A philosophical question - Is lateral thinking a valued trait in engineering?

[penfold]

[...]
I'm a rubbish part time self taught programmer. My struggles aren't so much with algorithms and bugs, its just getting the goddam code to compile so refactoring is basically a cleanup process where I take my ugly inelegant code and make it slightly less ugly and inelegant. Sometime I even put comments in!
[...]

Me too, I'll avoid saying rubbish because, well, it is part of my job, a relatively small part of being a mostly analogue and power person, but, it happens that sometimes I need to do a small amount of embedded and the first pass is rarely satisfactory. So I'd clarify to say, it isn't a particularly natural language to me and the thoughts as they happen in my brain don't necessarily produce good code, so I definitely lack some lateral thinking in that regard and my analysis and improvement cycles are fairly logical. I postulate therefore that somebody who can write good code naturally must surely be doing a lot of lateral thinking, whether they realise it or not.

Drawing good (appreciated by others) schematics, hierarchically, so that testable areas are cohesively documented, big BGA packages that are only ever going to be JTAG tested are pushed back, requirements and design decisions are visible and verifiable etc is kinda similar (in my opinion, feel free to oppose it), even flat, non-hierarchical, schematics which do that and avoid a big rats-nest of connections are difficult to draw if you base the arrangement of a circuit block only on a narrow set of logic following from the previous cluster of components... perhaps even the idea of "thinking ahead" is also a lateral thought process, or at least non-linear or high-order thinking as they call it.

[RJSV]

   OK, I'm 'wading' thru this; This subject is front and center, for those of us looking / needing improvement.

   Here is an example, of lateral thinking, in the 'immature' sense, maybe:
   The (smart terminal) had a 2 khz buzzer beeper, for when fax done, enabled by a mapped control bit, locally.  Well, with a stretch of (8-bit ) code, from a hobby magazine, you could 'modulate', basically treating that 1-bit audio like the fixed 2 khz was, also, along for the ride; merely adding a 'buzz' to the musical tones.
   So, point is, that was, maybe, LATERAL thinking, but about 'goof-off' subject material,  but DID get a response to the effect of:
   "...THAT will never work, as that channel is fixed frequency !..."

   While, like I said, it was a brief diversion, from daily tasks, that was 'Lateral thinking VS closed minds', ...was it ?
That being: I was thinking 'Modulate',  but also there was a file loading problem preventing proper load and run of the microcode.
   The other fellow; He was, apparently, convinced:
   "That will never WORK,  ...it's a fixed frequency tone"

   A sort-of   'Anti-Lateral', or I guess you (already) have been terming that as 'Vertical'.

But folks, like a lot of Engineers,  I think a lot of TEAM concept hasn't been taught, well, at least in MY various schooling / training.

[penfold]

I think that's a good example. But to a person who'd done that before or was from a comms and protocols background (maybe not that, but a background more naturally focused on modulation and spectra or whatever), that wouldn't be quite the same logical jump as to somebody who... can't think of a good example... but somebody who say, didn't think in those terms.

So, a bit like an IQ test, as a measure of somebody's ability to recognise patterns, reason syllogisms and whatever else it tests, it is possible to raise your score a little by learning to recognise the kinds of trickery used in number patterns and at least with vocabulary, just because a person doesn't know the meaning of the words in a syllogism doesn't define their capacity to learn them and do better on successive tests. So... I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with anything, just musing on how lateral thinking to one person could be (I don't like the term verticle and lateral... surely if you're laying down they're co-linear?) to another, the opposite... so that's perhaps a lot of decisions and processes natural to engineering that to somebody else would be very lateral.

Non-linear I think works better with my interpretation of it, more about thinking several steps ahead and evaluating a route between, drawing in knowledge from other disciplines, questioning the end result before it's defined etc. But most importantly, I don't in any way want to make it sound like I think that any of linear, non-linear, rational, verticle, lateral, real, imaginary, whatever thinking, is "better" than the other... I think I might have implied before that I do... the fact that some employers like to hear the buzz-words when justifying a salary boost is the only reason I'd call out-of-the-box thinking better.

[mc172]

I haven't read the entire thread so sorry if I repeat what someone else has said.
My experience is that it depends on who you're working for and this is the difficult bit as it takes you a few months in a place to figure this out. I've worked at places that didn't like it when I came up with solutions that were a bit unconventional and they made it clear that I should keep to the well-trodden path, and in some cases pretty much just do it like the last guy did because that's how we do it. OK then, time to find a new job. One of these bizarre places I ended up working actually told me that doing such things as thinking about problems wasn't my job, "that's what Colin's here for, he's the "ideas man" in this company!"

Other places I've worked have encouraged thinking about problems and coming up with unique (or clever if you like, not that I think I'm clever) solutions to them that aren't immediately obvious, even if it takes a bit of extra time to get there over doing it "conventionally" or just cracking on with whatever you've been given like a dead-inside CAD drone. Often if you step back a bit and ask how the product you're designing is going to be used or what it interfaces with and how flexible those details are (which in my experience are never given to you without having to ask for them), lightbulb moments happen and that's where you start being able to claw back some performance margin, perhaps you might even be able to outperform your competitors because you've seen something they haven't.

