When a high-school senior recently asked me what a day in the
life of an engineer is like, I was temporarily taken aback. I
could not easily respond. It depends, I said, going over the
usual range of possible environments — research, design and
development, manufacturing, marketing and sales — and telling
him a few war stories of my own to give real examples of what an
engineer might encounter. I did the best I could in the time I
thought a youngster might be willing to spare, but went away
feeling I had somehow missed the mark.
The form of his question had been unusual. Later, I thought, he
had probably been wondering whether engineering, if he chose it
as a profession, would be as interesting and exciting as he
believed it to be, or might there be many days of
less-than-challenging routine. How many high-water marks are
there in an engineering career, he may have been thinking. To
what extent can you do your own thing, or are you overly
restricted by your company or your boss?
Too late, Tracy Kidder’s The Soul of a New Machine came
to mind. Describing the trials and tribulations of an
engineering group at Data General in the late 1970s, striving
to develop a fast, inexpensive machine to better its
competition, the book, I thought, would be an excellent choice
to recommend to the young man should I encounter him again. I
withdrew a copy from the local library to refresh my memory.
The Story in
Brief
Operating from the basement of the Data General headquarters
building in Westborough, Massachusetts, the team was formed in
some secrecy, with a tight budget and a close deadline — factors
that guaranteed challenges to all its members. Its head, Tom
West, a veteran computer designer, split the team into two
groups: the “Hardy Boys” (hardware design) and the “Microkids”
(software design). Many top engineering graduates were lured to
the team by the prospect of having their name on an important
new machine, something the Data General recruiters told them
could happen at IBM only after years of routine experience.
Those who were excited at the prospect and showed other
indications that they would “sign on” were hired. Signing-on was
an informal process that amounted to agreeing, with unsolicited
enthusiasm, that the project would come first, ahead of friends,
family and pastimes.
The perks were these: they could wear jeans, work any hours they
wanted, do anything necessary short of spending money without
authorization, with the proviso that they’d complete their part
of the project in time to bring the whole machine to completion
within the specified deadline (one year!). There was an
implication, but nothing in writing, that if you signed on and
the project was a winner (i.e., it went out the door), you’d
then be rewarded. Rumors about stock options circulated.
Imagine how exciting this prospect was to a new graduate! West
gave only broad guidelines (The 32-bit minicomputer was to
compete with DEC’s successful VAX machines, and no mode bit was
to be used). West took a hands-off approach with the team, communicating only
through his two group lieutenants. “You tell a guy to do [some
part of the design] and fit it all on one board, and I don’t
want to hear from him until he knows how to do it,” West said.
Many of the team were overachievers in math in school, and had a
history of taking things apart to see how they worked. To his
credit, Carl Alsing, supervisor of the hardware group, was able
to recruit a woman, not easy in those days. Eighty-hour work
weeks were not unusual, with weekends and overnights no
exception. When a team member hosted an off-hours party, the
talk was exclusively computers. The term “midnight programmer”
came into vogue. One member spent nights alone in the lab,
studying schematics and microcode listings to help him
understand the IP, even though it was not the part of the
machine to which he himself was assigned. The members could work alone or
together. If personalities clashed, one could leave notes for
the other on the “next shift” to pick up where he left off.
Technical controversies were encouraged. The axiom that no
enmity should proceed from a dispute among engineers generally
prevailed.
Problems did surface. The drama deepened. As it was never clear
to what extent the company was prepared to continue support of
the project, some programming was done on the sly, adding to the
intrigue and enjoyment by the secret team.
One team member who signed on did not stay. After spending many
80-hour weeks, he left this note one day: “I’m going to a
commune in Vermont and will deal with no unit of time shorter
than a season.” He later joined another computer company where
he worked an eight-hour day, five-day week. Even so, he had
liked the fact that he had a lot of control over the things he
did at Data General.
The independence given to team members led one to complain
“There’s no grand design …no one’s in control ...” The Harvard
Business School “would have barfed at the management structure,”
he said. There were no organizational tables or PERT charts to
be found in the department. West felt the minimal bureaucracy to
be beneficial, even necessary to the on-time completion of the
project. To contain costs, he had rejected a request by the team
for a new logic analyzer, saying, the story went, “An analyzer
costs ten thousand dollars. Overtime for engineers is free.” The
team grew used to West’s aloofness. He would not respond to
their greetings in the halls, but acknowledged their individual
contributions to their team leaders.
Success Achieved
Data General introduced the new computer in April 1980. Alsing expressed
the team’s feelings, calling it “the most exciting project in
the company, the most exciting thing in our lives for a year and
a half.” He gave lots of credit to West, saying “West never
bored us.”
As for West, he was compelled by the challenge of working on a
project so complex that no single person could comprehend it.
“It includes some notion of insecurity and challenge, of where
the edges are, and of finding out what you can’t do, all within
a perfectly justifiable scenario,” West said. He likened it to
mountain climbing.
Writer Tracy Kidder concluded: “Maybe in the
late 1970s designing and debugging a computer was inherently
more interesting than most other jobs in industry. But to at
least some engineers, at the outset, [this computer] appeared to
be a fairly uninteresting computer to build. Yet more than two
dozen people worked on it overtime, without any real hope of
material rewards, for a year and a half, and afterward most of
them felt glad.” The proper mix of guidance and freedom to
invent may have been the key.
Perhaps if I can get a copy of this tale of extreme engineering
to my young high-school acquaintance, it might convince him that
excitement and even drama is possible in an engineering career.
But I should warn him that it doesn't happen every day.
Sometimes he may have to leave the office at 5 o’clock, whether
he wants to or not.
For more, see:
Tracy Kidder, The Soul of a New Machine, Atlantic-Little,
Brown, 1981.
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