johnmaconline

The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all.

Ecclesiastes 9:11

Solomon got it (assuming Solomon wrote it).

You can plan. You can get ready. You can be wise, swift, and strong. And sometimes, it will go exactly as you predicted or prepared for. You should be prepared.

But time and chance happen to all of us.

Life has a way of surprising us. What will you do when time and chance happen? With the proper mindset, they open doors to unexpected opportunities and paths previously unknown.

I just keep telling myself this. Maybe you should too. 

In engineering, choosing a network topology affects the short-term and long-term operations, performance, reliability, and abilities of the network and its constituents.

Star Network

The hub and spoke model. Every connection runs through the critical hub. It’s simple to create and easy to maintain and can be efficient. The overall network remains unaffected if an outside node goes down. However, if the hub goes down, everything crashes and burns. 

If you’re the hub of your network, you are the one maintaining the direct relationships to your people. You control who and how deep the relationship. However, it puts a lot of pressure on you to manage all interactions, and can be vulnerable if you’re unavailable.

Ring Network

The loop model. Data moves in either direction serially through each node. It’s very efficient and predictable. It’s also easy to configure, create, and diagnose issues, as each node needs only know about two others. However, a single breakage brings the entire network down. 

You’re connected to a small number, and relying on the connections of your connections. Each person linked to the next can pay dividends without you. But if a single person drops the ball, or doesn’t care as much as you, the whole thing falls apart. 

Mesh Network

The distributed web model. Every device has a connection to every other device, either directly or indirectly. Mesh networks are complicated and costly to create and diagnose issues but offer superior resilience. Nothing can bring the entire network down. 

You’re part of a larger web of interconnected contacts. Each person is not only linked to you but also to each other. This creates a robust network where referrals and recommendations can flow freely, increasing your reach and resilience. But it requires more effort to build and maintain.

Which One?

Any of these topologies can bring you success. However, only the mesh network can help you knock it out of the park.

How will you build your mesh network?

My 19-year-old son and I were in the grocery store recently, and he said to me, “Hey, Dad, don’t you think the number of ice cream flavors has exploded since I was a little kid? It’s crazy how many there are.”

He’s right. It’s crazy. 

My Dad always talked about setting up an ice cream stand on the boardwalk at the beach with only two choices: vanilla or chocolate. And every scoop is served in a cone. No dishes here. 

He’d smile, actually relish, as he could picture the conversation with the customer who asked for something off-script, “But don’t you have anything else? What about mint chocolate chip?”

“We got vanilla, and we got chocolate. Which would you like?”

He loved talking about that. 

Vanilla and chocolate are by far the most popular ice cream flavors in America, and have been since the beginning. Most people choose one, even when presented with a potpourri of other choices. 

So why all the flavors?

Do more flavors help the ice cream industry as a whole sell more ice cream? Do you, as an ice cream retailer, need to stock a million flavors? Can you build a better business with more choices?

I don’t know. Maybe. 

I do know, however, that the number of choices, not just in ice cream but in all things, has increased exponentially over the last 50 years. That has split markets into ever-decreasing niches.

In a world of endless choices, find the one that you can most delight your people with, and focus there.

When you’re stuck, frustrated, or feeling like you might not be able to, start asking more questions. Specifically the why questions.

Why are you working on this project?
Why are you trying to start a company?
Why are you spending time on this task?
Why are you designing it for that platform?
Why would someone care?
Why do you care?

At the end of the day, it’s the why that matters. 

“Hey, Bob! Great to see you. How’ve you been? Working hard or hardly working?”

Sometimes, we use time to determine the answer.

“Boss said we could have as much overtime as we want. I’ve been pulling double-shifts.”
“We gotta ship next week. I’ve been sleeping at the office twice a week.”

Sometimes, we use physical effort.

“It’s mulch season. By the end of the day, my crew is a dishrag.”
“That fire last night was the most intense I’ve been on. The EMTs had to give me oxygen at one point.”

Sometimes, we use the complexity.

“I’ve been working on this algorithm for days and I still don’t have it yet.”
“I have a patient with something I’ve never seen before. I’ve been talking with experts across the globe to figure out the best treatment.”

Sometimes, we use the level of responsibility.

“We’re shipping next week, and it’s my butt on the line if something doesn’t work.”
“I’ve got three people on my team who are not pulling their weight. I’m gonna lose the rest of the team unless I fix the problem.”

Sometimes, we use the emotional danger.

“I’ve gotta stand in front and defend our position.”
“I’ve written the piece, but it’s so personal that I’m afraid to publish it.”

No matter what kind of work you do, you want to do the hard part. The hard part is what makes a difference. The hard part is how you separate yourself. How you stand out.

AI could never do the hard part. 

If you haven’t, here it is.

What do you see? What do you feel?

At first, I didn’t see it the way the critics do. I think it hit me exactly the way Apple intended it to. To me, it looks like all of these creative tools are contained within the new iPad. Get the new iPad, and you, as a creator, have everything you need inside this handy little gadget. 

