What’s it like working in a small engineering startup vs a large established corporation? How do you motivate your engineering team? What are the most important skillsets for engineers to have? Join us as we learn from Pat’s 25+ years as an engineer and engineering manager/director/VP in the product development space. Pat’s currently works as VP of R&D at Shockwave Medical.
Pipeline Design & Engineering partners with medical device engineering teams who need turnkey equipment such as cycle test machines, custom test fixtures, or automation equipment but don’t have the bandwidth or resources internally to develop that equipment. You can find us on the web at www.testfixturedesign.com and www.designtheproduct.com
About Being An Engineer
The Being An Engineer podcast is a repository for industry knowledge and a tool through which engineers learn about and connect with relevant companies, technologies, people resources, and opportunities. We feature successful mechanical engineers and interview engineers who are passionate about their work and who made a great impact on the engineering community.
The Being An Engineer podcast is brought to you by Pipeline Design & Engineering. Pipeline partners with medical & other device engineering teams who need turnkey equipment such as cycle test machines, custom test fixtures, automation equipment, assembly jigs, inspection stations and more. You can find us on the web at www.teampipeline.us
What’s it like working in a small engineering startup vs a large established corporation? How do you motivate your engineering team? What are the most important skillsets for engineers to have? Join us as we learn from Pat’s 25+ years as an engineer and engineering manager/director/VP in the product development space. Pat’s currently works as VP of R&D at Shockwave Medical.
Pipeline Design & Engineering partners with medical device engineering teams who need turnkey equipment such as cycle test machines, custom test fixtures, or automation equipment but don’t have the bandwidth or resources internally to develop that equipment. You can find us on the web at www.testfixturedesign.com and www.designtheproduct.com
About Being An Engineer
The Being An Engineer podcast is a repository for industry knowledge and a tool through which engineers learn about and connect with relevant companies, technologies, people resources, and opportunities. We feature successful mechanical engineers and interview engineers who are passionate about their work and who made a great impact on the engineering community.
The Being An Engineer podcast is brought to you by Pipeline Design & Engineering. Pipeline partners with medical & other device engineering teams who need turnkey equipment such as cycle test machines, custom test fixtures, automation equipment, assembly jigs, inspection stations and more. You can find us on the web at www.teampipeline.us
Welcome to the being an engineer podcast. Our guest today is Pat Stephens path began his career as a product development engineer at Gore, and then worked at several other medical device companies, including Boston Scientific and Medtronic. I think a few of us have heard of those companies, and is currently VP of research and development at shockwave medical where they leverage acoustic waves through a balloon catheter to break up calcification in arteries. Pat, welcome to the podcast.
Patrick Stephens:Thank you very much, Aaron. It's a pleasure to be here.
Aaron Moncur:All right. So you have a pretty lengthy career already 25 years, and going. And there are a lot of questions that I want to ask you about experiences you've had as an engineer. But before we get into that, I thought we'd start with something really simple. And that is why did you decide to become an engineer?
Patrick Stephens:You know, I was just thinking about that in preparation for our talk today. So I'm from originally from Colorado, born and raised in Boulder, Colorado. And when I was in high school, I had pretty good aptitude for science and math, and was thinking about engineering. And one of my good friends. His name is Mike Kerrigan, his father was a federal judge in Colorado. And he had a dinner and he said, Hey, Federico Pena who was then the mayor of Denver's gonna be here. Do you have any interest in meeting him? So I went over, and I spent about 15 minutes with, you know, Mayor Pina at the time, and we talked a little bit about, you know, the future and what it looked like for me. And I told them, I was considering engineering. And one of the things he said to me that really stuck with me is he said, I think that's a great idea. I'm a lawyer, by trade. But some of the best lawyers I've ever worked with. And some of the best lawyers that I went to school with had engineering backgrounds. And it really provoked the right thought process and sort of good methodology, and sound, you know, critical thinking. So I think that was one of the the final straws that got me to accept that engineering was going to be my future.
