Avoiding the Billion Dollar Mistake Managers and Engineers Make [Storytime Saturdays]

If you avoid this mistake, you will make a lot of money.

Oct 09, 2022

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I know this title promises a lot,

And there is one inaccuracy in there. The mistake we will be covering is not worth a billion dollars. It is worth multiple billions. And this number will only grow.

If you can fix this mistake, you will reap many many benefits. In this post, I will some examples of how people avoided this mistake to gain great rewards. The best thing about this?

This approach involves doing less. I’m not baiting you. Fixing this mistake involves doing less work. No long hours required.

If this sounds like your thing, read on. You don’t want to miss out.

Key Highlights

What is the Mistake- This is going to shock a lot of you. The mistake is blindly trying to engineer better solutions when you have a currently functional solution. Don’t click off just yet. There is a reason this is bad.
Why is this a mistake- Engineering is hard. And very expensive. This is why you’re paid so much for it. A lot of the time putting money into improving your product by improving the engineering will lead to a lot of costs (especially when your product is already functioning reasonably well). You would be much better off focusing on the context surrounding the problem, as opposed to the problem itself.
What this means- If you are improving the service for users, instead of just chasing metrics, look for ways to change the user experience. If you’re building tools to help businesses, don’t just fix an issue (high costs, lag, etc) by engineering better products. Look at the context surrounding the problem. You might be able to solve the root in a much cheaper way. I will give you some of my favorite tips to help you solve the problem better.

Obviously, there are cases where you have to get deep and dirty with the engineering. That’s what the rest of the newsletter is for. However, some of the greatest innovations come from relatively simple products/ideas applied in the right places. This post will teach you how you can spot these, along with some examples.

woman in white shirt writing on white paper — Photo by ThisisEngineering RAEng on Unsplash

Why Perfect Engineering is a Billion-Dollar Mistake

Throughout this newsletter, I talk about the law of diminishing returns. At its core, it tells us something profound- the increase in the utility you get by doing more of something goes down the more you do that something. The first apple when you’re hungry, and you feel great. The second apple feels good. The 10th will leave you swearing off apples altogether.

There is also the 80-20 principle, which tells you that 80% of your results come from 20% of the work. This also means that the other 20% of the results come from 80% of the work. Why am I talking about these?

Chances are that most of you are working on products that are already reasonably functional. Engineers, Product Managers, and Domain Experts have already poured in many working hours to get things to work. You’re being paid to improve the product, not make it work. And if you have aspirations of working in Big Tech, this will only be more true.

In such cases, how much will your extra engineering really add? The hours you can spend will be tiny compared to the collective hours already poured in. All the direct optimizations are probably done, and the hard/tricky ones are…hard. You’re going to put in weeks of work for a 1% improvement in Engineering. That is a lot of resources spent. This could have been better spent on other avenues.

We have covered one such example in this newsletter (a whole while back). A team was struggling to reduce the operational costs of their services. While the engineering team focused on engineering heavy solutions, one creative engineer started digging into the problem. He noticed that there were a few clients that added a lot to the costs and not as much to the revenue. By dropping the costs from these clients, this problem would be fixed. Without the need for expensive engineering. And much quicker. This allowed him to gain lots of promotions. To learn more about this, read the following post-

Technology Made Simple

How a Software Engineer went from SW2 to Principal in 4 Years [StoryTime Saturdays]

Happy Saturday my amazing readers, I hope you’re all having an amazing time. I’m flying to India tomorrow, and am super excited about that. Will be seeing my family and some friends, and have an amazing time. I will be traveling quite a bit. Continuing with the theme of meeting my amazing audience, drop your locations to me by replying to this email/my social media. If you’re in India, I might just drop by your city…

3 years ago · 2 likes · Devansh

There are other examples where such an approach is amazing. Most notable is the story of the Houston Airport. The operators at the airport faced a lot of complaints from people who were sick of waiting for their luggage. Figuring out a way to get the luggage faster would be expensive. Instead, they started routing passengers to the furthest pickup aisle. This meant that passengers had to walk longer, and thus spent less time waiting. The complaints they faced dropped drastically.

There are many other cases like this. One of my favorite quotes states that to the person with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Often, when I am consulted with problems, my mind automatically reverts to presenting Machine Learning as a solution. Our mind has evolved to take shortcuts. We will default to what we know. For engineers, this means they will few things from an engineering lens. You want to snap this off. Remember, you’re not being paid to build/manage amazing engineering projects. You get paid to create value for someone. Plain and simple. Your tech knowledge is merely a tool to help you achieve this.

To become a millionaire, help someone make 2 million and ask them for half.
-Devansh (yes I’m quoting myself. Deal with it)

Now that we’re on the same page, let’s move to the next step. How can you stop yourself from making this mistake, and set yourself apart by providing solutions that are simple to implement but have crazy returns? Let’s get right into it.

How to Avoid this Mistake

So how can you avoid making the mistake of over-engineering? How can you spot avenues where simple solutions might work best? It’s not an exact science, but these are some steps that might help you-

Understand the end user- Your platform isn’t great if it hits metrics. It is great if the end users engage in a way that you can profit from. Thus you should spend a lot of time understanding your end user. Then you can create solutions that will help the user engage better. My favorite examples of this are the ‘@’ feature on Twitter (which created a new meta) and Instagrams like button. Both of these features were relatively simple to implement. Both allowed the end user to engage with the platforms in a much deeper way. TikTok did something similar. It stood out in a crowded social media market by giving the end user something that we all deeply crave- virality. TikTok made it very easy for someone to go viral, driving tons of people onto the platform. They didn’t have to compete on better recommendations, features, or content (all much harder to achieve). If you take some time to understand your end user, you will find all kinds of avenues for making things better. Some of these will be things that can be implemented simply.
Look to other people- There is also great utility in looking at your competitors or people that have achieved what you want. Their learnings and experiences can teach you a lot. Social Media companies are notorious for copying each other when they see features that work. All LinkedIn influencers have shockingly similar life experiences. YouTubers all make similar faces in their thumbnails. The list goes on. However, you can take things a step beyond. By learning about ideas/best practices in other domains, you will spot missing pieces in your domain/projects.
Understand the Roots of the Problem- Sometimes when you’re dealing with an issue, it is prudent to take a step back to understand the issue holistically. What is causing the issue? Is the issue experienced consistent across all users or just a few of them? How does this issue play into the larger system? This is what our super engineer did to gain his rapid promotion. Understanding the problem in the broader context can lead to you finding cost-effective solutions for it.

What I suggest might seem very simplistic. And in many ways it is. But simple doesn’t equate to easy. This approach requires a lot of foresight and patience to not immediately jump in with your engineering/expertise and to evaluate the problem holistically. However, this is an approach that will pay lots of dividends.

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