<story><title>All the best engineering advice I stole from non-technical people</title><url>https://medium.com/@bellmar/all-the-best-engineering-advice-i-stole-from-non-technical-people-eb7f90ca2f5f</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>michaelt</author><text>The First Transcontinental Railroad, 1868 mi in length, was built between 1863 and 1869. Six years - completing a route from the Atlantic to the Pacific.&lt;p&gt;California High-Speed Rail, 520 mi in length, began construction in 2015, cost 90x as much per mile, even after accounting for inflation, and.... was indefinitely postponed in 2019. For a rail line in a &lt;i&gt;single state&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;Admittedly, with much higher speed, and much more humane construction. But nonetheless, even with a much higher per-mile price they still couldn&amp;#x27;t deliver it? I can see how someone someone might get the &lt;i&gt;impression&lt;/i&gt; we aren&amp;#x27;t able to successfully deliver large projects any more.</text></item><item><author>fnord123</author><text>&amp;gt;I don&amp;#x27;t have much hope for the future generation of megaprojects. And, you know, we&amp;#x27;re not really doing them anymore. I wonder what changed.&lt;p&gt;We are still doing megaprojects just fine. And less people die doing them.</text></item><item><author>jrockway</author><text>I know exactly how it happens.  Engineering projects take a long time.  90% of the effort lives in the basement where nobody can see it; getting data from some other system, optimizing queries, spinning up the servers... nothing at all user-facing.  So to the untrained eye, 90% of the time, programmers are doing nothing.  And that 90% can be weeks, months, even years.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t think any of this is unique to software engineering, either.  You don&amp;#x27;t just one day decide to build a bridge and show up at the bank of the river with a cement mixer tomorrow.  To someone that wants to drive over the river, it looks like no progress is being made on the project.  Hence, lots of meetings (delaying the project further) to make sure everyone is working hard enough.  (Because there is always &amp;quot;that one guy&amp;quot; who actually isn&amp;#x27;t doing anything.  And it looks the same as someone who is working hard to an outsider.)&lt;p&gt;As for why we spend money hiring people that don&amp;#x27;t actually do anything, tracking the progress of other people&amp;#x27;s work... I think it&amp;#x27;s just loss aversion in action.  If you spend 10% of the day working on timesheets and pay an additional employee to check up on them... you know where your money&amp;#x27;s going.  But if someone just shows up to work and does nothing, then they&amp;#x27;re stealing from you and must be punished!  It is human nature.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t know what we did in the past that&amp;#x27;s different from today.  Somehow we got to the moon.  But now companies are so bloated that even doing nothing seems like it requires 30,000 employees.  I don&amp;#x27;t have much hope for the future generation of megaprojects.  And, you know, we&amp;#x27;re not really doing them anymore.  I wonder what changed.  Or maybe looking back at the all the achievements of the entire human race at once makes it difficult to put the present day into perspective.</text></item><item><author>noonespecial</author><text>&lt;i&gt;they have innate understanding that being observed working is more valuable than the results of their work.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve seen coders who knew this by heart forget this less than 5 years after entering management and become champions of forcing everybody into the office for 8:30 stand-ups and time tracking systems that enforce minute by minute &amp;quot;project accountability&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t know exactly how this happens, all I know is its like a damn force of nature. The only thing I&amp;#x27;ve ever seen kill morale and tank projects faster is random periodic layoffs.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>fnord123</author><text>Why not compare a functioning project with a functioning project? e.g. the Beijing-Shenzhen line (2230km (1390 miles to compare to the FTR)) that takes 8h34m and can hit 300km&amp;#x2F;h: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Beijing%E2%80%93Guangzhou_high-speed_railway&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Beijing%E2%80%93Guangzhou_high...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Or we could compare successful project of today (A380) vs failed project (Spruce Goose).&lt;p&gt;Or, I know it&amp;#x27;s not as romantic as a real living person on the Moon who then comes back home, but we have robots on Mars. And on comets.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;I can see how someone someone might get the impression we aren&amp;#x27;t able to successfully deliver large projects any more.&lt;p&gt;We&amp;#x27;re all clever people and can convince ourselves of anything if we really try. Why not be positive? :)</text></comment>