Keep yourself grounded though, it's important to remind yourself sometimes that it's also not good to be constantly reinventing the wheel, despite it being quite interesting to do so.

Also, unfortunately, there are boring, mundane jobs that need to be done such as maintaining CAD libraries, PLM systems, BOMs, wiring harness drawings and such like. Putting thinking creative type people on those tasks for too long is a highly effective way of killing them off, whether they burn out or find more stimulating work elsewhere.

[penfold]

[...] "that's what Colin's here for, he's the "ideas man" in this company!"
[...]

I once got accosted for daring to speak to a lead-physicist about possible ways we could solve a dire internal EMC issue (10kV pulses and FPGA reset controllers rarely play well at the best of times less so when there's no room to fit any more ferrites), it wasn't even particularly lateral or crazy thinking, in just a casual water-cooler conversation I dared to consider the root cause of the problem because there was no more room for sticking plasters (other interpretations of events may exist).

The side-rant is that there is far too much, unjustified, value a company can take from saying "all of our engineers have advanced degrees, therefore, our product is great" when maybe it should be "we have a range of skills, expertise and qualifications among our engineers that enables them to function well together and produce us a good product". By the very definition, everything learned at university is learnable and everything from experience is forgettable (and vice versa) and there is a hell of a lot which can be learned from "drone" tasks and very little from exclusively having blue-sky ideas and not experiencing the pains of entering x-number of components into an ERP system. So, hopefully, I've self demonstrated there that my resume may or may not be blank, I may or may not be a competent engineer, what I consider in myself to be good lateral thinking may just be flawed logic and in any case, I don't know when to shut up.

[Berni]

That sort of design work compartmentalization with lacking communication between departments is how a lot of idiotic designs come into existence.

The department in question just does whatever they are told and throws it over the wall to the next. They don't have a big picture view of what this thing is supposed to be so they just implement whatever the team before told them to implement. If it's something stupid they will design it in. The team after them might not know why some of these features ware in the design so they just work around them towards what they think this should do.... etc

By the end of it the product has some design features about it that seam completely backwards. Like a product clearly has hardware capability to do X but instead the software uses that hardware to do Y in some kludgy hacky way, even tho the hardware to do Y would have been simpler than hardware to do X

[Cerebus]

The first time I heard engineers talking about refactoring code I had no idea what they were talking about. It was only later that realized that it was just a fancy buzzword that could of been dreamt up on the Starship Enterprise.

It's pretty obvious that the origin of the term 'refactoring' comes not from some random desire to just make up fancy sounding words but from the mathematical term 'factoring' meaning "take out the parts that are in common in a lot of places and put them in just one place".

[Circlotron]

At one stage I worked for ten years in a SMPS design lab as a technical assistant so I had no direct input to designs. There was this situation with putting 3mm screws though a heat sink extrusion into a device block and they only allowed for the screw to engage into that aluminium block three turns! I pointed out that that would strip the thread in the aluminium very easily, especially if it had to be dismantled and reassembled. I was shouted down with words to the effect that the production department should learn how to torque screws properly... Eventually the service dept complained long and hard enough for them to change it.

Another time I found that their new 3kW 54vdc resonant mode psu would overheat the hexfilar wound dual 70mm diameter toroids if the load was approx 3 amps because the resonant frequency and toroid losses reached a max. Problem did not occur at higher loads. No one would listen so I set one up on my bench and let it run until it was fairly smoking then went and got the boss. That finally got some results.

[CatalinaWOW]

If the OP is still reading the prior post points out that listening is another valuable engineering skill, right up there with lateral thinking.  The more education and/or experience you have the more difficult this seems to be.  I know, because I have found myself guilty on more than one occasion.

[RJSV]

   mc172 thanks:
   Beg to differ, just a little.
It's alright: This here (blog site) has, I don't know...picture(s) of a cat (or cats),
I posted an interesting BUG picture; No One objected.
We humans now, subject matter is 'all over the place'.
(I'd rather play / teach my GUITAR).

   So, here I am, keeping re-inventing, the wheel...while others become 'Card Playing' experts. I simply LOVE novelty, whether by my mind, or others.
I even DID re-invent, a wheel:

    Enter the 'Just in Time' SPOKE...it's a system to, in transit, disconnect each spoke in turn for missing any collision, with support columns that,
Poke through the wheel spokes...

   So, respectfully, I want to INVENT... It's not a quick easy path, I've been lucky (life and limb, literally)!

Thanks, there !

[RJSV]

   FOLKS:
   Sorry, sorry, sorry, I didn't get a good 'shake-out', and examination, of my previous point:
   'IF THEY ARE ON THE PAYROLL, 'they' are then part of the equation, regarding 'dead weight' employees.
Course some employees are actually OK and under some sort of unfair reputation.
   But, the proverbial 'Boss's Son' DOES EXIST, in most any dialog to the contrary is...well...flat out at odds with a clear discussion.
   Comprendai ?

