I keep a notebook. It is not the one with my to-do lists; it is a worn, coffee-stained book in which, for more than thirty years, I have written down every mistake that cost somebody time or money in a…
Over the years I have interviewed and hired a good number of mechanical designers, and I have trained many more who were hired by someone else. At the end of almost every training course, one person waits until the room…
Several years ago, a company I advised held a three-hour meeting to decide what to call the people in its design office. Three hours. The argument went round and round: the people who modeled parts and produced drawings wanted to…
Some years ago, one of the best designers I ever trained came to see me after hours. He had just resigned. “I’m going to work for myself,” he said, half proud and half terrified. “Tell me what I’m missing.” We…
“Should I get certified?” is a question I have been asked on the first day of nearly every course I have taught, and my answer has not changed in twenty years: it depends on what you want the certificate to…
Every trainee I have ever taught asks about pay, usually in the last ten minutes of the last day, usually in a whisper, and usually as though it were somehow impolite. It is not impolite. It is the most practical…
A few years ago I had forty-one applications on my desk for a single junior designer position. Forty-one resumes, almost all of them listing the same things: the same software, the same school subjects, the same sentence about being “a…
When I take over a design department, the first thing I ask for is not the software list, the license count or the project backlog. I ask a simple question: “Show me how a job travels from the first request…
In my first week on any new team, I run a small, slightly mischievous experiment. I ask three people the same question: “What is the difference between a version and a revision?” It is rare to get three identical answers.…
Early in my career, I watched a purchasing clerk order forty ball bearings for a machine that needed four. The drawing was correct. The 3D assembly was correct. The parts were correct. But the bill of materials had been typed…