Aaron Moncur:Had that been something that you were considering before anyway? It was? Yeah,
Patrick Stephens:I mean, you know, as I looked at, you know, all the different options. Like I said, my aptitude was pretty good in science and mathematics. I had a lot of scientists in the family. So you know, sort of looking into potentially a career in science was another option. But I always liked the idea of making something tangible and something that you could, you know, use to either improve somebody's lives or, you know, something that you could just hold in your hands and sort of, you know, felt more real to me. So that was part of the reason I chose engineering.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, I agree. 100%. It's always felt to me, like a degree in engineering. Sure, you can become an engineer, but there's a lot else it prepares you for it. I think it helps develop that critical thought and problem solving skill set. Would you agree?
Patrick Stephens:100%? Yeah, no, I think there's no doubt about it. And certainly, you know, worked with and continue to work with people that have engineering degrees and backgrounds that are doing everything from sales to marketing, or their executives and CEOs. But that engineering, background and sort of foundation has really been instrumental in their success.
Aaron Moncur:Okay, so you have worked at a lot of different places over the years, some of which have been large corporations and others have been small startup companies. I was wondering if you could share what have been some of the key differences that you've experienced, working at, you know, an established Corporation versus a new startup? Environment?
Patrick Stephens:Yeah. Well, I mean, I think there are some some key differences. I mean, one of the things that I've always looked for, whether it's in a big company, or a small company is an environment where I feel like when I go in, in the morning, I make a difference. And if for whatever reason, I'm ill that day, and I can't make it to the office, that, you know, my work content is missed, and my contribution is missed. I think, for larger companies, sometimes your role might be smaller. You're sort of a relatively small person in a relatively large pool. But that doesn't mean you can't make a big difference in a big contribution. And whether it's been Tronic or Boston Scientific. I believe that's true. When you're at a startup environment, there is a certain sort of energy and almost a survival instinct that kicks in because you know, every day you know, you're burning a little bit of money every day, you're sort of you know, how far can we go before we've got to take that next round of financing or we've got to go out and, and basically go on the road. Wouldn't it look for for more money. And so that really does breed some, you know, pretty creative solutions to problems. It gives everyone a really strong sense of urgency. And in that sense, it's been kind of fun to do the startup world. Although both are fun. I've also found that my more recent experiences both at shockwave medical, where I am now, as well as endo logics, have been kind of a nice sweet spot because they're, they're relatively small, and they still have that kind of entrepreneurial feel, but also large enough to have some commercial sales and a full cross functional team. In both cases, we're able to take the company's public so that was kind of a nice find, for me personally, as I've gone on in my career,
Aaron Moncur:hmm, that's interesting. That makes me think of a Christmas gift hit my in laws got me several years back, it was a couple of tickets to a raceway, where I got to drive some exotic sports cars. One was a Porsche. One was a Ferrari, and one was a Lamborghini. And the Porsche felt really safe and almost like, I couldn't get into trouble with it. The Lamborghini just felt angry, like I was about to die every second. And the Ferrari was this perfect mix between the two it it sounds like that's that, you know, Shockwave pandologic environment is kind of the Ferrari of, of engineering companies for you. Yeah,
Patrick Stephens:that's a good analogy. I hadn't thought of it that way. But yeah, I think that's, that's, that's true.
Aaron Moncur:So more than half of your career has been spent in kind of the the managerial side of engineering. So my question, let me, let me preface this by saying this question is not necessarily specific to you. But in general, do you? Do you think that having a really strong engineering skill set is a prerequisite to being a good engineering manager?
Patrick Stephens:I'm not sure that it's it's a requirement that I would say, but I think it certainly helps. And I think it also fosters some level of respect among your team, that that you've gone through, you've been an individual contributor, you've done a lot of things that they're doing today. So So I would say, I would certainly, you know, be an advocate for anyone who said, Hey, I'm going to want to go into engineering management kind of longer term in my career, to spend at least some portion of their career as an individual contributor to make sure they know exactly what's required to be a good individual contributor.
