Thoughts from Engineer's day

Some thoughts from the last Engineer’s day - Engineer's day is celebrated each year on Sep 15th to commemorate the birth anniversary of the greatest engineer that India has ever seen - Bharat Ratna - Sir M Viswesvaraya.

About a week ago, we met a doctor friend’s family over dinner. The conversation as expected veered towards our kids and their future plans. While there is a general consensus that doctor kids generally become doctors, my friend proudly said that he has made the choice of putting his kid into Python classes at a young age considering how software has become all pervasive!

I don’t think my friend is alone in his thinking. Over a decade ago, Marc Andressen famously said “Software is eating the world” and with each passing day, this quote only seems truer than ever!?To be living amidst a time that is seeing the most rapid change ever seen – all driven by tech – I consider that a huge privilege.

If I were to extend Marc’s quote, I will say that engineers are getting the world to eat out of their hands. There has never been a better time to be an engineer – today no domain remains to be touched or reshaped from traditional definitions through engineering interventions and feats.?

Speaking about myself, I’ve always wanted to be an engineer. I remember that day when I was on the podium collecting my high school award and I was asked what I wanted to be. I blindly said software engineer although I barely knew what it meant! A few years later, I turned away a pretty good medical school offer to stay with my heart’s call to pursue engineering. Many decades later, to this day, I feel happy that I made the right choice.

So, why is it exciting to be an engineer? Reasons are aplenty. For me, what stands out is the ability to identify problems, the discipline and the smarts to go about methodically solving these problems that matter to the world, the general happiness in pushing the world forward through your work, the sense of “why not – there has to be a better way” that we intrinsically develop, the daily ability to adapt, the all-pervasiveness that I spoke about – and of course, the opportunity as well as the need to keep learning each day to surmount new challenges that keep cropping up. As they say, engineers help create a world that has never been. Now, that’s something to feel proud about!

I cant also help but draw a parallel with this quote of George Mallory, the famous mountaineer. On being asked why he would want to climb Mount Everest, he said - “Because it is there”. Similarly, engineers uphold this basic duty or “dharma” of sorts – to solve worthwhile problems because they are there to be solved and not because someone is asking them to solve.?

There are thousands of engineering marvels around us that stand out as superb examples of engineering excellence. What often comes to mind are the bridges, the tunnels, the ports, the mega buildings, planes, railways etc – but the software world has also phenomenally evolved through feats of engineering excellence. For someone like me, to see the evolution from the green screen monolith apps in the early 90s to the internet enabled mobile age now – it all seems so unreal! Multiple things have come together to fuel this progress – the internet speeds, powerful chip technologies, Cloud and data technologies, mobile devices, GIS, AI models and open source frameworks, Microservices/APIs, Agile/DevOps tools, IOT, ARVR etc.?

Last week, I was reading an article about Open AI and Codex on how AI can write not just twitter posts, speeches, poetry but also its own programs !! Now, this is engineering excellence at its finest, where engineers don’t worry about being rendered useless but are made even more powerful through technologies they themselves build.

Engineering excellence can manifest in multiple ways. Common measures include Efficiency, Quality, Cost, Time to market, Outcomes but also extend to Experience, Customer delight, Usability, understanding unstated needs, and a huge sense of pride in the work.?

So, quick thoughts on what contributes to Engineering Excellence? A few come to my mind.

• Knowledge – One MUST know their craft. A very sound understanding of the relevant tools, tech, frameworks, methodologies. Daily learning and curiosity.
• Mindset – A product mindset that promotes agility, automation, reuse. And a high productivity mindset too
• Sharing – Being plugged in to the ecosystem for learning from experts and peers
• Aspiration – To understand, adopt and improve on the gold standard (what great looks like). Taking pride in being the best. And also humble enough to learn and take small steps each day leading to big results?
• Culture – A team and leadership culture that promotes all the above

So what is your engineer story. Who are the greatest engineers you have seen? What engineering stories do you admire the most? How do you feel about being an engineer? Look forward to your thoughts!

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