One Of My Core Values

According to his boss, it would be a moral transgression to violate the company's core values, so this guy would be wrong to violate his own, right?  Makes sense to me.  At least you can't blame him for trying.  

This guy's boss makes a big deal when he shows up late, but I wonder if he ever notices the late hours this guy puts in.  As long as clients and co-workers are happy and the job gets done, I think high performers should be given the freedom they need.

How Do I Block All Emails...

My in-box size could be cut in half if I could just stop all those emails with the "good news" about my inheritance of millions from some long lost rich Nigerian  relative - all I gotta do is send a copy of my ID and bank account number "entirely risk free" to Barrister so-and-so and he'll "secure the funds" and wire me my rightful share post haste!  Who are these people?  And more importantly, who are the numskulls who respond to these emails?  Somebody must be doing it.  It's probably this guy.

I Don't Mean to be Condescending

This old guy seems to have forgotten that today's young whipper snapper just may be his boss tomorrow.  Reminds me of an experience early in my engineering career...

As a rookie engineer, I had completed the structural design for a large custom home in Las Vegas.  A plan check letter came back from the building department with a requirement that dozens of straps be added in unusual and completely unnecessary locations.  My supervisor agreed with me that there was no structural reason for adding those straps.  Nevertheless, I couldn't get the plan checker to acquiesce.  In desperation, I went to the building department to discuss the issue face to face with the plan checker.  When I asked him to help me understand why these straps were needed, he offered no explanation other than to condescendingly sneer down at me and exclaim, "That's engineering!" as if to imply, "Everyone that knows anything knows that."  Out of desperation to get building department sign-off, I reluctantly added the unnecessary straps to the plans.  In a gratifying twist of karma, several years later when my own structural engineering firm had grown to be one of the largest in the region, that same plan checker sent me his resume looking for a job.  He was not hired.

Whenever I'm inclined to treat someone less than well, I try to remember the words of the poem by C. R. Gibson:

                        "I have wept in the night
                         At my shortness of sight
                         That to other's needs made me blind,
                         But I never have yet
                         Felt a twinge of regret
                         For being a little too kind."

We Pass the Savings on to You

I love the one about the boss who asks the employee, "Who's the stupid one, me or you?" to which the employee responds, "Everyone knows you don't hire stupid people!"

Despite this guy's misguided strategy, experienced people know that you get the best results when you hire the best. For more cartoons making fun of the notion that you save money by hiring less-than-the-best, click here.

A Quick Meeting Prior to the Preliminary Meeting...

We all know that it takes a really good meeting to be better than no meeting at all.  This guy is definitely not one of us!

A few years ago, I came across the book "Death by Meeting" by Patrick Lencioni and had to buy it.  I can't remember a thing the book said, but the title was irresistable.

Credit for this cartoon idea goes to Brent Bauman, Architectural Project Manager at Pulte Group Southern California Division.

Who Do We Blame?

Am I the only one who's seen this?

Construction is a tough business. No design is ever perfect and no building is ever perfectly built. Most of the time everyone understands this and the design and construction teams cooperate and get the job done.  But occasionally, when stuff goes wrong, fingers start to point - usually at whoever's not in the room.

For a related cartoon, click here.

Cider Security Expert

It's all over the news. We need more cyber security! Russians hack DNC emails. A billion Yahoo accounts are compromised. Hundreds of hackers crammed in sweat shops working for nation states, terrorist groups and crime syndicates. It's like a war.

... and we need a no-nonsense guy like this to protect us.

Work From Home

I know lots of people do it, but I've never worked from home so I can only assume that this cartoon is accurate.  I do know that if I worked from home I'd be dressed verrrrry comfortably - like this guy (minus the tie).  Let's just hope they don't ask him to stand up and introduce himself to the team.

For another work from home cartoon click here.

Working Like a Dog

How the heck did the term "work like a dog" come to mean working really hard?  With the exception of sled dogs and some service animals, I've never seen man's best friend actually work all that hard. On the other hand, most dogs are really good at playing hard, which is usually followed by a good nap.  I can relate to that.

Sleep Mode

It's hard to blame this guy.  Sleep mode, low energy windows, zero energy homes and offices, energy saver mode... makes me tired just thinking about it.  Why don't they have a "high energy" mode or a "stand back 'cause this thing's about to go crazy" mode on that stuff?  Just think of the increase in productivity - after a heavy lunch or about 3:00 in the afternoon or on Fridays, hit that high energy mode button and everyone in the office instantly feels like they just drank a quart of Red Bull.

For more "low energy" cartoons, click here.

Gotta Be More Responsive!

The supreme challenge of our time: how to be available and provide great service without being a slave to your inbox.  Can it be done?  A couple of years ago, a 4 hour response time seemed to make most email senders happy.  Today it's under an hour.  At the rate this is going, in a couple of years a response will be expected before the email is received.  

