Pick, Place, Podcast
Soft Skills of Engineering w/ Being an Engineer Host, Aaron Moncur
This week we're joined by fellow podcast host Aaron Moncur who runs the Being an Engineer Podcast and is also the founder of Pipeline Design and Engineering.
We had a fun discussion on the soft skills of engineering, including how to have systems in place that align with/support your goals, time management, and productivity hacks you might find useful for managing yourself and your team.
Pipeline partners with medical & other device engineering teams who need turnkey equipment such as cycle test machines, custom test fixtures, automation equipment, assembly jigs, inspection stations, and more.
pickplacepodcast.com
This week we're joined by fellow podcast host Aaron Moncur who runs the Being an Engineer Podcast and is also the founder of Pipeline Design and Engineering.
We had a fun discussion on the soft skills of engineering, including how to have systems in place that align with/support your goals, time management, and productivity hacks you might find useful for managing yourself and your team.
Pipeline partners with medical & other device engineering teams who need turnkey equipment such as cycle test machines, custom test fixtures, automation equipment, assembly jigs, inspection stations, and more.
pickplacepodcast.com
Welcome to the Pick Place podcast, a show where we talk about electronics, manufacturing, and everything related to getting a circuit board into the world. This is Chris Denny with Worthington.
Melissa:And this is Melissa Hough with CircuitHub.
Chris:Welcome back. Melissa.
Melissa:Welcome back Chris.
Chris:You know, I should have said this is a, this is a sick Chris Denny with Worthington. If you can't tell from my bizarre sounding voice, but it's okay. I'm hopped up on Ibuprofen and Red Bull, so I should be able to power through this one.
Melissa:Perfect combo.
Chris:Don't make, don't make me laugh.
Melissa:decide later if I'll edit that. all the copying out.
Chris:Don't make me laugh. I'll try to, I'll try to mute that, but yeah, yeah. Not feeling great. I don't know, coming down with something here, but the show must go on as they say. This show must go on. But yeah. Exciting stuff going on at Worthington. My goodness. I feel like every week we got something new and exciting going on. We got a new, we got a new X-ray parts counter. Have we talked about that one? Melissa x-ray parts counter?
Melissa:I don't know if we about it on the show. I forget if talked about it on the show.
Chris:I think I might've mentioned we got that on order. That'll be a fun, you know what, we could probably have a whole episode dedicated to that. Maybe. We'll cue that one up. Add that to our notes here. And we got a we got a magazine board destacker, which sounds way cooler than it is, but I'm excited about it anyway, cuz I know it sounds super cool. Magazine board destacker, everybody's like, yes Chris, I can't wait to hear about your stupid magazine
Melissa:an No, but it's lot more exciting when it actually changes your day today.
Chris:Yes, exactly. It's exciting when you get to see machines doing work and making money. That's that's what it's all about. It has kept us quite busy trying, you know, just integrating one little simple machine is so much more than just like, oh, pop it on the floor and plug it in. It's like, okay, we have to rethink, you know, there's a whole, there's a whole process here that we follow. And when you plop in a new machine, it changes your whole process. It really does have an impact. You know, you flap a butterflies wings over here and you create a hurricane down there, and it, it, it is, it's no different. So, but it's all good. It's all exciting stuff, making investments, making progress. We're happy about it. So, speaking of investments in progress, here's a man who knows a whole lot about it. Our guest today, Aaron Moncur from pipeline Design and Engineering is our guest today. You may have heard that I was a guest on his podcast a few months back now at this point, and I was just excited to talk to him and, and wanted to keep the conversation going. So we invited him on the pick Place podcast. So welcome to the show, Aaron. Happy to.
Melissa:Yeah, welcome.
Aaron:Thank you so much for having me. Super excited to be here and see where this conversation.
Chris:Yeah, me too. And I, and I say it that way, and I think maybe Aaron is implying too that you know, we are an electronics show, a manufacturing show. And Aaron how much electronics engineering experience do you have?
Aaron:Oh my gosh. Let's see. On a scale of zero to 10, I'd say like negative two.
Chris:Negative two.
Aaron:I'm the least Sparky mechanical engineer you'll ever meet.
Chris:Well, if there's,
Aaron:get electronics.
Chris:if there's any sparks in electronics, we've done something wrong. So, yeah.
Aaron:Maybe that's a
Chris:yeah, unless we're working on stoves or internal combustion engines, we don't want sparks. So,
Aaron:right, right.
Chris:But, so Aaron, if you, if you don't mind, for listeners who, who maybe didn't start, cuz I did hear from some listeners who started subscribing to your show afterward. They've really enjoyed it so far.
Aaron:Great. Good feedback.
Chris:Yeah. Tell us a little bit about yourself. What, you know, before you get into pipeline design and engineering. How about yourself? What's your background? How did you, get into engineering? Obviously your whole show is about how did you get into engineering. We could probably go on for an hour just about that one subject, but maybe give us the, the two to five minute version of
Aaron:Yeah, I, I don't even know if I'll need that long, let's see. I've always been mechanically inclined. I remember when I was a kid, I would, I would Put together these contraptions like Rub Goldberg contraption alarm systems. I remember I had this, this Michael Jackson cassette tape.
Chris:Come on.
Aaron:way back in the day. It was, it was, I think it was the bad album.
Chris:That is
Aaron:yeah, yeah. And for some reason, I was, I was a kid, right. I was like eight years old, and I was convinced that someone was gonna steal this tape, and I had protect it. It was my job to protect this tape and
Chris:I mean that's, that's a recording you don't want to give up, man. That's
Aaron:No, no, absolutely not. Yeah. And I mean, I was in my house, right? So, like, who's gonna steal it? My dad or something, or my little brother. Well, that was a possibility, I Anyway, I had this in my head that I, I had to put together this alarm system for it. So, it was a, a combination of like tape and yarn and paperclips and like when you. Yeah, well, when you touched the tape, when you just jiggled it a little bit, it would set off this contraption of, of mechanisms
Chris:That is amazing.
Aaron:in a loud gong, right? And so, oh, it's the gong. Someone is, someone is actually stealing my tape. I better get out there and make sure this doesn't happen. So anyway you know, fixing my bike and, and building club clubhouses and things I, I love doing mechanical things like that growing up. And let's see, it was my senior year in high school. We were sitting around the dinner table at home with the family and, and uh, my dad says, what are you gonna major in next year when you go to college? And I say, I, I don't know. I haven't really thought about it my whole life back then was going to the beach and hanging out with friends. Right. I, I really had not, I truly had not given any thought to college and what I was gonna do.
Chris:where were were you from? You? From you from the shore somewhere.
Aaron:I'm from Hawaii. I born and raised
Chris:Oh, okay. Yeah,
Aaron:Yeah,
Chris:right. That's right. I have heard you mention that on the show. Yeah.
Aaron:That's where the name, we'll, we'll get into that the name pipeline comes from and So, I say, I don't know what I'm gonna do. And my dad says, well, you should consider engineering. And I really didn't even know what engineering was like. If he had asked me to define what is engineering, what do engineers do,
Chris:You operate a
Aaron:no answer. Ex Exactly. Yeah. The, the whistle right. With the trains. And so I said, okay, engineering, that sounds good. And that was really about all the thought I gave it. I very embarrassing to say at this point, but luckily my dad knew me pretty well and, and engineering has turned out to be a really great fit. I started off in the manufacturing engineering program and then it actually got eliminated from, from the university that I intended. The kind of the, the replacement of it was mechanical engineering. So after the first year I switched from manufacturing engineering to mechanical engineering. I'm glad I did. I think that's a better fit for me overall and probably has more options frankly, for graduates. And that's how I got into engineering.
