I’m in the middle of a move and reducing all the crap I’ve managed to hoard over the years. While tackling a stack, I came across a document I received from a lifer coworker which contained gems.
This unofficial doc contained rules for navigating a successful career in engineering leadership though it also applies for any institutional leadership position. Here’s the document unedited in its entirety.
Slater’s Laws for Engineers and Team Leaders
Rule 1: The purpose of business is to generate profit for the shareholders
* Jobs are a necessary byproduct of making money
* Products are the necessary byproduct of the chosen method of making money
* Profit is in everyone's (employee, company, & customer) interest
* The definition of quality is meeting the customer's expectation for the product every time at the agreed upon price and at the agreed upon time
Rule 2: Cost is one of the many technical variables a great engineer controls
* A job that is a financial disaster but a technical success is a failure
* A job that is a financial success but a technical disaster is a success
* Find paths that let you have both technical and financial success
* Losing money is a failure for both your customer and your stockholders. Neither is happy when you close your doors
* Do what is necessary (alternate paths, alternate parts, etc.) to maintain schedule. It's the least expensive choice in the long run
Rule 3: You create your own job security
* You do not have job security by hoarding information - eventually management will realize it is not to their advantage to have an irreplaceable employee
* "Learn from your superiors, teach your subordinates and all three of you will move up" - Andrew Carnegie
* If you can't show annually how you personally produced 10x your salary in revenue, you're paid too much and will probably be replaced
* The company has no obligation to you beyond paying for services rendered
* If the management can find a way to replace what you do more effectively they will - it's their job - find a way to do your job better so they can't do it better without you
* Learn more every year. It's your responsibility to avoid skill obsolescence
* H.R. represents only the company, not the employees
* You are an expendable asset. Make sure they don't expend your value before you are ready to leave
Rule 4: Understand the uses of the products you design
* Systems Engineers may pick specifications without knowing the cost
* Write specifications for the items you really need to make your system work
* Don't specify anything you don't require for your system to work as un-needed specifications drive cost and schedule unnecessarily
* Do not try to use a function you did not specify because you think it's implied. The designer will probably have chosen to leave it out
* Work with the designers early to adjust specifications to make the optimal use of the available technology without adding unnecessary cost
* Specify exactly what you need - no more no less.
* It's not a specification if it can be changed. It's a wish list. Wishlists cost more to implement than specifications
* Never put blinders on. You may have an idea that makes the unit less expensive or more reliable if you make minor changes
Rule 5: Take personal ownership of everything you do
* Your reputation is on the line each time your sign your name
Rule 6: Treat every design as if your life depends on it because someone's life probably does
Rule 7: Know when it's good enough.
* A great engineer knows when to stop improving the design because it meets its intended usage
Rule 8: Know the purpose and operation of every component in the design
* Don't make changes unless you KNOW the purpose of each part
* Don't assume you understand how an alternate part will function
Rule 9: Identify risks early and address them
* If you think something might be a problem, it probably already is one
* Have a fallback plan in place so you don't cause a schedule delay
* Execute the fallback plan with enough time to keep it viable until the primary path works
* Sole source parts put you at the mercy of your supplier - try to design with parts with multiple sources
* Prototype and test exhaustively any circuit you have not used before
Rule 10: Be flexible
* Bad things happen
* Plan your work and work your plan
* No plan survives the start of the task
* Work to be ahead of schedule at all times so you have margin when bad things happen
Rule 11: Do your homework
* Try to think of the questions others will ask and have answers before they ask
Rule 12: Anticipate your leaderships needs
* Try to have what they need done before they ask
Rule 13: Don't be afraid to make a mistake
* The only people that don't make mistakes are those that don’t do anything
* Your failures are faster paths to knowledge than your successes
* Sometimes, you have to make a determination without all the data
* This is your best engineering judgment. It may turn out to be wrong later. If you get it right more than you get it wrong, you've done well
Rule 14: Everyone climbs the ladder
* Everyone climbs the ladder of success. It doesn't define you
* Everyone falls. Your falls don't define you
* How you respond after a fall defines you. If you pick yourself up, learn from your mistake, dust yourself off, and start trying again, you will be a success
* Statistically, 1 in 4 new business starts will succeed for 15 years
* Statistically, on average, an entrepreneur will fail twice before having a business succeed
* Morale of the story. Winners don't quit. They modify their plan and go forward
Rule 15: Always learn from your mistakes
* There is plenty of room for new mistakes so try not to make the same one twice
Rule 16: Ask your leadership for help but always bring a suggested solution unless you are truly stumped
* Always keep your leadership informed
Rule 17: Ask for help before it is offered by your leadership
* Always keep your leadership informed
Rule 18: Never reject help if offered by your leadership
* Everyone needs help now and then
* If they offer, they think you need it and fighting it will only make you look naïve and is career limiting
* If you are told you need help, accept it gracefully. To fight it is career limiting or ending
* Did I mention Always keep your leadership informed?
