johnmaconline

Engineers are like all non-engineers — nobody wants to fail.

Nobody wants their design to fail. Nobody wants their decision to be the cause. Nobody wants to be seen as bad at their job. But really, nobody wants to be blamed. 

Measure twice. Cut once.

But failure doesn’t necessarily mean somebody was reckless. It doesn’t necessarily mean someone is bad at their job. 

When I was teaching my kids to drive, I took each to a snowy, icy parking lot. 

“Hit the gas. Feel the wheels spin. Now hit the brakes. Feel the car slide. Try to turn. Feel the car keep going straight.”

The first thing I do whenever I pull out of my driveway onto the snowy, icy road is get some speed and hit the brakes. How slippery is this road? I recommend you do the same thing.

Failure is a data point. Failure helps you find the limits. Failure helps you experience what happens when you cross the line.

Here we are on the arc of our product development, and this happened. That was unexpected. Or, maybe, OK, great! We found the limit. Interesting. What can we learn? Why? What do we need to change? What do we need to make better? What if…?

SpaceX has blown up a lot of rockets — nine of them. Rapid unscheduled disassemblies. Theory is one thing. The real world is another.

The faster you break it, the faster you can fix it.

Engineers are famous for proclamations such as “You can’t make a baby in one month with nine women.”

Reality, and such. There are laws of physics and biology, after all.

But also, physics doesn’t control how much effort you put in or the project management decisions you make to go as fast as possible. Each individual must do it today, not tomorrow. Look at priorities all the time. Reprioritize when necessary. Keep the thing, the thing. Yes, you can find time today to meet about it. If that piece will be delayed, reimagine it, find a new solution. Always find new solutions. There is no work-life balance. There is only work-life integration. You can sleep when you’re dead. Magic doesn’t happen on 40-hour workweeks. 

The bear is right behind you. The other startup wants it more. Faster wins every time. 

As engineers, we have a love-hate relationship with cost.

On the one hand, we like to start with a clean sheet of paper and dream. What if cost didn’t matter at all? What could we build? But also, cost is one of those existential variables that helps bound the problem. 

Sometimes, boundaries are just limitations that must be engineered around — The river flow has this range of characteristics.

But many times, the boundaries on the problem are what push creativity and technology in a direction that leads to a better overall solution. Even better than without boundaries — Screen real estate limitations lead to better user interfaces. 

Cost can be either. Sometimes, we know the budget, and then that budget is just a limitation to engineer around. Engineering effort stops when we meet the budget. Sometimes, however, the cost becomes the main thing. Minimization without expense to function, performance, and perception is worth the effort.

When designing, we often trade cost for time, responsibility, and perception, if even subconsciously. We look around at what already exists and start there.

However, what if we throw those assumptions out the window and return to the first principles of what we’re trying to make and for whom? 

We can use this service to get us started quicker. OK, but could we do it better ourselves?

If we use this provider for this part, they will take responsibility if it breaks. OK, but do we care? 

We want to put “ISO certified” on our website. Do we? Does it actually matter?

Questioning every cost can be exhausting, but it can also be liberating. 

When Elon started SpaceX, he looked around at the history, players, and current state of rocket-making and believed it could be done better, faster, cheaper. 

He came up with a set of rules that engineers would live by in SpaceX:

1. Question every cost.
2. Have a maniacal sense of urgency.
3. Learn by failing.
4. Improvise.

Who the heck was he?

At the time, it seemed arrogant. Maybe even reckless. Sure, NASA, the US military, Lockheed, Boeing, and the throngs of subcontractors were living off an unending faucet of government financing with little incentive to improve, but also, they’d been there and done that. They’d lived through the public successes and failures. They knew what they were talking about. 

It takes as long as it takes and costs what it costs. Measure twice, cut once. Safety (including reputation safety) is paramount. Failure is not an option. Slow and steady. 

I’ve been in this position — the underling, the newbie, the one without any experience in the field. Who am I to question the wisdom and the knowledge of those who came before?

But just because this is the way its done, and we have very good reasons for doing it this way, doesn’t mean we should keep doing it this way.

That’s true in engineering, and its true in your life. 

Name it. 

Your project.
Your book.
Your song.
Your app. 
Your company.

You can change it later, but name it today.

Once it has a name, it exists. 

It doesn’t have to be perfect.

It doesn’t have to be special.

It doesn’t have to be good enough for someone else.

It doesn’t have to be your best, but it better be your best effort at the moment.

But it has to be done. 

It’s not a matter of if. It’s a matter of when.

No matter how much you’ve pre-planned, followed procedures, controlled what you can control, kept up with maintenance, and ensured you’ve thought of everything, at some point, it will melt down. The tank will let loose, or the pipe will burst and fill your basement with excrement. Oh, and it will be 2 am on a Saturday morning.

How will you handle it as the leader?

Step one is to put on your boots, assemble the team, and prioritize. The team will want to spin because we’re humans. Spinning is what we do. You’re job is to focus the spin. Invite all of the relevant fixers into the room and discuss it. Argue it out. 

What’s our first step? Who’s gonna do what right now? 

Not what’s our long-term approach. Not who or what’s to blame, unless that blame directly leads to the solution (ie, “the pipe burst, let’s patch the pipe”). 

What are we going to do in the next hour? 

Determine who should work together and who needs to be left alone to focus. Nobody leaves the room until each of us knows exactly what we’re supposed to be doing when we walk out of it. 

Pure tactics. There will be a time and place for strategy, lessons learned, and blame. But it’s not right now.

Then dive down into the muck. Keep the real-time communication flowing. Adjust the path and directions based on that communication and what you learn. Head off the spin.

Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face. 

No, we don’t think it is. We can probably say we know that it isn’t. 

But it’s OK — actually scientifically appropriate — to occasionally look out the window and say, “Are we sure the earth isn’t flat? Because it really looks flat.” And then go through the exercise of convincing ourselves that it is indeed still round. 

Occasionally, if infrequently, you should go back and convince yourself that you know what you think you know. The key is understanding when it makes sense to do it. If you do it too often, you spend too much of your time re-establishing all you know to be true at the expense of moving forward. Can you imagine having to wake up each morning and going through all of the data associated with the roundness or flatness of the earth?

Two inflection points that could cause the re-evaluation:

1. Time — we look at it all again every so often just to make sure we really know what we know. Do new tools capabilities exist? Has more or more relevant data been gathered? Once a year. Once a quarter. What’s the time frame that makes sense for your industry?
2. Event — did something just happen that should cause us to re-evaluate what we think we know?

Don’t be afraid of the “Is the earth flat?” questions. Everything we know today says for sure it’s round, but scientific rigor requires that sometimes you should reconvince yourself. 

Willingness is a measure of risk tolerance.

Are you willing to risk money?
Are you willing to risk love?
Are you willing to risk your reputation?
Are you willing to risk comfort?
Are you willing to risk friends?
Are you willing to risk your future?

Most of the time we don’t think much about willingness because the stakes are low. A little money, adjacent friends, an unknown future. 

But every once in a while, we are confronted with an inflection point. Here it is right out on the table. Big risk and maybe big reward or big downside.

Are you willing?

This place has a high cost of living. That place has a low cost of living. Will you get a cost of living raise?

We talk about the cost of living in terms of financials: rent and real estate, milk and eggs, taxes and healthcare, energy and transportation. 

But is the true cost of living some financial measure?

Cost is trade of payment. What are you willing to pay to live the life you want? 

My guess is that it has little to do with money.