Chris:Cool. Very cool. And so, so, as Seinfeld likes to say yada, yada, yada, pipeline design. Yeah. How did, did pipeline design come about?
Aaron:Pipeline design came about through failure on my part to be engaged with the work I was doing at the company for which I previously worked.
Chris:Oh man. That sounds fascinating,
Aaron:it's a pretty good story. So I was working at this, this other engineering company here in Arizona, and great company, wonderful people, super smart engineers. And for the first few years I, I did great. I thrived there. I got to build prototypes, I got to do cad, I got to design and build things, and it was great. And for whatever reason, actually, I do understand what happened now, but it was a complete mystery to me back then. And for a long time I started to become disengaged work. I just wasn't in it. I, I couldn't get my heart into it. I remember. Walking around the office, wearing earbuds, listening to music, kind of tuning out everything else that was going on around me. And, you know, that's, that's kind of a terrible thing to do when like, you're not really aware of what's going on around you. It just sends, I think, a pretty strong message to others there that like, Hey, I don't care. I'm doing my own thing. I don't, I don't, I don't really care what what else is going on here. So, that was during 2008, 2009 and there was the recession, right? So the recession hit and work kind of slowed down at this, at this company as it did for many companies. And they needed to make some changes. And it was, it was pretty, I think a pretty easy one to say, Hey, Aaron clearly doesn't have his heart in it. I think gotta go. So, that's what happened. They called me. And they said, Hey thanks. But you know, we can kind of tell that you're not super engaged anymore, so we're gonna transition you from a full-time employee to a 10 99 contract employee. And so that, that happened. Yeah. Yeah. So it was better than just, we're laying you off. And that's it for sure. So I left work one day as a W2 employee, and I came back the next day as a 10, nine to nine contractor. Same project, same work. The only thing that changed was the, the, the government form that I had to fill out. And I, I did that for a little while, just. Contract work for that same company that lasted a couple of months maybe. And then the, the project I was working on ended and so did the work there. By that time I had started to reach out to some other people and say, Hey, I'm doing this freelance thing and if you need any, any help with engineering work, you know, reach out and I'd love to work with you. And so I, I had a couple little things going on. I had also a, a few years previous to that, started a photography company with a, a friend of mine just on side. Yeah. So it was like a side thing, side hustle. And that was great. We had a lot of fun. We made a little bit of money. You know, it wasn't gonna feed the family long term, but
Chris:like weddings and stuff like
Aaron:Exactly. Yep. Yep. Like portraits and weddings and commercial photography. And it was fun. We, we did that pretty consistently for about three or four years, probably made, you know, 20, 25 grand a year that we split between the two of us. So there was a little bit of income coming in from that. So between that and this freelance engineering gigs, I found I was okay. It was a scary time at first, but
Chris:Did you have family at the time?
Aaron:yeah. Yeah, so that was a big part of it. I, I remember going home that day, I got laid off and it was the first home my wife and I had purchased. We had just had our first kid. so I'm, I remember leaning in the doorway of this, this modest home that we had the bedroom and, and telling my wife, Hey, I got laid off and I'm not really sure what the next step is. And just watching her face drop, you know, understandably. And just going in a panic mode, being so scared, like, what am I gonna do? I got a mortgage, I got a wife, I got a kid. I gotta support all of this. So that was like, that was pretty terrifying. I remember feeling sick to my stomach for, for several days after that. So that, you know, it wore off after a little bit and, and luckily the photography thing was there and I did have some contract work and I started putting my name out to some people I knew in the industry. And, and I started getting some, some freelance work. And I, I actually explored a variety of things. I, I looked into web design. I actually did some web design for a little while, and I got a little bit of income there. I was looking into like commercial real estate and really different things thinking I, I think I'm, I'm done with engineering. I, I thought I had fallen out of love with engineering. And one day my father-in-law sat me down and he says, he didn't say it this way, but I'm sure what he was thinking is, Hey, you married my daughter and now you have kid. My grandson, you better figure this out. Pronto, right? So he sits me down and he says maybe it's not engineering that you don't love anymore. Maybe it's just the way in which you were doing
Chris:That's
Aaron:And, and that was a really interesting and, and very useful statement for me at the time. And so I thought, you know, maybe the, maybe he's right, I should give this another shot. You know, I went to school for it. I spent all this time and my parents money getting a degree.
Chris:Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Aaron:so, let's give this another shot. And, and I did. And that worked out pretty well. And what I learned was that I really love having a high level ownership. And what, what took me. Years really to figure out. The reason why I was so disengaged at work is because I, I was being micromanaged and because I was like so disengaged, right? My disengagement led them to micromanage me, and it was just this downward spiral. Nevertheless, there I was being micromanaged and it just, it just sucked the life outta me. So, what I learned was that when I had this kind of high level ownership over everything, when, when I got to be the machine as opposed to just a cog in the machine, that was really transformational for me. And all of a sudden I loved doing engineering again. So that is kind of the story of how Pipeline came to be
Chris:Fascinating. So let me, let me ask a couple questions about that. So what kind of, like, you don't have to disclose who the company was, but like, can you give us a gist of who it was you were working for, where you were dis disengaged, or what kind of things you were working on there?
Aaron:at the, the engineering company where I.
Chris:Yeah. Where you were just like, earbuds in I'm, I'm checked out of this
Aaron:Yeah. They started off as really some pretty cool projects. One of them was a a GERD device, gastroesophageal Reflux Disease. It was a
Chris:Oh, everybody knows what that is. We all know what that is.
Aaron:do you really, or are
Chris:No, no,
Aaron:I, I don't know.
Chris:no. I've never heard of that in my life.
Aaron:So it's, it's kind of a fancy stomach stapler. What it did is it decreased the functional volume of the stomach for obese
Chris:Oh, no kidding.
Aaron:Yeah. And, and for gerd, which is this disease gastroesophageal reflux. It's, it's, it's reflux, right? Heartburn basically.
Chris:cool. So you're working on medical devices, very
Aaron:devices. Yeah. Yeah. And they were fun. It, it was, I liked it. We started getting a little slow though, and there wasn't as much like design work and prototyping and building, and it started becoming more paperwork and documentation just because that was kind of what, what the company was able to, to scrape together. That's just where we were during that 2008, 2009 time. And that I, that didn't help things for me. Right. That was not interesting work for me. Not that the work, you know, I, I should never expect, no one should expect to just be fed like the most interesting work all the time. You gotta roll with a bunches and, and do what you know, what, what the company needs you to do. Anyway call it immaturity, whatever you want to call it. I let that get to me and became pretty disengaged even though, you know, there was some interesting work kind of. Changed a little bit to more documentation. That's, that's kind of what happened.
Chris:I think a lot of people can relate to that. You know, it's, it's. You know, it's fun to, it can be fun to remodel the kitchen and it's not so fun to maintain the kitchen. Right.
Aaron:There you go. Good analogy. Absolutely.
Chris:But if you maintain it, then you have a, you, you, you save a lot of money and you have a beauti, you know, beautiful, clean and, a functional space to cook food in, you know?
Aaron:Absolutely.
Chris:it's easy to get carried away with, like, yeah. But I want to like tear it all out and redo it again. fascinating. Okay. So, so with all these little side hustles and everything, you're like, Hey, look, I can, I can turn this into something here. And hence pipeline design and engineering was, was born and at first, was it just like an llc, just yourself doing?