Rule 19: Once you determine your requirements, start identifying the best way to test
* Do this before you start the design
* Design in the tests - provide access as part of the design
* Think about ways to make the test shorter and easier
* Think about structural tests - computers will repeat the program the same way every time it runs. Test that the computer runs, not that the program gives you the same result on each successive unit
Rule 20: Design with production and test in mind
* Design is sexy but production pays the bills
* If you want the opportunity to do more design,, make your designs so others can easily support them. Otherwise you'll be doing a lot of production support and won't get to design
* Cost effective designs are the best designs - see Rule 1
Rule 21: Keep Einstein's simplicity definition in mind at all times
* Paraphrased - "Keep your solutions as simple as possible but no simpler"
* Elegance is simplicity, Simplicity is Elegance
* Overkill is the best answer if it is the simplest answer to the problem
* A complex solution to a problem is not elegant if a simpler solution is available
Rule 22: Keep Einstein's definition of insanity in mind at all times
* Doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results is the definition of insanity
Rule 23A: Keep your leadership informed
* It is never a good idea to let others tell your leadership how things are going. Let them know the facts first so someone else can't spin a story
Rule 23B: Keep large meetings short
* A large meeting has never solved any problem
* Most attendees are not participants
* Select your attendees carefully
* Always have an agenda
* Always have a purpose for the meeting - status, brainstorming, organizing a group, etc.
* Assign topics to a smaller group to be addressed outside of the meeting and a report back time and date.
* Be prompt - it's disrespectful to the other attendees to be waiting for you
* Try keep the meeting to the scheduled time. Everyone is busy
* DO NOT use a computer or cell phone during a meeting. You are not paying attention to the topic and are being disrespectful of the others in attendance
Rule 24A: Communications is the key to everything
* Always keep your leadership informed
* The most effective communications are face to face the participants can read body language, voice inflections, see pictures, and written data, and ask clarifying questions
* The next most effective communications are by telephone, you only lose body language
* The next most effective communications are by letter, memo or email - You lose both body language, verbal inflection, and clarifying questions but you maintain detailed written information
* Email should be used to confirm verbal discussions and create records
* Email can also be used to document a recipients lack of responses
* Never argue via email. Come to a consensus (preferred) or agree to disagree then document via email
* When you reply to email, reply to those that have a need for the data. Reply all is of limited value and wastes a lot of other people's time
* The least effective form of communications is texting
* Texting should only be used to set up one of the other forms of communication or to ask a very simple question that may need an immediate answer
Rule 24B: Know the basics cold
* Understand the meaning behind the equations
* Be able to visualize the interactions
* Fight against your own tendency to assume things
* Most problems can be reduced to the basics. Ohm's law, Maxwell's equations, Shannon's sampling theorem, Nyquist equations, Schroedingers Equation, Eulers identity, Pythagorean equation, etc.
