Thoughts on Engineering. And Coffee.
Get your Fizz On! Don’t go Buzz Off! Crack open a FizzBuzz! Slam it down. Feel the burnnnnnn! Forget wings – Fizzbuzz gives you buzzzzz! Fly around on your Buzz and Ride The Fizzy!
On the other hand, FizzBuzz may be one of the classic developer tests widely used to filter out the estimated 90% of programming job candidates who can’t program their way out of a wet paper bag.
There is a cost associated with every product ever made. The coffee cup you are drinking out of. The chair you are sitting in. The screen you are looking at. Every item around you was produced at some point from some sort of human labor and can have some sort of value placed on the generation of that object. The way that companies make money is to then sell products for a higher value than that cost and therefore make some money on that object. Welcome to the wonderful world of profit margin.
When things go wrong at work, the day can seem really long and hard to get through. However, the reasons behind why things are going south in a hurry might be beyond your control! You might be in the midst of an Engineering Law attack! Did you know that there are dozens of laws that can trip you up at almost every turn? In order to help you navigate this minefield of unintended consequences you first need to understand these laws and where they came from. Luckily, the internet is here to help! Below are a collection of the best of the best Engineering Laws that you can use to your advantage. Remember, forewarned is forearmed! Good luck!
You weren’t hired to make it work on your machine – you were hired to make it work on every other machine in the world…
“If wishes were horses then beggars would ride” is a quote that I remember hearing at home often while growing up. There is also no use crying over spilled milk. The fact of the matter is, wide open big opportunities are all around us every day and we routinely miss them each and every day. We all have thoughts and dreams. We all have random shower thoughts. The gap to be bridged here is whether or not each of us can first envision how that one big idea would grow into a viable business and then find the motivation to take the first steps down that path and start doing something about it.
Whether it is money or fame, for a sense of passion or a sense of duty everyone that leverages their ambition and pursues these ideas feels the motivation to do so. Therefore, from these statements and the story above we have isolated three key elements that are required for going all carpe diem on a Big Idea: Identification, Vision, and Motivation.
The following seven things are all part of what I want any newbie on my team to know, embrace, and understand at a deep level. Anyone who has made it through the hiring process and who can embrace these ideas should end up being a great teammate. Or – if unable to get through the learning curve that these ideas imply – at least we will find out sooner rather than later that we might have whiffed on this person as a valuable member of this team. So here are the seven things that I want any new Engineer on my team to know.
The grass is not always greener on the other side. I am sorry to have to disappoint anyone reading this, but it is true. This idea that things will be better or that having more information will lead to more satisfaction or understanding or something that will help you to fell happier and more fulfilled at the end of the day is not always accurate in the business world. I am speaking here of that feeling of anxiety that can creep in when seeing managers or upper level people go into a room, close the door and have a discussion. What are they talking about? How will it affect me?
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…
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!