Aaron:That's right. Yeah. It was just me in the beginning. In fact, I remember, I remember there was a friend of mine who we used to go out to lunch. He also had his own business and we were both kind of at the same place. Very different industries, but the same places in our career. He had just started his and was growing it. We used to go out to lunch every now and then, and I used to tell him, I, I love just being out to go out to lunch, kind of whenever I want, and not having to worry about employees or anything. I really enjoy being on my I think there's, there's no way I would ever want to have any employees or the liability that comes along with that. I just want to do this on my own. And that was 13 years ago or so, and now I just cannot imagine ever not having a team to, you know, like to do all the work, right? I, I would never want to go back to being solo again. But yeah, it was just me in the beginning and that, that went on for probably, I don't know, a year or so, and, and then more work started to roll in. And I really never did any, any formal marketing. I did spend, I remember there was maybe a week during that time, that first year when things started to get a little bit slower. And so I just went online and started looking for online directories of, of different manufacturers and maybe other product development firms that might be able to use me and calling 'em up, just cold calling anyone I could. And I, I actually found a few people who turned into terrific customers. I just perfect for me at the time, you know? So I got some work from them and, and things started to grow a little. And then about maybe a year or so, and I hired a a contract engineer to help me with the work. And then maybe a year later I hired another contract engineer. And so we had this small team, me and a few contractors. And then in 2014 I hired my, my first full-time employee. And then from there, you know, it was like every year we'd, we'd hire a few people. In fact, in 2020 we hired like seven people. I think 2020 was kind of a big year for us, but we're still r really small.
Chris:Which is odd considering most people got pretty slow in 2020. What made you so busy then?
Aaron:Wow. We we're largely focused on medical devices and yeah, the medical industry was still going. So we did have some, some slow months, certainly. Actually I think I misspoke. It was 2021 that we hired a whole bunch of people. 2020 was a little bit slower, and then towards the end of 2020, it picked up in 2021. We were super busy.
Chris:so, okay. I, so many questions. I'm so sorry. You had mentioned how you had wanted to be solo. You didn't wanna have the responsibility of a team. And I'm, I'm curious, like I totally get that. I 100% get that the, the, the concept of freedom and being able to do your own thing. Like I totally understand that. You said you hired somebody. What was that experience like? Was, was that sort of a, like, for me, that gives me anxiety to think about because I, now, I'm, now I'm thinking, man, I've gotta make sure I'm bringing in the accounts cuz I'm responsible to feed this guy's family now. You know what I mean? How, what was that feel? Was it scary to hire your first employee?
Aaron:It was absolutely scary my first employee. Yeah. For exactly the reason that, that you say I'm, I'm pretty big on obligations. If I commit to someone that I'm gonna do something, I will stress myself out all day, all night until it's done. And so I, I'd hired this guy and he was married, right? So he had his own little family and, and yeah, it was, it was scary. I remember talking to a friend of mine at the time who also ran his own business and they were a little bit ahead of me. They had, he and his business partner had had hired probably 15 or 20 people or so, and I said, yeah, I just hired my first employee. And it's, it's kind of nerve-wracking. And he says, ah, you know, after you hire the first few, you don't even think about it anymore. And that's, that's kinda been case. That first one was scary, but after a few more hires, just like, oh yeah, we need to hire someone else's. Bring someone else in.
Chris:Fascinating. So, so how does it work with, presumably you hired another mechanical engineer, somebody that has a similar skillset to your own, just to kind of augment what you're doing for your customers. Am I right?
Aaron:Exactly.
Chris:Okay. And, and so how do you, how do you make that determination of like, what's appropriate to give them versus what are you still gonna do yourself? And did you find that challenging?
Aaron:I didn't, but I think he did. To me, I, I, I think organization is one of my skills and I kept things pretty organized and I would assign very specific tasks to him. And he, he shared with me, he ended up working at Pipeline for quite a long time and was a very insightful individual. And he, he shared with me at some point that, Hey, you know, you're, you're very specific in what you tell me to do, but I often don't understand high level, like, why, you know, what's the why behind What's the objective that we're really trying to finish here? And he was a hundred percent right. I would just say, Hey, go screw this bolt into, x, y, Z machine. It wasn't quite that detailed, but, there wasn't, there wasn't a lot of context behind it. And that was one of the things I had to learn early on was I mean, that's why I got disengaged, right? I didn't see the higher level of purpose when I was an employee. I would be micromanaged and say, go do this thing, go do that thing. And I'd do it. But there wasn't a lot of passion in it. And here I was doing the same thing, just micromanaging. So that was really helpful for me to hear from from him saying, Hey, Gimme some more context, gimme a little bit more responsibility here. I'm an engineer, right? Don't, just happy doing grunt stuff.
Chris:Yeah, that's a good point. You, you mentioned in uh, when, when we were conversing back and forth and, and talking about having you come on the show, a couple of interesting things and I was hoping you could maybe speak to them. You said you talk about different productivity hacks that you use to manage yourself and your team, and I'm curious what you meant by that and how it might relate to what we're talking about now and trying to manage a team of engineers and that sort of thing.
Aaron:Yeah, for sure. Couple things that, that I can share here. One is this idea of having systems that are aligned with your goals, goals, objectives however you wanna put that. I'll start sharing this by, By telling you a story about me, about seven years ago, I started training in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Super fun, loved it. After I had a goal to get my blue belt, that's the second belt. So it's not like a hugely ambitious thing. Right? So get to the next level. So that was my goal. Get, get the blue belt right. And after three years I had still not gotten the blue belt and I wasn't going super regularly. I wanted to, I really did want to, I just couldn't get there. I, this was still, when the business was younger, I was, I was growing the business. I was working probably 60 hour weeks pretty regularly and that was part of it. Plus I had a young family, right? And I just, I just couldn't get there. And so I ended up quitting and it was a super sad day and I thought about that experience a lot afterwards. Why did I quit? Why did I not accomplish my goal? And what I realized is I didn't have a system that facilitated the achievement of that goal. It's really easy for us to set goals, right? That's the fun part.
Chris:Yeah. New Year's resolutions.
Aaron:Exactly right. We can all do that. We, we get all hyped up and we say, I'm gonna do this and I'm gonna do that. The problem comes in executing those goals, and that's where I think a system is really, really important because as humans, it's just too easy for us to get distracted. It's too easy for us to let life's, you know, this and that get in the way. So, what would that have looked like if I had had a system to help me reach that goal of getting my blue belt? I think a few of the things it could have looked like are taking a look at the calendar one to two weeks in advance. And if I saw, there's a school event for one of the kids blocking that off. So I knew beforehand to go on a different day to jujitsu, so I didn't just miss it outright. Oftentimes I'd just be like, wasted tired by the end of the day. So what, what else that could have looked like is maybe I, I put into my schedule, like calendar in a 30 minute power nap. Right. Something like that.
Chris:Let, let me this down. You're talking about looking ahead and planning and scheduling is, do I have this right? look,
Aaron:I it's rocket science, isn't revolutionary stuff.
Chris:I'm not, not familiar with those stories. Melissa, are you familiar with planning ahead?
Melissa:No.
Chris:No. Yeah,
Aaron:Yeah. This is a, a new technology that I invented. Yeah. This is a pipeline's IP over here looking ahead planning.
Chris:No, Aaron, I don't think you get the gist of the joke. I am horrible at planning ahead. Terrible. Absolutely
Aaron:We, we all are. We all are. Which is why it's so funny, right? It's not a difficult thing to do, we just don't do it. And so if I had had a system that, that's the other thing. You, we talk about systems and people, I think automatically think of this like complex, huge thing that's really hard to come up with and implement. But systems can be really, really simple and easy. One of the best systems that, that I've found is just putting things into my calendar and then following the calendar. That's a wonderful system. So, I, I mentioned that I really did want to show up at, at jujitsu, right? I would, I would have dreams about being there after I quit because I missed it so much.