Aaron Moncur:Okay, fair enough. A tangent to that question. Have you seen any evidence to support the the hypothesis that a really good engineer will make a really good engineering manager?
Patrick Stephens:Not necessarily. I mean, there are certainly, you know, some outstanding engineers, which have difficulty mentoring and difficulty kind of working as engineering managers. And and there's no doubt that nobody's going to do it exactly like you do it. So if your expectation is that you're going to sort of create clones along the way, and they're going to basically pick up and do exactly everything exactly the way you do it, that's just not going to be the case. So you have to get comfortable that you can mentor, you can guide, you can direct people, you can give them sort of the right set of requirements, and the expectation that you've given them everything needed to empower them to get their job done. I think that's the key to being a good engineering manager, and then is not necessarily ingrained in all engineers.
Aaron Moncur:So speaking of being a good engineering manager, what can you share some strategies that that you have found useful in keeping your team focused on key objectives? Whatever it is, they're supposed to be focusing on? Yeah, I
Patrick Stephens:mean, I think there's, there's several different ways to do that, right. I mean, I think you want to make sure that their individual incentives are aligned with that. So you know, at the beginning of the year, you want to make sure you set the goals and objectives up for your team so that they're incentivized to complete everything that you want to in the right order. So they have more incentive for things that are more important for the organization, or more important for the research and development department. And they have less incentive for others. I think you do want to allow for a little bit of freedom and flexibility, because otherwise, I think that their job feels a little stagnant to them. So I think you need to create that balance in order to keep some motivation as well. But I think the incentives are really the key.
Aaron Moncur:I'm glad you brought that up. Because that was another question that I wanted to ask is that balance? I agree it has to exist. How do you find where that balance is? How do you give your team enough freedom to pursue, you know, some creative ideas that who knows might turn into really important new innovations for the company, but not so much freedom that It distracts them from focusing on what the predetermined key objectives are. Yeah,
Patrick Stephens:I think you just want to stay in good tune with the team, I think you want to be in constant contact with people, you know, I spend probably some portion of every week making through your walk through all the engineering laboratories talking to all the technicians talking to all of the the people that are not necessarily my direct reports, but people that are in r&d, and trying to get their perspective. And I think you can sense when the energy levels a little bit low when people have been working really hard, but it's been kind of a grind. And then you can identify what are some things we can do? What are some incentives that we could have them look forward to, that will be very motivational for them in the future, whether that's potentially, you know, some incentives on patents, try to get some additional disclosures, creating some ideation sessions that might be motivational for them. Sometimes, it could involve bringing physicians in and talking about sort of how their work and how the products that they ultimately developed are impacting patients lives and helping people. So I think, try to keep some combination of all those things.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah. And and you don't get that without having one on one conversations with your team do you
Patrick Stephens:know, I think that's critical. I mean, I think, you know, you don't want to basically be the kind of engineering manager that sits in the office. So if you're not spending, you know, a fair bit of your time out talking to people in the lab, looking at things, looking at data, sort of encouraging people, but also offering up solutions. I think we're all problem solvers at heart, you know, all of us that have started engineering. So I think people really appreciate that, you know, you're willing to take the time to sit down and kind of work, you know, arm in arm with them, or elbow to elbow with them and try to solve problems. Yeah,
Aaron Moncur:I'm curious, do you? Do you actually schedule time during which you're going to be roaming around the r&d Lab having direct conversations with people? Or is it a little bit more fluid kind of just whenever you have time, or whenever you feel like it's appropriate?
