One of my engineering role models is the late Jim Gray. I happened across a Microsoft Channel9 interview with him and decided to watch it.
I most appreciated Jim's comments on the following three points:
- The importance of first principles
- The "risk" that research presents to established products
- The role writing played in his getting recognition for what was actually joint work with others
One of the most influential papers that I've read was Jim's (and Shenoy's) Rules of Thumb in Data Engineering. This relatively short paper is packed with insights derived from simple trend data and the application of first principles. Since that time I've tried to rely on first-principles while researching new technologies and communicating the results. I've found this approach to be both highly effective and differentiating as, unfortunately, the practice doesn't seem to be as common as it should be.
Although my current position doesn't compare to the one Jim held at Microsoft, I do run a small research team inside of a large company. As a result, I found his comments on this topic interesting. In particular, I was pleased to hear that I have come to a point-of-view in common with Jim's - research innovations represent increased risk to an established line of business that is trying to minimize risk. It's a classic example of the "change vs. control" conflict that Kotter describes in his seminal paper, What Leaders Really Do. In realizing this, I have come to the conclusion that it is my group's responsibility to reduce the risk of research innovations to a level that allows the main-line managers to predict with confidence the cost/time/effort required to bring the new product/feature to market. As a result, creating new technologies is not sufficient - my team must also make those technologies consumable to an existing line of business. This has been perhaps one of the most important realizations of my career and it was encouraging to hear Jim make similar comments.
Towards the end of the interview, Jim made it a point to say that much of "his" work was actually done in collaboration with others. However, much of the credit has been given to Jim because he took the additional effort to document the work in the form of papers, articles, books, etc. This statement matches my own observations of authors/presenters earning outsized credit and highlights the importance of communicating effectively in regards to career growth.
