Being an Engineer
Being an Engineer
S7E9 Brad & Aaron | Top 5 Takeaways After Interviewing Over 300 Engineers
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After more than 300 episodes of conversations with engineers, founders, and technical leaders, certain patterns start to emerge.
In this special retrospective episode of Being An Engineer, Aaron Moncur and Brad Hirayama flip the mic around to distill the biggest lessons learned from six years of interviews. Instead of focusing on any single quote or guest, they zoom out and identify the recurring themes that consistently show up in the careers of high-performing engineers.
Surprisingly, none of the top takeaways are about mastering CAD tools or memorizing GD&T standards.
They explore why understanding the business—not just the engineering—can dramatically accelerate your career. They unpack why soft skills and communication are non-negotiable if you want to move beyond being “just” a technical contributor. They discuss the transformational impact of mentors and coaches, and how simple habits like lunch conversations and honest feedback can change your trajectory.
Aaron and Brad also dive into what it really means to “do more than you’re paid for”—not by working longer hours, but by focusing on high-impact contributions that move the business forward. And they explain why establishing repeatable processes, checklists, and systems is one of the most overlooked drivers of engineering success.
Finally, they introduce a new three-part mini-series on accelerating the speed of engineering, previewing practical tactics like hacking prototypes from off-the-shelf products and building psychological safety so teams surface problems early.
If you want to grow faster, lead better, and think beyond the technical, this episode delivers a clear blueprint drawn from hundreds of real-world engineering stories.
LINKS:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/pipelinedesign/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradhirayama/
https://pipelinemedialab.beehiiv.com/
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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 like cycle test machines, custom test fixtures, automation equipment, assembly jigs, inspection stations and more. You can find us at www.teampipeline.us
Watch the show on YouTube: www.youtube.com/@TeamPipelineus
If you're the most skilled engineer in the room when it comes to technical skills, there's but your communication, your soft skills are not that great. There is a bar beyond which you really can't progress as an engineer in any organization. But if your technical skills are good enough, you know maybe they're not as good as that smartest guy in the room, but they're 80 percentile or something like that. They're good enough, and your soft skills are really excellent. I mean, you're in the top 5% when it comes to communication and soft skills. There's almost no limit to how far you can go in your career. Hello and welcome to another exciting episode of The being an engineer podcast today, I've got my partner in crime, Brad Hirayama, with me, and we are going to be discussing some lessons learned over the past 300 plus episodes on the being an engineer podcast. Brad, welcome again to the show.
Brad Hirayama:Thank you, Aaron, and a good morning. Well, good morning for me to everybody here. You know, Aaron, I've been really excited to do this episode with you. You've spent the last what going on, six years now, talking to some absolutely amazing guests, having people share their experiences, their wins, some of their failures, what they've learned with us and over the last 300 or so episodes, you've gathered so much insight from the 300 plus engineers that you've spoken through. So today I really wanted to flip the mic around. You've been the interviewer for most of these episodes, and so I wanted you to share with us what are some of your greatest insights that you've picked up from these 300 episodes. And I'm not talking necessarily just about like, you know this one quote that stood out to you from this one guest, but let's look big picture. Let's zoom out a little bit. What are the patterns that you, that you have seen that keep showing up. What are some of the lessons that you've really been able to distill from the last 300 plus episodes that we should carry forward as engineers, as we grow in our career? I'm really excited to see and to hear what you have to say, because I think from the minimal amount of episodes that I've listened to, I've already learned a lot, so I'm sure that you have some great wisdom to distill with us today.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, thank you, and really, all the credit goes to all these amazing guests that we've had on the show who have shared their hard earned insights and wisdom with me and with our audience. So I've thought through, you know, the going on six years of episodes, I think we're up close to 350 episodes at this point, and tried to extract the five most important lessons that I think engineers can take from all of the wonderful experiences and content that has been shared by our guests, and to provide a little bit of context here this, these key takeaways for me. These are the things that engineers who really want to grow in their in their role who want to grow as as engineers, as professionals should understand and internalize and use to facilitate that growth. So the first one, the first one is, of course, technical proficiency is always going to be important, right? You can't be an engineer if you don't have the technical chops. That's just a given. But that's kind of the like minimum bar to to enter right the field of engineering. And if you really want to be not just an effective technical team player, but an effective team member or part of your organization, it is so important to understand the business, not just the engineering. And I think we're never taught anything about business going to school to be an engineer, which is reasonable, right? We're going to school to become engineers, not not business leaders, but growth never stops as a professional, and this is one of those key elements that will catapult your your growth as an engineer, your advancement within your organization, if you can beyond just pro. Provide technical support and skill sets to your team if you can understand the business that is huge. And Brad, I think you're going through some of this right now in your current role.