Patrick Stephens:I think it depends, you know, so, you know, on a given week, you know, if I sit down on Monday morning, and I look at my schedule, and I want to make sure that I do spend some time doing that, if my calendar looks like it's pretty full for the week, I'll definitely do a couple of different things, I'll schedule some time just to do work. So whether that's reviewing information, reviewing documents, getting some planning together, making sure that I have time to just sit down and think and do some of that work. But also, you can schedule some time to, you know, walk through the lab to talk to people. And then there are weeks, in which I'll say, you know, this is an important week, I don't think I've had spent enough time with certain key individuals, whether they're the individual contributors or my direct reports. So then I'll go off, and I'll schedule some more formal one on ones for half an hour an hour, depending on what the content of the topics that we're going to talk about our
Aaron Moncur:I love hearing that you schedule blocks of time to do these things in your calendar, I do the same thing. Do you? Sometimes I feel like there's so much going on that all I'm doing is reacting. And I haven't given myself any dedicated, intentional time to just take a step back and think high level, do you ever schedule in time to your schedule to to, you know, to not react to just take a step back? Not really relax, but to give yourself time to reflect? And just, you know, think high level think creatively about what is it I'm actually trying to accomplish here? How can I do that?
Patrick Stephens:No, absolutely, you know, I think you've hit the nail on the head there, which is, there are times when you know, things are very busy, maybe you've got some deadlines that are coming up, maybe there's a few different projects, or we're coming up on, you know, potentially a show, or we want to basically go out and highlight some of the technology or some of the products that we're working on. And you can feel like you're just reacting and you're not being proactive in any way. And so that is an important time. And it's an important acknowledgement that you say, Okay, I need to take a step back, I probably need to critically look at my schedule, and maybe identify some things that I would do on on the average week that I can't do this week, just so I can have some time to myself some time to think some time to think strategically, some time to think creatively in some time to just make sure that I'm being proactive and not just reactive.
Aaron Moncur:Okay, so you've been involved in r&d in a long time. In fact, a lot of your role titles have had r&d in them. Have you ever thought to yourself, I wish I had a tool that did this? That doesn't exist? So let me rephrase that to be a little bit more clear. Is there Has there ever been a tool or a piece of equipment that you've always wanted for your r&d lab, but that just doesn't exist?
Patrick Stephens:You know, it's interesting you say that, I think I'm sure there is you know, and I'm sure there have been times So we're looking for equipment. And you know, I think, you know, last week, you know, you talked to Den Casper sack and some of the equipment that the MSI team has come up with. And I remember years ago, when we were at Gore trying to load, you know, stent grafts was a huge challenge. And I don't know if you know, the history of the original, you know, it was called Kima bond before it was via bond. So it was one of their first covered stents, but it was essentially, in order to get that thing loaded onto a catheter, what they did is they would, they would chill it so that the nitinol would go into Martin site, then they could smash it flat and roll it like a jelly roll. And that that had, you know, some advantages, and it was kind of a creative solution, you can imagine, because there was no Iris crimper at the time to go and load it. But you certainly could see that, that at the time was was a need. And MSI as a company has been highly successful, because it wasn't needed. It wasn't just a need for for us when we were a gore or at Boston Scientific or Medtronic or others. But it's a need for anyone who wants to develop either self expanding our balloon, expandable stance or stent graphs. So I think, you know, that would be an example. But But it's interesting, you know, hindsight is always 2020. You look back in retrospect, can you say that, that that Iris is such a great idea. And and it's relatively simple, conceptually, it's difficult, you know, in practice to make something like that, but relatively simple conceptually. But you know, it's one of those things, but you know, how did we do it beforehand, you know, now we just count on something like that,
Aaron Moncur:what has been one of the most exciting or interesting projects that you have worked on to date as an engineer? And can can you share a little bit about what made it exciting, what made it interesting,
