| Dealing with this right now actually. We (a start-up) got bought. The product was split into two teams - we originally did BOTH HW and SW. Their HW team was pretty good so we let them do the HW and we did the SW. The problem can from the HW actually being HW + FW (a form of SW) and turns out they are mediocre at best FW and digital design and that's become a problem (we have to hook into what they are doing). We (the original startup crew) finally figured out what the problem was: their commitment to ANYTHING (our HW project but also every other product they've ever worked on) is exactly the same as how most people treat school and homework, namely, how much can get away with NOT thinking and doing about it and still get a passing grade. They can't be "fixed" because that's how deep the problem is: they've been trained for this attitude since they were children and they wouldn't know how to break out if their lives depended on it; they are not dumb or low-IQ. But they've been trained to achieve the lowest-common-denominator of anything they design or engineer. This has never been how any of us have approached anything in life. For us, it's: 1. Do the best job regardless of what you could get away with 2. Focus on the big picture and little picture integration 3. Know who actually makes the product a success: the customer and the market Significantly IMO I went to elite schools on merit rather than legacy/money while my co-founder was home-schooled and didn't actually finish his BS but he has more drive and commitment than 99 out of 100 BS EE or CS degree holders I've ever met or worked with. Most people mouth the words but either don't actually know what they mean or do not mean what they are saying when they say them. This may not be sufficient but I think it's a necessary difference between normie engineers and 10x engineers. |