Brad Hirayama:Yeah, you know. And this is really interesting, and something that, yeah, I don't think you're ever going to learn in college. It's kind of an on the job type of learning, but I've worked in startups my entire career. I've gotten an opportunity because of that, to hone the fundamental technical skills that you're that you're talking about, but also to have one eye on what does the business really need, and being allowed to ask questions about why certain decisions were being made. So, for example, a business that is preparing for another round of funding, or preparing for M and A or preparing to go commercial, preparing to IPO. Those are all different business contexts that as engineers, you need to understand, because sometimes what you think is quote, unquote best maybe doesn't fit that current business landscape and and I think I'm, I'm going through that right right now, working at a startup. You know, there's so many levers that could be pulled to make our design better, if you will, but where the business currently sits, it just doesn't make sense to spend all of that time, money, resources in order to do the best thing we've had to make decisions about, how do we make this the best for our current business? And, you know, I read a book a couple of years ago. It was by Ben Horowitz. The hard thing about hard things, he's one of the premier Venture Partners over in the in the Bay Area, but his thing is, he always preaches that the best product doesn't always win, but the best business does. And I think what he's trying to say, and what I really took up. Took away from that is that you can have the best, most innovative, cool idea, but if it really doesn't fit the context of where your business is, it doesn't matter. And so I think as engineers, as you progress in your career, you really need to make sure that you are understanding the total picture, not just operating on your own project or what you're you've been assigned to do, connect that to the bigger picture. And for the business, the engineering leaders out there, people that are leading engineering teams or engineering divisions. I think it's really important for you to teach that, for you to give your people the full picture to the extent that you can, and to allow them to understand how their impact is impacting not just you know, their set project or whatever they're doing. But how does it impact the business as a whole?
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, as much as we would love to believe that engineering is the heart and the foundation of a business, because we are engineers, engineering is just one component of the business, and ultimately, businesses are in business to make money. I hate to sound so clinical or sterile about it, but if a business isn't profitable, that business cannot employ you as an engineer, and so as an engineer, you should always have that one eye on all right, why am I doing this? I've been asked to design, you know, something, whatever it is, why have I been asked to design it this way? How does that fit in with the ultimate business goals? How is how are my actions going to help this business generate profitable revenue? And to the extent that you can help your business generate profitable revenue, you will always have a job, and you will always be in demand in the market.
Brad Hirayama:Yeah, that's right, you know. And I think that it's, it's, it's a shifted mindset. And I think there's a little bit of a a stigma around the business school, you know, when I went to the engineering school and you went to the business school. But everything is so interconnected that it's really important that from the start of your career you build those technical chops. You need to have the technical foundation, but you always keep your eye out on the big picture. Yeah. Because that's where, like Aaron said, you are going to be able to bring the biggest value to your team purely by, how do I make sure that I what I'm working on, is going to be profitable for the for the business? It's sad to say, unless you're in an academic setting where ideation and, you know, forward thinking, like, that's like the key to what you're doing. If that's you, great. We need people like that. But you know, for all of us that are in industry that are making things to be sold, it's, it's kind of the nature of the game,
Aaron Moncur:yeah, knowing when good enough is good enough is is really critical. Because, like Brad said, you can always make a product better, and as engineers, we always want to make it better. We want to strive for perfection. I think it's in our nature. We always see those little tweaks that can be made to improve a product, but those tweaks take time, and that time costs money, and so knowing when good enough is good enough is really a critical business skill. I remember when I first started the podcast, actually, one of my team members kind of rolled his eyes at me, and he was pretty open with me about it. He was like, why are we starting a podcast? We're engineers, like this doesn't make sense for us. And I remember thinking, Oh, okay, he doesn't. He doesn't understand, like, the vision for the business. And I mean, frankly, we've, we've made good money off of the podcast. It's been a good marketing tool for us. It's generated visibility for the company. And organizations have approached us because they learned about our existence on the podcast. So having that kind of long term, not short sighted view of how different things can help the business is just super important.
