Thoughts on Engineering. And Coffee.
The first person to be highlighted in the Luminary series is someone named Margaret Hamilton. While you may not be aware of whom this post is about here at the beginning, this is a person that has had great influence over the profession of Software Engineering and is worthy of recognition by all who claim that title.
Meetings. The scourge of the business workplace. The necessary evil that sucks up time and people. The black hole of early morning and after lunch sleepy people and never ending powerpoint slides. Here are some haiku to commemorate these wonderful time sinks.
Some recent reading brought the concept of a 10X Engineer to my attention, specifically an article titled: “The 100x Engineer”. This is a concept that I had no knowledge of prior to this revelation but after digging deeper there is quite a large amount of information regarding this philosophy out there on the web. Think about all of the things in your life that would change if some of them were 10X. Sure, we would all love a 10X bigger paycheck. What if your internet was 10X faster? Or your car was 10X more fuel efficient? What if you worked out so much that you needed to eat 10X the calories to balance out the workouts?
Writing is not easy. Wait – start over. Writing consistent quality material can be difficult at times. Wait – still not right. Let’s go back to the first one. Writing is not easy. Not great, but good enough to get going here. The collection of targeted writing that I have produced is currently very limited in scope and quantity. Therefore, the data set with which to draw conclusions from is rather small. Many of the topics that have resulted in something that I would consider to be higher quality have been generated in creative outbursts where my poor fingers felt like they couldn’t keep up with the torrent of words and ideas flowing from my brain to the screen. Then there are days like today where I have a day off, my family has left for school, and I have space and quiet and all the coffee that I can…
We finally made it! 5 long days deep down in the salt mines to make it to the two wonderful days of freedom and independence: the weekend. Here are some haiku reflecting on and celebrating this weekly milestone. Enjoy!
Author: Eric Reis First Published: 2011 Amazon Referral Link: The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses Review Part 1: The Lean Startup (Part 1) This book is highly recommended for anyone that wants to explore more ways to grow and evaluate their own methodologies for development and successful processes. There are a lot of awesome ideas in this book that can strengthen methodologies and provide value to any organization. The following is an attempt to capture some thoughts on some of the big ticket topics of the book but this should not prevent you from reading it and seeing which ideas have the most relevance to you in your situation. Validated Learning – Build-Measure-Learn Having experienced the results of Validated Learning without having the words to describe it well, reading through this approach in the book provided a great sense of completion to…
Humans are creatures of habit. There is no getting around it. Engineers tend to be more anal than the average human and therefore, Engineers are curators, cultivators, and consumers of routine. So when someone parks in my parking spot at work, I get upset. Today, when I got back from lunch, I became upset as my space was taken. Now it should be pointed out at this point in the story that there are no defined or reserved parking spaces at the company I work at and since the lot is only used for employees of this company, it is not like we will run out of spots or that whomever gets there first couldn’t pick any open space available. Still, someone was in my space. So what advice can I provide a new Engineer other than to simply stay out of my parking space that I don’t own or…
Wow… when you reach a milestone or goal that you have set for yourself and you finally climb those last few steps or rungs or handholds and reach that plateau, life feels good. It is also easier than you might guess to surprise yourself. If you had told me that this adventure would lead to me publishing my first post on a site like Medium in the upcoming months I would have thought that you were crazy. But, now, today, I just self-published my first story on the Medium Partner Program. Let’s rewind a bit and I will attempt to show you how I got to this point. Back in August of 2019 when I finally did something about my random and scattered thoughts regarding starting a blog and putting my voice out into the wider world there was always a little voice that wondered what it would be like…
So you finally made it! 12+ years of primary schooling plus high school and now you have managed to get through weeks, months, and years of school to be an Engineer. You can now put down that notebook. You have a job. This is the real world. You can Google any problem that you have. Stack Overflow is fully available for use. And you can finally put away that pen and paper because you don’t have to take down all of those infernal notes all the time!
As the days grow colder and the coffee steam rises from the cup, here are some nice and fresh haiku to keep you entertained while the leaves fall outside.