   So,... while some see the humor, in making an ORG CHART having those subtle little lines, connecting PURCHASING DEPT. / SHIPPING DEPT. / etc. Those
lines NEED to include, for validity, 'Boss's SON..
 Owner's Daughter's Husband...Owner's Second Cousin,
etc. etc.
OR...How about put a 'disclaimer' in the data, saying:

   "All relatives or good friends data,...pls see page 52.".
That way you, actually covered that workplace.

Sorry sorry sorry.

[penfold]

[...]
   So,... while some see the humor, in making an ORG CHART having those subtle little lines, connecting PURCHASING DEPT. / SHIPPING DEPT. / etc. Those
lines NEED to include, for validity, 'Boss's SON..
 Owner's Daughter's Husband...Owner's Second Cousin,
etc. etc.
OR...How about put a 'disclaimer' in the data, saying:

   "All relatives or good friends data,...pls see page 52.".
That way you, actually covered that workplace.
[...]

Yeah, haha, they certainly should, at least whilst they're complying with the ISO9001 stuff by having job-specs, minimum qualifications, KPIs etc... they should at least be honest and put "...unless the employee is the boss's son".

The MD once asked me to review a firmware guy's (from a different office) code (because they slyly wanted to get rid of him and hoped I'd say it was awful and he was lazy), I sent back my report saying it was "very impressive and way beyond my critique but btw... your son's isn't"... and that was the end of that job.

[fourfathom]

I'm sorry to hear about all the dysfunctional companies you guys have had to work for. I've seen some of that crap but for the last 25 years of my career I worked for startups where we were focused on being successful rather than empire building and protecting deadwood. There's a world of difference.

[coppice]

I'm sorry to hear about all the dysfunctional companies you guys have had to work for. I've seen some of that crap but for the last 25 years of my career I worked for startups where we were focused on being successful rather than empire building and protecting deadwood. There's a world of difference.

Most stories of larger companies are a mix of good and bad, because any large group of people is never just one thing. If you want to hear stories of truly dysfunctional places, you need to listen to stories of startups. They get really polarised, and good ones often flip to awful if the original plan doesn't actually go to plan.

[RJSV]

   Yea !
   Lateral Thinking: Towards One's Career :
  The 'troubled' places had similar structure, being at about 20 employees, roughly.  Going into WEB sites later, that had 'consumer review' type evaluations, all did say, " Don't work here if you want to build a career, that's not in the equation..."
Plus, I have to say, I've gotten a few decent jobs, VIA a relative, or neighbor...
   One interesting thing is:
These 'little' places, doing new products, had a designated 'Outsider', right in the center, an Inventor type / Phd.     One of those 'hyper-brained' people was named...(wait for it...).     'Clark Smarter'.           lol

   BUT, back to Lateral Thinking:
   That Mars Lander, firing retro-rockets and 'hovering', at 20 feet up, that's over the top just weird.
"Did your 7 y.o. KID come up with that SUCESSFUL IDEA ?"

   AND, also the 'BACKWARDS' travel HOME, that 1rst rocket booster that literally turns around and flies back to the pad...AWESOME OFF-SCALE...

...(Did someone's 4 year old come up with that?
...(Seriously, NASA folks...whew...)!

[fourfathom]

About this lateral thinking...  It seems to me that we should be talking about specialists and generalists.  I'm definitely a generalist, but with some areas of specialization.  In my experience it's the generalists that come up with what appear to be the out-of-the-box concepts -- not because of any particular "lateral" thinking, but because they can bring experience from one field and apply in in another. A specialist wouldn't have been exposed to that foreign concept or application, so would never have a chance to consider it.

There are obviously places where you need a specialist, and others where a generalist will have useful strengths.  Lateral thinking without adequate knowledge seldom results in anything useful.

[tggzzz]

About this lateral thinking...  It seems to me that we should be talking about specialists and generalists.  I'm definitely a generalist, but with some areas of specialization.  In my experience it's the generalists that come up with what appear to be the out-of-the-box concepts -- not because of any particular "lateral" thinking, but because they can bring experience from one field and apply in in another. A specialist wouldn't have been exposed to that foreign concept or application, so would never have a chance to consider it.

There are obviously places where you need a specialist, and others where a generalist will have useful strengths.  Lateral thinking without adequate knowledge seldom results in anything useful.

That's a sensible generalisation (i.e. it matches my opinion and background )

[RJSV]

Yes, you can't just be making up, the proverbial UNICORN with golden poop...
   My favorite example, comes out of my own 'shortcomings'; that being a 'POCKET SHOWER'.
It didn't have to be built to recognize the looks, market, and attractive package possible.
   Turns out, there IS a similar product, in form of a CAMP SHOWER, that's a solar warmed bag you can hang from a tree branch, out at some backwoods backpacking trek.
   The engineering would have been centered on little pumps, and the user buttons and utility screen.

   But point is very similar, to what you guys just said; It was easy to propose, and outline, A device that could work, in confines of a train bathroom, for example.
(Just for quick armpit swipes).
The practical outlay of cash required, PROBABLY staggering, for a decent development effort, along with 'start-up hassles...