An Engineer’s Mindset

A few weeks ago, my friend from my student run VC firm asked me for help with the due diligence for a company. The company is working on magnetic braking and he needed help understanding what this company does from a technical perspective.

I forgot most of what I learned from my physics courses, but roughly 2 hours later, I figured out the basic principles of magnetic braking enough to explain it to my friend.

A moment like this made me appreciate my education. Though I bash it at times, and I complain about the course work being overkill (are you really an engineer if you don’t do this?), I love being an engineer.

One of my takeaways from my education is how to see problems and how to solve them. It taught me to see who has the problem, identify the change agent, and understand what resources I need to solve it. Whether it’s trying to understand the physics behind some technology or growing my newsletter (coming soon), I see most problems now as just engineering problems. And my education gave me the confidence to figure out the solution.

February 9, 2020


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