Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1532278
FEBRUARY 2025 I DESIGN007 MAGAZINE 61 I recently made a career recommendation for someone—a good recommendation, actu- ally—and they pushed back with, "at job will be replaced by AI in the future." at was the end of the discussion. I happen to know that the person I was talking to never explored—and will probably never explore— how AI could automate that task. at's the type of person who gets replaced by it. When I realized that I didn't know where it was going, I signed up for a ChatGPT account and regis- tered for a few classes. As it moves forward and most likely mushrooms in the next few years, I don't want to be playing catch-up. You once told us, "How you do anything is how you do everything." Explain what you mean by that. You saved the best question for last. It's a gener- alization, of course, but it's pretty useful. I think of it in terms of Newton's First Law, which states that an object in motion will stay in motion, and an object at rest will stay at rest unless an outside force acts upon it. In my application of it, the object is you: your life, career, health, habits, etc. e outside force can be from your environment, or it can be from a decision you make. at's the difference between humans and physical systems. e force can be a change of mind or changing a habit. I've studied people over the years. I watch how they work and react to situations. With soware programmers, salespeople, or appli- cations engineers I've worked with or been adjacent to over the years, I've gradually increased the sample size. ere was a so- ware developer a few years back who always seemed to have a problem wrapping up his projects. He was unpredictable. Occasionally, I'd pop into his cubicle to talk to him about a project. Every single time I popped in, he was surfing the Web. He didn't work for me, or I'd have fired him the second or third time I saw this. I was popping in on him to see how proj- ect delays were going, and he was spending company time doing non-company stuff. How he worked when I checked in on him was how his projects went. Fast forward a few years, and I see the same thing with soware developers who have worked for me. Some are super thorough. ey think about contingencies and test their own code. at's what you want, obviously, and they are like that all the time. Others commit code that's barely been tested, it seems, and I can consistently find issues in under five minutes. ey're also like that all the time. One developer who worked for me in the past seldom imple- mented something in less than three attempts. I like using the analogy of the Nine Dot Puz- zle, as it applies to this. e goal of the puzzle is to connect the nine dots with no more than four straight lines. To do it, you have to go beyond the nine dots. In my analogy, there are engi- neers who will go beyond the nine dots, mean- ing they above and beyond what is required. ey go the extra mile with their projects. ey make good neighbors. ey take good care of property. ey may even make their beds in the morning. en there are others who do as little as possible. In the analogy, they barely go beyond the second dot, let alone the third. Great analogy. I appreciate your input. ank you, Andy. DESIGN007 The solution to the Nine Dot Puzzle.