S2 E35 Design of Experiments, Real World Experience, & Human Interaction | Angel Martinez

It’s very clear speaking with Angel that he cares about people, and so it’s no wonder that his warm personality has allowed him to advance in his career to a director level. A technically brilliant engineer without good interpersonal skills will only advance so far in his or her career, but for one with brilliant communication and people skills there is almost no limit. Join our conversation to learn more about how Angel has improved these skills over time and applied them to the benefit of his teams and the companies for whom he has worked. Contact Angel with relevant inquiries at asusta00@yahoo.com 

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.  

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

Transcript

Aaron Moncur: 0:00

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. Enjoy the show.

Angel Martinez: 0:15

I think that has helped me to be a better listener, not going just straight to business but, but to actually be genuine and care about my employees and how they're doing. I think that's probably a good habit.

Aaron Moncur: 0:48

Hello, and welcome to another exciting episode of the Being an Engineer Podcast. Our guest today is Angel Martinez, who is currently the Director of Engineering and Project Management at Edwards Lifesciences in Ireland, and has held positions as senior manager of manufacturing operations leader and production manager at Abbott Vascular Devices and Courtice, both also medical device companies. Angel, thank you so much for joining us on the show today.

Angel Martinez: 1:18

Thanks for the invitation. Happy to be here with you.

Aaron Moncur: 1:22

Excellent. Okay, what made you decide to become an engineer?

Angel Martinez: 1:27

Yeah, interesting. So all my life, I thought I was gonna be an architect. Architecture was very appealing to me. And my, my sister approached me about,'Hey, have you thought about industrial engineering?' And I said, 'No, what is that about?' And she said, 'Well, it's, it's all about being efficient, and implementing solutions that can help companies to be more effective, more profitable.' And I'm like, 'That seems interesting,' so she actually gave me a brochure. And I read it. And I thought it was fascinating. What an industrial engineer does, which is a little bit of a mechanical engineer, but taking a practical approach. In that brochure, they gave you the example of an elevator, been receiving complaints by people that users saying it's really slow, an industrial engineer got the problem. And then they said,'Well, you need to solve this problem.' And what he did is he just put mirrors inside the elevator, and after that people stopped complaining. So that was a really good example, about taking a practical approach, not necessarily a, 'Let's change the speed and motor of big investment,' but actually solving the problem in a simple way. So that's, I think, that summarizes why I made the decision, and I don't regret it.

Aaron Moncur: 2:57

Very cool. That reminds me of a story I heard on the podcast, actually, I can't remember who told me this story. But they were having a problem on their production line where they had these packages. And some of the packages, I guess, didn't have product in it. And they were trying to figure out, how can we inspect this? It's like, it's an opaque package. So you couldn't just see through? And the engineers were coming up with all these ideas? Like, what if we tried X-ray this or ultracell that, and one of the operators on the on the production floor, just put a fan next to it? And the packages to the didn't have anything in which blow off?

Angel Martinez: 3:33

That's, that's a very, very clever.

Aaron Moncur: 3:36

Very clever. Yeah, I thought that was great.

Angel Martinez: 3:38

Yeah.

Aaron Moncur: 3:39

Okay. Well, you you've held various roles in engineering management for over 15 years now. In your opinion, what are the right reasons and what are the wrong reasons for an engineer to move into an in-management role?

Angel Martinez: 3:55

Oh, so I think that the good reasons to become a manager is if you feel passionate about helping others to be successful, because I mean, as an individual contributor, you can deliver projects and you can write reports and things like that. But imagine if you can multiply that by teaching others how to do it. And in my opinion, management, it's a decision of dedicating the time you have to give up when you come into management, especially when you're an engineer and you're passionate about you doing a lot of the work. You need to be able to give up that part. But in return, you now can accomplish more by directing people especially if those people again, if you can mentor them and train them and in and spend time really, it's like when you're growing the plant, like you need to put the right attention and and why the plant so that they grow, and the people that report to you, it's the same way you need to spend time. I realized early when I was a project leader, I didn't have direct reports, right, realize that I enjoy spending time and, and and coaching them and telling them. And then again, when I saw the results, I said, 'Yes, these people are not reporting to me.' But as a project manager, I'm able to influence at that point, I made the decision to to go into the management track. And again, it's been very good.

Aaron Moncur: 5:32

It probably feels like part therapist part technically being in management, right?

