Doggone engineers….

I’ve worked and screwed (with) enough engineers to know that Pavlov’s rule applies — they want the food to show up every time they push the button.

Now, some engineers are curious little puppies and when the button gets pushed and the food doesn’t show up, or it shows up someplace new, like in the cage of the dog next door, these puppies get all excited and try to figure out why.

These puppies will enlist you in their team to find an answer to ‘the question,’ to better define ‘the question’ or to find a new, more relevant question that needs answering first.

These adorable doggies want all hands on deck, stretching all the different options anyone can think of, to figure out how to get control of whatever is making the food show up and how — button or no button — should there be a button? Let’s try a lever, a shelf, just leaving all the food out….you get the idea. These engineers are begging for productive, unambiguous conflict where no individual is without useful contributions, and it’s worth the time to hear everyone out, even if there is no agreement at the end.

These engineers want to know: What are we missing (and we are always missing many things…)? These engineers love the ultimate limits to technology and money (these limits are…