Brad Hirayama:Yeah, that's an interesting segue Erin into, I think point two, you ready to move on? Yeah, yeah. So I think, you know, understanding the business is one side, but there's a whole nother dimension that, you know, we've kind of touched on, and kind of sort of got to but I really want to talk about here. I think the second point that has really been distilled over the last 300 episodes has really talked about how soft skills and communication are non negotiable tools that you need to have in your toolbox. And it seems that you know, like your like your example, it's just the communication that was, you know, distilled down to your to your team members didn't necessarily give him the full picture, and so he was questioning it, right? You fostered an environment where he can question it, right? And that's a very good environment to be in. But how is it that you found soft skills are really important to play alongside the technical skills for engineers,
Aaron Moncur:we have a volunteer organization called CAD club, and we teach middle school and high school age students how to use CAD and we teach them some some basic engineering principles. And at the beginning of each term, I show them a slide, and it talks about communication skills and technical skills. And I try to impress upon them that if you're the most skilled engineer in the room when it comes to technical skills, there's but your communication, your soft skills, are not that great. There is a bar beyond which you really can't progress as an engineer in any organization. But if your technical skills are good enough, you know, maybe they're not as good as that smartest guy in the room, but they're 80 percentile or something like that. They're good enough, and your soft skills are really excellent. I mean, you're in the top 5% when it comes to communication and soft skills, there's almost no limit to how far you can go in your career. So again, the technical skills are a prerequisite. You have to have them, but alone without the soft skills, you will be limited in your advancement as as an engineer, engineer and as an employee, but developing those soft skills just unlocks so many doors. So an example of this I remember, this is many years ago at Pipeline, one of our new project leads who was really ambitious and excited about this new opportunity that he had as he had moved into this project lead role, was talking with another team member, and they had come up with an idea for how to change one of our processes, how to improve it. And at Pipeline, we've, we've generally been, what's the word I'm looking for here, not mired in in deep procedure, a. A we're a relatively small team, and we can move quickly, and we make decisions quickly, and that's kind of been the culture at Pipeline, which has worked really well for us. So at this time, this engineer, this new project lead, had this idea for improving a process, and he approached our Director of Engineering and said, Hey, I want to make this change. I think it's really going to help. And the director of engineering this is all through, you know, teams message or emails, not in person. And the director of engineer sent a message back and said, Okay, well, write me a proposal for this, and then we can talk about it. And that's not really like the pipeline way, write me a proposal and we'll talk about this. It's so stiff and formal. And I remember being in the room with this project lead and watching him receive that feedback from our director, who was new at the time, and arguably still kind of coming up to speed on some of the cultural aspects at pipeline. And I remember seeing this project lead's shoulders just slump, you know, like he was so excited about this idea he'd had. He'd been part of the team for quite a while, and so he was familiar with our culture and used to our way of doing things pretty quick, without a whole lot of procedure or, you know, bureaucracy involved. And his shoulders just just slumped, you know? It's like, oh, man, I had this great idea, and now, like, we're getting mired down in the politics of this. I have to put together this big proposal for it. And I remember seeing that and and this is where the soft skills come in. I could have just left it alone and be like, ah, they'll figure it out, you know? But I approached this project lead, and said, Hey, I noticed that you looked a little disappointed by the response that you got. Let's talk about that. How are things going? How are you feeling right now? What should we do about this? How would you like to proceed? What's the best, best possible outcome that we could achieve here? And he shared some things with me, and I ended up having a short conversation with our new director as well. And in the end, we did not do a big formal proposal. We just had a short conversation about this. Decided, yeah, that's a good idea. Let's do it and move forward. And everything was great. But had I not been there present first of all, to actually see the reaction on this project leads face and then had the foresight to say, No, I should step in and have a quick conversation about this. That could have really soured this project lead and demotivated him in this brand new role that he was so excited about. So that's just one of many, many examples about how soft skills can play such a critical role in advanced, advancing projects and keeping morale high and just being productive in general, in an engineering environment,
Brad Hirayama:that's a that's a great story. Earn it brought up a question for me that I'm I'm really curious. From your perspective, you know you've been an engineer. You are an engineer, but you've also been a leader for a long time now, and you've led a company, you've led multiple or you've led one team with a bunch of people on it. How much of leadership do you feel is just translation, just being able to distill your thoughts clearly to other people in a way that they can understand it.
