I just read an article entitled "How to Work with an Engineer". Rule #2 says " Engineers are natural-born problem-solvers." It's true. Give an engineer a problem (a challenge) and he'll find a way to solve it.
You may consider this the Engineer's corollary to the age-old wisdom, "Be Careful What You Wish For". As an example, never tell your engineering team that industry studies predict that they should be finding a certain number of bugs per thousand lines of code. If you do, tomorrow you will discover that the engineering staff has obliged!
Another case in point up until the end of October, the Company I work for was providing 10 dozen Krispy Kreme donuts every Wednesday morning as an employee perk. At the same time, the finance team was thinking of ways to save money; the Company would like to reduce spending by $100K this coming year.
There was an employee survey; a lot of people said they don't need the donuts. The donuts cost a few thousand dollars annually. The donut purchase was cut.
The donut lovers were not happy. They did not revolt, however. They're engineers. They came up with a solution to the problem.
One donut-loving engineer created the Krispy Kreme Association (by subscription). Four people joined as "angel investors" (one donated $100 to the cause, even though he says he never eats donuts). Another co-worker volunteered to pick up the donuts on his way to work on Wednesday mornings.
Subscriptions were taken. A spreadsheet was drawn up to track who paid how much. Another co-worker notified everyone that the October Valu-Pak envelope contained coupons for a dozen KK donuts (donate your coupons!). A mailing list was created.
Donuts were purchased. Special preferences were considered, recorded, and met. Donuts were hand-delivered to desktops on Wednesday mornings. October and November passed peacefully in a happy sugar haze.
As December dawned, the founding donut engineer pulled out his spreadsheet and did a little calculating, his position, in his words, being "somewhere between a child planning what to do with his allowance and a PTA treasurer." He reported that the association was working at a slight deficit. A new scaled subscription program was proposed, with 2 donut, 1 donut, and 1/2 donut per-month levels. Agreement was reached with ease.
Today the VP of finance cried Uncle. The Company KK purchase will be reinstated.
In a company of 200 employees, there were never more than 25 member of the Donut association. The association existed for less than two months.
Give an engineer a problem and he'll engineer a solution.
I joked that the founders of the KK association will now need to occupy that little corner of their brains with something else… we may discover that perhaps a donut association was a simpler choice. 🙂
Slightly Off KIlter 