Why It's Wonderful to Be an Engineer

I sometimes wonder how everyone else gets through their life so inefficiently.

I can't fathom how it isn't painfully obvious that by coming in at 11am and leaving late at night, not only do I save half an hour of anguish in traffic, I save maybe $50 a day by eating all my meals at the office. Lunch is the new breakfast, and the giant container into which I serve it means it lasts all afternoon. Unlimited snacks on demand and dinner on the firm ftw!

Sure, it kills the social life, but I reserve that for Thursdays, since Sunday through Tuesday is for A/B testing profiles and asking matches for feedback on my experiment vs control elements, Wednesday is for release and Thursday is for the date. And also why would you NOT submit a follow-up survey after a date? Honestly if a date isn’t intrigued by a rigorous data-driven approach to life then it would never have worked out anyway. Take a guess at what my dating NPS is. Well no obviously it can’t be that high because then why would I be dating. Think about it, NPS is a retention metric… I suppose going back to root principles to understand something is just something that has been drilled into me alone as an engineer.

Life is all science. I’m glad to have that rigor instilled into me, and I just wish this were the case for more people.

Why do people just write down lists of things to do? Don't they even know about Lean Agile/Scrum? How do they get through their day?

I see people sitting around all the time just... talking. How can there be that much to talk about? I feel like maybe I should be talking too but I’ve got so much to get through. Anyway if it’s work related, I prefer to get it all out of the way in a daily standup and communicate the rest over Slack. Maybe people don’t know the bliss of the $300 noise cancelling headphones that only engineers get for free.

And in the rare case you do have to get up and go somewhere, why would you not pick the quickest, most expedient form of transportation? The future is now!

Look, I get that there are non-technicals out there and we need them, I’m not disputing that, but honestly it seems like our company could do the same job with a third of them. I don't know how to educate them. They don't show up to the brown bag lunches I advertise on the office workplace. Don't they use it? I suppose I could post on Instagram but… privacy, need I say more.

Anyway. I've got to do another build. I’m exhausted. How are we out of low sugar Red Bull cola again?