All posts filed under: Interpersonal

Fail Fast, Succeed Fast

Published by Joe

The micro-world that is Silicon Valley has a perception of a breeding ground for new ideas. With a few horrendously bad (like ‘disruption‘), and others being quite good – when put into context. Fail fast! Fail often! This is an idea that has been bandied recently, and out of context, some companies have used it to fail right out of business. The core idea of this concept is to make small, but brave changes to your project and see how the customer responds. Only a small amount of time is invested and if the result is an awful failure there has been little lost. On the other hand, if the results look promising, you could iterate the idea into a successful product. Fail fast – but not for the sake of failing. Fail fast or succeed fast, either way, the idea is to take an idea and act on it. Fail Fast in Your Career For you, the idea of fail fast is just as applicable to your career. However, for performance review reasons, we …

Making Mistakes

Making Mistakes and Learning From Them

Published by Joe

This blog almost didn’t happen. I was afraid I’d make mistakes in what I write or what I say. In fact, many other projects that I have started have completely sputtered out due to this fear of failure. Have I already made some mistakes? Yup, and I will continue to do so as I go. What I have not done is to allow these mistakes to cripple me. Instead, I allowed myself to use them to improve, and so can you. Making Mistakes, and Learning From Them Success is like getting high, but failing is like going to the gym. When things go right everybody feels good, everybody is happy, and nobody cares why. When you tied your shoe this morning did you reflect on how it could have been improved? Or on today’s commute, did you think about how to add additional safety processes to the transportation system? Probably not, because they worked just as expected. Things that work rarely get attention, and therefore rarely get improved. Now think of something that didn’t go so well this …

Workplace Gossip

Workplace Gossip, What’s an Engineer to Do?

Published by Joe

Gossip, scuttlebutt, water-cooler talk, chit-chat. Call it what you will, but let’s talk about what you talk about at work. People gossip, and the more time you spend with your teammates away from the office, the more gossip you will hear. Workplace Gossip As the Oxford Dictionary defines gossip as the “casual or unconstrained conversation or reports about other people, typically involving details that are not confirmed as being true.” Now, defining the word is nice and all, but let’s dive into some specific areas where we can apply it to our engineer careers. Sets a Precedent One of the unforeseen side effects of partaking in gossip is that it sets a precedent in your coworker’s mind. If they know they can talk to you about the ridiculous thing they just heard, they may come back to you to share even more. This could quickly spiral out of control and next thing you know you are playing therapist (but without the paycheck). When ‘shit gets real’ you have become the one person they go and unload. …

Working with Experienced Coworkers

Dealing with Experienced Coworkers and Learning From Them

Published by Joe

It doesn’t matter if this is your first job or your third, you will have the opportunity, and challenge, of working with a broad range of individuals. As an early engineer working on building your credibility and proficiency, perhaps the most daunting group of people are the experienced coworkers. The experienced coworkers I am not talking about the guy with only a year left before retirement and just coasting, I’m talking about the engineer who is the expert in her field and has ten patents and nine papers to her name. Perhaps every time you bring up an idea they have 10 reasons to shoot it down. Or they can seemingly walk up to your computer and instantly point out a critical mistake. After a few of these incidents, you quickly learn to avoid them or get an anxiety attack just by knowing they are going to be in the same meeting. The difference of years Why are so many early engineers intimidated or even threatened by senior engineers? When you look at the differences between …

The Power of the Lunch Table

Published by Joe

Time for your annual review! As a new engineer, it may be understandable to think that your merits and promotions will be based on your work alone. Makes sense. That’s how it worked in school, and seems like an objective way to attain your worth to the company. The reality is, how much you are liked could influence your position within the company more than how well you can engineer. Surprised? You are not alone, many people get out of academia thinking that getting a good grade at work is just a matter of doing the homework (finishing a task), passing a tests (meeting project deadline), or showing up to office hours (working those extra hours). Now, don’t get me wrong, missing deadlines and not being proficient at your job will hurt, but so will getting on your boss’s nerves (the person who approves your promotion) or making another team member look bad (the person giving peer reviews).   Making Friends As you progress in your career, it will become more important to be liked, …