope this helps as well