Category: Inspiration from Other Fields

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Improve Your Project Management Skills by Applying a Land Navigation Lesson

I want to explore the application of an important lesson from land navigation to our engineering work: always have a backstop. Backstops in Navigation When navigating in the wilderness, it is important to identify backstops for your journey. Fundamentally, a backstop is any kind of kind of boundary condition that keeps us within our target …

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A Software Development Idea Inspired by Mushroom Cultivation

In the previous article, I discussed the importance of spending time doing things outside of your professional field. By doing so, you expose yourself to new ideas, paradigms, patterns, and practices. Breakthroughs often come from taking an idea in one area and applying it to another. To help critical ideas spread across fields, we need …

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Why Professional Programmers Shouldn’t Have Programming Side Projects

Our field is full of companies and individuals who are quick to look down on anyone who doesn’t have any programming/embedded side projects, some even going so far as to consider it a hiring “red flag”. Even with 11 years of professional experience, maintaining open source projects, and running an embedded firm, many people still …

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Are You Using This Strategy to Build an Outstanding Team?

I was listening to the Jocko Podcast, and Jocko was reading from a U.S. Marine Corps (USMC) publication titled "The Squad Leader Makes a Difference". Jocko relayed the story of Corporal Gregory, who served with the USMC in Vietnam. I thought that Corporal Gregory was an outstanding example of a leader who focused on training, …

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Engineering Lessons I’ve Learned from Working at the Japanese Tea Garden

Since September 2017, I’ve been volunteering at the San Francisco Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park. I work with the head gardener, seasoned bonsai devotees, and a master gardener to prune trees, mend fences, beat back bamboo, pull weeds, catch koi fish, and clean ponds. These tasks may not seem relevant to engineering teams, …

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