Ralford.net

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Around this time last year I wrote a post about my first 365 days as a hardware engineer. This year, I've tried to sum things up from a more general point of view: As the number of years one spends in a career increases, the probability that a serious occurance becomes comical also increases.

To cope with the insanity of the working world, I've devised this simple three step strategy:

1. Keep a stressball in the area where you spend most of your time. If you are stressed then squeeze it. If not, set it somewhere where it will look like it's on display. Coworkers will avoid you because you look like the postal type.
2. If more than one person is responsible for answering phones within a room, quietly challenge a neighbor to a match of rocks-pape (w). The one that loses must pick up the next call.
3. Eat a regular morning snack. This should happen every day about 2/3 of the way through the morning. A pack of crackers or granola bar, for example, will tide most over till lunch. This breaks up the morning, and creates the illusion of lunch arriving sooner. To further intensify the illusion, items with a quanity (crackers, m&ms, pez) should be consumed one at time, while recalculating the time until lunch after each portion. The remaining number of food subitems should then be evenly consumed across the calculated time interval.

Oh yeah - hobbies also help the sanity thing.

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MS Labor Troubles - No doy. That's cause we're all in State College working for bomb-ass embedded systems companies. Actually, there's a lot more that you can get out of a small company. You get to be a contributor of the growing process, and have more opportunities to work on different types of technology. Plus, you don't have to drop your life to move out to the MS campus hell hole. For some of the lucky ones, working at a small company means a jump start up the ladder. You also get a chance to work with management, and they actually do quite a good job hearing out your comlaints. I could go on and on with the benefits. Boo Microsoft. Hooray for smaller companies!

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It's near the end of my first year of employment. Hard to believe I graduated from PSU's engineering program one year ago this December. Don't feel like I've done much over the last year, but looking back, I feel accomplished. Turns out I was involved with many things: board level design, schematic clean-up and review, CADing PC/104 boards, mechanical drawings, hardware manuals, webpage updates, prototype testing, temperature chamber testing, documentation, and lots of technical support (all though it may not have always been supportive).

At this point I'm happy that I didn't go to grad school. I'm a year ahead with hands on knowledge of embedded systems, that I probably wouldn't find anywhere but the workplace. Of course, staying in school is the better decision for many people, but I'm happy to have added one year of solid background to my resume.

I owe my superiors at RTD a lot of thanks. They've put up with a lot my questions, a few questions here and there, and lot more of me asking them questions. I suppose we all benefit from this. Taking the time to train me means that they have one more engineer who knows what and what not to do. On the same note, if I didn't bother them, I'd probably be re-inventing the wheel. I'm sure I'll pass the torch some day, and hopefully I'll be as patient as those who've showed me what's up.

With that out of the way, for the first time I can say that I feel like an engineer.
Bring on my second year...

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Sticky pads are great for writing down something that you don't want to forget, like picking up milk or beer when you're almost out. But when you want to permanently remember something, it's best to post it in a shared document, or more specifically a wiki. I've read about numerous workers using wikis in the workplace, and we've done the same at my place of employment.

I must say that the work wiki has become a lifesaver. Its great for keeping track just about everything. I don't care how many (or how few) people actually use it.

As the wiki grows, I see it turning into a starting place for product application notes. When customers begin to ask questions about what the funnyPurple module does, our staff looks it up and throws it in the wiki. The wiki becomes a quick reference for other customers who may ask similar questions about the funnyPurple module. A few weeks or months later an engineer may happen to be working on a new revision of the funnyPurple module. He makes some additions and updates to the funnyPurple module section in the wiki. The new funnyPurple module gets released, and customers ask more questions. By this point, all our staff says "grr, these customers keep asking about this, lets just publish it as an application note".

One more reason why you should write it down.

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As an avid user of FogBugz in the workplace, I've recently started browsing through the weblog of Joel Spolsky - the creator of FogBugz, and manager of Fog Creek Software. A number of his viewpoints come from a different angle that is eye-opening compared to traditional ways of developing - one that we can all learn a thing or two from.

One particular article focuses on an interesting approach to making good software. The approach he describes can be applied to developing any kind of solid product. Titled "Converting Capital into Software that Works", Joel puts a strong emphasis on the importance of a good development team.

In the article, he states: "Imagine that the goal of your software company is not to solve some specific problem, but to be able to convert money to code through programmers... A software company has to think of recruiting the right people as its number one problem." The idea is that a successful team can produce a better product than a competitor, even if a similar product already exists.

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