<story><title>All the best engineering advice I stole from non-technical people</title><url>https://medium.com/@bellmar/all-the-best-engineering-advice-i-stole-from-non-technical-people-eb7f90ca2f5f</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>michaelt</author><text>The First Transcontinental Railroad, 1868 mi in length, was built between 1863 and 1869. Six years - completing a route from the Atlantic to the Pacific.&lt;p&gt;California High-Speed Rail, 520 mi in length, began construction in 2015, cost 90x as much per mile, even after accounting for inflation, and.... was indefinitely postponed in 2019. For a rail line in a &lt;i&gt;single state&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;Admittedly, with much higher speed, and much more humane construction. But nonetheless, even with a much higher per-mile price they still couldn&amp;#x27;t deliver it? I can see how someone someone might get the &lt;i&gt;impression&lt;/i&gt; we aren&amp;#x27;t able to successfully deliver large projects any more.</text></item><item><author>fnord123</author><text>&amp;gt;I don&amp;#x27;t have much hope for the future generation of megaprojects. And, you know, we&amp;#x27;re not really doing them anymore. I wonder what changed.&lt;p&gt;We are still doing megaprojects just fine. And less people die doing them.</text></item><item><author>jrockway</author><text>I know exactly how it happens.  Engineering projects take a long time.  90% of the effort lives in the basement where nobody can see it; getting data from some other system, optimizing queries, spinning up the servers... nothing at all user-facing.  So to the untrained eye, 90% of the time, programmers are doing nothing.  And that 90% can be weeks, months, even years.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t think any of this is unique to software engineering, either.  You don&amp;#x27;t just one day decide to build a bridge and show up at the bank of the river with a cement mixer tomorrow.  To someone that wants to drive over the river, it looks like no progress is being made on the project.  Hence, lots of meetings (delaying the project further) to make sure everyone is working hard enough.  (Because there is always &amp;quot;that one guy&amp;quot; who actually isn&amp;#x27;t doing anything.  And it looks the same as someone who is working hard to an outsider.)&lt;p&gt;As for why we spend money hiring people that don&amp;#x27;t actually do anything, tracking the progress of other people&amp;#x27;s work... I think it&amp;#x27;s just loss aversion in action.  If you spend 10% of the day working on timesheets and pay an additional employee to check up on them... you know where your money&amp;#x27;s going.  But if someone just shows up to work and does nothing, then they&amp;#x27;re stealing from you and must be punished!  It is human nature.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t know what we did in the past that&amp;#x27;s different from today.  Somehow we got to the moon.  But now companies are so bloated that even doing nothing seems like it requires 30,000 employees.  I don&amp;#x27;t have much hope for the future generation of megaprojects.  And, you know, we&amp;#x27;re not really doing them anymore.  I wonder what changed.  Or maybe looking back at the all the achievements of the entire human race at once makes it difficult to put the present day into perspective.</text></item><item><author>noonespecial</author><text>&lt;i&gt;they have innate understanding that being observed working is more valuable than the results of their work.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve seen coders who knew this by heart forget this less than 5 years after entering management and become champions of forcing everybody into the office for 8:30 stand-ups and time tracking systems that enforce minute by minute &amp;quot;project accountability&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t know exactly how this happens, all I know is its like a damn force of nature. The only thing I&amp;#x27;ve ever seen kill morale and tank projects faster is random periodic layoffs.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>defterGoose</author><text>We also live in an era where the government (federal, state, whatever) is seemingly viewed by many as less a benevolent force to be co-opted, and increasingly as a necessary evil to be thwarted and disempowered. Sure, the time period you mention is right around the heart of the civil war, with all the anti- and pro-establsihment sentiment that came along with it, but these feelings were rather new at the time. Most people were still farmers who valued &amp;quot;getting shit done&amp;quot; more highly than divorced-from-reality ideological barriers. The country was still needing to be connected and filled up.</text></comment>