Chris:Oh, wow.
Aaron:So I actually did end up going back I took about a three year break and about a year and a half ago I went back, and this time I did have a system. Instead of just saying I'll, I'll go whenever I have time, I dedicated three times a week. I'm definitely going these three times each week, so I know where I'm gonna be and and I, I'm happy to say about a year ago I got my blue belt,
Chris:Hey,
Aaron:you go. Thank you very much. The system worked.
Chris:This system works. So, I'm wondering how I can apply that to losing 20 pounds. Can you help me with that one?
Aaron:Absolutely. Yeah. That's a great one. Let's dig into this.
Chris:I got a trip to Greece and I don't, I don't wanna look like the fat American that I am. I wanna make sure I fit in a little bit here. And by in, that was not a double meaning. I mean, literally
Aaron:let me
Chris:clothes, fit in
Aaron:I, I, I think you were tongue in cheek a little bit, but let's, let's talk about that. Like what are the things that need to happen to lose 20 pounds?
Chris:It's, it's called exercising and eating less.
Melissa:Yeah.
Aaron:Okay. All right. Not even thinking about diet or exercise, just in general for your workday, how do you make sure things get done? Like, do you have a system in place already to ensure that the new machine gets installed or, you know, whatever it is? What, what does that system
Chris:be good at my job if I didn't. Yeah, it's, it's, it's, honestly, it is it is a thorough and, and careful checklist along with not checklist. Cause when I think of checklist, I think of like, I, I consider like a task list or a project list. Very different from a checklist. My opinion, a checklist is like what a pilot uses when they go to start up at aircraft. They're, they're following the same procedure every single time, which shout out to checklist Manifesto if you have this book l life-changing book.
Aaron:A tool. Gandi just book.
Chris:dude, dude's amazing. And it's like, this is like, He's such an accomplished person in like, so many areas of his life. And yet he's known for the Checklist Manifesto, which was like a total side project for him. But anyway, it was the, I digress tangent, a tangent on the pick place podcast. Never. But, but project list. So I have project lists and I have people I need to follow up with, and I have a calendar and I'm, and I schedule meetings and yeah, it's, that's how I get stuff done at work. Yeah.
Aaron:So what would happen if you started calendaring in those like exercise activities? So it's just part of your day, you wake up and you just follow the calendar.
Chris:Yeah. See, it's following the calendar. I'd look at the, oh, gotta walk 30 minutes on the treadmill, but this donut looks really good.
Aaron:Another thing that I have found very helpful in meeting goals is finding ways to measure progress. I I've, I've actually Been trying. Okay, here's my tangent. I've been super skinny my whole life. Like twig
Chris:This conversation's over. done. We're here. We've had enough.
Aaron:This is the, the opposite end of the spectrum. Yeah. And I, I would get, I mean, not, not, not a lot, but I, I got made fun of a little bit because I was super skinny. My nickname was Bones back in high school, and I've always wanted to be little bit bigger. I'm never gonna be, you know, the big guy, but I wanted to gain a little bit of muscle. So lately I've been trying to gain weight, lean muscle mass, not just, not, not fat. And one of the ways that's been really helpful for me is, is tracking my calories, right? Just measuring how much I'm actually eating. So I know I'm eating enough to have the mass to like turn it into lean muscle mass. But anyway, measuring things. The point is that measuring things is also a really wonderful way to, to help achieve goals.
Chris:It's a great point. It's interesting that you mentioned that because with this, with this implementation we've been doing recently of some new equipment, it's sort of like, well, we know, you know, kind of like in our gut it's going better, but how does it, how does it really look? You know? And then we start to look at the data and we go, oh, it definitely looks better, but it doesn't look better enough. Like, why this should be looking so much better. And simply by looking at the data, it, it is so much more how do you put it, it fires you up, you know, you're like, we should be way better than this with all this new equipment we have. What's going on here? So totally get being able to measure progress. I, that is awesome to think about. Totally. Awesome.
Aaron:it right?
Chris:Said to, and this I was just gonna, you took the words outta my mouth. I was just gonna say it. Totally gamifies And, and so how do you, how do you do that? And at engineering level? So for example, right now we have this, this is perfect opportunity for me to pick your brain on this cuz I'm dealing with this right now. We believe that we have a pretty good idea to, to accomplish, to, to use software to accomplish a task that normally we would have to, just, you know, sit a human down and, and have them grunt, work their way through this work. But we have a pretty good idea for some software to do it. I know how to measure placements per week and placements per month and, and board shipped and dollars and revenue. How do you, as an engineering firm, how do you measure your achievement of designing something and whether or not it's gonna accomplish what you're, what you're. Hoping it will accomplish, like this seems so much more difficult and, you know, abstract than, than, hey, a million placements a week.
Aaron:So there's actually a really robust tool that we and, and many, many engineering companies use. And it's not super interesting at all, but it's, it's a product requirements document. We call it the p r D here internally. And it's a combination of understanding and correlating user needs with technical requirements. So a user might say, I want to develop this new medical device, and one of my needs as a user is it can't ever slip out of my hand when I'm using it. Okay. So that's a user need. Right. How do you know that you've accomplished that at the end of your, your development phase? have to translate that into a technical requirement. so this, this p r d, the product requirements documented it, it lists the, the user needs on one in one column, and then in the next column it lists the corresponding technical requirements. And so a technical requirement to meet that user need might be it. It needs to have bumps that are, you know, a 16th of an inch in diameter spaced no more than an eighth of an inch apart covering a square an area of, you know, eight square inches or, or something like that, right? So you have these user needs. That's where you start. You all start with the and then you translate them into technical requirements. And then throughout the project, you're looking regularly at these technical requirements. We have a traveler that we've created. It's kind of a internal homegrown document. And one of the things that project leads do every week is they, they look at this traveler, and part of that is to take a look at the, the requirements documents, and we evaluate, okay, are we doing something to address this technical requirement? Yes or no? If the answer is no, then well, you need to start doing something, right? So by the end of the project, we have a little check boxes next to all of these technical requirements. And before we release something, we need to have a check in each of those boxes. And if we don't, there needs to be a really good reason why there isn't. Maybe
Chris:there you go.
Aaron:changed the requirement or the user need or something like that.
Chris:Yeah. Yeah. I think the hardest part might be for, you know, as you're describing this, I'm thinking of, okay, I, I have a very good understanding of the requirement and what I need this software to accomplish. That is crystal clear to me. The, you called that the user need. So I have the user need in my head perfectly, cuz I'm the. I know exactly what I need. The technical requirements to get there. I'm a little more fuzzy on, right? Because you could say, okay, I need these bumps to be a 16th of an inch. But then maybe another engineer goes, why don't we just put you know, the gecko material on it? And then another person says, well, why don't we just make it the shape of a glove? And, and like, you know, I think that's where it can get pretty complicated. And how do you make those kinds of decisions when your various engineers are disagreeing about the best way to accomplish the user need?