Aaron Moncur:Have you ever built a test fixture that didn't work well? Most engineers have usually because of hidden pitfalls you wouldn't know to look for if you don't design fixtures all day. After watching this happen for years, we built a simple five step framework that gets fixtures right the first time, and we packaged it in a free guide called The Essential Guide to designing test fixtures if you want more accurate, repeatable data and fewer redesigns, click the link in the show notes to grab the guide, get it, steal the framework and level up your fixture game. I have a I have some thoughts about leadership, and Brad you and I have talked about this a little bit recently. The communication aspect is, for sure, one of the more important aspects of being a leader. I remember hearing someone talk at some point. I can't remember who it was or what they said, but they suggested that the higher you get in any organization, the easier the people are to deal with. And I wouldn't say that's 100% universally true, but generally speaking, it is true, and that's because the higher you go in an organization, the better communicators those people are. They know how to translate those thoughts and ideas a. I can remember many instances when I've been on a design review call with my engineers and one of our customers. And most of our customers are relatively technical, but maybe not to the same extent as the engineer who's working on this particular project, which is often why they hire us to do these projects, and an engineer would just be, you know, getting down in the weeds and the super technical information. And and I could, I could see on the customer's face that it was just, it was over their heads, you know, and not just that, it was over their heads, but they didn't need to know all of that technical information. And so there have been some times that I've stepped in and and kind of guided the conversation back to a little bit higher level. I remember one conversation in particular when our engineers, the customer, asked a question, our engineers went down this rabbit hole of deep technical discussion, and they I wanted to give them a chance to bring it back and just answer the question concisely for this customer. And so I just let it go for a little while, but after a couple minutes, it was clear that, like, they weren't really getting to the answer that the customer had asked. And so I gently interrupted and gave literally, like a eight second response. And the customer was like, oh, okay, thank you. You know, if so, we have this tendency as engineers to just get mired down in that detail, because we love detail. We're engineers, and when we're talking with the engineers, it's appropriate to share that detail, but, you know, read the room, understand what needs to be translated based on the the other parties, and then make that translation happen.
Brad Hirayama:Yeah, you know, and it's a skill, and that's why you know that in the beginning of this, I use the word tool in your toolbox. It's, it really is something that you need to continuously work on, and you need people around you that can give you feedback and that will help you understand if you're doing a good job. Because this is something that you know, if you run with it and you just think, yeah, I'm doing fine, you know, it's never, you know, you're never going to sharpen your tool, right? So this is something that just needs to be focused on throughout your entire career, that you need to just keep sharpening, and the conversations change as you climb the ladder, whether technical or into leadership or management, and it's just something that needs to be at the forefront of your mind at all times.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, that's a great segue into what's actually number four on our list, but let's just skip to number four, and then we'll go back to number three, because that's such a great segue having mentors and I'll lump in the title of coach with this. I think there are some nuanced differences between a coach and a mentor, but for purposes of this conversation, we'll just lump them into the same category, having mentors and building relationships. This is point number three that we're talking about. So quick recap, we've got. Number one, understand the business, not just the engineering. Number two is to develop those soft skills and communication skills. And the number three we're talking about now is finding mentors coaches and building relationships with people. I've had mentors and coaches for the past probably 10 years of formally, anywhere of my career, and before that more informally, just, you know, people who knew more than I did, who would informally mentor me, and it's been transformational for for my own career. I'm sure, Brad, you have experiences with this as well.
Brad Hirayama:Yeah, so I actually want to step back a second, you know, I know that we're not going to talk about it, but help me define, in your mind, the difference between a mentor, a coach, and somebody that you just build a relationship with, because I think that there is very distinct differences, and they play very distinct roles in what we're talking about.
Aaron Moncur:To me, and this is just my definition, I'm not claiming this is gospel for everyone, but to me, the difference between just kind of an informal relationship, a mentor and then a coach is in the degree of agreement or formality that you have with these individuals, so just an informal person who can teach you. There's no formal like structure or agreement in place. This might be a water cooler conversation that you have with someone who shares some instruction or insight with you, and then you have mentors, which generally, there is some agreement in place that you are my mentor and I am your mentee, and there's a conversation that happens about that no money is taking place here. It's not a financial or commercial transaction, it's just someone. Who has more experience, who is willing to share with you that you have identified, approached and said, Hey, will you please act as a mentor for me? And this individual has graciously accepted. And then you have a coach, which, typically, there is a financial, you know, structure in place where you're paying this coach money to share his or her wisdom, knowledge insight with you. And so that's the way that I think about those three.
