It isn't true engineering until it is boring to outsiders.
One of my first jobs was as an intern working on a laser fusion project at Los Alamos. It was exciting, as in giant lasers and high voltage. My job was also exciting because we really didn’t know how much those pellets of deuterium could be smashed and how much neutron flux they would produce. That’s science.
In my most recent job, we build software that allows our customers’ infrastructure teams to provide services that run for years with no user-apparent bobbles or disruption. Hardware fails. Bugs are found. However, the users get a stable platform that performs the same way today as it did yesterday. That’s engineering.
Being on either of these teams is exciting. Both involve working with top-flight thinkers solving hard problems — and a bunch of not-so-hard ones as well — with precision and finesse. Working on the science of fusion had the promise of solving global warming and the energy supply, but working on the engineering of data is actually feeding and protecting people today.
The key to making this engineering valuable is to make it rock solid and reliable, and to make it essentially invisible to those who use the data. Let’s look at how this is done.