Aaron:I think the, the word disagreeing is really important. You want there to be some disagreement beginning. If there isn't any dis disagreement, that might be a sign that you're not diving in deep enough to those requirements and being a little lackadaisical and say, ah, yeah, that's fine. Whatever. You know, there should be some, some discussion and sometimes it gets a little heated and that's okay. In fact, that's, that's great. Right? That's when you know that people care enough about these requirements really make sure that they're defined Well,
Chris:Yeah. Interesting. And so then you, you know, somebody at some point has to make the call and say, well, either we only have so many resources, so we can't work on the glove, the 16th of an inch bump and the gecko material. We gotta make a decision here and move forward with it. And presumably all of your engineers just, they go, yep, great. I no longer care about my idea, I'm gonna make the gecko material work. Right. Nobody complains about it.
Aaron:yeah. So we have a, a principal we follow, and that's invitation, not compulsion. That's here at Pipeline. We, you know, we try to treat adults like adults, not adults, like children. And we, we invite people to, to do something or to follow something as opposed to compelling them. Compelling, just flat out dictating, we're doing it this way, period. I don't care what you have to say. That's a great way to lose the respect of your team, right? Great way to, to promote some animosity and just not feelings of goodwill. So, the way I like to do things is, is let's lay out all the requirements. Take a look at them. We've got three different ideas for how to solve them, what, you know, what are the pros and cons. We discuss them as a team, and you're right, ultimately someone needs to make a decision. And so that person on in our team anyways, typically the project lead. But there's a lot of discussion that goes on before someone ultimately makes a call and, and a lot of time. Never gets to the point where someone just has to make a call because you have enough discussion that the pros and cons of each are weeded out and organically you arrive at whatever the best solution is.
Chris:Yeah. Yeah. We, we have had some circumstances in the past where we, we had that situation where somebody just had to make the call because there so much disagreement and people were so, just sort of, what's the word I'm looking for? So convinced of their own side of it that they could never come around to agreeing with the other side. And I, I can think of two specific examples in the history of our company where this has happened and it has never ended well. It has never ended well. It's never gone well, like, later on either, the person who lost out on their idea, decided they wanted to find a different place to work, you know, it like, it gets to that point. it's, it can be really tough, you know, but you're right, it's only two times I've been here for tomorrow will be 13 years.
Aaron:Holy cow. Wow. Congratulations.
Chris:you. And only two times in 13 years have we had this situation where engineers disagree so adamantly that it has resulted in just, you know, whatever poor thing going on. usually we d we are able to come to some consensus on how to move forward. So it's. It's it's, it's not always easy though.
Aaron:I agree. It's not always easy and, and it, it probably shouldn't be if it's super easy, that that might be an indication that there's more to dive into there. A, a trick that I have used with success, and this does not work a hundred percent of the time, right? There's always gonna be those cases where it doesn't work. But something that has worked really well for me, let's say that let's say that you are Luke Skywalker.
Chris:Oh, now we're talking baby. Yeah. Now my childhood
Aaron:Wars analogy. That's perfect for an engineering podcast. So you're, you're Luke Skywalker. And I'm Han Solo. And you as Luke say to me, Hey Han, we should get a dog. That would be fun, right? name it whatever you want. Yeah. Now as Han Solo, I know that wikis eat dogs. And so I know that's a bad idea right Now. I could come out and just say, no, we're not gonna do that. And if I say that, how do you, Luke, how do you feel?
Chris:Look, you know what Han, I want a dog. I want a dog. All my friends have dogs talking episode four, then I gotta use his voice from episode four cuz he was real whiny in episode four. So,
Aaron:So that doesn't go over so well. Right. I instead if, if I were to say, Hmm, that's a great idea. That's a very cool idea. Let, let's talk about that. Did you know that, that Wilkis actually eat dogs? What do you think about that?
Chris:I think we gotta get rid of Chewbacca cuz I want a dog man.
Aaron:Okay. All right. Well that opens up some other options even to talk Right. My point is, I've had a lot of success as when someone provides a suggestion that I know is, is not gonna work for whatever reason, instead of just shutting it down, I like to ask a question back to them and have them work through the reasoning in their own mind, and they'll get there on their own, you know? And when they get there on their own, then they're sold, they're bought into the process, right? So that's one tactic that has been useful for me.
Chris:I think I could, I could definitely apply that lesson to myself because I feel like a lot of times I, I usually give the reason, but I don't think I do it quite as well as how you just described. Like I'll, I would, I would probably phrase it in a way where I'd be like, you know, Luke, we, we can't get a dog because, because Wilkis eat dogs. We can't get a Right. Whereas you, you'd handled it much like, that's okay, that's one way handle. You gave the reason, but you handled it better. You'd be like, yeah, but hey Luke are you aware that Wilkis eat dogs like that? I like that so much more. Cuz it gets them thinking about it rather than you no, you can't do it. That's
Aaron:They work out the logic in their own mind and, and then they're, they're bought in.
Chris:Yeah. Oh yeah. Well, all right. I gotta apply that. I got, oh, how, how can I apply this to losing weight before we go to Greece? Think about that. I'm not sure. I'm not sure there's an analogy Yeah,
Aaron:I don't know. be stretch, Chris. I know.
Chris:Maybe if I had multiple personalities, I could talk to each of them and
Aaron:you. There you go. Yeah. Just develop a psychotic disorder to lose weight.
Chris:You know, you know, the ironic thing about all this is my sister is a dietician and one of my closest friends owns a gym. I just have to talk to the two of them about it, I could very easily solve this. You know,
Aaron:You've already got support there.
Chris:it's the self-control model inside that I'm having trouble with here.
Aaron:You know that, that is a good point though. The, the whole idea of being accountable to someone. Right. That's, that's a powerful motivator. I,
Chris:yeah. It's one of the most powerful motivators.
Aaron:yeah. Right?
Chris:I just, you know, that's, that's the reason. Well, I'll bring it back to the weight analogy again. The the ubiquity and popularity of programs like Weight Watchers, because you're accountable this program now. You're gonna these people every week and, and if you're not making progress, you're gonna be, you're gonna feel like some kind of sense of embarrassment. So you're pushing yourself to make sure that you're, you know, there's that, that's slippery slope there too. But anyway, yeah, that accountability is is a real thing. But this is an engineering podcast. This isn't a health and fitness podcast. We gotta bring it, bring this back around here. So I, I, I think one of the things you know, kind of to, we, we could talk about the, the best way to manage engineering teams and things like that all day long. One of the things I'm very curious to talk to you about though, you, you are an engineering firm. Do you do any of your own? Modeling, are you, are you making any of your own things? Do you have any of your own equipment, like when it comes to actually cutting some metal do you have any of that in-house or are you outsourcing those sorts of things,
Aaron:Different engineering firms will do those those activities differently. I know lots of engineering companies out there that have full machine shops internally. It's all integrated. We do not, we outsource machining work. Fabrication work. Anything that has to do with metal or like, Precision cut plastic. We, we outsource that. We have partners domestically and also overseas. Anything that's 3d, well, not anything. I'd say, I don't know, 80 to 90% of 3D printed parts. We do internally, we, we 3D print quite a few parts and interestingly, we actually use them as final deliverable parts and, lot, yeah. A lot of people still think that 3D printing is just for prototypes, you know, looks like, feel like, but not, not really a production solution. And there's some awesome 3D printing technologies out right now that are very well suited for production.
