What is the best engineering advice you ever received? 205

[tulum]

I would like to continue engineerdaves series of threads; what frustrates you at work, and what satisfies you at work...

I just finished reading one of Donald Trumps books entitled "the way to the top". What he did was he asked the top executives across the US to submit the one single most important thing they learned to help them achieve businees success.

For example one qoute was (and is very applicable to engineering):

"Although you can't always control where you are planted-to which department or specific project you are assigned-you can control the experience while you are there...bloom where you are planted."

So my question to the forum is: What is the best engineering advice you ever received?

 

[sayee1]

The list can go on and on, but some of my boss's fav one liners. Not necessarily linked to engineering, but life in general. Ant the proverbs by famous people as below, only puts in better words the thoughts in most of the posts above. A beautiful thread!!!

Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.

An expert is one who knows more and more about less and less until he knows absolutely everything about nothing.

Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterward.

And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.

Guns don't kill people, people do!

We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it - and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again -- and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore.

Real knowledge is to know the extent of ones ignorance.

It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read a book of quotations.

We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.

Vision without action is merely a dream. Action without vision just passes the time. Vision with action can change the world.

Thanks and regards
Sayee Prasad R
Ph: 0097143968906
Mob: 00971507682668
email: sayee_prasad@yahoo.com
If it moves, train it...if it doesn't move, calibrate it...if it isn't written down, it never happened!

 

[Nate101]

"Use an engineering team. That way not one person can be blaimed for mistakes."
This was from an owner of a shop I worked at, who himself was a manufacturing engineer.

 

[Comcokid]

The best engineering advice I ever found, came from a column published in Electrical Engineering Times magazine about 20 years ago titled Lama Dung.

The column explained that during WWII, Leather used in goggles, flight helmets, and jackets intended for use in aircraft had a specification that it be treated with Lama dung. Because of shipping and submarine menace made transporting the material from South America so difficult, there was an attempt to establish a Lama heard in Arizona. Only after this attempt failed, did someone question the spec.

It turned out the leather specification had been copied from US Army Calvary specs for Leather. This spec originated in earlier British specifications, which themselves had originated in the colonial era of the British empire for use in leather used for horse saddles. Untamed horses were less frightened by leather treated with Lama dung which changed the smell. Obviously, the old requirement had no place for leather used in aircraft.

The column ended up with the pointer that when as an engineer you see specifications that make no sense - question them. They might be Lama Dung.

I know that in the 20 years since, I have encountered a lot of Lama Dung!

 

[ruggedscot]

Read this one a while back and it still gives me a chuckle....

A guy in the midwest buys a car, a few months later he returns to the dealer with a concern, My car doesnt like chocolate ice cream. Dealer laughs it off, guy gets angry, Im serious he says.
So they try to find out the problem, ends up the guy takes an engineer down to the ice cream shop buys vanilla ice cream and the car started. They repeated this and went for chocolate and the car would you believe it didnt start.
Engineer was very perplexed about this, and so a long and intensive investigation was carried out. Several other technicians got involved. Nothing could be found wrong with the car. Eventually a company engineer was summond and he went through the events with a fine comb.
The result was that the reason was eventually found, and lo and behold it had nothing to do with the ice cream flavour but it had everything to do with the length of time it took to be served. Vanilla was served right out of the tub in the display and given to the guy, but the chocolate flavour required the server to go to the freezer in the basement and then bring it up. This added quite a few minutes to the transaction and when the driver returned to the vehicle they had the problem.
The problem itself was fuel percolation in the carb.
Anyways you know it shows that sometimes you can get confused with the obvious around you and then let the actual root cause escape you for a while.
Dont let the trees obscure the wood !

Advice given to me by an older electrican was that the best piece of test equipment that you could ever have was a restroom. When you hit a problem and it was stalling you a quick trip out of the loop was sometimes just enough to break the loop. From personal experiance it does work....!

Rugged

 

[GOTWW]

Two things:
(1) Engineers are tools of industry.
(2) Get out before the industry wants new tools.