Brad Hirayama:Yeah, I know that, and that's that's a great way to look at it. I I've only just recently found the difference between mentors and coaches. I got my first coach last year. It's something that I really I've really cherished, the time that I've had with him, allowing me to go through this process of reframing who I am as a professional and, you know, entering parenthood and all of that kind of stuff, and the lessons that I was able to learn from him was more about me driving a conversation and asking questions and then him kind of guiding me through the thought process, whereas for me, you know, some of the the best mentors that I have have always just been people that have been able to that I've been able to build deeper relationships with, than just co workers that are then able to give me hard feedback, and for Me, that's different than people that are I just have a relationship with, like a working relationship with, the mentors truly are able to give me hard feedback. And I'll give you an example of this. I had a manager who I keep in touch with, who I consider to be one of my greatest mentors. He's somebody that I that I look up to, and I speak to him probably once a month, just for us to catch up. And a couple of months ago, right before I took this new job, I was kind of in a funk, and trying to understand where I wanted to go, what I wanted to do, I had some options. And, you know, he was listening, you know, listen to my entire spiel. I talked for quite a while, and then at the very end, he said, I didn't understand a word that you just said, like you're so all over the place that, do you understand anything that she said? Because I did it, you know. And that was a huge wake up call for me, of like, wow. Like, I don't even understand my own my own direction. So this was a great opportunity, you know, it was something that I don't think just, you know, a co worker that I'm having lunch with or something like that, would have said to me, and that really refocused me. That really got me to where I am today, you know? And so he's somebody that I consider a mentor, and I think it's really important as you go through your engineering career, because there's so many aspects to being an engineer, right? There's the technical side, there's the soft skill side. We just talked about the business side. That's a whole new thing to a lot of engineers. It's really important to find people that number one are more experienced than you, so who are far along in their careers, then then then you are. But that person also needs to be willing to have a critical eye and a critical ear for you, because without that, the mentorship doesn't, it doesn't really provide any value to either side. And so what I what I mean, is that, you know, this, this, this guy that I'm talking about, he's worked his way up the ladder. He's achieving so much in his own work world and building his own relationships, and doing so many different things within engineering and business and etc, but he still takes that time where we have an hour that we can talk to each other, and he will listen for that hour. He's not distracted, he's not trying to answer emails, but he will listen, and He will answer questions, and he will give me honest feedback. And that really is, I think the key is, when you're looking for a mentor, or if you are a mentor, you need to give the people the time, and if you can find somebody that's willing to give you the time, that's willing to give you that hard advice, that's somebody that you really want to build that strong relationship with.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, and one common. Concrete step that any of you listening right now can take towards building relationships, whether it's with a mentor or, more informally, just people at at work within your industry, because at the end of the day, this stuff all comes down to relationships. The old adage is true. It's not what you know, it's who you know. It's also what you know, but it's definitely also who you know. And a great way to build those relationships is just to take someone out to lunch. It's it's so easy and, you know, low pressure, we all need to eat. So find someone you think knows more than you that you'd like to get to know better, and invite them out to lunch and get to know them. And that's been a great way for me to build relationships over the years,
Brad Hirayama:you know. And so same, over the last year, I've had more than a dozen coffee chats, lunch lunch chats, Happy Hour chats. And the thing is, is that even through cold outreach, LinkedIn, cold outreach, Hey, I've seen this thing you're working on. Would really love to pick your brain. Love to buy a cup of cup of coffee, you'll find that the people that respond to you, the people that actually agree to do this with you are the people that you want to get to know. And so take the take the chance, because I found it super valuable, and I want to lean into it this year as well and continue doing so, and continue building my my network. And I think it's a great way to build that relationship. Get face to face.
Aaron Moncur:Pipeline now offers procurement of custom machined parts at significantly lower costs without sacrificing speed or quality. We design and build custom machines ourselves, so we consume a lot of precision machined components. Over the past several years, we developed a proven overseas supply chain to support that work, and in 2025 we successfully piloted that capability with select customers. Now we're opening it up more broadly, if you'd like to see how our prices and lead times compare, send us a drawing or two for quote, visit team pipeline.us, or message me directly on LinkedIn. Yeah. Okay, let's move on to the next one. So number four, do more than you're paid for. I There's a great analogy that I heard once about putting in fuel before you have the fire. So let's pretend that you're out in the woods and you've got one of those old wood fired stoves that warms the house, right? And you're freezing. It's winter out there, and you're thinking to yourself, Man, I just need some heat. I need some fire in here to keep me warm. That fire is never going to come unless you put the fuel in, you put the kindling in, you put the wood in, you light a match, and you create that fire. And putting the fuel in is like doing more than you're paid for, you're never going to get the recognition or the opportunities or the advancement until you put that work in. If you're just doing the minimum and getting by and hoping, oh, people, you know, see, I show up to work every day, you'll probably get the minimum in return, and and I'm not saying that everyone needs to be like this, super hustler go getter, right? There are seasons to life. I mean, maybe your life is personal. Life is just crazy right now. You got things going on that's fine. You don't need to be the top performer every day of your life, but just recognize that there are seasons to life, and when you're in a season that you want to grow, you want to advance your career, if you do the minimum, you will get the minimum if you do more than what you're paid for, more than just that minimum, in my experience, the returns have been out of proportion to to the inputs, right?
