Tag Archives: engineer

Ruby on Rails Reading List (kind of)

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A student from RailsBridge NYC asked me for a reading list. Rather than focus on Ruby or Rails, I broadened the topic to software writing and writers I look to for inspiration. Here’s my reply:

The best book on Ruby language is the The Well-Grounded Rubyist by David Black. The Ruby documentation is pretty handy, especially the API pages http://ruby-doc.org/

For the Rails framework I dive into code and rely on google searches of Stack Overflow Q&A’s and the rails docs http://api.rubyonrails.org/ for answers to specific questions I run into.

For developer practice, I’ve been reading James Shore (The Art of Agile Development), Diana Larsen (Liftoff: Launching Agile Teams & Projects) and Jean Tabaka (Collaboration Explained: Facilitation Skills for Software Project Leaders)

For inspiration, I love The Existential Pleasures of Engineering by Samuel Florman and To Engineer Is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design by Henry Petroski.

Thought leaders who helped shape my values as a developer, product person and development manager are Jeff Sutherland, Ken Schwaber, Bob Martin, and Steve McConnell.

For online training resources, my team and I are using RailsCast, ThoughtBot, RubyTapas, Code School.

This man is why my father became an engineer

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As a boy growing up in West Virginia, my father wanted to study science but a high school teacher convinced him he had no talent for it.

That man was not why my father became an engineer.

My father joined the Navy, served in the Korean War and became a non-commissioned officer.

While enlisted, he took a class in radio/radar technology. The instructor, a well-respected engineer, turned out to be a great teacher – at least for my father. Which is great enough for me.

Vacuum tubes in an old radioMy father became the best student in the class. The instructor’s encouragement convinced him to pursue a career in engineering.

My father earned degrees in electrical and a nuclear engineering and made a long career working with technologies evolved from those he learned in that first class.

Now retired, my father decided to find out who this teacher was who had made such an impact on his life.

***

Nick Holonyak invented the Light Emitting Diode (LED). He is winner of the IEEE Medal of Honor.

Before that he was the first post graduate student of John Bardeen who with fellow Nobel Laureate, Walter Brattain, invented the first transistor.

Somewhere in between these accomplishments, he taught engineering to a class of military personnel.

When my father speaks of Nick Holonyak it is with gratitude and wonder.

***

New York City FIRST LEGO League ChampionshipMy father, the engineer, encouraged me to love science. I studied mathematics and physics and make my living building software.

I encourage my grade school aged daughter to love science. This year, my daughter’s robotics team competed at the New York City FIRST LEGO League Championship.

These are perhaps small things to a man who assisted Nobel Laureates, won prestigious engineering awards, worked at Bell and GE Labs and continues to teach at a research university in a position he’s held for over forty years.

But Nick Holonyak is the reason my father became an engineer. His teaching kindled an enthusiasm that is a source of generational wealth to our family.

Thank you.

Collegiality Versus Collaboration: Getting our Hands Dirty

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Merriam-Webster Online defines:

collegiality as, “the cooperative relationship of colleagues.”

collaboration as, “to work jointly with others or together especially in an intellectual endeavor.”

In the article, Norms of Collegiality and Experimentation: Workplace Conditions of School Success, Judith Warren Little places true collaboration at the end of a continuum of collegial relations.

Starting from weakest to strongest:

Of these four, only joint work is “strong enough to contribute to a collaborative culture of enduring benefit.”

Joint work is the sharing of tacit knowledge. Tacit knowledge is acquired through experience but difficult for the holder to express in words. It is core to craftsmanship and mastery.

Tacit knowledge is transfered when we work in collaboration with another person. In The New Product Development Game, Nonaka and Takeuchi call this “osmotic” learning and consider it the first phase in the organization knowledge creation process.

Nonaka and Takeuchi describe how attempts to design the first bread maker failed miserably until an engineer apprenticed herself to a baker, learning by doing the movements required to kneed great bread. She took that learning back to Matsushita, devising a paddle system that became an essential innovation in a wildly successful, new class of home appliance.

The relationship between product owner and team in most agile projects is certainly collegial. We communicate by story telling. Participants make themselves available to help each other. We share explicit knowledge across business and technical domains as best we can. However, all of this falls short of true collaboration.

The lesson I take away is if we want to foster creativity and innovation we need to get past the barriers of status and roles, go beyond talk, roll up our sleeves and labor together — joint investment, joint consequences, and joint work.

Ethical Action is not Moral Certainty

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“With malice towards none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on…” — Lincoln’s Second Inaugural

Roger Boisjoly was a Thiokol engineer who found “large arcs of blackened grease” on the solid boosters recovered from successful shuttle launches. He identified a correlation between cold temperatures and leakage of hot gases from the O-Ring seals in the solid boosters.

In January 1986, based on Boisjoly’s analysis and forecasts of cooler temperatures than ever experienced during a shuttle launch, Thiokol recommended the shuttle Challenger not launch.

NASA could not proceed over the contractor’s objections. “Appalled” by Thiokol’s recommendation, NASA held a private caucus with Thiokol management. A senior Thiokol executive was asked to, “take off his engineer hat and put on his management hat.” (Rogers Commission, 1986)

As a result, while still expressing concern, Thiokol withdrew their objection for lack of definitive proof. The age old argument for ignoring risk. By definition, no risk is certain.

Space Shuttle

Challenger exploded during launch killing all seven aboard.

In the aftermath, Boisjoly testified before the shuttle commission which is why we know all this.

As a result of coming forward, Boisjoly experienced such a hostile workplace he was granted sick leave and then extended disability.

In 1988, Boisjoly was awarded the AAAS Scientific Freedom and Responsibility Award. He is a role model of ethical action.

The most important thing to learn from his example is that ethical behavior is not about being right or infallible.

Despite his expertise, in[sight] and integrity lives were lost. At points he respected the chain of management even though he clearly disagreed with their decisions.

However, when it became clear he had, against his best efforts, contributed to tragedy, he stepped forward despite the consequences.

Human judgment is fallible but we must act to create the most benefit and least harm in accordance with the principle that others have as much right to joy, fulfillment and dignity as we do ourselves.

If harm results from even our best efforts we must take responsibility.

No one is perfect and there are always mitigating circumstances but there are also no excuses.

[NOTE: The Boisjoly Case Study is borrowed from Engineering Ethics: An Industrial perspective by G. Baura.]