Making the "best" decisions..
I work with Engineers, my close friends are Engineers. Basically everyone is Engineers. So I live pretty much in a engineering world.
I have always been interested in understanding how decisions are made and the rationale behind them, in general I have found that the larger the organisation are the harder engineers have understanding why decisions are made and on what grounds.
Quite often, after a decision has been made, engineers express something like this: "the bosses/suits don't get how x/y/z works and this decision will make my work slower/much-less-optimal/(place anything negative here), the suits don't GET how important this is for us/me. The suits are just idiots and don't understand how we, engineers on the floor, work.". The general rule is engineers rules and everyone else pretty much sucks.
I have been crossing the engineering road to become product manager, marketing manager and sales guy, sometimes all-in-one. I'm finding this quite challenging. For me this becomes a challenge because I'm stepping outside my comfort "engineering" zone and doing something new! But I do enjoy challenges!
From this I have learned how HARD sales, marketing, financing really is. Its not as simple as "we build the worlds greatest 'thing' and customers will hunt you down and force you to sell to them". What I think are the "best" features might not at all be what the customers thinks are the best features. Dealing with customers, getting them to accept your solution and making them come back for more is a great challenge indeed.
Perhaps you are thinking, "Well gosh, Robert, if you just offer customers what they want they will buy it from you in a second!", in all honestly many customers does not know what they want until they see it, this means that you take your product and describe it in a number of really good use cases for their "application".
This means that I have the luxury of now seeing things from many directions, it is quite refreshing. I wish more engineers would move outside their comfort zone, I firmly believe it does makes all of us better engineers, because now the "best" decision is a more diverse decision.
Account Executive at Full Throttle Falato Leads - We can safely send over 20,000 emails and 9,000 LinkedIn Inmails per month for lead generation
7 个月Robert, thanks for sharing! How are you?
Silicon Valley Hardware Product Engineering Leader - AV/Compute/Networking
7 年Nicely said Robert Wikander. Understand customers real world problems and architecting your products to meet those needs is the key. History is full of examples of great technology that does not succeed solely on it’s on own merits.
Making life better at work.
7 年As a former web app developer who moved into Project Management and then Product Management, what you've said resonates. I have the utmost respect for people in all domains because I see their challenges and victories. I see my role as translator, bridge, telescope and glue that makes the activity at one end of the spectrum visible and understandable, and empowering at the other end. I am like superconductor. Creating harmony across such disparate perspectives is more art than science. It is achieved through empathy, listening, sharing, suggesting, pinging, questioning, cajoling, and bribing with donuts. The recipe combination of these elements changes every day, and moment by moment. My purppse is to ensure that every person regardless of expertise is able to contribute in the most impactful way to advance the business toward its goals - harmony and clarity assembled from ambiguity, divergence, and chaos. That is where I thrive.
Director of Packet Processing Solution Development at AMD
8 年Like this a lot
The hardest thing for an engineer is to step one step back and let customer do their thing in their own way. I found this to be The most difficult. Yet