Patrick Stephens:you know, I think, in retrospect, looking back at those early days at Gore, where no one really had created a good stent graft at the time, that was pretty exciting, because it was Gore at the time was really a surgical products company, it didn't really have the the know how to create some of the individual products for which they're known for today. And it was really trying to go out and reinvent and recreate the company. And that was a pretty exciting time to be involved in that particular product. I think, you know, the other really exciting and innovative time for me was early in my tri vascular experience. So you know, when I showed up at Tri vascular, there were only six other people in the company, I was number seven. And we were kind of in this little garage, in Santa Rosa in Northern California, and trying to create not just a stent graft, but a stent graft that was going to use an injectable polymer. So this was going to be the first time that anyone had really used an injectable polymer into a stent graft too. And so that was daunting, but also pretty invigorating, that we were gonna, you know, take the bull by the horns and actually do something that nobody had ever done. And so I think, when I look back on my career, when we start to do things that no one's ever done before, that's pretty motivational. And although I'm not a founder or inventor on the shockwave technology, that was one of the things that really intrigued me about the company that, you know, here we are, solving a problem that's been long standing, there's been this long felt need, you know, nothing's really done a good job treating these calcified lesions, for as long as we've been treating, you know, coronary arteries, or, you know, below the knee, or any of the places that has significant calcification, and, you know, coming through with this balloon technology using kind of Shockwave acoustic technology to really crack and modify that calcium. I think it's, it's ingenious,
Aaron Moncur:I'm glad you brought up Shockwave, I wanted to talk about the company just for a little bit here. I think that, especially for maybe younger engineers, or certainly for individuals not really associated with the whole product development space, it's really hard to appreciate how much work and effort goes into developing even a simple device much less, you know, something more complex, like like this, the catheter that you've all developed there, can you share a little bit? What level of effort How long does it take to develop something like that?
Patrick Stephens:Well, you know, we just look back. And, you know, I'm lucky that I'm still in contact with some of the founders from Shockwave. So John Adams, for the most part, who's kind of one of the primary investments, inventors, but you know, John, and Daniel Hawkins, one of the other co founders, basically, were taking this technology and looking at it in the, the 2005 timeframe, maybe even a little bit earlier than that. And so if you think, you know, that's, that's 15 ish years now. I think there were some, you know, financial constraints along the way in 2008, when it was difficult for them to get funding and they had, you know, no, not availability of the kind of capital that they needed. But it wasn't really until they They involve Todd Britton, who was a cardiologist and Stanford and then went ahead and really, you know, took the technology from the Seattle area where it was originally developed, brought it down to Northern California that they were able to get traction. So, you know, you're talking about about a 10 or 15 year run from conception to where we really had products on the market. And well, that's probably on the long side, I think it would be relatively commonplace for especially an implant to take five or seven years to design and develop.
Aaron Moncur:That's incredible. It's so much time for Shockwave, specifically. What do you think was the turning point, you mentioned that they started to get some traction after meeting one of the physicians that they worked with? What was it? Was it just getting to know the right people? Or was there some turning point in advancing their technology? Or some combination of the two or something else altogether?
Patrick Stephens:Yeah, I think it was a combination of factors. I think by bringing the team to Northern California, they were able to get some people with significant catheter design and development experience. So I think, a lot of the electronics, while they've changed and they've been refined, I think that sort of the basic understanding of how the electronics were going to work and the generator is a box itself. We're not that different from what the team in Seattle was doing. But I think the catheter expertise in the Bay Area really helped, you know, expedite that. But the other interesting thing about the whole journey was there was a lot of skepticism among physicians that this was really going to work, right. I mean, it sort of seemed funny, because on the one hand, you can hold the the shockwave catheter in your hand, and you can actuate it. And while you can feel the shock waves that they pass through the soft tissue pretty easily, right? So the impedance between kind of the the saline in the balloon and the soft tissue in your hand doesn't really cause a lot of attenuation signals. So you don't absorb a lot of the energy where calcium does. And so I think it took a while to explain that. And then once physician said, Okay, I believe it's going to modify the calcium, I think there was then concern, well, they're going to be another unintended consequences of the technology, for example, are we going to get embolization, whereby particles go downstream, and we have other problems associated with this? And so I think it took a while to get some real key advocates to try the technology to do some of the early clinical studies, in order to get traction with with the design of the device itself.
Aaron Moncur:If you're holding that that balloon in your hand and you push the Go button, do you? Do you feel it in your hand? Is it enough to feel it? It is?