* Work to simplify problems until the basics apply
Rule 25: Defining the problem is 90% of any task
* Any engineer can solve problems and equations
* Great Engineers can define the problems to be solved
Rule 26: Don't assume anything
* Ask the basic questions even if everyone "Knows" that question doesn't apply
* Most of the time, everyone else will assume they know the things that can be omitted without checking. They're usually wrong
* Avoid the tendency to jump to a solution until you understand the problem. If you have a solution before you understand the problem, you will miss key elements and get a chance to solve the problem again because you will not have solved it the first time
Rule 27: Always think first
* Your most effective and useful tool is inside your head (your brain). Use to it first
* Simplify problems in your head first
* Reach for other tools like simulators, Matlab, software, calculators etc. after you have used your best tool
Rule 28: No one and nothing is perfectly useless, you can always use them as a bad example.
* You can learn from everyone whether you think they did something right or wrong
* Take advantage of your learning opportunities
Rule 29: Never turn down an opportunity to take a seminar or course even if you think you already know the topic well
* You might be surprised
* Take advantage of your learning opportunities
Rule 30: Discuss problems with colleagues
* You will need to better understand the problem to explain it
* Explaining a problem is a true test of your understanding
* While you're explaining you might gain insight to the issue
* They might ask clarifying questions that will cause you to receive those rare flashes of brilliance we all get
Rule 31: Keep your perspective
* 100 years from now, no problem you're solving will be remembered
* Family / Religion must come first Work comes second
* Entertainment comes last. Respect that in others and honor it yourself
* Care about your fellow employees. When you ask how they're doing, be interested in their answer
* Remember the story of the task master who drove his people hard. The employees disliked him greatly. They were on a program that was behind schedule and over budget. Yet, when one of his employees wives got terminally ill and the employee ran out of sick and vacation time, the task master went against HR and instead of firing the employee, he provided an overhead number and assigned the employee to the hospital for the last two weeks of the wife's life. The employee told his co-workers and the co-workers rallied around the task master working uncompensated overtime for weeks. They brought the program back on schedule and budget. The employees respected the task master and they would follow him anywhere and do what was needed for him
* Don't expect anything from others you won't or haven't done yourself
Rule 32: Problem solving is best done with rigor
* You may get lucky and jump to the right conclusion sometimes and that will be very fast. However, if you jump to the wrong conclusion, you can skip the most important pieces of information. If you skip the important pieces, you may never come back and get them
* There is nothing wrong with a working hypothesis as long as you don't become emotionally invested in the hypothesis
* Analysis paralysis is a far worse problem than trying something based on the available data and learning something new. Just make sure of what you learn and try top fill in the unknowns in the problem
* Control of variables is critical to successful problem solving. Make sure you only change one thing in any experiment so you can determine the impact of that variable
* If you change multiple variables and you get lucky and find the solution to your problem, you will regret not understanding which variable was the cause when something else comes along and causes the problem again
Rule 33: There is only one stupid question
* It is: "Is the question I'd like to ask stupid and will it make me look stupid?" The real answer to the stupid question is: It doesn't matter, ask anyway.
* Make all questions about the data (i.e. what data do we need?, What data do we have?, What is the data telling us?)
Rule 34: Use analogies that everyone understands as a good frame of reference for explaining problems and concepts
* The simpler the better. If you make your analogies simple enough that any person can understand them, you will probably be understood
* Developing the analogies helps you better understand the problem
* Explaining a problem to someone else helps you better understand the problem too
Rule 35: Let your results speak for you
* Politics are never a good long term career answer
* Live by politics, die by politics
* It is impossible to argue with success. Facts and data trump all other arguments even political arguments
Rule 36: Never take credit for someone else's work
* Give credit to those that actually did the work
* Only take credit for those things you did
* Over the long term, it will become apparent who was the driving force behind the successes
* Even if you are the one driving a team's success, give the team the credit. They will respect you for your humility and will work with you again
Rule 37: Do not make arguments personal
* Know that some people will take losses personally
* Try to always allow others to save face
* Do not gloat over wins in arguments or issues. Just move on
* Once an argument is over, win or lose, move on
RULE38: THE FIRST STEP OF GETTING OUT OF A HOLE IS SToP DIGGING!
