

Things I Wished I Learned In Engineering School - czzarr
http://www.cattell.net/talk/TiwiliesTalk.htm

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apl
Amusing off-hand remark in a merely 12 year old presentation:

    
    
      > Rule 1: Almost all organizations try to do too many things
      > Examples: SGI, NeXT, Apple
      > Lesson: Make sure the company management can make the hard calls
    

Arguably, that was spot on.

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fridek
While I agree with most of your points, I think that you've mistaken
engineering school with soft skills/personal management course that you can
attend on weekends or order on DVD for $19.99.

To be honest, I never actually believed anyone can learn these things by being
told how it works (in contrary to engineering, BTW). Making a mistake is an
important part of the process. Otherwise you will get a two-week lasting hype
"I will change my life and be more mature from now on" and then you are back
to normal. There has to be some feedback and positive feedback is simply not
fast enough.

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mechanical_fish
You can't take the "I wish they had taught me X in school" genre too
literally. Often what it really means is "it's too bad X can't really be
taught in school, but must be learned through experience", "it's too bad that
the typical school contains very few people who understand X well enough to
teach it", and/or "it's too bad that, when they told me X in school over and
over again, I was so young and inexperienced and lacking in context that I
didn't really grasp the importance of what they were saying".

What it doesn't _really_ mean is "they should simply start a one-semester
course in X and then all the new grads will be much smarter".

Why do we phrase our essays in this manner? Optimism. Optimism and marketing,
which often go well together, like chocolate and peanut butter. "Ten things
that you could learn from me today instead of spending ten years learning them
the hard way" is a good sales pitch. "Ten things that you will spend five
minutes reading, but will not truly understand, and then you'll still have to
spend ten years learning them the hard way, but at least when you learn them
you will already know the _words_ for them" is not as good. ;)

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brd
I love rule 64

 _Don't get too good at what you don't like doing. Work will gravitate to the
most competent people_

As an enterprise dev, I'm always weary of being pigeonholed. I've witnessed it
on many occasions yet I don't think I've ever seen the idea expressed so
succinctly.

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drostie
He also delivers the talk in some videos accessible from
<http://www.cattell.net/book.htm> .

Edit: except the second link he provides doesn't seem to refer properly
anymore and the first link has a very long load time, if it loads at all -- an
HN-type slashdot effect?

So I guess the slides are your best option.

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amirmc
A question (given that this is dated 2000).

What do folks think of Rule 42 (slide 18)? _"Being first is more important
than being best."_ Specifically in light of recent discussions about Instagram
and 'being first' [1]

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3844820>

~~~
mechanical_fish
My feeling is that this rule is often true, but also mostly useless. Because
of _why_ it's true: post-facto rationalization. Every product ever made is the
first to do _something_ \- though sometimes we are forced to make up new words
to describe just what that something is - and if that product is a wild
success it will turn out that that _something_ was the important thing to be
first in.

I'm fairly sure that the first iPhone camera shipped out of the box with the
ability to snap a photo and then email it to a list of your friends. I'm sure
that there was a way to post an iPhone photo to Facebook. But in the next five
years when two dozen Instagram clones get founded, flail, and die, we will be
told that they failed because Instagram was the "first" to "really" get mobile
photo sharing. Where "really get" is defined circularly: We know that
Instagram was the first to have it, because no earlier company managed to
become Instagram.

Similarly: The IBM PC was not among the first PCs to hit the market, the
iPhone was not the first smartphone with a touch screen, Facebook was not the
first social network, Dropbox was not the first way to sync files between
computers, Amazon was neither the first online retailer nor the first online
retailer of _books_ :

<http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000044.html>

More classic examples: Singer didn't build the first sewing machine, neither
Swan nor Edison built the first electric light bulb, Henry Ford was far from
the first automobile manufacturer (but he was "first" in several other things,
which are now known to have been vitally important, because they formed the
basis of… the very successful Ford Motor Company!)

One could probably rephrase the rule to make it more useful. (Perhaps a
variation on the classic "nobody ever got fired for buying the industry
standard"?) But it's surprisingly hard. The subject resists glib
generalization. I'd just pay more attention to the other rules. ;)

~~~
amirmc
That's kind of what I was wondering. That being 'first' is largely irrelevant
since, if you make it, you were 'first' to get it 'right' (terms which are
rationalised after the event). Hence, I'd consider them of limited use outside
of hypothesis testing.

Thanks for an excellent post.

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sparknlaunch12
Problem is you only have a limited time to learn. How do you prioritise the
curriculum? How long do you spend at uni before going into the real world? I
have learned more in the real world but probably because my teachers lacked
inspiration...

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hef19898
While I agree that these business skills are VERY necessary in life (sometimes
unfoutrunately so), you can learn them up to certain degree during school. You
need a good teacher with relevant exerience in these skills, he / she will
give you the basics and some anecdotes. when finally are in a position you
need these skills, then you have the necessary basis to built upon.

And that really is something you hardly learn at university, no matter which
major you have.

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raverbashing
As having gone to engineering school, I agree with you.

But the main issue is that most technical courses are given by people with a
strong foothold in academia (and a lack of knowledge of "the outside world")

Good teachers go a long way, you have to be aware of the issues to realize
they're happening once in the "real world".

You have to know the technical aspecsts, but if you restrict yourself to that,
you'll spend your life in Dilbert's world unable to change things. And when
it's your turn to lead, you'll do exactly the same as your boss did.

This list is very important, and the most amazing thing is how many people
don't know 10% of it, even in companies!

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thyrsus
What is Morris's Law? The closest I could find was Morris's corollary to
Greenspun's Law.

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VonGuard
I was just happy to see that there was NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO rule 6.

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Jebus
Image 28 is broken: <http://www.cattell.net/talk/Image28.gif>

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petrst
You can get it here
[http://web.archive.org/web/20010904104144/http://cattell.net...](http://web.archive.org/web/20010904104144/http://cattell.net/Talk/Image28.gif)