Patrick Stephens:Yeah, I mean, you can you can feel it pulsing, right. So the way that it works is, you know, the shock waves go through, obviously, very quickly, right, so they're moving just slightly faster than the speed of sound. So if you feel it in your hand, you'll feel sort of like this buzzing. And essentially, what happens is it's it's, it's pulsing once a second. So it's rep rates, one hertz, the shockwave itself happens, kind of, you know, in a few microseconds, so within a few microseconds, it's passing through your hand and, and out, quote, sort of dispersing radially outward into the soft tissue. So yes, you can feel it, but I think it's hard for physicians to really understand that that's going to modify calcium. And one of the favorite things that I was able to observe early on as I went to the the TCT meeting, so the transcatheter therapies meeting, and it was in San Diego in 2018. And we had some cardiologists come up, and they were they were looking at the device, and they sort of said, well, you know, what is this thing, so you handed it to him? And the first thing they said was, you know, actuated in their hand, and we asked him out, right, we said, Do you think that we'll do anything to calcium? And both of them said, No, I don't think so. And then we had, you know, created this little gypsum model, we thought this might be kind of an effective way to show folks. So we basically took the gypsum, put it around the balloon, put it into a little saline bath, and actually waited, you could actually see the chips would crack right away. So they were absolutely fascinated in this. And by the end of the meeting, I remember there was 234 deep, just wanting to see this this sort of way that you could you could show and you could see and tangibly understand how the shockwave technology was working in modifying the calcium.
Aaron Moncur:What a great demo. Does the does the shockwave technology does it work as effectively for every patient with calcium buildup or is it is does the patient need to fit kind of a specific, like physiological profile to be eligible for the procedure?
Patrick Stephens:I think it has some effect on virtually all calcium in as I've learned over the last couple of years. You know, not all calcium is created equally. So some calcium is circumferential. So you can imagine it's like a ring all the way around the artery. In some cases, it's essentially located on one side of the artery or the other. And then there's a sort of a form of calcium called nodular. Calcium, which tends to be a little bit different in its orientation and strength. And so our technology seems to work the best on concentric calcium. It seems to work on essential calcium, but it takes a little bit more pulses in order to break up the center of calcium. And nodular. Calcium is the most difficult for it. So as as we look to continue to iterate our technology and then ultimately come up with next generation catheter designs. These are the areas that we're focused in terms of how do we get better with the central cattle, we get better with nodular calcium? How do we do and treat calcified lesions in places that right now I don't have any methodology for one of the areas that we're focused on, for example, is the aortic valve, there's a significant amount of calcium on the leaflets in the aortic valve, that, that we have the potential to treat, and either augment the valve replacement therapy as it is today. Or if we're highly successful treating the calcium, you can imagine that you could reduce the pressure gradient or the pressure drop across the valve, such that it would allow for a patient to go on several years before needing a replacement valve.
Aaron Moncur:Very interesting. Okay, I want to take a step back now kind of remove ourselves from any specific company and ask a general question. And this is really general, so hope you don't have too much too hard of a time answering it. It does not need to be specific to any particular technology. It could just be, you know, dealing with stress or focus or whatever. But the question is, what what are a couple of the biggest challenges that you face as an engineer, and as a manager each day? Like, when you go into work? What are some of the things that you know, you're worried about?
Patrick Stephens:Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, I worry a lot about as, in my current, you know, job, I worry a lot about motivation and retention of my key staff, I worry a lot about making sure that I'm recruiting and, you know, getting interest from the best talent that I can possibly get, you have sort of come to the conclusion that if, if I'm the smartest person in the room, I haven't done my job, I should make sure that if I'm successful, that virtually everybody that I recruit is as smart or hopefully even smarter than me. And and then that's, that's sort of the the biggest challenge as an engineering manager to make sure that that's right. I think, as an individual contributor, thinking back on some of those problems, I certainly remember whereby, you know, there was discovery that was needed, you know, we we, you know, wanted to solve a technical problem, and it wasn't clear how to do it. And just, instead of, you know, concerning yourself with the details, and trying to jump to the conclusion, really just taking a step back and counting on the sound fundamentals that you gain, both in school and through life and life experiences and engineering experiences, to do some problem solving, whether it's, you know, trying to use the Six Sigma tools, or whether it's basically just some good design experiments, or whether it's, you know, kind of just checking in methodical approach to the problem, and not letting it overwhelm you that it's going to be difficult to jump to this, you know, difficult technical solution.
