Hard, harder, hardest

I’ve been quiet lately. When the boss is not around at work, my stress level goes up a little higher.

I honestly don't know how he can do it on a daily basis, sitting for meetings after meetings where all the managers from different departments attend and when everybody in the cross-functional meeting was asked to introduce themselves, everybody mentioned they had 8 - 12 years of experience, some worked so long they can't remember how many years, which made me feel tiny, tinier, then tiniest, which made me whisper a little too loudly to the person next to me, "I think I'm the youngest", which some of them heard and made them laugh, which made me say when I introduced myself, "I've been working for 4 and a half years", unconsciously hoping that adding the "half a year" would make it sound like I'm not so tiny among all the very experienced managers sitting there. ;)

Anyway, I need to state some facts about being an engineer in this gray company I work for.

Fact #1: Being an engineer is hard.
It requires a lot of brain juice to survive. I’m proud to be working with a lot of intelligent people, but there’s always the pressure to produce as much brain juice as them.

Fact #2: Being a software engineer who has to understand how the hardware works is harder.
You may be a software expert, but the software has to understand the hardware and you don't understand the hardware. So how leh? More brain juice required.

Fact #3: Being a software engineer who has to understand how the hardware works but has no passion for hardware is the hardest.
Brain juice is not the only thing needed. Without passion, it's hard to produce brain juice on a daily basis. Then eventually, the brain juice may dry up and the brain halts to a stand still.

Conclusion of all 3 facts
Boss = passion + brain juice (a lot of it).

Sooooooo....... Next time you’re enjoying your latest new cool electronic device, take just one second to think of the hundreds of engineers dried up all the brain juice, cracking their head for hours trying come out with the latest technology to make life better for you.

It's just one second of thought. :)