Ideal Engineering Practice

TEST 2024-12-18 10:22s

Engineering. What is it? What is the soul of the practice? Does it even have a soul, or is it simply defined by the rawness of its pragmatism: Engineering is what works! No ideals other than getting the job done, satisfying the specs, delivering the goods and nothing more.

In my decade of engineering, I have sensed that a soul does exist beyond deadlines and delivery objectives.

To the soulful engineer, the implementation of the machine (the “guts” of a machine) matter just as much as the interface of the machine (the lights and buttons and knobs facing its user).

Lift the hood on a beautiful and well-engineered machine, and you should find a well-organized, and optimally simplified set of subsystems, each of which could be further scrutinized, revealing a recursive pattern of good planning and organization.

But MBAs beware(!) of the engineer who is caught up in these practices. Achieving elegant implementations can sometimes be as profitable as a zen garden in a shoe box: beautiful and not useful.

…That is, if the MBA naively draws his bubble of value-analysis around the machine and only the machine. He is blinding himself to the intangibles: The sense of peace that anyone who works on the machine will feel, the flood of self-worth for the engineer who designed it, and the happiness of the worker that assembled it and the joy of the technician who maintains and repairs it, and the growth the student who studies it, and the wonder of the layman who observes it, inside and out.

Well made things give us peace. They honor our existence. They sing to their Creator and to Creation with far deeper bravado than the object made cheaply and in haste. We are able to harmonize our lives around high quality items and feel a noble pride for our species.

To me, Engineering has a soul, one that is acknowledges but does not worship the profit-motive. It goes beyond the economics and strives for that which hums with ingenuity and are complete expressions of our better selves.

I search for this soul, quietly, as I carry out the duties of my profession.