But that’s not how everyone saw it. 

This advertisement is the perfect illustration of the nature of the arts. The creator has intention. He is trying to say something. It comes forth from his worldview. He hopes you get it. 

But also, there is a consumer in this contract. The consumer receives it and applies their own worldview. Sometimes, it lands differently. Personal history, experience, geography, education, circle of people, and beliefs all attend to this worldview. 

Both sides are relevant. Both sides are valid. 

“Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.”

– Maybe Mark Twain, but maybe nobody

I stare at my ToDo list for the day, and I can feel myself gravitating towards certain tasks.

I can roughly categorize my tasks on the list as follows:

• Sales and networking
• Management
• Technical

Myself really wants myself to do the technical ones. Those are the ones I like. Write some Python to help so-and-so? Sure! Love to. Look at last night’s automated test suite and figure out what hapened? Absolutely! Dig into our architecture to see how we should make it better? I’m already doing it. 

I can often psyche myself up for the management tasks also because I’m usually good at them, even the tricky ones. I don’t mind doing the stuff I’m good at.

But then there’s the sales and marketing tasks. Ugh.

We’re starting a new company. Going out on our own. We need to find customers. I, as the leader of the band, need to find the customers. I suck at it. At least right now.

Guess which tasks are the most important? In fact, nothing else is actually important right now.

The days you start by eating the frog are the days you’re making progress.

Nothing else matters.

If you ask most people, they’d be happy to drive an EV. 

Probably even some of the people who think and say out loud how EVs are part of the grand master plan of authoritarian control. You know, mass surveillance and whatnot. I live amongst many of those people. 

Even these people would drive an EV?

Yes, many of them. Because at the end of the day, most people choose their cars for practical reasons. A person’s personal car choice is not the religious issue that the politicians and wealthy people say it is. It’s a practical choice. 

“This is one that I like and can afford.”
“I like to buy used cars. They provide better value.”
“I understand this one here.”

Even choosing a car-lifestyle or a non-car-lifestyle isn’t the religious issue those same people say it is. It’s, yet again, a practical decision for most. 

Sure, you’ll find scads in the trendy areas of NYC that don’t have cars due to the religion of evil-cars. And you’ll find scads in the semi-rural regions of Pennsylvania that would never consent to public transportation due to the religion of do-what-I-want-when-I-want. 

But for most, if you live in NYC, having a car is really difficult unless you also have a bank account with lots of commas. If you live in semi-rural Pennsylvania, not having a car is really difficult. We don’t have public transportation, Uber, DoorDash, Instacart, or the old-fashioned local pizza delivery guy on my road. You want it? You gotta go get it yourself.

Here’s my view: EVs will overtake fossil fuel vehicles when it becomes more practical for the masses to have an EV.

Like with any other product development, watch what people do and ignore what they say. So, if you’re an engineer or in the EV business in any way, focus on that. Let’s make EVs more practical than fossil fuel cars. Cost, charging, reliability, safety, and yes, even the messaging. 

Most people don’t care whether their car is electric or not. 

When the Bobs come asking, you better have an answer.

Is it your title? “I’m the CEO. I do the CEO things.”

Is it your project responsibilities? “I’m the lead software engineer for the automated test framework. I define, develop, and fix it.”

Or is it more informal and harder to define?

Every good engineering team has at least one person whose role is hard to define. At least in the traditional sense of “here’s my title, and here’s my job description.” They step up to whatever is needed at the time, even if what is needed is below them, not familiar, or someone else’s job. They’re standing next to you in the lab, the conference room, and the mud.

Every great engineering team has this quality running through all the members.

When you start something new you’re going to need defined roles. A contract amongst yourselves so that everyone knows who’s responsible for what. You’ll need to satisfy the Bobs.

But also, everyone’s gonna need the mentality of “Yeah, I’ll do that.”

You can plan. You can measure twice and cut once. You can think ahead.

But at the end of the day, sometimes the universe pulls its goalie in the middle of the period. 

Now what? Now, you dig in and find solutions. You improvise. You could never have foreseen the current situation, so don’t get hung up. Use a different part, move that functionality into a different module, change the API, find a different supplier, bend it and hit it with a hammer. 

My favorite scene from the movie Apollo 13 takes place a short time after the famous, “Houston, we have a problem.” A group of engineers stands around a table staring at a mish-mash of pieces and parts available to the spacecraft crew. Their mission is to turn that pile of stuff into an air filter because C02 buildup is slowly asphyxiating the crew (here’s a great article on what they did).

Here’s what you got. Do it, or people die. 

There is no higher compliment that can be paid to a boots-on-the-ground engineer than “Wow, that’s clever.” Clever solutions happen at the intersection of creativity and knowledge. Now, put that engineer on stage with a crowd of people asking him to create a clever solution on the spot. That’s improvisation.

Don’t be afraid to go off-script.