Tag: engineering

Your Idea Of A Dream Job Is Wrong – Here Is How To Adjust Your Thinking

Published 2021/10/21

Your Idea Of A Dream Job Is Wrong – Here Is How To Adjust Your Thinking

Have you ever sat back and considered how strange, weird, and often times dumb humans are?

This isn’t about looking up whatever craziness Florida Man has gotten into lately.

What I am referring to is how hard it is for the human brain to recognize and understand the current world around us each and every day.

Think about it using that big, wrinkly brain of yours.

We build and create some amazing and wonderful things. We hope for the future. We even have a word, nostalgia, that defines looking back at the positives in our past.

Yet, if you were to ask any random human what they would call their dream job, how would they respond?

Oh, How Your Goals Will Change

Published 2021/09/26

Oh, How Your Goals Will Change

There are a few things that have become rote at certain events in our lives.

These events are not guaranteed for every person. However, they have become so embedded in our culture to have becomes almost cliched caricatures of the original meaning and intent. They are as embedded as decorating a tree at Christmas and finding candy-filled eggs at Easter.

Yet when it comes to jobs, making money, and being a professional there are also some tried and true customs.

These aren’t your familial holiday traditions.

Your Salary And Title At Work Do Not Define You

Published 2021/08/19

Your Salary And Title At Work Do Not Define You

Think back to the last time you met someone new.

The circumstances may end up dictating the conversation – if you are on a sinking boat you probably won’t stop to chat with the person next to you while you are both trying to stay afloat.

However, in many social situations, meeting a new person often goes something like this:

“Hey, Kevin, I would like you to meet my [insert one of the following: friend/co-worker/teammate/acquaintance/random person I just met], so-and-so.”

“Hi, so-and-so! How are you?”

“I’m good. Thanks for asking. So…. what do you do for a living?”

It may not always happen that quickly and it may be asked in different forms, but thinking back over meeting new humans in my lifetime that question comes up a lot.

Which begs an even greater question: why do we insist on defining new people that we meet by their jobs?

We’ve Got Talent, Yes We Do, We’ve Got Talent, What About You?

Published 2021/08/16

We’ve Got Talent, Yes We Do, We’ve Got Talent, What About You?

No, this isn’t a high school football game. Yes, this was channeled in the spirit of cheering everyone on.

However, instead of spirit, we need to talk about talent.

Inspiration comes from many places and will strike when you least expect it. Today, it came in the form of scrolling through one of my daily read websites.

This one was The Verge. While looking over the daily tech news they had a Vox Media careers blub nestled among the regular news about crypto-this and Apple that.

It simply read: “We’re building great things, and we need your talent“

100 Posts In: Lessons Learned In Blogging, Engineering, & Life

Published 2021/07/19

100 Posts In: Lessons Learned In Blogging, Engineering, & Life

Ideas are awesome. Ideas are great.

However, ideas don’t pay the bills. Ideas don’t manifest themselves out of thin air, hopes, and dreams.

How often do we have ideas?

MDIs are great. MDI stands for Million Dollar Ideas.

How often do we find ourselves sitting around and some amazing and practical thought worms its way from the back of our heads to a shining spotlight position of prominence right up front?

This would be the type of idea that you find yourself coming back to while sitting around bored. The one that rents space in the back and pops up early and often.

The one that, if implemented and turned into reality, could easily net you at least a million dollars.

Do You Even Process Bro?

Published 2021/05/30

Do You Even Process Bro?

Yeah the title sucks. That is what I get for having kids and living with teenagers – the constant meme-driven noise that pervades every aspect of home life. The title is a deviation from an older meme about weightlifting that has been co-opted into a simple question about doing things that seem obvious and common. Things that we should all be doing. Which brings us to the topic at hand. Processes. The thought of building and following a process can unfortunately have some negative connotations. Processes almost always carry overhead and paperwork. They take time. They can be tedious. Yet there are processes all around us in the business world. They are, at a deep level, a means of communication. Of structure. Of collaboration. To an Engineer, a finely tuned process is a thing of beauty. But I digress. While the goal is to argue for processes and the value…

You Need Organizational Readiness – But You Don’t Know How To Implement It

Photo by Startup Stock Photos from Pexels

Published 2021/05/14

You Need Organizational Readiness – But You Don’t Know How To Implement It

Let me introduce a new concept to talk about today: Org Readiness It just rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it? Org Readiness is a necessary concept that goes hand-in-hand with Engineering. While the concept may be more easily understood in the realm of product Engineering, this really applies to any Engineering discipline. While I write mainly regarding Engineering topics and specifically for Engineers, this topic is not directly for this group. However, indirectly, this is a concept that has a huge bearing on whether the work and effort done by the Engineers has any chance of success within the business. If we were to draw an organizational structure that looked like a target with the Engineering Team sitting smack-dab in the middle of the bullseye then it is a fact that the concept of Org Readiness is not within that center circle. However, it is the connecting tissue that connects…

Has Tesla Really Engineered A 6 Year Head Start?

Published 2020/02/18

Has Tesla Really Engineered A 6 Year Head Start?

A very interesting article was released today relating to Tesla cars. The article, published by electrek declares: “Tesla has ‘6 years lead over Toyota and VW’ in electronics, says new Model 3 teardown“ 6 years… In the age of modern electronics that is a lifetime for some CPUs!! Using a very liberal interpretation of Moore’s Law, if it were to apply to AI processing, means that 3 iterations of the law would pass in those 6 years. That would put an effective lead of eight times the computing power ( = 2^3 ) inside Tesla’s electronics over competitors in the automotive space. A six year lead and eight times the computing power? When does that ever happen in the Engineering world? Tesla of course has the huge benefit of being an upstart in what has become a hugely iterative market. Sure, new cars and new designs come out, but there…

How Long Is A College Degree Relevant?

Published 2020/02/15

How Long Is A College Degree Relevant?

While reading resumes for an open position recently, an interesting thought surfaced: How long is a college degree relevant? This question may immediately make some people start to feel queasy. Specifically, the people that still have huge amounts of debt many years after that coveted piece of paper was awarded at some institute of higher learning. That queasiness cannot be helped by the realization that many years later much of the detailed knowledge that was imparted in those glory days of learning has started to fade. Yet, this is not an argument for or against a college degree. From the standpoint of an Engineering Manager, a college degree provides a great deal of value and information when reviewing resumes. The hiring process is all about guesswork and assumptions based on a very limited data set and, while it can be faulty in some cases, it does allow for many variables…

Using a 3D Printer To Explain An Engineering Mentality

Published 2020/01/14

Using a 3D Printer To Explain An Engineering Mentality

Creating a 3D print is an act of pure creation. An Engineer may not have much of an artistic streak when it comes to the traditional artistic skills, but an expression of form through technology could be considered stock in trade for this mindset. However, this comes with a caveat. For every minute of watching the X, Y, and Z-axis machinations of the busy printer head, at least 3 times that has been spent simply searching for the perfect thing to print and in getting it set up.