Name: The Never-Ending Challenge of Engineering
ISBN: 9780894485770

What Hacker News says

nobodysomebodyFeb 2024

By Adm. Rickover https://govleaders.org/rickover.htm https://www.powermag.com/blog/hyman-rickover-on-nuclear-desi... Books The Never-Ending Challenge of Engineering: Admiral H.G. Rickover in His Own Words The Rickover Effect: How One Man Made a Difference

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atomicnatureJan 2024

Essay: Rickover's "Doing a job" - https://govleaders.org/rickover.htm

Books:

- Rickover's "The Never-Ending Challenge of Engineering"

- Taichi Ohno's "WorkPlace Management"

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atomicnatureJun 2023

The senior engineer's job is managing engineering intangibles:

- psychology

- team work

- understanding economics, business context

- establishing reinforcing and refining culture

- setting a strong example, inspiring through practical demonstration + theory/reasoning

- improving standards in every aspect of engineering

- championing the system, making it work, but also making it shine

- retaining the best people, raising their standards even further

- dealing with politics at an above average level (not necessarily at grand-master level)

- "wisdom" - humility, strong will, reasonable words, firm decisions, etc

I'd recommend reading about Admiral Rickover. If I had to recommend one book - "The never-ending challenge of Engineering".

If you have less time, read his essay "Doing a job": https://govleaders.org/rickover.htm

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atomicnatureJan 2023

I recommend learning about two key figures, their principles and the way they conducted themselves throughout their life.

1. Admiral Rickover. Start with Rickover's "Doing a job" essay [1], and then move onto more detailed books, such as "The never-ending challenge of engineering" [2].

2. Lee Kuan Yew. Start with some of the more light-weight reads about the man, but to really understand what it takes to build something great from scratch, go through books by him [3]. You'll definitely learn many useful things through his books.

[1] https://govleaders.org/rickover.htm

[2] https://www.amazon.com/Never-Ending-Challenge-Engineering-Ad...

[3] https://www.amazon.in/Books-Lee-Kuan-Yew/

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Thursday24Sep 2022

Rickover was near the top echelons of US navy for ~60 years, as far as I know. Definitely, he knows a thing or two about burnout and turnover. He executed many, many sophisticated projects throughout his life. That's why he had such a long & successful career. I'd recommend reading his book - The never-ending challenge of Engineering. In my readings, this has been the best book on Engineering management.

Secondly, about burnout and turnover. Let's discuss from an empirical standpoint. The number one proximal cause of turnover is lack of "commitment". There are longitudinal empircal studies which demonstrate this. Job satisfaction is important as well; however commitment dominates every other factor.

Hence, it is important for managers to generate commitment, one way or another. I believe from these aspects, Rickover truly understood engineers and technical folks... In fact, he went against the US military books, and emphasised Individual initiative and judgement, regardless of what the rulebooks said. In a way, Rickover was able to work around the navy rules to create sufficient commitment to get complicated jobs done.

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hayst4ckMar 2024

I have not read them (yet).

This is a summary of one of those I think: https://www.ans.org/news/article-1592/caught-in-the-leadersh...

That page itself references: The Never-Ending Challenge of Engineering: Admiral H.G. Rickover in His Own Words which appears to be on kindle.

"Admiral Hyman Rickover" is another book that doesn't appear in your list.

https://rickover.com/ is a site that recommends a couple of books.

There is a PBS documentary-ish thing that can be rented on a couple streaming services: https://shop.pbs.org/WC1852.html

Google is surprisingly sparse on him, so combing over his Wikipedia references was my plan. I've also found it hard to find a list of his congressional testimonies, but I am pretty interested in that.

You can also watch some interviews on YouTube. Rickover was a person who successfully spoke truth to power, which made him enemies. I have a hard time telling how much influence the power he spoke truth to has had over his legacy. Watching some of his interviews that can be found on youtube are a very "never meet your heroes" kind of experience.

The greatest criticism of Rickover is that he did not create a system that produced more Rickover's, which created a sort of "succession" problem and "bus factor" problem. On the flip side it is very hard to argue with his results and legacy.

These are some other non-exhaustive HN discussions of him: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28574622 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36080015 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38383206 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38178207

> He claims "this is our fault, we'll fix it"

That is exactly the opposite of Rickover's idea of ownership. This is "our" fault means that everyone is responsible, which paradoxically means no one is responsible. In tech "this is owned by everyone" means it is completely neglected except by "heroes" who are on the path to burning out because they have leadership that has no idea what is going on because if they did, then someone would be directly responsible for the state of whatever is communally "owned".

Rickover's philosophy (from what I gather) is as simple as the difference between "our" and "my." Rickover would have definitely said "my" fault. "This is my fault, I am responsible, I will fix it." A CEO has the most power and therefore the most responsibility, so a CEO who diffuses responsibility will find that no one else wants responsibility either. It is debatable whether Rickvoer was properly responsible since there is rumor that during the USS thresher incident he distanced himself from responsibility, but I think his philosophy is very very clear about the distinction between "our fault" and "my fault" and how important that difference is.

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