Lesson Learned: Sometimes Engineers Need to Learn Humility

Several years ago, my engineering team was given a seemingly impossible task.  Design and implement an infrastructure upgrade in ⅛ of the time that we “needed”.  

The team’s response and mine were identical, “we can’t do that”.  

I scheduled a meeting with the customer’s director.  We had worked together for many years and had a deep respect for each other.  

I went into the meeting planning to change his mind with my superior technical expertise.  I walked out of the meeting humbled and educated.  I happily accepted the original scope and timeline of the project.  

This post discusses some of my takeaways.

“It’s not always a technical decision.”

Everything that I was going to say in this meeting was silenced with that statement.  

At that point in my career, I didn’t have the perspective to consider anything but the technical position.  

He told me that he didn’t think the timeline was reasonable either, but it wasn’t relevant. This effort was financially and politically driven, and it was going to happen.  

Here are some things that may be considered:

• Sometimes, it is the end of the fiscal year, and the business needs to spend money (i.e., for tax purposes, to secure funding next year, etc.)
• Sometimes, a project was forgotten  until an unreasonable amount of time is left to complete it
• Sometimes, it is politically driven, and you do not want to be involved
  
  

Reciprocity is real

Because the order came from “above his pay grade”, the director’s hands were tied.  

On a more personal level, he told me that if I made him look good to his higher-ups, then he would “owe me one.”  

I did.  He did.  And it was worth it. (He introduced us to people that we wouldn’t have otherwise had access to.  Praised us more than we deserved.  And this led to a lot of new business) 

If you stay within your comfort zone, you may never find out what you are truly capable of

Based on past experiences, we believed that something like it would take at least two months.

We delivered in one week.

We were experienced, knowledgeable engineers, but none of us even considered that it could be done in that amount of time.  

I don’t think that this means that every time you’re faced with unreasonable requirements that you should go all in.  I do think that you should be slightly more aggressive than you are used to.

That discomfort that you’ll feel in the process is called growth.  

Don’t assume that you are the smartest person in the room

Even if you are the smartest person in the room, there is rarely a reason to act like it.  

In this case, I thought I was, acted like it…and I was not.  

We can learn from everyone if we look for opportunities, ask questions, and actually listen to the answers.