[squalo]

As someone who read Zen the first time many years ago, the book talks about the joy you get from seeing the world on a motorcycle (or bicycle) over being in a tank like car where you don't fully experience your environment. At its heart though, Pirsig used the concept of motorcycle maintenance as an examination of quality, value, and what brings people fulfillment. It takes a meandering path to get there which is probably why so many people don't finish it. The most memorable thing in the book for me was the topic of gumption and how it can so easily be destroyed. In my work in tech, gumption traps are everywhere. Reading this book made me recognize them so that I could logically decide my next action rather than making an emotional decision.

I wish I was articulate enough to properly detail how really interesting the book is even for someone who has absolutely zero interest in maintaining a combustion engine

[apsurd]

can you talk more about gumption (inspiration) traps you experienced at work? i take this to mean some powers-that-be destroyed internal motivations you had?

also curious to hear your learnings on holding onto inspiration.

[squalo]

I have a lot of examples. I'd love to tell the most recent one but its specific enough to possibly be identified. Instead I'll travel back in time a bit.

I was lead infrastructure engineer for middleware at a large retail company. When I started, they were just starting a project to roll out a content management system. Because they didn't have expertise in house at kickoff, they paid the vendor to do the infrastructure design. The visio drawing was delivered to me when I started for review. Despite the guy who drew it supposedly being an expert from the vendor, it was missing two of the most vital components in the drawing. He'd also asked for a total of over 30 physical machines which was way over the capacity that was needed then (or now). I setup a meeting with the Enterprise Architect who was heading the project. He didn't know anything about the solution and was the one who had suggested they hire the vendor to do the design. I explained to him the issues with the design and suggested a different design. I explained how the vendor charged by vcpu so implementing this overkill of a solution would result in millions of unnecessary dollars being spent. His response was "they've already budgeted the money so we should spend it while we've got it." I said ok and that was the end of the meeting.

I had already drawn out my corrected design and I assigned my team to build my design. This was 2012 and outside of a hardware refresh and updates/upgrades, that design is still in place and still being used. The company has saved millions in licensing fees and they don't even know it.

Most people would have just gone ahead and built it as told. My inspiration was to always do the right thing. It was obvious to me that the EA didn't have that same motivation.

[detourdog]

The book was on the recommended list for second year Industrial Design students at my school. The discussion on quality is why it was there.