Hey, it’s Collin. Welcome to Engineering Echelons, a newsletter full of ideas and insights to help engineers excel at management.

Here’s what I’ve got for you this week.

• New and noteworthy news

• A management perspective to consider

• Leadership insights to delve into

• And more…

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Alright, let’s get into it.

Noteworthy Headlines

U.S. Commercial Construction Outlook (QBE)

Highlights:

• Despite some near term uncertainty, the 2-3 year outlook is largely positive

• U.S. fiscal health remains a persistent concern, as does the lack of profitability for AI and related tools despite massive investments

Fed cuts rates again, signals it may be done (WSJ)

Highlights:

• Federal Reserve officials cut interest rates at their third consecutive meeting but signaled little appetite for more amid unusual internal divisions over whether inflation or the job market should be their bigger worry.

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Management Perspective

Engineers think in terms of efficiency a lot. It’s a major part of our schooling. We learned how to quantify and influence efficiency. Namely, it’s all about reducing inputs and maximizing outputs.

To engineers, efficiency is a good thing. To managers, that’s not always the case.

Efficiency is important, but it’s only a multiplier to the work that is being done. When teams multiply the wrong way, you just get bad results quickly.

Efficacy, on the other hand, considers the value of the work being done. It looks at the overall effectiveness of the outcome, not just a measure of outputs compared to inputs.

Efficiency asks: “How fast can we do this?”

Efficacy asks: “Should we be doing this?”

Managers need to prioritize efficacy before they can shift to efficiency.

Management Insights

Ed Catmull (founder of Pixar) on the importance of teams:

“Getting the team right is the necessary precursor to getting the ideas right. It is easy to say you want talented people, and you do, but the way those people interact with one another is the real key. Even the smartest people can form an ineffective team if they are mismatched. That means it is better to focus on how a team is performing, not on the talents of the individuals within it.”

—

Alexandr Wang (Founder of Scale AI, Chief AI Officer at Meta) on purposeful hiring:

“…as we’ve grown and continue to grow, it will be more common for people to interview for the brand rather than the substance. In fact, most growing companies often miss this effect entirely, and simply observe the fact they’re getting far more top-of-funnel. It makes it much easier to recruit raw numbers, but what often is missed is the ROI of the hires drops dramatically. Before you know it, the majority of the company begins to resemble a university: there’s a constant churn of smart but uninvolved people who stay for a few years, and never dive deep enough to do meaningful work. Unless you actively fight against it, it will happen.”

—

Henry Ford (Founder of Ford Motor Company) on resistance to change:

“Businessmen go down with their business because they like the old way so well they cannot bring themselves to change. One sees them all about—men who do not know that yesterday is past, and who woke up this morning with last year’s ideas.”

Management Resource

Stop solving your team’s problems for them (HBR)

This article is a good resource for promoting self-sufficiency amongst team members.

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• Let me know if you’ve found something worth sharing.

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Looking forward to hearing from you. See you next time.

Collin

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