Chris:we, we use 3D printed tools all the time.'em here, we print 'em here, and they go into the, you know, this is the tool that forms the part that we actually ship. You know, usually it's not something that gets shipped with the final product. Usually it's a tool that helps us to create the final product, only because there's not a lot of plastics that go into the what we ship. Right. Obviously copper and fiberglass and solder. But yeah, 3D printed parts, you know, they're legit now. And, and if you, even with you know, I love, I love being an electronics engineer talking about a mechanical 3D printing machine, like an authority. But we have. We we're finding that is it FDM that's kind of the most popular, like hobbyist level type of technology, right? There's high-end. Yeah, there's high-end FDM machines. You know, you spend thousands and thousands of dollars on them, but man, are they precise and they're consistent. And we are getting some amazing materials out of those, even though it's still a, you know, a hobbyist level technology I guess you could call it, you know, but just coming out of a high end machine,
Aaron:Yeah, definitely. There are a few manufacturers that we use. There are, there they're machines. There's one called Mark Forged.
Chris:that's who I'm talking about.
Aaron:Oh yeah, they're great. They're great, you know, they're machines range quite a bit actually, depending on what you get. But I think the, the least expensive one is something like $4,500 and it, it spits out beautiful parts, really strong dimensionally, stable, accurate, really great parts.
Chris:Yeah, absolutely. So, the reason I was curious to ask you about your, your model as an engineer engineering firm as opposed to, like, you're not really a product company. Do you have any of your own products or are you mostly designing products for other people?
Aaron:Historically, it's been the latter. Over the last year we have started developing a couple of our own products and, and we actually have one that's finished and released, and a second one that it's, I would say in like a, a beta phase right now.
Chris:Okay. I'm gonna, I'm gonna table that. I do want to talk about that, but I want to go back to pre your own product as an engineering firm because if you think about in, in electronics manufacturing, it's not too different from mechanical manufacturing. You have mechanicals, you have lathes, you have C n c, you have. Mills, you have all these, you know, different machines to turn metal or some other material into a finished product. In electronics, it's very similar. You know, we have all these various machines to create a circuit board and to get, get it to where you need it to be. The expense of these machines for how much you generally need to use them is way, way, way outta whack for an engineering firm. If you're, if you're seven people, you are not gonna spend a million dollars on an electronics assembly line. That's, that would be crazy. And oftentimes you're designing products that simply cannot be built by hand. It's just in case, it's just impossible. You would, you would spend months trying to build even one board by hand and you'd probably screw it up. Right. It's just gotten to the point where it's so complicated. I have to imagine there's a similar analogy to the mechanical world where there's some things that, you know, even if you had a, like say, say you went on a. You know, the equivalent of eBay for CNC machines. I dunno. You know, and you got yourself a 19, late nineties spec CNC machine, and there's probably things you're designing that you simply could not build on such a machine to this day, I'd imagine, right?
Aaron:I think that's where 3D printing comes in. Certainly there are things that cannot be manufactured on like a c and c piece of equipment or welded together. And that's where 3D printing really saves the day. You I mean, almost make any geometry you want with 3D printing.
Chris:That's crazy. All right, well that does not exist in the electronics world.
Aaron:not yet.
Chris:yeah, not yet. There, there are some pretty cool things people are doing with where they, there's kind of two approaches where they're doing additive versus subtractive prototyping of circuit boards. So, for your, for yourself, since you're not quite as familiar with circuit boards, I think much of our audiences, but I I, if you're not, maybe you would be entertained by this 32nd description of a circuit board. You basically have a piece of woven fiberglass, right. You know, you guys, prob I'm sure you use fiberglass in your products too. And then you just laminate a very thin piece of copper on top of it and on the bottom of it. So you have a little sandwich of copper. Now, a lot of times you want the electrical signal to pass through from one side of the board to the opposite side of the board. And in order to do that, you have to, you have to drill a hole and then you have to plate that hole with coppers. So now you've created a connection from the top side of the board to this opposite side of the board. That process is still very difficult to accomplish without expensive machinery,
Aaron:Hmm.
Chris:that sort of, you know, pass that, pass that signal through the board. You can take a piece of copper. On one side and you can etch away at it, right? So you can have a super high speed drill and just sort of etch away at it, and you can create the, the signals that you want on the top of the board, or you can just have a piece of fiberglass and you can add copper or a similar material, so maybe like a silver ink or something. And you can create, you can create the signals the way you want 'em on top of the board. So those things are gaining in popularity. I'm not sure how often they're used, but they are gaining in popularity. But for the most part, when it comes time to actually. Parts on that board and solder those parts. Some of these parts are just too small. They're just too small. Like humans, we, when we're trying to, let's say we made a mistake on a very small part, we cannot just replace that very small part by hand. We oftentimes have to take that board, put it into a machine, have the machine replace it, cuz it's just too small. We can never actually get it done. And, and where I'm, where I'm heading with all this is what, hoping to talk about that sort of relationship you build with your suppliers, right? Because I have to imagine at a certain point you start to align your design to your supplier's capabilities, right? So you say, You were talking about here's what the customer needs. They need this thing to not fall out of their hand. And you said, well, we're, we wanna put a 16th of an inch, you know, bumps all over this handle, and somebody raises their hand and says, Hey, you know, supplier A who we use all the time, those guys can only get eight of an inch bumps on the handle, which I know that sounds crazy. Believe me, I understand. Anybody can create a 16 inch anyway. You get my point. Do you, do you find yourself in that situation where you're kind of aligning your designs to, to your to the capability of your supplier? And, and is that, is that realistic or you just go find another supplier?
Aaron:To a small extent, yes, we'll do design reviews with our suppliers beforehand. Maybe when we're, you know, 60 to 80% done with the design, we'll call up one of our, our shops and say, Hey, we're gonna be sending this your way. Here's what the design looks like right now. What can we change to make this more machinable, more manufacturable for you? And they'll
Chris:a good firm.
Aaron:Really great tips. Well, it's, yeah, it, it's super helpful. Even senior level engineers, you know, they're not out making parts every day. They're, they're designing and testing and, and things like that. So there's just no expectation that they're gonna have it all figured out. So talking with the people who are actually making the parts, I, I'm sure your customers call you guys up, right? And be like,
Chris:They
Aaron:Chris. Yeah. What,
Chris:The ones listen to this show do.
Aaron:There you go. Yeah. And, and they're, they're the ones that are getting cheaper parts.
Chris:It's true. No, it's absolutely true. It's funny that you mentioned cheaper parts. We were supposed to. We were supposed to record another episode of of the Pick Place podcast last week, all about how to make boards cheaper and everything. But that got derailed by, I was on my, I was on my way into work and I was, I was passing an accident and there was cops in firetruck and ambulance. I'm like, Ooh, boy, that looks bad. And I'm trying to drive around all the glass and plastic and metal and everything that's all over the road. And then I look and I see that it's my wife's like best friend,
Aaron:Oh no. Oh,
Chris:com completely derailed our ability to have the convers have, that recording, which we'll do in the future. She's totally fine, by the way, which is why I don't mind talking about She's totally fine. Wasn't her fault the, the person who hit her admitted to missing a stop sign and she's, she's, okay. Her car is very much not okay. that's the, the sacrificial car is much better than the sacrificial, you know, arm or neck or whatever could have been
Aaron:true. Yeah. Yeah.
Chris:But yeah, they're getting cheaper parts because they had the conversation, right? They said, Hey we expect to build, you know, 5,000 of these every quarter. What do you think about this design? Does this work for you guys? Do you have any trouble with it? Do you need any special tools? So we have we have a couple of customers that do this with us all the time. They say, Hey, we know this is gonna be a hot product for us. We can tell the demand is there. But it's tricky and we can tell it's gonna be tricky for you guys to assemble. What do you think can, can you pull it off and having that conversation so helpful because sometimes we may need to get a custom tool made and that custom tool, I'm sorry, it ain't gonna be made in two weeks. It's not gonna be made in four weeks. It's gonna be eight, 12 weeks before that custom tool is finished. And having that conversation when your design is 80%. It's so huge. It's so huge. Don't wait until you need the product, cuz we might, we might not be able to get it for you. And it's not just us. Nobody's gonna be able to get it for you. Everybody else needs the tool too. It's not just cuz we're incapable of getting it done. You know? It's
Aaron:Yeah, time.