Angel Martinez: 5:37

Yes, exactly. I mean, at the same time, I've seen people that they say I want to grow, and I want to become my manager, because in the individual track, I don't see that. That ability to go up and, and earn more money and things like that, those would be the wrong the wrong decision. Because I've seen an individual who used to report to me that wanted to become a manager, just because of that. And, and he was not very good. I mean, he was excellent as an individual contributor, but not very good as manager. So in my opinion, those would be the wrong reasons. Just Just because you want to earn more money or earn a title that says management. But in reality, you're not passionate, or you're not really good at, then yeah, don't waste your time. There's a lot of companies, fortunately, the one I work for, that values, people that want to go and stay in the individual contributor track that can have a director level job, or even senior director level job. And yeah, I would my recommendation to your audience is that if, if they want to if they want to grow, I mean, find the company that values equally, those that are in management or individual contributor track.

Aaron Moncur: 6:54

Yeah, I love that mindset. I think all too often people who, there's almost this default expectation of, I've become a good engineer. So now, the natural advancement for me is to become a manager. And I don't think that should be the default. I think that, like you said, being a really, really good individual contributor, that's, that's every bit as legitimate, as going into management or some leadership position.

Angel Martinez: 7:25

Yeah.

Aaron Moncur: 7:26

You mentioned an individual who made this change into management, but it didn't work out very well. How do you share with an individual like that, that he or she maybe just isn't cut out to be a manager, and should maybe consider going back into the individual contributor role without offending the person or

Angel Martinez: 7:51

Yeah

Aaron Moncur: 7:51

Dampening the experience?

Angel Martinez: 7:53

On hurting her/his feelings?

Aaron Moncur: 7:55

Yeah

Angel Martinez: 7:55

Well, I think it was pretty clear that when human resources, call you a couple of times and said, 'Hey, the directive force complain about this person, and the way he talked to them on the fact that he's really not willing to spend the time' because maybe he didn't have the patience, that as a manager, sometimes you have to have. And so by just talking to him and saying, 'Hey, this is not working,' and you really can go back to the individual contributor track for the following reasons. I think as long as you are objective, and to be honest with you, it also help that this individual was a good friend of mine. So he was reporting to me, by chance, it was not. So he was my first, my my friend first, and then my direct report. So we kept that relationship, the friendship, we kept it separate. But I really think that in this case, when I had to communicate him, that it wasn't working, it did help. Because he saw that as a friend, I was trying to do the best for him. And he tried. Once he went back to the individual contributor, he tried and people valued his, his knowledge, his his his opinion, and all that, but having the right reporters was not the thing for him. So yeah, I'm not sure how it would have worked. If this individual was a friend of mine, to be honest with you.

Aaron Moncur: 9:25

Okay. Well, maybe that's the answer, right is to develop that personal touch, even if you don't become good close friends with the people who report to you, but at least if you can establish some personal connection with them.

Angel Martinez: 9:38

Yep, exactly.

Aaron Moncur: 9:40

All right. I'm going to switch gears just a little bit here. You've held roles in operations, manufacturing and in engineering. Can you share maybe just really briefly, a summary of the key responsibilities related to each of those roles?

Angel Martinez: 9:58

Yeah, so in engineering, I want to start with that one because I was the first one as an individual contributor. Once I became a manager, it, it's it's more about making sure you're you're making the right decisions. And applying the procedures. For example, let me give you an example. As I became aware of tools that I learned in college, such as design of experiments, and I became aware how useful and how critical those were for the job, because as you, as you know, in medical device, the weather you develop a process, the more you're going to be comfortable in releasing the product. So you're not going to have issues when you do product verification, you're not going to have issues in statistical process control, because you spend the time. So I think, the key aspects when you're a leader in engineering, it's to make sure that those tools that are available for those key activities, key actions in engineering, again, such as implementation of design of experience experiments, for process development, I spent a lot of budget, sending my my engineers, my direct reports, or even people that were not direct reports, but that I knew that they were going to benefit from those training. So understanding what is key in that role, and train your your workforce to become successful. If I can share a very quick anecdote about why I'm passionate about those statistical tools, my very first key very critical project, it was to insource, or non insource, to transfer a very, very small French catheter, for French, it that is very, very small. So I had to fuse, a braided portion of the catheters to a soft, deep in the insource mall. Everybody was telling me this transfer was from the Netherlands into Mexico. And they were telling me, you're not going to get better yield than 60%. Because this is very, very challenging to fuse together, you're going to have a lot of functional failures in your deals, not going to be more than that, like, 'Well, have you guys implemented design of experiment?' They said no. He said, 'Well, I'll challenge you that my yields are going to be better.' And when I transfer this one, and that was my very first time using a very successful design of experiments are ideal was able to go all the way up to 92.