Aaron Moncur:But that's a great answer. And it makes me think of another question, I want to ask you, what are some of the skills that your best engineers have?
Patrick Stephens:Well, I mean, I think that all of them have, I think, good engineering, aptitude and good skills. And I think, if I were to look at, you know, what are the what are the what are the traits and attributes of, of the engineers that do the best? I think tenacity is one of them, I think, you know, just sticking to it, engineering, it's one of those things where it's a marathon, it's not a sprint, most of the time, you know, you're trying to chip away at problems to get to a solution. I think, you know, good, strong technical attributes, you know, acumen is a really important and key part of being a good strong engineer. I think teamwork. You know, if I were to talk to young engineers, I think it's easy for them to, you know, lose sight of, you know, I was, I've been working as an individual, a lot of the time I've been, you know, focusing on making sure I pass the test. But I think, you know, you win and lose and business as a team, it's a team sport. So I think making sure that you've got good appropriate team and communication skills within the team. So those are the kind of attributes that I look for. So it's important, I think, for me when I look to build a team, to make sure that the individual people that are going to be involved in that team are a good fit for one another. that you've kind of identified, what is the culture that I'm trying to build? And as I bring people into the team that they're going to build on that culture?
Aaron Moncur:I love that answer. What, what are some things that you've done to determine whether a person fits the culture you're trying to build or not?
Patrick Stephens:You know, I think you can get a sense for it in an interview, I think you can get a sense for it when you, you do the reference checks, and you talk to their their former colleagues or their former. You know, folks, I think it's really important when you're going through and trying to identify this is a person I'm going to add to the team, that you get a broad cross section of the organization to at least speak with that person before giving them a final offer. And then when you you do wrap up, and you have a conversation about all of the different interviews and all the different topics that people talk about, you really take the time to listen to everybody in that room, and really assess what you think that person is going to be a good fit or not.
Aaron Moncur:There's a there's a software company called Menlo innovations, I think I may have even mentioned them on the podcast before the CEO wrote this book that was so interesting. Joy, Inc, it was called. But he talks about evaluating new potential new employees. And one of the things that they do, which I thought was so fascinating, is he, he has them come in for a day and work a full day paid with one of their existing employees, and the objective and they tell the the candidate this, the objective for you today is not so much to demonstrate your technical aptitude, it's to make your partner look good. They call it their kindergarten skills, you know, show us your kindergarten skills, make your partner look good. And I thought what a wonderful way to evaluate potential new team members, because chances are most of the people you interview are going to have good technical skills where else they wouldn't be applying for the job anyway. But I find that it's a smaller percentage of those people who are really good communicators who know how to be a team player are pleasant to work with, etc, etc. Anyway, I just thought that was really interesting.