Chris:Just take some time.
Aaron:And I, that principle also applies to so we were talking about design, basically, right? Is this design manufacturable? How can it be made more manufacturable? We've also had luck having those beforehand conversations, just when it comes to a, a big order on a, an aggressive timeframe. So recently there was this piece of automated equipment that we were working on. And this thing ended up being a beast. It had like 300 unique part numbers and I think something like seven or 800 total parts, custom parts that had to be made. And we were under a really tight
Chris:Sounds like a Tuesday to me,
Aaron:Yeah. Probably for
Chris:the electronics world. That is in the electronics world. That's a typical board. Yeah.
Aaron:So these are parts that a machine shop would have to put up in their, their cnc, you know, mill or lay. They'd have to create a program for each one of them, and then it takes, you know, whatever, 15 minutes, 30 minutes per part. So like, the time adds up pretty quickly. And when, when you're doing 700 of these and. Many hundreds of those are, are unique parts. It's, it's a big job.
Chris:of course. Yeah.
Aaron:So we knew this was coming up and, and rather than just finish the manufacturing documentation and then send it out and say, okay, go, manufacturers, go.'em up like, a week and a half beforehand and we said, Hey, this order is coming for sure. We wanted to give you a heads up beforehand so you can get ready for it. And we ended up splitting the order into, I think, four different manufacturers just because of how many parts there are. Yeah. But having those upfront conversations a week, a week and a half before we were actually ready to start manufacturing was huge. And all four of our vendors were able to get ready for it. And so by the time we gave them a PO they were off to the races. They weren't waiting around for everything. And we got all those parts in like two weeks. It was of. Yeah.
Chris:Super cool. That's super
Aaron:cool. Yeah.
Chris:So we, we had a very similar situation ourselves recently. We had a customer come to us and they said, Hey, we need this many boards. And we're like, okay. First of all, how many have you had made before? And they, they were like, they're like 10. We're like, that is not enough. You, you cannot ramp from 10 to 10,000. You've gotta go from 10 to a hundred to a thousand to 5,000. You know, like you gotta, you gotta ramp it. It's building 10 of something is so it's, it's, it's night and day different 10,000 of something and, and building 10 of somethings different from building a hundred and building a hundred is different from building a thousand and building a thousand, you know. So, and so we told them, we said, talk to another vendor or two, because if you really need 10,000 of these,
Aaron:Hmm.
Chris:we're all gonna have to ramp this. And we're not the only ones. Everybody else is gonna have to ramp it. You're better off getting 2000 from us, 4,000 from them and 6,000 from somebody else than, than trying to, you know, get one shop to do all of these things. And I, I believe that's what they ended up doing. I this is a. I don't know. I, I talk to so many people every single day. I forget where all these things land, but yeah, that's, that's really smart. Split it up over multiple manufacturers. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I'm also curious about, so when you are, I hear, I hear on your podcast you talk about de designing automated systems. And when I hear, you know, automated systems, oftentimes I think about machines that manufacture goods.
Aaron:Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Chris:Right? And do you find that you have a situa? Cuz when I think of machines that manufactured goods, I think of like, well, we might need like two of these and then we just keep those things running and they keep making the thing we need them to make. But do you find yourself going, okay, we've made two of them, but now we need six and now we need 10, and all of a sudden that, you know, you're calling up your suppliers to make those same things over again, or do you pretty much do like one off orders and you're done?
Aaron:Most of what we do, unfortunately, and fortunately are one-off orders. And I say unfortunately and fortunately because on the one hand it's a terrible business model, it's, it's really hard to be profitable making one of something. On the other hand, it keeps things really interesting and fun. I mean, one of the things that my team says they like working about here is the, the large variety of different projects they get to work on. It's always something different and unique and so it's kind of a double-edged sword, but certainly when we have projects where we're delivering even 10 of something, right, it's a lot easier to make money there,
Chris:yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I totally get it. It's funny because you would think in electronics manufacturing, it's easier to make money. Making 10,000 of something than it make 10 of something. But the trouble is 10,000 of something is bloody waters. do you know what I mean by bloody waters?
Aaron:Yeah. Not blue Ocean.
Chris:yeah. It's not blue ocean. Yeah. It, that's where all the battleships are. That's where everybody's killing each other over overall, the margins, you know, there's so much competition and it's, it's very difficult to compete with manufacturers that, you know, like once you kind of like start building something with all this equipment, you can pretty much keep that equipment rolling and you can continue to create a quality product over and over and over again. And you don't necessarily need to have the pay scale that we have up here in Massachusetts and the engineering level and the talent that we have to supply here. You know, you can, you can probably take somebody who's maybe got some experience working literally at a fast food restaurant because they're used to, okay. I gotta make sure this fry later is changed over every so often. Here's the maintenance routines, like as long as they understand how to, you know, keep things moving along, they can keep an electronics assembly system moving along as well. And so you really, you end up with electronics manufacturers that have kind of two different specialties. You have the ones that are better at high volume. They've designed their team and, and, and their engineering to operations. Ratio is very, very small compared to here where we have, we're probably very, very heavy on engineering and lighter on operations, you know, because we're doing 10 of something, 50 of something, maybe a hundred of something over and over, which lately we're getting more and more high volume. But yeah, it's, it's, it's a little bit different in this world. We, we do really enjoy working with engineering firms. And, and this is, you know, again why I keep coming back to this because engineering firms do kind of challenge us. They do kind of push us. It's sort of like lifting weights when we work with engineering firms cuz they're the ones using the latest and greatest sensors and chips and things that are super tiny and things that we've never seen before. And we have learn how to handle the product stuff. You know, that we, we just keep shipping year after year, after year. They're fun too. It's just a different sort of fun, you know, it's exercise is, exercise is kind of fun, but it's not like you. It's like, wow, yeah, I accomplished that. That's super cool. I can't believe I ran a marathon. But sometimes you just kinda like wanna walk around a city and take in the sites
Aaron:Sure. Yeah. Yeah.
Chris:and, and that's what it feels like be being able to build the product. You know, you're just like, ah, this is nice. You know, we're just getting some exercise, enjoying fresh air. My but my, my heart rate isn't at 160 right
Aaron:I know exactly what you mean. Yeah. Yeah.
Chris:sometimes it's just a little bit easier that way. It's Aaron, I think we, you and I could probably talk forever. We could probably keep this conversation going for three hours, but we should probably cut it off at some point here. Anything else fascinating and interesting? You didn't get a chance to share, you wanted to share with our audience and as a mechanical engineer who has to work with a bunch of sparkies?
Aaron:Hmm. As a mechanical engineer who has to work with a bunch of sparkies, you know, one of these days I just need to block out like a couple of weeks, take my vacation time and, and go learn more about electrical engineering. That day is not today. I really appreciate you having me on the show. This was a lot of fun just getting to talk about not electrical engineering stuff, but hopefully people still found it somewhat interesting. So thank you so much for having me on.
Chris:Yeah, absolutely. Well, we have a lot of engineering firms that listen to the show, and I'm sure they have cross-disciplinary you know, needs. And the electrical engineers that listen to this show, I'm sure they work with the mechanical engineers and they work on teams that have to decide what's a priority and you know, how to decide between, between a glove, the gecko material of the 16th 16th of an inch bump. Right. So,
Aaron:you go. that's gonna be title of this show, gecko Material versus 16 an Inch Bump.