Aaron Moncur: 12:46

Wow, that's terrific

Angel Martinez: 12:49

Design of experiments in this in this machine. And this machine was not complex, it was a pressure, time and temperature, those three factors when applied when you do a, and I'm not going to say to you that it will be my first one, I did not get help, I got help from Betty vest, the director of quality at that time that she was passionate about it. She helped me with it. And it was amazing. So I wanted to share that with you.

Aaron Moncur: 13:16

That's a really cool story. Thank you for sharing that. I love it, you apply these fundamental engineering principles and boom, you get successful results. What a What a great success story. Thank you for sharing that.

Angel Martinez: 13:28

Yeah, thanks. So in operations or manufacturing, I think I have only spent a limited time. But I think one of the key things in my opinion that I wish I had done spending time as a production supervisor, because I never had that. And I went directly to manage a group of supervisors that in turn had a lot of product builders, in my opinion, the understanding of your number one resource when you're a production manager, the number one resource is the product builders, because you can have multiple machines engineering, can can dedicate time on that, but understanding what motivates your employees, the product builders and all that, in my opinion is key. I had to learn and when I became an operations manager, I had to learn in a different way by spending a lot of time talking to the operators, the product builders, what motivate them and all that. That is time that I probably if I had spent time as a production supervisor, I would have learned that that for so my advice now, people that want to be in a rotation people that want to do beyond engineering that maybe have an engineering degree, but they want to spend time in other roles. My advice is to spend some time as a production supervisor because then you will have a lot of interaction with with our product builders and in them being the ones that are spending eight hours spend hours a day, in front of a process with equipment, they know much better than anybody else. And they will tell you very, very good things. And, and you just know how to ask them and they will come up with great ideas and, and they will be become a great asset for you to be successful in operation. So

Aaron Moncur: 15:24

That's great advice. I hear quite often that guests on the show, they recommend that engineers have experience with manufacturing. And specifically like running a milling machine or a lathe machine, so they understand how parts are made. I think this is the first time that someone has suggested being a production supervisor. So that's, that's really great advice. Yeah. Um, let's see.

Angel Martinez: 15:50

What was the third one? I'm sorry, I just think I forgot.

Aaron Moncur: 15:53

The third one was manufacturing.

Angel Martinez: 15:55

Okay. Manufacturing and operations, in my opinion, I, I take them very, very similar. So I don't...

Aaron Moncur: 16:01

Pretty similar. Yeah. Now we could just take your answer for operations as is for both. Let's see you correct me if I'm wrong here, but I think you received your degree is two of them with a Bachelors of Science and an MBA from a private university in Mexico. Is that right?

Angel Martinez: 16:19

Correct. Yes.

Aaron Moncur: 16:21

I wondered, how is the engineering environment in Mexico different than it is in the US? Or is it just the same? Yeah, so I think, academically speaking, I think it was very similar. I mean, when I came to the US, and, and I was a little bit concerned about my degree in Mexico, would it be very different the terms and subjects and things like that. And to be honest, I mean, because engineering is worldwide. The difference was, was not, I did not notice any difference. And it also probably, is the fact that the university day that I attended, it's compared to, to some universities in the US. And it's considered one one of the best in Latin America, I think it was founded by entrepreneurs in Monterey, one of the most industrial cities in Mexico. In fact, the name of the is Monterey Institute of Technology, because it was founded in Monterey, but then they expanded throughout the entire country. And, and I think it helped a lot that these businessmen that created this university in Mexico, they, they had a lot of relationships, not just with the US, but other parts of the of the world. And they really did an effort to put in their programs, engineering degrees that were at the power of other universities in in the US. So as a result of that, my first job was at three m, in, in the engineering, I was a maintenance engineer. So my role, my first job was to implement all the preventive maintenance routines of 500 pieces of equipment in a highly automated, well, plant, imagine if this was the plan that used to do the, this scotch tape, and other other products from Trium. And it was highly automated and honestly, it was a very good experience because my industry engineering background was not so focused technically, but I think by being exposed to those preventive maintenance routines on these electronics or mechanics, that gave me a much better understanding of how how a semi automated facility with all this complex pieces of equipment, PLCs, and all that worked, I think that was a great great background. So if you ask me how compared it is, I think they're pretty equal I think Mexico being the neighbor of the US has has a great advantage a lot of collaboration. engineers from three m used to come to the three implant in my hometown San Luis Potosi and have interactions and ensure share knowledge, share experience and all that and it was not a problem. So I see it as a as a very, very competitive and in a great collaboration. Very cool. Now has being bilingual helped you much in your career as an engineer, as an engineering manager? And if so, to what extent has it helped you?

