As an engineer, do you feel you carry a bigger burden at work? Dan and Alison answer your questions with the help of Richard Sheridan, an engineer, CEO, and the author of Joy, Inc.: How We Built a Workplace People Love. They talk through what to do when you want to influence decisions as a technical expert, you’re a female engineer seeing your male counterparts promoted more quickly, or you have a hard time committing fully to flawed projects.
From Alison and Dan’s reading list:
HBR: When You Have to Carry Out a Decision You Disagree With by Art Markman — “First, how much effort your team puts into making a plan succeed depends in large part on how much they believe in it. If you communicate a new course of action halfheartedly, you’ll get less than peak effort because people will sense that you’re not enthralled with the job to be done.”
Book: Joy, Inc.: How We Built a Workplace People Love by Richard Sheridan — “Deadlines passed without working software or anything even close to a completed program. When the software was supposedly finished, the quality team couldn’t even get it to work! The programmers who had already moved on to the next project declared, ‘It worked on my machine,’ and left it at that. When programs did finally work after months of quality testing, the results were seldom close to what the customers actually needed.”
HBR: 6 Things Successful Women in STEM Have in Common by Laura Sherbin — “Women in STEM have one of the toughest — and, potentially, most rewarding — jobs in the world. But how to reap the rewards is far from clear, especially in a male-dominated environment. The onus to improving gender diversity in STEM shouldn’t solely be placed on women’s shoulders, but systemic change can be slow.”
HBR: Structure That’s Not Stifling by Ranjay Gulati — “As large engineering projects unfold, Warby Parker holds periodic “retrospective” conversations with relevant stakeholders—including managers outside engineering—to capture learning about what’s going right or wrong. For example, during a commercial foray into Canada, participants discussed why they hadn’t realized until late in the game that a local bank card was incompatible with the company’s payment system. Conversations about such missteps are structured to cover not only what could have gone better but also ‘What’s still an open question—what still puzzles us?’ according to Andrew Jaico, a Warby Parker technical product manager.”
