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Published: 2017-05-05 16:58:50 +0000 UTC; Views: 139; Favourites: 13; Downloads: 0
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The problem in working with Engineers, we never see anything as "done." We're always sure the next iteration will be an "improvement." Production people in factories usually hate engineers for this very reason--- their job is to get product out the, they just want to leave well-enough alone and make a lot of it. Engineers are on a relentless pursuit of "better" on the way to perfect. We all know "perfect" in an unattainable aspiration,... but a never ending succession of "better" versions keeps us going.Of course, sometimes an attempt at "better" ends up ruining what was adequate if we'd just left it alone.
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Comments: 4
I remember a college instructor I had whose motto what 'The enemy of good if better' as a warning against over-thinking a problem. But he was not an engineer.
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Yes, there are many variations on the same idea,...stop trying to make it perfect, just make a lot of them. We always drove the production people crazy because they were required to produce --- LOTS of whatever it was we were making -- and we (engineers) were always trying to perfect everything we did.
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Knowing when to let it go is a problem. I expect that there must be something of a balance between wanting the perfect design and wanting to see it made into something real. I have my own practical concerns in game design (which was an accidental rather than intentional career choice) On one hand I have an entire team of 2D and 3D artists and programmers to smooth and teak my concepts into perfection, balanced against the reality that the production cost of a high-end game can run as high as 5000US a day
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My first real confrontation with the good vs perfect conflict was my first engineering career job -- in a steel mill. The production people had to produce a minimum of 14,000 tons of ingots every 24 hours -- with several quality criteria being met. While the engineers wanted to make every ingot (about 12 to 14 tons each) perfect, completely defect free - an impossible ideal. Needless to say we didn't exactly get along on the best of terms all the time.
The mill was making ingots for structural steel and tool steel parts. We wanted to make ultra-clean steel as if every gram were to be machined into a fine Swiss watch part.
I learned a great deal in that place -- far beyond what any classroom can convey.
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