Angel Martinez: 19:46

Yeah, I thank my mom because on on summer, she used to put us study English and suppose something else, and I have to be honest with you at the beginning, I was like,'When am I going to use this?' She insisted that at some time, it was going to be useful because when I was working at Trium, I had the opportunity to attend a job fair. In this job fair, it was in Monterey, which was the city I wanted to live and experience working for a multinational company. They're not to mention that not to say that Trium was not a good company. But it was just a curiosity. I had to live in another city. And it turns out that these job fair, even though it was hosted by my main campus, Monterey, all the companies that were hiring were companies that were located in the mortar. So in other words, I don't know if you have heard the term maquiladora, which is a US company located in right in the Mexico side of the border. Okay. And the way it works, they import temporarily all the all the components, and then they just export it back in us as a finished good. So basically, what you do is to just complete the final product with cheaper labor. And so a lot of these companies were there. And that's how really, I started working for multinational company was just Johnson and Johnson, my first employer in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. And, yeah, during the interview, I'm not going to tell you that I understood everything because the the guy that interviewed me had a southern accent. So I probably understood 60% who he was. But I think it was good enough, because I answered everything correctly. And in really, I think I was my really one of my first conversations. Not my first conversation, but my first interview in English and it wasn't too bad. I have had conversations with engineers from 3am back in my hometown in, in San Luis Potosi, Mexico. But being in an interview, in not in your native language, it's quite different. So I did, I did well, to the point that they call me for an interview and the rest. Rest is history. I ended up accepting this job in in Juarez, Mexico. And then, after a few years, I got an offer to come here to work in in the US and being sponsored by this company.

Aaron Moncur: 22:33

Well, I can empathize. Right after I graduated from college, I had an interview with an automotive company. And it was a position that required a Japanese language speaker. And I spent a few years living in Japan. So I spoke the language pretty well. And the interview was in Japanese and that was tough. There was a lot of formal language that I wasn't I wasn't accustomed to I hadn't heard before. So I can appreciate how difficult that can be.

Angel Martinez: 23:02

Yeah.

Aaron Moncur: 23:03

Well, I'm gonna take a real short break here and share with the listeners that teampipeline.us is where you can learn more about how we help medical device and other product engineering or manufacturing teams, develop turnkey equipment, custom fixtures and automated machines to characterize, inspect, assemble, manufacturer and perform verification testing on your devices. We're speaking with Angel Martinez today, who is the Director of Engineering and Project Management at Edwards Lifesciences. Angel, something I think a lot about is engineering education. And I wondered, what is your opinion on this? How should engineers be educating themselves these days to best prepare themselves for success in the engineering field?

Angel Martinez: 23:54

In my opinion, the more you subject engineers to real life situations, I think that's probably one of one of the best ideas to help them become successful when they graduated. So to give you an example, I got a lot of my subjects was theory, for example, I explained to you design of experiments, I would have loved for my university to maybe have more programs, with the industry in offer the students to actually come and solve some of the problems, real problems they had with maybe a process that is not the best, maybe a process that has low yields, and really say, look, these students right now are taking the statistics or design of experiments, curves. Do you have anything that they can help you with? In my opinion, that's going to be a good education'cause again, I learned great these subjects, but, but they were giving you examples on the books, not necessarily something in real life, it's my understanding that the university I attended. Because I had interaction with them recently, after my university of graduation, they contacted me. And it's my understanding, they're focusing a lot on that. So they have classrooms, not anymore in everybody's face into the teacher, they have tables, where they, a lot of times, maybe it's now 50-50, they have real-life problems that they need to solve. And the other percentage is just the theory behind behind that. So I really think that that's going to be very, very successful. And we're going to see more and more engineers that are sooner applying the concepts just based on the fact that during college, they were able to face real life problems, combined with the theory that provided to them.

Aaron Moncur: 26:11

Speaking of being an engineering student in college, and then moving into an actual career, in engineering, what what is surprised you about being an engineer that you didn't expect before becoming one?

