Leading engineers has been compared to herding cats. ZZ

FreddyMusic

Leading engineers has been compared to herding cats. However:

1) A cat playing with a string may quickly get board and loose interest. If engineers are kept at the same repetitive tasks, they may also quickly get board and loose effectiveness. Be sure to provide changing challenges to your engineers. Make sure they are satisfying challenges and not impossible Herculean tasks.
You can't herd cats. However, if you can get the cat's attention focused on a string or bird, you only need to stand back and let the cat do it's thing. Engineers also are very independent. Engineers need to be pointed in the right direction and given information needed to reach the goal. Then stand back and don't micromanage.

2) The simple sound of a can-opener will make cats do amazing acrobatic feats to get to the source of the sound. For engineers, recognizing them, meeting their basic needs for tools, and protecting them from politics will allow them to perform amazing design feats.

3) Cats may bring you a dead bird or mouse and lay it at your feet. This is a sign of respect and acknowledging you as the master. Engineers may occasionally bring you a thorny problem and ask for your help or resources. This is a sign of respect and acknowledgement of your position. Don’t throw the problem back into their face. Taking charge of a problem handed you by an engineer is not making you subservient to the engineer, it is freeing them up to focus better on other technical issues.

4) If you hiss at a cat, it will hiss back. If you then try to reach out to it, be prepared to go to the doctor. If you hiss at a cat often enough, it will avoid you or disappear for elsewhere. Don't yell or be-little your technical people - it is demotivating, not motivating. If you do loose your cool, quickly eat some humble pie and apologize or they may go elsewhere.

5) Cats sleep a lot - it's the nature of the cat. However, when you're asleep or not looking, cats will be on the prowl. It may seem that technical people are sometimes goofing off, but design engineering is not a production line. Technical people will read technical articles, may follow up a thought by searching the web, or may try to peruse an unrelated technical idea. It may not look like work, but creativity and keeping-up technically is part of the technical career. It pays dividends in the details of the design that you will probably never notice. Engineers tend to keep mentally working even when they are not at work. If you want to hiss at them about this, well, see #4.

6) Cats require flea collars, litter boxes, scratching posts, vet care, etc. If you want to do without some of these the cat may not be at maximum health. Engineers also require accessories - tools, computers, software, equipment, etc. In many companies, capital equipment is a nasty word. But just like an old flea collar or old litter box, old equipment may not do the job, or may be just plain nasty. No equipment creates even a bigger mess.

OK - maybe I've taken this analogy far enough! I started out to post a quick remark about how managing engineers was like herding cats for teaaddict, and it grew from there.

Dogs don't work well when comparing them to Engineers. Dogs are too loyal - you can mistreat a dog to the point of killing it, and it will still look up to you. Too many dysfunctional companies want to hire dogs. Good engineers are more like cats - they won't put up with mistreatment for long before they leave.

I'm actually not a cat person. My sister had one when I was a small kid but today I'm allergic to 'em.

zye

Spent 5 mins to read it,it's really penetratingly~~

FreddyMusic

zye,

I assume you herd little cat and have concept of engineers.

One question,
For me it is interesting to know, Why you like to stay in a Engineering forum ?
Try to find a boy friend ? Or what ?

zye

hehe,I just want to meet different people form me and my life
Don't you think living in the same way is really boredom~~
I also want to know why you think I was planning to find a BF ??

ggbbggb

原帖由 zye 于 2007-8-20 18:01 发表
hehe,I just want to meet different people form me and my life
Don't you think living in the same way is really boredom~~
I also want to know why you think I was planning to find a BF ??

That is often how a wolf begins his story, you trapped?