-----Original Message-----

From: Hagler, Marion

Sent: Monday, October 05, 1998 12:50 PM

To: Firth, Neal

Subject: FW: data general

Neal:

Two things:

1. Have you had a chance to look at the attached HTML file to see if you would object if I put it on the EE 1305 Web site?

2. Your perspectives stirred considerable interest among the students. Three questions from the students:

A. In your opinion, what are the top three qualities that make a good engineer?

B. What are you doing now?

C. In your opinion, what made the Eagle project so special?

Thanks.

Marion

-----Original Message-----

From: Firth, Neal

Sent: Thursday, October 08, 1998 5:30 AM

To: Hagler, Marion

Subject: Re: FW: data general

Marion,

Sorry. I didn't realize that you would actually wait for a response prior to posting. Thanks - I appreciate integrity.

As for posting ... Other than requesting removal of personal contact information I have no problem with putting any of my responses on the WEB..

.

.

As for the student questions…. I've attached a word document.

As a note, Steve Wallach founded Convex which was based in Richardson TX before it was acquired by HP. Don't know if it's still there, but at least he's the person closest to your location.

Regards,

- Neal

-----The Attachment-----

Q: What are the top three qualities that make a good engineer?

A: In relative order from most important to least most important:

1. Solid grounding in fundamentals. I’m not talking about walking encyclopedias. Rather, I’m talking about understanding what the basics are, why they exist and how to apply them. Facts are easy to look up only if you know what you are looking for. You also need to be able to recognize and understand an answer when you find one. Having a solid grounding in fundamentals allows an engineer to have a "feel" for unfamiliar topics and tasks.
2. Attention to detail. I’m not talking about anal-retentive behavior. Rather, I’m talking about the ability to pursue and obtain complete and accurate information. In any project there are things left undone. The ability to make informed choices about what to leave undone is often the difference between success and failure. You are informed only when you can identify and quantify the details.
3. Ability to view information from multiple points of reference. Basically, this is a variation on the old forest and trees problem. But, in this case I’m saying that a good engineer knows how to see a forest, a stand of similar tree types and individual trees all at the same time.

So your students read this and think: "Great. More generalizations. They don’t teach this stuff. This doesn’t apply to my life. What a waste of time!" And knowing that most of them are going to think this way I’ll add something that I never got in school – a way to apply this information to their life.

The tangible parts of quality (a) come from the content of course work. How well you do in introductory level courses is a good indication of how well you know the fundamentals. If you don’t do well (a C or less), consider re-taking the course. If you have to, ignore your advisor, get on the 5 year plan and extend the student loan. Getting on to the advanced courses is NOT the most important thing you can do. Why ? Well, the reality check is that five years after school no-one cares what courses you took. They care what you can do. And I believe that if you don’t have solid fundamentals you won’t be performing.

Which brings up qualities (b), (c) and the intangibles of (a). All of these come from how you do your course work. Some people seem to come by these qualities naturally. Others need to expand their horizons to achieve them. Do you do the minimum or do you follow the occasional tangent? Do you ever follow tangents to the extent that they are impacting your ability to do other work? The work habits you use in school are very much the same habits you’ll tend to use after school. It’s OK if you want to follow the prescribed path. Many engineers do. However, be aware that most of the top engineering talent (those that command the most interesting work and the top dollar) know how to live on the edge. But what if you want to do more than the minimum but find you’re too busy (work, family, social, etc.). Then I’d suggest you need to stop the excuses and find the time. If it means a lighter course load, fine. Take longer to graduate. If you can’t find the time now, you’ll never find it later. More importantly, school is the best opportunity to explore your personal limits. The cost of failure in school is a bad grade. The cost of failure outside of school may be your job (which can be a real drag if times are tough or the mortgage is due). And although school isn’t cheap, the cost of life only seems to go up, not down.

To make a long answer even longer, I’ll point out that I haven’t identified what type of engineer I’m talking about. I haven’t because I’m talking about all engineers. These qualities are universal. They apply to bridge designers as much as they apply to computer designers. They apply to technicians as much as they apply to quality assurance engineers as much as they apply to design engineers. By the way, you didn’t think technicians or quality assurance engineers were something less than design engineers did you? The tasks they perform may be different. And the skills needed to perform those tasks have different characteristics. But, their need for engineering skills is just as important.

Q: What am I doing now?

A: For the past year and a half I have been doing consulting work. My company is C & T Solutions, Inc. Most of my current work is software development with a focus on vertically integrated tools. In the future I plan to turn the focus of my company to the development of tools as shelf-ware. It only took me 20 years to figure out that while the need for tools has grown, the desire of companies to pay for tools development work on a full time basis has shrunk. Thus, consulting is a good career choice.

Q: What made the Eagle project so special?

A: There was a synergy within the talents of the group. You didn’t spend a lot of time explaining concepts because every just knew them. This allowed for a lot of what can best be described as leaps of logic. The impact was that designs didn’t slowly evolve. They almost seemed to just happened.

But more importantly it was a mostly ego-less engineering environment. Nothing was personal. You could go into meetings and express yourself openly and completely. People didn’t waste a lot of time saving face. People didn’t worry about careers. Carl and Ed were bosses. This meant that they had the responsibility of authorization. It did not mean that their engineering opinion was any better. If you thought something was great you said so. If you thought something was crap you said so too. And this environment lasted until almost the end of the project. We all seemed to discover egos and the career implications of interactions at about the same time. And we all started to pay attention to these issues at about the same time.

I’ve experienced the synergy aspect of the project several times since the Eagle days. It’s always quite a rush to be involved in that sort of engineering effort – you get so much done with such high quality in such a short period of time. On the other hand, I’ve never experienced anything akin to the ego-less environment again. And I almost never hear other people use the word ego-less when describing their work environment.