Angel Martinez: 26:27

So if I understand your question, again, is what in my engineering degree what

Aaron Moncur: 26:35

So after you became an engineer, you got a full time job at Trium and J&J. What, what was one or two things that about being an engineer that you just you didn't expect when you are going to school to become an engineer.

Angel Martinez: 26:53

Uh-huh. Let me think about what, I think the importance of relationships, it's one of them, I think, I, being drawn in year to get the world and in start doing things. I didn't realize how critical was relationships. A good example, it's when when when I was telling you, I was hired for this first job to implement the, the routines for preventive maintenance of these pieces of equipment, it was critical because it was related to the ISO certification of the plant. And I only had a limited amount of time to document everything because we weren't going to get certification. My approach was to just get an ass and schedule meetings with these great guys technicians, who had all the routines in their in their mind, but I need to write them in a formal routine, documented that is going to be scheduled every, every month or every six months. And obviously, they were afraid to lose their job, because maybe they were thinking that, by extracting this information from them, they were going to be laid off, and someone else was going to come and do that job. So I came a little bit aggressive, and not understanding the motivation behind behind a human in again, in this case, it was maybe they were a little bit afraid of, 'Hey, he's gonna document everything, and they're gonna let us off.' So I had to change my approach, because I was not getting anywhere. Like they were like, just telling me,'Oh, yeah, come come this day.' And when I was that day, they're like, 'You know what, I have something else to do.' So I had to take a different approach and be more friendly, be more about,'Hey, this is this is just part of my job. And this is what you're gonna gain from getting these routines out of your mind and in a piece of paper, and, and why is it good for the company,' so I had to spend some time convincing them why it was a good thing. But at the beginning, to be honest, I was like, 'This is my job, and this is what I'm going to do,' and it was very strong. And in all at all times you're gonna have to really know that even if you're an engineer in machines involving your job, that the human part, it's, it's equally important, or maybe even more important, because you don't want to hurt feelings. You want to be productive relationships.

Aaron Moncur: 29:46

Yes, yes, I agree. wholeheartedly. I think that you can be an extremely talented engineer. Technically, maybe you're the smartest guy in the room. You know all the equations, you know how to solve everything, you're a whiz with CAD, you understand manufacturing, you could be the best engineer out there. And, but without those people skills, you're only going to go so far as an engineer, there's almost a ceiling to how far you can advance in your career without those people skills, versus if you're an okay engineer, maybe you're like 80th percentile or something, but you have really good people skills, there's almost no limit to how high you can climb.

Angel Martinez: 30:33

Exactly. Because then you can, recognize that you, not necessarily as a leader, are going to be the best one in the room. But knowing how to talk to people, how to convince, how to influence, and you can get even better results by recognizing there's other people smarter than you that if you motivate them correctly, then you can get the result. So

Aaron Moncur: 30:58

Yeah, I've talked with a lot of very talented senior level engineers, such as yourself, and pretty much everyone echoes that same sentiment that people skills and communication are so vitally important to engineers, if it makes you wonder why they aren't taught in in university. Right, as dense they are.

Angel Martinez: 31:18

That's that is true. Yeah, yeah.

Aaron Moncur: 31:20

Well, let's see, what strategies do you use to to manage your time effectively? It's another great skill that they don't really teach in college.

Angel Martinez: 31:30

Yeah. So I think, the, my background is in project management, as well, I have a certification in project management as project management professional. And I think recognizing that, at any given point, you're going to have a lot of things, you're going to have phone calls, you're going to have email, you're going to have tasks that you need to do in your agenda. I think it all comes down to prioritization. So I divide my day on in this day, these are the most things that happen that need to happen, making sure that you have enough time to cover them during the day. And there's others that always are going to be nice to have. Also, the one thing I'm trying to do, as much as I can, is, is dedicating a time to review your emails to not be a slave of as soon as you hear the sound, check, what is it? Check your email at certain points of time? I think that that's probably one of the best strategies to to really become more efficient in managing your time, as best as you can.

Aaron Moncur: 32:44

Yeah, that's great advice. Otherwise, you're just every time it dings, right? You get distracted your attention is not what it should be. Let's see if if you could wave a magic wand and fix one problem for yourself or for your team. What would that be?