Brad Hirayama:You know? And this is a an interesting topic, because a lot of times I feel like now the narrative is, you want to be the first in the office and the last to leave, right? That's how you get promoted. That type of advice, I think, is it's short sighted. The what Aaron is talking about, is really important to keep in to keep in mind what you you. What you do needs to make an impact. It's not about how much time you put into something, it's how much impact you are making on your team, on the business, on the bottom line, you know, whatever the focus is for you at that at that moment, I think it's really important, and something that I've been questioning for a long time is for myself. I started off my my career with that mentality. I used to be the first in the office. I used to be the last to leave. I used to work. I used to take work home with me. And I'd work pretty much until I went to sleep. You know, I always felt like I was checking boxes. And so, because I was checking so many boxes, I was going to get recognized, because I was checking all these boxes, and so many things were getting done, and it was just going to be attributed to myself. And I think that what I struggled with was, I think my biggest struggle at that period in my career was, how do I balance being visible and advocating for myself and not trying to be like boastful, you know, or coming across as being like that young, cocky engineer who's gonna, you know, make sure that everybody knows that he worked till 1030 last night, you know, or something like that. And I think that one of the key points that I've that I've realized, is it really doesn't matter how much you work. Yes, working hard takes a long you know, doing hard things takes a long time. Yes, I agree with that. But really what matters is the outcomes. And what metrics are you measuring those outcomes against? Right? So if I can do one high impact item that really moves my needle, and that item takes me five hours versus doing five small things that barely moves the needle, but that took me 10 my time is better spent on that five hour task, and I think that's where my mindset and how do I market myself, and how do I make myself visible that had to shift in my in my mind and really get away from that constant need for do they see what I'm doing? I'm doing? You know, do they know that I'm working hard? It kind of comes naturally when you're doing those high impact things.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, and marketing, within engineering, I think, is looked at as kind of a dirty word, sometimes, like, we're not marketers, we're engineers. We do the hard technical work. And I would venture to say that that most of us, when we're considering how much to quote, unquote, market ourselves, to our bosses, to those above us who might have control over our advancement, we're we probably do too little. Most of us err on the side of not doing enough. And you can have a very candid conversation about this. I think you should whoever your decision maker is above you, who is going to decide whether you're you advance to whatever the next position you want is you should have a candid conversation with that person and just let them know, Hey, this is what I would like to do, and, of course, get their feedback. What do you think my career path should be? I'd like to get your feedback as well. But this is the path that I would like to realize for myself and and I want to make sure that I'm letting you know that I'm actually having an impact on our team and on our business. So from time to time, I'll let you know what, what I've accomplished that I think is, is noteworthy, is that, okay, you know, just have that candid conversation so that it doesn't feel, I don't, know, disingenuine when you do market yourself. There's already a plan in place, and your your superiors are expecting to hear from you.
Brad Hirayama:Yeah, nothing happens by accident, right? You have to make it happen. And I think you know this could be a whole episode on itself, but you know how to effectively have these conversations with your managers, how to effectively have one on ones, have those career discussions, how to have the better, better career planning as an engineer, I think that's what's really important. A lot of people, myself included early. My engineering days, kind of had a very broad view of where I wanted to go, and I had no idea what the stepping stones to get there was, but I also didn't ask the right questions to help figure that out. So I think there's a lot of there's a lot that can be said here, and I think we'll save that for another day. But definitely, you know you have to market for yourself. You have to advocate for yourself, but find the balance between overly cocky or overly confident and just waiting for something good to happen to you.
Aaron Moncur:All right. Item number five, last one here, establish processes. And for a lot of mature organizations, there are already processes. But that doesn't mean that there isn't room for improvement. This kind of goes back to the last bullet, which is, do more than you're paid for. Look for opportunities to improve the business. Right? Don't just sit back and do what's handed to you. Be proactive and look for opportunities to improve things. And I think process is definitely an area where that that can be done. I love using checklists. I think checklists are a great way to establish and execute process, and we have so many checklists at pipeline that help us keep on track everything from starting a project and starting a project, it's not a trivial matter. There are probably a dozen different things that need to be done just to create the environment the back end in which to to execute this project and to make sure all of those things get done the same time, the same way every time we have a checklist, a project star checklist, and then just Brad, I'm sure this is the same with you and your experiences and many other engineering teams out there, when you're going through the product development process, there are checklists as well. You know, don't, don't build a production product injection molded parts with tooling when you're still in the prototyping phase, right? So anyway, establish processes and follow those processes is one of the key themes that has been discussed over the past many 100 episodes of The being an engineer podcast.
