Being a great engineer is an art, not a science.
Hiring great engineers is more like dating than anything else.
Recently, on my daily hikes over Mt. Sanitas to @dojo4 I’ve been trying to answer seemingly simple questions such as:
- Why is it hard to hire great engineers?
- What is a great engineer?
Typically, I’ll begin to categorize, formalize, and arrange ideal traits in my mind as the trail gets steeper (I do stuff like that while I’m hiking). Later, when my breathing labors and oxygen deprivation has focused my mind a bit more, I come back to the same set of ideas.
On the one hand, I know the answers to both of the above questions but, on the other, I’ve found that trying to formulate precise answers has become harder and harder to pin down, as I’ve pondered them more and more on each passing hike.
Ultimately, I’ve arrived at the conclusion that describing how great engineers are, is more meaningful than describing what they are.
It’s probably important to mention here, that what I mean when I say ‘great engineer’, might be different from what you mean.
I mean technicians who build useful solutions to real human problems.
Wikipedia sums this up similarly:
The work of engineers forms the link between scientific discoveries and their subsequent applications to human needs and quality of life. In short, engineers are versatile minds who create links between science, technology, and society.
ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineer
By this definition and my own, one isn’t an engineer when one’s work:
- doesn’t address the needs of real humans.
- doesn’t create solutions that are adopted by groups of humans.
I don’t think most engineers actually evaluate themselves by a similar definition – instead, preferring an assessment based on technical skill alone, and leaving the human litmus tests as the responsibility of business and marketing teams.
This is unfortunate, and a topic for a future post…
In the meantime, here are some of the practices I’ve witnessed in successful engineers, and ones that I’ve grown to identify as indicators of the type of engineer who is going to consistently – problem after problem – be able to deliver solutions to large groups of other living, breathing human beings.
Great engineers use hammers
No, I don’t mean “rm -rf”. I mean hammers, metal ones that bang nails in.
Nothing tests engineering skill (vs. technical skill) like solving a problem outside one’s domain:
- bathroom to tile?
- bridge to build?
- satellite dish to calibrate?
- sump pump to repair?
Being a technician, means being limited by tools and skill, but being an engineer, means being limited only by problem solving skills and communication – so pick up that f***ing manual and figure out how to wire the thermostat today; tomorrow, you can figure out how to change the oil.
(An interesting titbit on hammers: does a titanium one produce more force on impact than a lead one? Does it depend on how fast you swing it? Is it ‘easier’ or ‘harder’ to use a light hammer vs. a heavy one.)