Posted in Start ups on Mar 26th, 2007 No Comments »
I was touring one of the mansions along the Hudson River and noticed a custom-made telephone built into the wall in the foyer. The tour guide said that it was one of the very first telephones. In fact, the phone number was 7.
It made me wonder, what in the world was the owner buying? Certainly […]
Posted in Start ups, Managing engineers on Mar 16th, 2007 1 Comment »
Leo Tolstoy begins his novel Anna Karenina with the profound observation that,
Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
Not to be maudlin, but an engineering development team is a lot like a family, especially where Tolstoy’s observation is concerned. I would state the Karenina Principle as:
Successful development teams are […]
Posted in Managing engineers on Mar 2nd, 2007 No Comments »
A wise man once observed, “There are two types of people in this world: those who divide people into two types and those who do not.” Perhaps it was Steve Martin; I don’t remember.
In that same vein of reasoning, I have found that there are two types of engineers:
The engineer who believes that his job […]