Patrick Stephens:No, that's that's a great story. I've not heard that before. But that's a that's a really interesting idea.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, yeah. Okay, um, would you share with us, either either a major success or a major fail that you've had in your career and what lessons you learned from that
Patrick Stephens:one of the biggest lessons I learned and it was sort of a lesson around, where I wanted to take my career and sort of how I wanted that to work as I spent a couple of years in biotech and I went to work for this sort of MIT relatively well, relatively small company in Santa Barbara, California, and we were working on basically photodynamic therapy. So you essentially activated these drugs with light, different wavelengths of light would activate the drug. And that conceptually, this is a great idea. But I think when you look at all of the steps to go ahead and get that approved, in this particular thing, sort of had a device component, had a drug component. This is before the combination devices were commonplace within regulatory bodies like FDA, I think it became clear to me that, you know, that was a bigger project than someone that has a mechanical engineering background, like myself, is able to take on and really, you know, drive to fruition. So I think, when I took a step back, I think it was identifying what are the key important things that I can contribute? Where is it that I need significant help? And I think that is, that's a key. And that's been with me ever since and whether it was at Troy vascular, where I had to have people reporting to me that were polymer chemists and I know very little about polar chemistry, but I can identify probably the things that I want the attributes that I need, added the Polymer itself and identify people that have strong skillsets in that are the electrical engineering team electrical and software slash firmware team at shockwave medical, very talented team, and an area that I am not particularly savvy and so certainly something that I count on their technical acumen for
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, I know what you mean there. I I am terrible with electronics. I took a W class of course in college and it was probably the worst class I took. So I can't do any. I'm not Sparky as some of my colleagues say I'm not Sparky. Luckily they are. Okay, great. Well, let's see. Just Just one more question for you. If if you weren't, I'm sorry. I lied. I have two more questions for you. The first one if you weren't in any engineer, what do you think you would be? And why?
Patrick Stephens:That's a difficult question. Because I love engineering and probably at this point in my life, it would be difficult for me imagining doing anything else. I think I probably would have fallen back. And I probably would have been a scientist. I mean, I think, given that that was relatively commonplace within my family, given that a lot of the people that I looked up to and respected, were scientists, my grandfather worked at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. He was an atmospheric physicist, I, you know, I think I probably would have done something like that, and felt like that would be a good way. For me to go.
Aaron Moncur:Interesting. Okay. So it's fair to say your family had a significant influence on kind of guiding your, your technical path anyway.
Patrick Stephens:Yeah. And I think it's, it's a little bit about interest. And, like all families, it's setting values. And, you know, I think, as a family, you know, people sort of value valued, scientific thought process over, you know, business, we didn't have any entrepreneurs in the family. I think that that's, that's been an acquired taste and interest in me. And then something I'm certainly very interested in now was, you know, business and entrepreneurial activities, but certainly had no exposure to it as a young person.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. All right. Last question, are there any tools that you can share that you've really loved using, that have been very beneficial and influential in kind of molding your career and developing yourself as, as an engineer, and I'll use the term tool fairly loosely. I mean, it could be a physical tool, or it could be something softer, like, you know, personally, I find immense value in reading a lot of books that that generate new ideas and things like that. So that could be considered a tool. But in your own life, what what kind of tools have you found that have been very useful for you?
Patrick Stephens:I think there is a certain amount where by I've spent a little bit of time trying to go out and read about product development, read about best practices in terms of engineering, spend some time trying to keep up my skill set. So I think that the idea of, you know, trying to stay current would be one, one of those tools. But But I think the other thing that I've probably spent more time on certainly, as I've gotten into engineering management is working on some of the soft skills. And certainly a work in progress, and probably always will be for me, but really trying to identify ways by which I can make other people better. And I think, well, that sounds like a good idea. Conceptually, I think it's a difficult thing in practice, to really identify and try to figure out what is it that I can do to make my team the best I can possibly be? What is it that I can make, whether it's a catheter designer, or one of my, my sparkies, or one of my computer programmers better at what they do?
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, that's a that's a huge point. Something I think all of us probably work on, like you said, it's always changing, always evolving. It's never finished. Right. It's a work in progress.
Patrick Stephens:Yeah. Couldn't agree more. Well, Pat, thank
Aaron Moncur:you so much for spending some time with us today and sharing your wisdom and your insights. I really appreciate you taking the time out and just speaking with me and sharing, you know, some of your history and background. So thank you very much.
Patrick Stephens:Oh, you're very welcome here and it was my pleasure.
Aaron Moncur:I'm Aaron Moncure, founder of pipeline design, and engineering. If you liked what you heard today, please leave us a positive review. It really helps other people find the show. To learn how your engineering team can leverage our team's expertise in developing turnkey custom test fixtures, automated equipment and product design, visit us at test fixture design.com Thanks for listening