6 Ways to Finish Your Projects
I often work on many projects at once. Finishing a project gives me great pleasure- I like to look at it, talk about it, and feel the sense of accomplishment that is nearly analogous to a runner’s high. But getting there takes some practice at the skill of Finishing Stuff. Universally, it is recognized that the last 10% of the project is 90% of the work. I’d say that the first third of the project is 2% of the work. Can someone do the curve and put it in the comments? Why is it so tough to finish projects and so easy to start them? Starting is easy, involving large portions of researching, discussion and shopping. These tasks don’t actually involve producing any results but they feel as though something has been accomplished. Making something out of nothing, to design something or to build something where it wasn’t in existence before…
What’s In My bag : Sophi Kravitz
I carry around three bags for my daily routine of going from my house to car to worksite to car. Bag 1 is a handbag. It is pretty and contains a tiny tape measure, wallet and smartphone. I carry it when I go out to lunch. I like to have the tape measure because I often see something that spurs an idea and like to get an idea of scale. Bag 2 is a gym bag. It contains both my gym clothes and another change of clothes in case I spill something on myself before a meeting. I have a funny habit left over from before cell phones which is to keep comfy shoes in the gym bag in case my car breaks down and I have to walk to a service station. Bag 3 is a backpack, of which the contents change frequently since I work for a few…
How the “Freshman 15” is like the “Office 25”
We’ve all heard of the “Freshman 15” which refers to the average 15 pounds a college freshman puts on when away from home for the first time. Finally on your own and free to eat unlimited quantities whatever you want, possibly on a college “unlimited” meal plan. There’s also a lot of change happening at this time in life with a new home, no more high school and new people. All of this stress can trigger overeating. The Freshman 15 is similar to the “Office 25”, which is a term that I just made up, but refers to an average 25 pounds that an office worker will put on in a sedentary job. Sedentary, like engineering. There is no typical engineering job; some are in factories, some are on assembly lines, some have excessive travel and some are in front of a computer. But as a generalization, I think it…
The Next Big Thing – A New Product Snapshot
Most companies, large and small, recognize that they need to constantly develop new products or revisions to existing products to stay ahead of the herd. Ideas for new products come from multiple departments: Sales, Engineering, Marketing and occasionally the people who manufacture the product might speak up too. Sales and Engineering generally butt heads during new product development, especially in the concept phase. Sales goes and talks to customers and brings back highly optimist views of what will sell. This might be based on a compilation of many customers, or it might be based on one customer, or it might be based on something that someone dreams up and thinks it is a good idea. Because it’s Sales, this department always has a say and will get their New Product Idea heard. It is Engineering’s job to tell Sales how long it will take and how much it will cost to…
Hands vs. Heads
We’ve had a few posts recently about jobs recently. Chris’s Weekend Journal said that degrees shouldn’t be necessary to obtain jobs (though they can help) and Sam followed up with a question about ways to establish your pedigree outside of a university degree. I agree with the opinion that it is harder for a non-degreed engineer to get a job as an engineer. The way I have often seen this structured is that the non-degreed engineer gets the job called “technician” where s/he builds for the engineer with the degree. There is a general perception around technical positions, validated by lower salaries and position, that working with one’s hands is less valuable than working with one’s head. People who build the prototypes are valued less than those that design the prototypes/ first articles. Never mind that the technician often needs to re-engineer around the engineer who may be great theoretically, but less…
Bottom of the Design Curve with No Budget
This week is a Theme Week and we’re writing about our experiences at some point in the product or company’s lifecycle. My Location : Startup. I’ve always seen design engineering as having two distinct categories. Sustaining engineering and R&D engineering. Since I’d always seen Sustaining as being boring (sorry Chris!), involving designing the same product over and over, tweaking it to make it better, but basically understanding how it works already, I managed to start in R&D nearly right out of college. Seb’s recent post seems to prove me wrong, but maybe “Sprockets” have it better than us “Sparkies”! Some of the companies I’ve worked at on a project basis were similar. They had been in existence for years, eking out a living and had a common trait: No money for New Product Development (NPD). I’ve had many successful projects (I came, I designed, it worked), but the unsuccessful ones are…
Truth and Money: The Sale-Dependent Salary
Sophi Kravitz is an electrical engineer who enjoys being somewhere near the bottom of the learning curve. Currently, she is pursuing RF engineering, analog engineering and building art based on RF signals. She lives in a workshop containing a kitchen and living room with her husband. I have to say: Frautech’s recent post about Double Speak resonated with me. Nearly two years ago, I moved into a Sales Engineering role out of Design Engineering. Exhilarating, fun, challenging and creative, being a Design Engineer is fulfilling on an emotional level. Making money for the company which can provide a sense of importance, Sales is fulfilling on an egotistical level. My function is to maximize sales for my company by helping engineers and scientists to choose the right product (ours, naturally) for their application. The thermal control products that I sell aren’t very complex, but there are distinct competitors which use other technologies…
Is Your Health Insurance Holding You Back?
For most of us working as engineers or other technical jobs in the United States, it is a given that we receive paid-for medical insurance. It is difficult for companies to find technical workers, therefore they usually offer health insurance in some form or another as an incentive. This site gives a breakdown of how much insurance costs state by state: http://www.ahipresearch.org/statedata.html So if you work somewhere that asks you to pay say, 50% of your health insurance, you might be paying $2,500 per year for a single person. That is on par with paying to go out to eat lunch every day (and even then, on the cheap). If you’re a family, things get much more expensive; the costs get closer to $6,500 on average. If you have a single-earner family, it’s unlikely you’re eating lunch out every day. If you are self-insured in NY state (where I’m from), it…
Life-hacking my Engineering Day Job
Sophi Kravitz is an electrical engineer who enjoys being somewhere near the bottom of the learning curve. Currently, she is pursuing RF engineering, analog engineering and building art based on RF signals. She lives in a workshop containing a kitchen and living room with her husband. I am an Electrical Engineer working as a Salesperson. I love engineering, it is my true passion, and I spend lots of time in my home shop building, designing and making stuff. I live in the Hudson Valley, NY, which isn’t particularly desirable for tech people. The only large company here is IBM. There are very few design engineers in the area, which makes getting a generic engineering job at a generic small company pathetically easy. So why did I switch? I worked as a New Product design engineer for 7 years, enjoyably switching projects (and jobs) quite often. As an engineer, I found…