Brad Hirayama:So this one surprised me a little bit. I'm very process oriented. I love checklists as well. I love looking at how things are documented. I think one of the things that I always harp on is, for me, the speed to information is the best key that you can turn in any engineering team. So having like, a single dashboard where everybody can find the key documents and the timeline and, you know, what have you. I love that kind of stuff. And I always thought that I was kind of alone. You know, this is not something that would be talked about as much as it was on the various guests that you've had. I, you know, I always go back. I think I really, I really got into reading when I was in college. I was, I was introduced by one of my professors. Of you know, he was, he very candidly told me, you know, like that. He pointed out that I really think in frameworks, and that's kind of how I've always operated, is I, is that I like to think in frameworks. I like to have a framework for what I'm doing or what I'm thinking about, and then apply that to whatever I'm working on. And one of the first books, which I'm sure everybody has read, or at least heard about, is atomic habits, by James clear. That was one of the first books that I read when I really got, got back into reading, and I read this book, you know, at least once a year, just to kind of remind myself, and, you know, really reinforce the lessons that that he learns, but he always harps on that it's not about your goals, but it's about the systems that you have that create these habits for you. And that's that's been a really big in my personal life driver for how I'm building myself as a professional, myself as a husband, myself as a father, but it's really carried over into how I lead teams, having systems in place, not necessarily like a bunch of status updates. I don't you know that I hate status. Update meetings, but going into and building a system around we're looking big picture. Everybody around us is looking big, big picture. You understand your role in this big picture, and so we're gonna just show you where we are on the timeline. And it's your job to raise a red flag, like that's a system, and when you can build that system around you that you're comfortable in, that everybody else is comfortable in, I feel like that is where a high performing team comes from.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, I think successful businesses and engineering teams are built around good processes. Process is a way of transferring the knowledge that maybe one person or one group has and disseminating that to everyone else who needs to understand how to do that thing. We have a process at pipeline that I've been in charge of for a long time, and it probably takes me, I don't know, two or three hours to complete this process. And I finally said to myself, Why am I doing this? I shouldn't be the one who's doing this. Anyone can do this process, but there are other things that only I can do that I'm not getting to because I'm taking up my time doing this process. So I finally documented this process, created a couple of training videos, a Word document with some check boxes in their checklist, and I handed it off to a couple other people on the team. I said, here's how to do this process. Now you can do it. And guess what? They're doing a great job of this process. I don't have to do it anymore. I can focus my time on the things that only I can do, and it just advances the entire organization. It makes all of us more productive as a team, because we have that process that can be followed and passed on to others.
Brad Hirayama:Yeah, Aaron, this has been such a great opportunity to hear some of your thoughts, and really to distill some of the big ideas from the last 300 episodes. 300 almost 50 episodes. Now, one thing that I'm really pulling out of this is we didn't talk at all about technical knowledge that nobody not one of our points was like, You need to be the best CAD designer and understand all of Gd and T perfectly in order to be a really good engineer. And so something that I've really taken away from this is that technical knowledge is just one side of it, and I think it's really important to know and to understand that being highly technical is just one part of being an engineer, and that there is so much more to what makes a good engineer, a good engineering team and a good engineering organization tick. And I think that's really what we've touched on today.
Aaron Moncur:Fantastic summary, yeah, so let's, let's go through all of these very quickly. Once more, just to recap, we've got, number one, understand the business, not just the engineering. Number two, develop those soft skills and communication skills. Number three, have mentors, coaches and generally build relationships with people. Number four, do more than the minimum, do more than what you're paid for, and then, last but not least, establish and follow processes. So there's some bonus content that that we want to share quickly before we sign off here today. And this is a segue into a mini series that Brad and I are going to do. One of the questions that I have asked our guests for the past probably 100 episodes, it's been a recurring question, is, what have you done to advance or to accelerate the speed of engineering? And this is a question that I'm very interested in, not just for my own team here at Pipeline, but because productivity drives me I'm I feel at my best when I feel that I'm being productive. So how do we do things faster? How do we do things more efficient? And I've gotten a lot of really great insight and feedback from all the wonderful guests that have shared their insights here on the being an engineer podcast, and I have a list of 20 very actionable things or methods for accelerating the speed of engineering. And in this this, it's going to be a three part mini series. Brad and I are going to go. Through all 20 of these methods for accelerating the speed of engineering. So as a quick bonus and a teaser, we'll go through two of them right now, and this will be a lead in into this subsequent mini series. So the first one how to accelerate the speed of engineering is when you are this is in the context of early stage R and D prototyping, you're trying to build something quickly to see if just the core concept works, if the idea works, buy existing products, tear them apart and reuse the components to hack a prototype together quickly, as opposed to spending time to design everything custom in CAD you might need to do some of that also, but look for opportunities. If there's some mechanism that you need and maybe exactly what you need, you can't buy off the shelf, but you can buy something close enough. Here's an example. There was a machine that we were building a little while ago, and we needed a a constant force spring mechanism to just pull with a constant force on a lever arm on this machine. And we could have, you know, gone, gone to McMaster and found a constant force spring and designed a little housing to hold it in place. And that wouldn't have taken that long, you know, maybe a few hours, half a day or something to design a little holder for this constant force spring spec out the right one on McMaster. What we ended up doing instead is just using a tape measure. We took a tape measure out of a drawer which has a constant force spring in it, and we just used a tape measure to test this idea that we had, and that took zero extra time. We literally grabbed it out of a drawer and used it. So look for opportunities like that, to just use existing products, tear them apart if you need to, and reuse the components instead of trying to design everything custom, especially in that early stage R and D prototyping phase. So that's one, and then the second one goes along with some of the things that we've already talked about today, and that's building trust and psychological safety so that people ask for help and surface problems early. Now I have some thoughts about this that I can share, but Brad, I want to give you an opportunity. Do you any stories or thoughts that come to mind along the lines of making team members feel safe, so that they ask for help or surface problems early.