For another related "heckuva rush" cartoon click here. 

Expert Advice

Like the old saying goes, you don't have to be crazy to be in this industry, but it helps.

I feel like I can relate to this guy - especially when I'm in Lowes or Home Depot (my favorite stores) browsing for seemingly unrelated parts for some creative new home improvement project (one of my favorite things to do).   Once, and only once, I made the mistake of trying to explain to a helpful Lowes employee what I was doing.  "So you're gonna take this electrical conduit and pound the ends flat and bolt it to this thing and use it as a what?" The more I tried to explain, the more perplexed he became.  It didn't take me long to realize that whenever anyone asks me if I need help, the best course of action is to quickly say, "Nope, I'm good thanks", and then go back to talking to myself.

For another cartoon relating to the mental health of design professionals, click here.

Saw it on YouTube

How'd anyone ever make it before YouTube?  This guy's got the idea - why waste your time on a degree and on-the-job training when you can bypass all that stuff and just watch how to do it on YouTube!  If someone ever posts some YouTube videos on how to engineer a building, I might be out of a job. 

Thought He'd Save Money

The bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of low price is forgotten.

This poor guy learned the hard way that saving pennies by hiring the lowest priced designer could greatly increase bottom-line costs.  Quality design requires adequate time and the right people to do it.  Cut-rate design may still "work", but often the final cost of the project is many times greater than the small difference in fee between the best designer and the cheap guy.

For a bunch of similar cartoons poking fun at the notion that cheap is really cheaper, click on the "Cheap" category link on the right sidebar.

"There is nothing more expensive than hiring cheap engineers."

                               - Bob Sheeran, Xavier University

Volume's waaaay up!

It feels like we have to compete with this guy a lot more than we should.  He's like the farmer who grew watermelons for $2.00 each, sold them for $1.75, and decided the way he could make more money was to get a bigger truck!

Will Knotchange

I'm a believer that to be the best we must continually strive for improvement and that we can't become what we want by remaining what we are.  And it's impossible to improve if we're not open to change.  We all know people who are so blindly confident or set in their ways that they refuse to consider that there may be a better way.  It's even worse if that person pretends to be open to change, but they have no intention of actually following through.  Those people drive me crazy.  This one's for them.

For cartoons of more people like this guy, click here and here. 

What Are You Thinking?

Occasionally builders complain (and sadly, sometimes justifiably so) that an engineer or architect they know can draw pretty pictures, but he doesn't have a clue how to actually build anything.  And it's worse when that engineer doesn't know he doesn't know and insists that the builder just "build it how it's drawn." 

...and it's even worse if the engineer can only communicate in "engineerese".

On the flip side, it's not uncommon to hear an engineer gripe that the builder on such and such a project needs a lot of "hand holding", or that he fires off dozens of "duh" RFIs which the engineer could answer with, "Did you not even look at the drawings?"

It's a love-hate relationship.  Depending on the day, mostly love.

Here's My 2 Weeks Notice...

Good thing this guy's giving those 2 weeks notice - he sure wouldn't want to leave his employer in a bad spot.

...and he's got to stay on good terms just in case his new job doesn't work out.

Who can blame him for at least partially mentally checking out after giving notice, but...

GOT GRAY?

Sometimes you need some "gray hair" on your project.  After all, they've supposedly already seen it all, done it all, and made all their mistakes long ago - on someone else's project.

Gray hair is hair you can trust - and having lots of it (or for some, at least remnants of it) can be an advantage for us humble engineers.  I was "blessed" with enough gray hair in my mid- twenties that I could easily pass for someone ten years older.  More than 20 years later, I still claim to be in my "late, late twenties".  It must be a genetic trait (the age claim I mean) - my mom still turns 21 again every March 6th.

This cartoon was inspired by a project with a particularly cantankerous owner's rep who insisted we put "more gray hair" on his project - after all, how could some young whippersnapper with a full head of "immature" hair, an engineering degree, and "only" a decade of experience with similar successful projects possibly be trusted?

Good news for that owner's rep:  dealing with him caused the young whippersnappers to sprout a few gray hairs of their own.

Holiday Season Productivity

Everyone knows that not much gets done around the office between Christmas Eve and New Years Day. Most people are on vacation anyway, and those that aren't wish they were.  Even if there's work to be done, no one's around to crack the whip and make sure it gets done.

Christmas 1999, our first Holiday Season as a company, we had about ten employees - all but one of whom were out of the office happily enjoying their vacation time.  The one person that remained could not work independently, so I had to come into the office each day during the Holidays to try to keep him busy.  I felt like we were the only two people working in the entire city.  The phones were dead.  It was a huge waste of time.  I vowed it would never happen again.  Every year since then we've closed between Christmas and New Years Day.