Weekend Journal — Vendor Relationships
This weekend I had a buddy in town who I’ve known since childhood. It was great getting to hang out with him. But in one of the great ironies of the universe, it came to pass that my best friend is also what sometimes ends up being a perfect foe for an engineer: a purchasing agent. In reality, we work for different companies and work in drastically different industries. So while there could be tension, it usually only comes up as a function of our discussions about what engineers should do and how purchasing agents should act. But on today’s topic, our contention came to a head: My purchasing friend says that I should not maintain relationships with vendors (platonic, of course). I should not allow them to buy me lunch occasionally. I should not accept sample kits from them. I should not talk to them other than in official capacities for work. I’ve written…
Becoming a Thought Leader
I recently attended a fascinating event held at a marketing company, specializing in PR and marketing for startup companies in the cleantech space. Now I recognize the necessity of marketing (as separate from sales), and I understand how much of it (nearly all of it?) is done online these days. But my goodness, I could spend my entire working time on the computer doing marketing, if I followed all the “best practices” as outlined! Hmm, I guess that’s why even small companies find value in a dedicated marketing person… 🙂 One of the audience asked a very thoughtful question: “Many times startup companies are operating in ‘stealth’ mode, to avoid showing their hand before their product is ready. But how then to build a marketing buzz or excitement, or establish yourself in the market, while dealing with that kind of restriction?” The answer I found quite relevant – it has…
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…
Weekend Journal — The Good Ol’ Degreeless Days
I’m not someone who is prone to nostalgia often. First off, I haven’t been an engineer that long, at least in comparison to many of my peers. Being the “new guy” (or gal) can really prevent being nolstalgic about the old days. However, I find I’m becoming more so when I try to hire people. Hunh? You see, I know a decent chunk of engineers who I’d love to hire. I know I’d like to hire them because I’ve seen their work, I’ve talked to them about electronics and I know that they know their stuff. I feel confident that whatever they don’t currently know, they would quickly go out and learn to the best of their ability and apply it to the situation I’ve placed them in. However, in reviewing their work and credentials, I see that there isn’t an undergraduate degree on their resume. FULL STOP. Is this…
Bring Back Manufacturing
Recently, there has been a significant amount of rhetoric by President Obama on how we need to re-establish manufacturing in the United States. This topic was front-and-center in the State of the Union speech in January. Additionally, President Obama has been touring the country, speaking at universities, businesses, campaign stops, and fundraisers about how we can boost our economy by emphasizing manufacturing. The President, thankfully, has backed this initiative with a serious amount of funding. Much of the following information is paraphrased from Manufacturing.Gov, the website detailing the National Network for Manufacturing Innovation. In a nutshell, the government is looking to fund up to 15 Institutes for Manufacturing Innovation in the next year backed by up to $1 Billion in funding. The pilot institute, with a focus on Additive Manufacturing, will be funded using FY2012 funds, meaning it will be awarded before the end of September. These Institutes will primarily…
Needing more than two PhDs to file taxes
This past week was the deadline for the joyous occasion of filing your 2011 taxes. This was the first time that DrWife and I have had to file taxes in the US in several years due to being overseas. For us, filling out our tax forms was a soul crushing lesson that simple math eludes us. At least we got a happy ending. In short, we’ve learned that either more education than two PhDs in Mechanical Engineering is needed to fill out your tax forms or the IRS and Congress needs to simplify the tax process. [Before I go on, I want to put a disclaimer in here. This post and forum is not meant to be a political statement one way or the other. Constructive criticism and comments will always be accepted. This is not meant to devolve into a political discussion about which political party contains the more out-of-touch…
Training Professors to be Educators
The Atlantic had an interesting article entitled The Forgotten Student: Has Higher Education Stiffed its Most Important Client? which parallels a recent Op-Ed in the NYTimes on why one former executive left Goldman Sachs because they lost sight of their client. I remember reading the NYTimes Op-Ed over breakfast and I thought to myself, “I really wouldn’t want to work in a place that wasn’t looking out for the best interests of their client.” After reading the article in The Atlantic, I think the veil has been completely lifted from my eyes. I guess I should explain that. This is not to say that everything in the article was totally foreign for me and that I have never thought about some of those things. However, I never really thought of it from the view that administrators might be failing their clients. For example, there’s discussions here and here on college…
Patently Absurd
The US supreme court recently struck a blow to biological and pharmaceutical industries. They shot down a patent (and probably several others that use similar technology) on measuring a metabolite as a diagnostic procedure. In other words, even if someone came up with the idea to measure a particular naturally generated substance as a way to diagnose an illness or dose a medication, it’s not patentable. The article in the Chronicle of Higher Education states: Patent claims that merely describe natural phenomena are not patent-eligible, the court said, and the diagnostic procedure outlined in the patents at stake in the case “adds nothing to the laws of nature that is not already present when the steps are considered separately.” It makes sense why this would be problematic in medicine, a field that is facing rising costs. If tests require patents to be administered, this significantly increases the cost and means…
TMI from your Advisor?
One of the things that I think an advisor should do is train their students technically (duh!) but also train them about the social-political-monetary issues of working in a competitive environment. I’m not talking about force my students to be Democrats or Republicans, but rather that they should understand that things are much more interlinked than they might believe. For my students that are pursuing academia, I hope that I’m giving them an accurate representation of what it takes to be in the same role that I’m in. For my students that will end up in industry, I hope this at least gives them some insights and clues for what to look for when they’re deciding on a company. I’ll give you a few examples of what I’m talking about. All of my students (4) are currently paid out of startup money, which I’m using to seed projects that I’m…
STEM graduate crunch solved
We’ve been hearing a lot on how there is a huge shortage of STEM workers and how the US needs to have more to stay on top. It looks like our concerns are well on our way to being fixed. The financial sector is apparently downsizing, so all those tech majors who originally planned to go into business and banking are thinking of a career in…you guessed it…engineering! An article in Bloomberg BusinessWeek discusses the fact that the financial sector has been seriously cutting down on hiring. Many tech majors discussed in the article said that they majored in technical fields to get into finance, but now that jobs aren’t available, they’re looking for jobs doing the stuff they were actually trained to do. The article does mention that things are shaky in the tech sector, but says that, “few expect Silicon Valley to undergo the carnage suffered by Wall…