 

[HgTX]

Maybe not the most important thing I've learned, but for some reason the words that stuck best in my head:

"Don't get cute."

(Addressed to a professor of mine when as a young engineer he over-optimized a design.)


Some of my favorite engineering advice was written by Paul Pendragon and published in Process Engineering in 1973:

http://www.sacbusiness.org/cs/hesterj/Beware The Wrath Of Abibarshim.htm

(or try

http://tinyurl.com/5p87r

if the URL wraps too much)

It's one of the funniest (and most painfully true) things I've ever read. A small sample:

"Design not assemblies which require four arms to put together or operate. Verily, the guy we hire in these days hath not four arms but ten thumbs."

Hg

 

[JasonG]

"Good judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgement."

 

[JTMcC]

You get what you pay for.

JTMcC.

 

[lengould]

Perhaps off topic but interesting:

http://www.benjaminrossen.com/DAISIES/html/internet/Internet_Herold.htm

Also interesting is that this was originally written by Don Herold and has been endlessly plagiarized on the net by people who can read but not understand.

Pechez les vaches.

 

[sprintcar]

"The first 50% of a project will take the first 90% of the available time.
The other 50% of the project will take the other 90% of the time."

Keep the wheels on the ground
Bob
showshine@aol.com

 

[VEBill]

Risk can be divided into two categories: those risks that you can imagine and those risks that you can't possibly imagine.

Lacking any better information, one might as well assume a 50:50 (%) split between these two types of risk - a good first approximation. With many years of experience, you might be able to tilt the split to something like 75:25 (%) by improving both your prediction and prevention skills.

In other words...

'Risk plans' typically have 50-75% coverage.

 

[makeup]

I once worked for a company and due to lack of opportunity became unhappy. This led to me moaning and groaning and generally becoming MR Angry. Until one day my boss took me to one side and said: sonny Ive noticed that you are not very happy here any more and while your a good worker and all, at the end of the day this is my company and if you dont like it, ***k off.

Now while I was gob smacked at the time it turned out to be the best advice Ive ever had. I no-longer get fed up at a company or moan or groan I just leave before it gets that bad.

 

[plasgears]

Feel free to discuss your challenges with team members and others in associate teams.

The Manhattan Project benefitted from consulting with others. It started out as a compartmental set of groups in which you were not allowed to talk to others.

 

[PLB]

There are some great answers here!

I'd only add one that I received from a savvy engineer that I used to work with: "Always remember, they pay you the same to march as they do to fight."

I have to remind myself of this every now and again.

 

[mechantaeus]

Long hours with no results mean nothing. Learn To Work Hard and Work Smart!

 

[davidinindy]

If you can;t dazzle them with brilliance... Baffle them with Bullshxt...

And i also subscribe to the K.I.S.S. principle

 

[That1Guy]

I forget who said this, but it applies here:

Make it as simple as possible, but not moreso.

Don't customize your design to the builders to such a degree that it fails or does not do what it was intended to do. While making your designs as intuitive to the lay person as you can, you also have to assume that the builders / fabricators / etc ARE familiar with standard practices and aren't going to try to fil all the square pegs into round holes. Some people in our shop make you think that they don't have a clue, but it's just so they can slide by without making an effort to do their job.

 

[GGOSS]

Although some of the following may apprear a little negative at first, they are certainly worth thinking about.

A. For those of you who aspire to be a 'Manager', be very careful of what you wish for!

B. Pushing for what you believe is best for the company you represent will often cause your superiors to view you as a threat.

C. Be a worker, nothing more nothing less.

D. Never invest any more than 65% of yourself in whatever it is you do. The remaining 35% will ensure you maintain a quality of life.

Regards,
GGOSS

 

[IRstuff]

Given that you're only supposed to be working 40 hours out of 168, suggests that if you invest more than 24%, your quality of life has already degraded. ;-)

TTFN

 

[philbob]

"Walk softly, but carry a big stick"