Brad Hirayama:I think this is the most important key for engineering teams that want to move fast. Engineering is such a collaborative discipline. You know there's, there's very few times where one person can do everything, and can and can can do it all. But as we talked about today, business matters, and so timelines matter. And the thing is, is that when you're building a timeline, you can't always just build buffer into every single task that's on that timeline. And so what's really important is people that are proactive, people that are able to spot where you're going to have some type of issue early in the process, is invaluable to making sure that your timeline is de risked and that you're going to be able to meet your your key milestones. And the only way that you can do that is to have a team where you trust from the top, top down and bottom up. Everybody trusts everybody. But you also have to have an environment where from your builders all the way up to your executive level, everybody has the safety to say that doesn't sound right. And the thing is, is that that sounds so easy to do, but in practice, and when you really dive in and look at a lot of organizations, that's not the case. Most organizations are built around whatever the senior executive has to say. That's what we do. That's what we follow. It's more rare to find where you have a junior engineer who is there, who's working on a product or process, who is able to say, this is not right, and everybody takes him seriously, and everybody then looks at and distills this information to the point where a critical eye is is given. So, yeah, I'm super excited about this. You know, the first time I was on this podcast, was on the accelerate to engineering, or acceleration of engineering series. And so this topic also is, is always going to be top of mind for me, working in startups, timelines are always going to be the pressure point for us, and the pressure cooker. So I love this topic. I can't wait to go through this, and I think it's it's going to be a fun, a fun. A fun three episode mini series for us.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, yep. So they're your two bonus tips. Buy existing products for prototyping and build trust in psychological safety. We've got 18 more of these methods for accelerating the speed of engineering, so tune in. They'll be coming up in the near future. So whenever you're listening to this, probably a few weeks after this, is when we'll have the first in that three part mini series. And I think that, I think that's all we have, yeah, today, Brad and Aaron, just want to go over,
Brad Hirayama:yeah, just just, just one more thing. So I so I really want to start to plug if you guys have not, please head over to pipeline, media lab.beehive.com, subscribe to our newsletter. In that newsletter, I go through and try to distill down some of the most important topics from the last 300 episodes. I pick one. Sometimes it's recent, sometimes it's in the archive. And so it's a really good, good way to kind of get a good holistic view of the episodes. But I also want to elicit some, some some feedback. Aaron's done this podcast really interview style for the last almost six years now, and we're introducing this kind of new, new new style between the two of us. And I want to know what you guys think. Is this something that you want to hear more of? Is it these conference Do you like these conversations? Is this that the topics that you want to hear or is there something else you know we really want to build, PML and everything that we're doing here, and the podcast, the newsletter, everything collaboratively with our audience. And so please leave a comment if you want to email us, our emails are going to be in the show notes or on on LinkedIn. We're both on LinkedIn, both open to DMS, but, yeah, any feedback you guys can have, I think we can just we're trying to make this as best as possible, and so whatever we can do to make this better, we're open to it.
Aaron Moncur:Great. All right, thanks, Brad. Until next time.
Brad Hirayama:Until next time, have a good one.
Aaron Moncur:I'm Aaron Moncur, founder of pipeline design and engineering. If you like what you heard today, please share the episode to learn how your team can leverage our team's expertise developing advanced manufacturing processes, automated machines and custom fixtures, complemented with product design and R D services. Visit us at Team pipeline.us. To join a vibrant community of engineers online. Visit the wave. Dot, engineer, thank you for listening. Being an engineer has more than 300 episodes, and you don't have to listen to them in order. If you're dealing with a specific challenge right now, there's a good chance we've already interviewed an engineer who's been through it. You can jump around, search by topic and listen to what's most relevant to you see you on the next episode, you.
