johnmaconline

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. 

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.