Angel Martinez: 33:06

One problem. So right now, my team is a little small, but maybe I can talk about my, my previous team, I used to have up until recently, seven PMs, across, for project managers, across the world. I think communication because based on the distance and and again with COVID with COVID and the need to, to, to communicate better, even from the distance, I think the one thing is try to find ways to to be better connected. And we have the tools now we have the teams we have zoom and and all those, they are only covering certain portions, some of the emotions, especially if someone doesn't have the camera on, you may have those things in you can misinterpret the feelings and all that my magic wand it probably would be that how can we become more connected even even if you're remotely having meetings. Being a PM, it's a critical, it's a critical role, that you almost want to have that that feeling that I mentioned earlier that human interaction, otherwise your job can be more difficult. So magic wand would be how creating a tool that goes beyond the video. And maybe, I don't know maybe put some, some feelings behind that. That just someone behind a screen. Talking then in maybe being able to, to see some of the feelings that you sometimes cannot, cannot see. And that you need a human in person interaction to be able to, to get that information. So I think that's probably what I would do.

Aaron Moncur: 35:15

That's a great one. Yeah. Well, I guess we're just waiting for Elon Musk to implant all those chips in our brains. And then we can, we don't even have to talk. We could just be more our feelings and emotions back and forth between each other. Well, what are a What are a few habits that you have developed over the years that have proven useful to you? And it could be engineering-related or even personal?

Angel Martinez: 35:41

Habits? Um

Aaron Moncur: 35:44

Habits, routines

Angel Martinez: 35:45

Yeah, I think I'm spending one on ones first. Because I have to be honest with you, when I became a manager, and I had to schedule one on ones, I used to just go directly and talk about work. And by now asking my direct reports about something personal first, and how things are going in your life. I think that has helped me to be a better listener, not going just straight to business, but to actually be genuine and care about my employees and how they're doing. I think that's probably a good art, a good habit. And another one is volunteering for becoming a mentor to other people. I offer mentorships, outside the mentorship program, to some people, and then they pass the word that I was doing that, and then some people came and asked me and, and it was really, really nice to know that maybe based on the first experience of the first person, that it was good that other people approached me. And I think being a mentor helps you to, to recognize things that you have done well, and and how to share with others to to be successful, I think. I think those two things are probably not necessarily engineering related, but more like, soft skills that I learned to develop over the years that I'm pretty happy and proud to have developed.

Aaron Moncur: 37:29

Yeah, well, hopefully, when this podcast episode goes live, you don't get overwhelmed with requests to be people's mentors. Have you noticed any any trends in the medical device industry?

Angel Martinez: 37:48

Trends like, like in, one trend that I that I've seen is the biomedical engineering was a, it was a degree that, to be honest with you, when I first joined this industry, it was not even I didn't see many people coming to us with that degree. It was mainly mechanical, electrical, industrial engineering, coming in and applying for that, for that role. Nowadays. I've seen a trend in and also the other trend that I've seen recently is a lot of female in the engineering degree, especially

Aaron Moncur: 38:31

How interesting

Angel Martinez: 38:34

If I if I share with you, I think the engineers in the manufacturing engineering area, so engineers that are either supporting the processes in a production line in my current company in my current site in Utah, they are probably more almost double what I was seeing when I just joined

Aaron Moncur: 39:02

Wow

Angel Martinez: 39:02

This, yeah, this company. So it's really a good trend, in my opinion, because it having more diversity, not just males we used to, in the past dominate these, the engineering careers. I think in my opinion, it's a good thing. I have enjoyed in fact, a lot of the mentor. A lot of the mentees I have are females that have either biomedical engineering degree or mechanical engineering degree. And yeah, it's it's my opinion, it's good friend.

Aaron Moncur: 39:40

Yeah, that's interesting. I think men and women think differently just inherently because of our genetics.

Angel Martinez: 39:49

Yeah.

Aaron Moncur: 39:49

And it's not necessarily that that one sex thinks better or worse than the other is just different. So having that diversity I think is really powerful for a company.

Angel Martinez: 40:00

Yeah, it is, and I've noticed that, as you mentioned, if you're having a meeting or brainstorming and having the, the different mindset, the different backgrounds, and it's just, it's just amazing. So that's probably a good trend that my first my first job here at Edwards, as Senior Manager of Engineering, I only had one female engineer, and the equivalent role has probably out of our 45, 20 female engineers, that tells you well, that tells you everything. So

Aaron Moncur: 40:40

Yeah, yeah. Well, that's great. Here I am saying the diversity is so great. We don't have any female engineers a Pipeline yet.

