
The Unwritten Laws of Engineering: What the Beginner Needs to Learn at Once - wallflower
http://memagazine.asme.org/Articles/2010/October/Unwritten_Laws.cfm
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vgm
If you are interested, you may find the second and third installments here:

[http://memagazine.asme.org/Articles/2010/November/Unwritten_...](http://memagazine.asme.org/Articles/2010/November/Unwritten_Laws.cfm)

[http://memagazine.asme.org/Articles/2010/December/Unwritten_...](http://memagazine.asme.org/Articles/2010/December/Unwritten_Laws.cfm)

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fleitz
Fail Safe. Shit is going to go wrong at the the most in opportune time.

Ensure your production environment will kill your applications at random
times. At least you'll be practiced. Uptime is your enemy and gives you a
false sense of security. Given enough time, eventually someone will trip over
a power cord despite your triply redundant power supplies and backup systems.

I learned this when a memory leak became impossible to track down and so we
just killed the process when it reached a certain point. That program was the
most reliable thing I've ever seen, eventually every inopportune moment it
could have died had been found and the code knew what to do. It would never
crash despite always crashing.

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fbnt
I don't really like the 'In relation to your supervisor' part, maybe I'm just
frustrated, or maybe in america things are different.

 _\- 'Do not overlook the steadfast truth that your direct supervisor is your
“boss.”'_

Right, I'm an engineer, a _technical person_ , and as such, I'm the one doing
all the hard work. If I'm very good at my job, there will be no reason to
promote me or assign me a responsability position, I'm perfect at doing what I
do. I'm the only one with the ability to get things done. My boss instead, a
non-technical _people-person_ , can roam around and chit-chat all day.

 _\- 'Be as particular as you can in the selection of your supervisor.'_

What? How do you select your supervisor? In the real world, you get assigned a
supervisor.

 _\- 'Whenever you are asked by your manager to do something, you are expected
to do exactly that.'_

Exactly. You're a beast of burden, it dosen't matter if his/her requests are
utterly absurd or impossible, you are expected to do exactly that. Obey your
master.

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hvs
Every company I've worked at as a software developer or a manager, my managers
have been technical. I got to my position by being capable both technically
and managerially. If you don't believe that doing what you are told to do is
important, _that_ is the reason that you won't be promoted, not because you
are a "beast of burden".

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fbnt
Clearly, our stories are different. I posted my thoughts based on my 3 years
experience in a major Fortune 500 IT corp., where 90% of managers are top-
school MBA graduates.

My objection to the article was that too often, engineers are considered
subordinate by definition, and seen as mere doers with no say in the matter,
which is in great contrast with the idea of being an engineer I had back when
I was at the university.

Reality is that in some workplaces what you call 'managerial capability' ends
up being the ability to carefully choose whom you're going to spend your
coffee break or lunch with, false empathy, or just plain arsekissing. Some
says this is office politics, but it's a game I don't like to play.

~~~
hvs
I agree, that's why I don't work in those types of organizations and don't
recommend it.

My rule of thumb is this: if technology isn't a major component of what your
company "does," you will never be treated with respect by your company as
someone in technology.

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sievert
This is great content. I really wish someone had told me about the point of
focusing really hard on the first (and often trivial) project you're given
when I first started. I've only been in the workforce a year, from a business
degree at a large bank, but these laws still apply.

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mikeknoop
This is the first ASME article I havve seen on HN in a while -- so this
question is somewhat scoped:

Are there any companies with representatives here on HN which hire or are
looking to hire Mechanical Engineers? Bonus for an emphasis in numerical
methods and optimization.

I saw one job posting in a "Who is Hiring?" thread several months back but
nothing since.

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dreyfiz
Damn, the stuff about how to treat and think about other people in Part III is
solid gold. It’s really speaking to me.

[http://memagazine.asme.org/Articles/2010/December/Unwritten_...](http://memagazine.asme.org/Articles/2010/December/Unwritten_Laws.cfm)

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Scorponok
“One of his jobs after an explosion was to plot where the body parts landed,
and to figure out what caused the explosion.”

And I thought my job had bad days.

