Knowing when to slow down
As a new faculty member on the tenure track, I don’t have the luxury of saying no very often. It’s not that I can’t say no at all, but rather, I’m worried that if I don’t say yes, it will be misconstrued that I don’t play well with others. That could potentially damage my case for tenure when that comes up or make it more difficult to work with certain folks because I will seen as being in the camp of one faculty faction instead of another. A lot of the advice you read on the interwebs about this topic is that you should say no as often as possible because you need as much time to advance your research as possible. When offered other committee positions or responsibilities (journal editor, conference organizer, etc), you’re supposed to avoid those like the plague for as long as possible. I can totally…
Technician or Project Manager?
No one person’s engineering job is like someone else’s. I know many of the electrical engineers in this community spend a lot of time in their labs or at the bench. Being an engineer seems to be its own batch of challenges and opportunities but many aspects of the job wax and wane between a more hands on technician role or a very hands off project lead role. Despite working at a large company my role can be confusing at times. One would think with plenty of qualified technicians to work on the bench, and plenty more qualified programs and management folks to support the paperwork and planning side, that an engineer would get a nice rounded role. As in, maybe we could actually do our job. But so often you’re pulled into going to Home Depot to pick up that set of hardware that your multi-billion dollar business just…
Sacrificing the Short Term
Most designs are a solution to a problem. But a lot of times you can’t always solve the problem the way you want. The ideal solution might require a redesign of interconnecting parts that you can’t necessarily change. Or it might require time to test components that you don’t have. Sometimes you have to pick the next design iteration because it’s available or works within your time frame. But how can you be sure you’re not sacrificing the best solution for something that’s easy? Sometimes you need to have an interim solution. Sometimes you do have to make the quick and dirty choice while still working towards something long term. I’ve had several problem child pieces of hardware lately and this decision has come up several times. Often I’ve been forced to come up with a practical quick fix. It’s tough when you do that to keep the momentum up…
Engineer to the Rescue
It’s 20 minutes until when you’d normally leave your office and your boss rushes in. There’s something wrong in manufacturing. Or maybe there’s some particular analysis that needs to be done for the customer or some report that he needs for his boss. Of course, you’re the only one that can help. Does this sound familiar to you? If so you’re probably trying to figure out what to do about it. Allison Green over at Ask a Manager recently answered a question from a reader that covered this very topic. In fact, they are an electrical engineer. They wonder what you do when you’ve become the go to person and are maybe under appreciated as well. Click the link to go over to the Ask a Manager blog, read Allison’s response, and check out the readers’ discussion. Here’s a snippet of what the original writer is talking about: I feel under-appreciated for…
Requirements & Relativity
What if every person’s perception of time was arbitrary and completely different? What if what seemed like months to you felt like days to someone else? I’m not talking about psychology here, I’m talking about this week’s theme: deadlines. The academics here at Engineer Blogs already weighed in with things that are familiar to their world; Miss Outlier talked about long term deadlines, GEARS talked about procrastination, and Cherish talked about the difficulty of getting started. Paul Clarke gives some tips about dealing with deadlines and whether to approach them as the tortoise or as the hare. Unlike academics most of my deadlines are much more short term. Sometimes you get two days to pull off a major design and drawing change and sometimes you get two hours to put together part of a report an executive is going to see. My issues with due dates are often that different…
Getting started is hard to do
I have a confession to make: I’m a recovering perfectionist. In high school, I was able to breeze through most of my classes. I could procrastinate and still manage to do really good work, even if I didn’t manage to start my homework until the morning it was due. I started taking university classes in high school, and this was only marginally more difficult…I could often get by with starting things the night before. And then I went to a big name college, and found out that I couldn’t procrastinate at all. My perfectionism became a problem in college. Deadlines became terrifying…and still are. It turns out that procrastination is a sign of perfectionism, along with several other signs. People don’t like to start things that they are afraid they can’t do, well, perfectly. I didn’t know I was a perfectionist, however, until I had kids and found out that they were…
The Hare and the Tortoise – Deadlines
The story of the Hare and the Tortoise needs little introduction, but I think fits well with this week’s theme of deadlines in the work place. We all know the moral of the story is that slow and steady wins the day. How do you become the Tortoise and not the Hare? We each work in very different ways, so I’m not saying that everything here is right for everyone. However, it’s right for me, and I hope you will be able to take a few tips and adapt them to your working day. In fact, the way I operate now would not have worked at some of my past jobs. Therefore, each of us has to develop our own special way of making deadlines. First, I want to consider what this deadline is. Without detail of the project or whatever it is it’s difficult to say. However, deadlines come…
School Competition Pt2 – Judgement Day
Last week I introduced the Chelmsford Engineering Society (CES) Competition for schools. As I said before, I was one of the judges, and this week, I want to report back on what I have seen and what stood out. Before I show you the entries that stood out, I first want to run though the background information about the contest so you better understand the whole day. My day started at the Marconi Building, which is on the Anglia Ruskin University complex, at 8:15am for registration. I was one of 42 judges taking part on the day. We were being supported by members of the CES, who were organising and helping log scores. We are all paired up with another engineer who we have not meet before; I was with a chap called George who, in his day, used to make TV Camera tubes before it all went solid-state. Each…
Reality vs. Virtuality
This week’s Theme Week at Engineer Blogs is dealing with cross functional engineering material. Like most mechanical engineers, I’ve had to do my fair share of other engineering disciplines, mainly civil/structural (on the small scale) and electrical (basic circuits, signal processing). Because ME, EE, and Civil are all what I would consider core engineering disciplines, I think most engineers in one of those three fields should understand the basic concepts of the other two fields. Typically, the fundamental concepts in Civil are easier to understand for a ME. (I mean, you have to know your target to make the right bomb 😀 ). Basic concepts on the EE side are a little harder to grasp because they tend to be more abstract. But if you’ve had to do any programming, you understand Paul Clarke’s underlying argument, even if you don’t get the complete package. As we divert from the core…
Engineering the Age Gap
There’s nothing new about complaints about “kids these days” or young people claiming older just “do not get” them. But there is something relatively new in the workplace: possibly the widest age gap ever seen in the last 100 years of corporatism in the western world. (Notice I’m not making any claims here on pre-industrial or early industrial societies. ) Ask a Manager just had two age-related posts in a row. First from the old and crotchety side, my managers are younger than me! I am having a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that I have to take orders from people who are no older than 18. I know they don’t have as much work experience as me, simply because of age. The one girl was already complaining to me yesterday about how she has not gotten her raise yet and has more responsibility for less pay.…