Chris:that's, that'll do real well in the seo. I'm that'll just, yeah. Well, we we, we can't leave without my favorite part of the show talking about our, our pet peeve of the week. and Aaron, I would be remiss if I didn't give you the opportunity to let something let you let you talk about something that's your pet peeve. So let's, let's have it, Aaron. Let's
Aaron:Well, I love this question. I might have to steal this for my own podcast
Chris:By all means,
Aaron:this is a very fun question. My pet peeve is when people spend inordinate amounts of time giving me details that I don't need.
Chris:Oh, oh, interesting.
Aaron:a, a conversation that that could and should be over in one minute, lasts 10 minutes person on the other side just keeps spewing details that I don't need to hear. So that, that is my pet peeve and, and my suggestion for all of you out there, not that all of you are doing this, but some of you I know are, I'm pointing fingers here around the team, but anyway, is that know your audience and know what they need to know and give them those things. And if they want more detail, they can ask for it, but don't flood someone with detail that they need.
Chris:That's great. That's great. Aaron, if, if I'm understanding this correctly, is it sort of like, like, you know, somebody comes to you and they're talking about getting a piece of aluminum milled, right? And they're like, when you gotta understand when you mill aluminum, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you're like, dude, you didn't have any idea how much aluminum I've milled.
Aaron:Exactly. Exactly. And they're like, and I would've been here earlier, but you know, my wife had to take the car to the vet and get her pet checked up and, and then my son was doing this and like, and then I was just like, I don't, I don't need to know all this stuff, know, tell me what I need to know and let's move on.
Chris:That's good. That's good. So you didn't have to hear about my friend getting in a car accident. Why I couldn't record last
Aaron:Yeah. I just tuned out during that part. I just pushed mute and started eating a snack. He'll be, he'll finish at some point.
Chris:At some point I'll get Yeah. Well, if, if you're not into that, I'm not sure if the pick place podcast is right for you because I I just poetic about some of
Aaron:there, there is a time and a place for
Chris:Yeah,
Aaron:Right? Con context is definitely important in that, that,
Chris:So I, if I was to phrase this another way, I would, I would, I should I, I, if I'm hearing this right concise with your words, be concise and get to the point.
Aaron:Perfect. See, that was beautiful, eloquent, beautifully expressed.
Chris:I love it. I love it. Aaron how can people get in touch with you? Well, how can they subscribe to the, well, tell us about the show and, and how can they subscribe to the show and get in touch with you if they mean need mechanical engineering expertise?
Aaron:Great. Yeah. You can find us online@teampipeline.us a caveat there. We do not do anything having to do with pipelines or oil refineries
Chris:yeah. You never, you never explained the name. Sorry. You were supposed the name. Yeah, explain the name for us.
Aaron:Okay, so I, I grew up in Hawaii on the east side of Oahu. And surfing, that's what I did growing up, especially in high school. And, and it, it was my, my first love. And if I had to pick one thing to do for the rest of my life, it would be surfing. I just so much. Even more than Jiu-Jitsu. Sorry, Jiu-jitsu, but
Chris:lot of in Arizona, I take it.
Aaron:Not yet, however. All right. Here's another tangent, quick tangent. They are building a surf park a legit surf park, so I'm very much looking forward to that. Anyway, on the North Shore of Oahu is a stretch of the most famous surfing beaches in the whole world just referred to as the North Shore usually. And arguably the most famous surfing beach on that stretch of coast is called Bonsai Pipeline, or as it's commonly referred to Simply Pipeline. So when I started my company, I thought, you know, pipeline, that's where the best of the best go to surf. And I, I thought I, I want the best of the best engineers here. This is where they come to, to really hone their skill and, and perform magic, right? So, that's really a throwback to my days growing up, surfing in Hawaii pipeline.
Chris:awesome. Okay, so it's it's Team Pipeline, us
Aaron:Team Pipeline us.
Chris:and a plug for the show too. Remind, remind us of the
Aaron:Thank you. Yeah, it's the Being an Engineer podcast, and we talk with high performing engineers from around the world. We've caught uh, James Hobson,
Chris:heavy
Aaron:a we do have some pretty cool people. I'm still trying to figure out why they agree to be on our show. James Hobson, who is the, the Hack Smith on YouTube, he's kind of this YouTube sensation, got like 12 million followers or something, does some really, really cool stuff, making movies into real technology. We've had your audience won't think this part is as cool, but John Hirschtick, who is the founder of SolidWorks, which was like the industry standard
Chris:me, I drooled when I saw that John was
Aaron:Oh, did you?
Chris:Oh God. I like, I, as soon as it downloaded, I'm like, pause the current podcast, away. I love John. He's a good, and his background story with the, the casinos and everything, the movie they made about
Aaron:yeah.
Chris:so awesome. Yeah. I met him once at a show for, he, he's an investor in one of our customers, startup and, and we build boards for him. So we, they, our, our customer invited us to the show and they introduced me and I was like, oh my God, this is, this is amazing. Yeah. I was
Aaron:He is like, like, yeah. Engineering royalty.
Chris:And he's the most down to earth person. You can possibly like, I expected this guy to be completely aloof. Like, because he's so stinking smart and, and he's built, you know, he's probably worth billions. He's
Aaron:A lot. A lot. Yeah. I don't know what
Chris:And he was just so easy to talk to. He was just so chill. And he was so excited and enthusiastic and wanted to listen and and anyway, sorry. Sorry. John's amazing. John's amazing. Others had, you had somebody from NASA on your show.
Aaron:Yeah, David. Oh, super cool guy. He was the, like the system architect for the Mars Curiosity mission, and he, he talked about living on Mars time. I think it's like 20, 25 hour cycle or
Chris:So cool. And he did it with his whole
Aaron:with his whole family. Yeah, yeah,
Chris:Oh gosh, that was such a, that was such a great episode. You got some heavy hitters on there. So anybody who's interested, where do you find that?
Aaron:You can go to our website. There's a, a link in the navigation up on the top, the menus just the podcast there. That, that's probably the easiest place. I can't
Chris:If, if you just search for it, you can just search. What is it? It's called becoming an engineer,
Aaron:being an engineer.
Chris:being an engineer.
Aaron:Yeah. Search for being an engineer podcast and it'll come right up.
Chris:Awesome. And if anybody wants to get in touch with you personally, is the best way to just get started on the website or do you, do you wanna share your email address or anything? The LinkedIn.
Aaron:You can send me just submit a form on the website or I'm pretty responsive on LinkedIn as well. Just send me a, a invite request and we can chat there.
Chris:Awesome. Awesome. Well, thanks so much for coming on the show. We'd like to conclude each show just by reminding our audience too, that they can get in touch with us. Contact@pickplacepodcast.com. We are, we are on the Twitter still. I know it's trendy and cool to be off the Twitter, but whatever. We're still on the Twitter at CircuitHub and at w Assembly. By all means, reach out to us anytime. And as always, please tell a friend anybody you think might be interested in hearing this show let 'em know about it. It's really the best way, you know, you can, we invite you to write reviews and stuff, but letting a friend know can a lot of times be the best way to spread the message about the show. So we appreciate it.
Melissa:Thanks for listening to the Pick Place podcast. If you like what you heard, consider following us in your favorite podcast app, and please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast from.
Chris:Thanks very much everybody.
Melissa:Aaron.
Aaron:All right. Yeah. Hey, thanks, Chris. Melissa. Great.