How to be a better Engineer

1. Ask Yourself Questions. A Lot of Them!

I do not mean questions related to your work (I assume you are already doing
this), but situational questions in general. In short, be inquisitive. I remember
that, when I was about seven years old, I noticed that generally the braking
distance does not depend on the car weight. For almost a month, I tried to find
an explanation for it…

It might seem pointless to ask yourself questions for which you can very easily
find the answer on the Internet, but training your brain is really a good thing.
Some people prefer to lift weights, you should lift problems.

2. Validate Your Findings.

Assuming you’ve already found some answers, do some research on the

Internet? Understanding how far your approach was from ideal may be very
rewarding.

3. Put Yourself In Charge.

There are many ways to do a specific thing, but some ways are better than
others. Engineers are change agents. You can imagine what would have
happened if Einstein had taken everything for granted. Yes, I think Einstein
was a great engineer, as he was able to connect the dots.

4. Learn How To Ask Questions.

No matter who you ask questions – yourself or others, there has to be a process
that starts with the overall picture and ends with the last detail. To me, the
process of asking questions is very much like Google Maps. First, you get the
picture of the entire region and afterwards you may zoom in. The basic set of
questions imply at least a “what”, a “how”, a “when”, and a “where”.
Sometimes, you may need to ask more, but always ask “what” and “how” (in
this order).

5. Don’t Be Afraid Of Making Mistakes.

Great engineers make big mistakes. People who do not want to make mistakes
live by the book. For example, in software engineering there is a solution for
almost anything. All you need is a little bit of research. I like it when people
still try to build greater things, even though they failed in the past. It’s really
no shame to fail. With engineering in particular, lots of things can go wrong
and many lands remain unexplored. Because most people choose to walk the
line.

6. Don’t Be Afraid Of Fixing Mistakes.

Always fix and improve. For example, very few people are able to
acknowledge mistakes and fix them. When it comes to engineering, denying
mistakes leads to extremely poor results. In software engineering, this may
turn out to be a big issue, because things can get crazy when you somehow
know that a component is broken and, instead of fixing it, you simply wrap it
up with layers that eventually try to deal with the source of failure.

7. Befriend The Impossible.

If you assume something is not going to happen simply because chances are
slim, bad news – it will in fact happen at the worst moment possible. As an
engineer, try to identify the things that got overlooked and anticipate the
worst-case scenario; there might be a few. Predicting the unpredictable is a
highly important engineering task!