Angel Martinez: 40:47

Yeah. Maybe?

Aaron Moncur: 40:50

That's right. Hopefully, you get a whole bunch of new mentees, and we get some new female engineers.

Angel Martinez: 40:56

Yeah.

Aaron Moncur: 40:57

Well, let's see. I've got just just one more question for you. What would today's Angel tell yourself back when you were a brand new engineer that you wish you had known back then?

Angel Martinez: 41:14

I think again, it goes back to, to make sure I can be strong about a position and all that, but making sure that by being that I'm not seen as a hungry

Aaron Moncur: 41:31

Tyrant?

Angel Martinez: 41:31

or yes, a tyrant. I have learned recently the different styles. And when I say recently is when I joined this company, they put an emphasis on, on recognizing the different styles on on every person, the dominant directing style, the influencer, the supportive, and the compliant. And really, if I had known those tools, earlier, I think I probably would have been more effective as an engineer as an individual contributor, because what they tell you about this is, again, this, this this profile, the I see, because of those four main type of personalities, they tell you, what it what motivates it, each one of them, and how to approach them, for example, you cannot approach someone that has a, a, a dominant style with, hey, how was your weekend, because for that, for that person, the results and everything, time is money. And you cannot approach the person the same way. I mean, it's different if it's, if you have a direct report, and, and again, as part of your one on one you want, you want to have some interactions, but not to the point where you are going to say, hey, you're boring me in money. So to be honest, I think having learned that simple tool, which is the disc assessment tool, would have been very, very helpful at that time. So I wish and held these days would have fell Angel in the early days of my engineering career. To learn about these so that I could be more effective. Again, it comes back to maybe I would have realized that when I was trying to get this information from these technical people, in my first role, all of them were highly C, highly compliant. People understand what motivates them to go and talk to them about that first and then be able to get the information I needed probably would have been faster and easier. And at the end of the day, I think I figured out but I think it would have been a great tool to to understand.

Aaron Moncur: 43:50

Yeah, yeah, the, the disc profile is a pretty cool tool. I've taken that myself. And this is a good reminder, because I'm definitely D, dominant. And it frustrates me so much when people they just want to chit chat, and I'm like,'Just tell me what I need to know, and let's move on.' You can't be that way with everyone. You need to learn their communication style. And

Angel Martinez: 44:14

Yeah

Aaron Moncur: 44:14

The only way we get anything done is through people. So you need to learn how to communicate with people.

Angel Martinez: 44:19

Exactly. Yeah.

Aaron Moncur: 44:21

All right. Okay. Well, I've been pronouncing Angel and I just heard you said'Ang-hel.' Is that your preferred pronunciation?

Angel Martinez: 44:29

Yeah, in Mexico, it is pronounced 'Ang-hel.' But, but I'm already used to the pronunciation I've heard a lot of times in, in the US, so it really doesn't bother me. I can go either way.

Aaron Moncur: 44:42

The ignorant American pronunciation. Okay, well, Angel. Thank you so much for joining us today. How can people get ahold of you?

Angel Martinez: 44:52

Yeah, I think the best way is my personal email. So it's, do I need to say them? Or

Aaron Moncur: 45:00

If you want to share it, that's fine. I can put it in the show notes as well.

Angel Martinez: 45:04

Yeah. So it's asusta00@yahoo.com.

Aaron Moncur: 45:13

Okay, excellent. All right. Well, is there? Is there anything that we haven't talked about that you think we should have talked about?

Angel Martinez: 45:21

No, to be honest, I think we cover a lot of the, I mean, having a engineering degree, we focus a lot on on the, on the soft side of this, of the skills that we need to be successful. And again, it goes back to the things I wish I had learned early in my day. So I think we had a good balance of the technical side and the soft skills and thoroughly put modern emphasis on the soft skills. So I really thank you for the opportunity to share my experience with your audience. And yeah, looking forward to any comments or yeah.

Aaron Moncur: 45:55

Excellent. Excellent. Well, thank you so much, Angel.

Angel Martinez: 45:58

All right. Thank you so much, Aaron. Have a great day.

Aaron Moncur: 46:04

I'm Aaron Moncur, Founder of Pipeline Design & Engineering. If you liked what you heard today, please share the episode. To learn how your team can leverage our team's expertise developing turnkey equipment, custom fixtures and automated machines and with product design, visit us at teampipeline.us. Thanks for listening.