Understanding how something works, finding where it fails, and improving it, whatever discipline that happens to be in.
Click a discipline to see how it connects.
I don’t think an engineering mindset was something I was given when I graduated as an engineer. Looking back, it had been following me for most of my life.
I’ve always had a habit of looking at things and wondering how they work, why they were designed that way, whether I could fix them myself, and, usually a little later, whether I could make them work better.
My professional background is in software engineering, computer engineering, systems, and infrastructure, but my curiosity has never stayed inside those boundaries. Over the years I’ve worked on cars, automotive repair and maintenance, detailing and paintwork, general painting, electronics, basic electrical work, wiring, soldering, welding, 3D printing, DIY projects, home improvement, construction, concrete work, yard projects, design, BBQ setups, and a long list of smaller things built mostly to make everyday life easier.
My garage reflects that pretty accurately. It has gradually turned into a small workshop, lab, fabrication area, auto bay, and storage problem all at once. There are tools for automotive work, painting, electrical work, soldering, welding, fabrication, woodworking, yard work, detailing, diagnostics, 3D printing, and plenty of things that made perfect sense to buy for one very specific project.
At this point, the problem is rarely whether I have the tool. The problem is remembering where I put it.
Most of those tools have actually been used, too. I’m not much of a collector for the sake of collecting. If something ends up in the garage, chances are there was a project behind it, often one that began with the dangerous sentence, “This should be pretty easy.”
I learn the same way. I’ve always learned faster when I can see something, touch it, test it, take it apart, build it, or break it and figure out why. Reading gives me the map; doing it is usually when the subject really clicks.
School was an interesting version of that. I was never the student who naturally wanted to spend hours studying every subject. Math and history were the two exceptions. For a long time they came unusually easily to me without much effort, which probably gave me a little too much confidence, until I walked into my first real engineering mathematics course and discovered that mathematics was perfectly capable of fighting back.
That experience was probably good for me. It taught me the difference between understanding something quickly and understanding something deeply.
That curiosity still goes in directions that have nothing to do with my job. Recently I started learning about quantum computing simply because I find it fascinating. I’m not planning to build a quantum computer in the garage (although, given the garage, I should probably clarify that I have not ruled out buying an unnecessary tool for one). I just enjoy learning subjects that force me to think differently.
The same personality follows me into engineering work. When something fails, I usually don’t feel satisfied just making the error disappear. I want to know what actually happened, what evidence supports that explanation, whether I can reproduce it, and how to keep the same problem from wasting someone’s time again. That is usually where troubleshooting turns into automation, a tool, a better process, or occasionally a research question.
I like the boundary between physical and digital systems in particular. I’m equally comfortable thinking about a piece of software, a server, a circuit, a mechanical problem, a wiring issue, or something being built in the garage. To me, they are all systems with inputs, constraints, failure modes, and ways of understanding them.
Outside of that, I enjoy sports and anything that gives me an excuse to build, repair, design, or learn. Sometimes the result is useful software. Sometimes it is a repaired car, a painted body panel, a welded bracket, a soldered connection, a 3D-printed part, a concrete project, a better backyard setup, or a browser game that existed mostly because making it sounded fun.
I don’t expect all of those interests to fit neatly into one job title.
I think that is part of the point.