Relationships set our life and career direction
How a relationship with my dad introduced me to my love of engineering, science and technology
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If you’re someone currently in a technology, engineering or broader science career or are currently pursuing a degree in one of these areas in a university, stop reading for a moment and think to yourself: who first inspired me to pursue this? Where did the idea first come from?
You might not immediately come up with an obvious answer to that question, but if you think long enough you will probably come up with one or more relationships from your life who planted some seeds of interest and got your personal career momentum started. We humans rarely begin new pursuits completely on our own.
My own journey in technology and writing software began when I was only ten years old. First introduced to it by my dad, I still very clearly remember my first piece of software I ever wrote. My dad, an electrical engineer by degree (as was his dad, my grandpa), worked as a systems engineer for most of his career. Attending college for electrical engineering in the late 60s meant that he was also required to take some early computer programming classes. He carried this into a spare time hobby writing some simple games like Tic Tac Toe. And it was precisely because he was working on a game that first intrigued me to ask him questions about what he was doing.
"What do you mean you're making a Tic Tac Toe game on our home computer?" I asked my dad. He showed me what he had created so far. It was exactly what you'd expect, a 3x3 square he had somehow coaxed our computer to draw on the screen. I'd been interested in drawing for as long as I can remember, in particular, drawing our house in the suburbs and other buildings using an increasing collection of rulers and T-squares, compasses and protractors. So the fact that he could draw this on the computer screen and knew how to do that, was the first thing that drew me in to want to learn more. Plus, he was my dad and I loved my dad very much - if he was doing something fun I wanted to be there to spend time with him and learn all about his world.
Using simple commands in a programming language called ST BASIC, my dad explained to me the very basics of how he could draw the lines on the screen. Okay - I wasn't far enough along in my math in 4th grade to quite know what x and y coordinates were, but my dad tried his best to explain them to me. I was learning how to draw lines on a computer and getting a little bit ahead in math - I got very excited!
"How did you make each of those squares mean something dad?" It was mind-blowing to me what he described next. He introduced me to something called an array where he stored the state of the board. It was a behind-the-scenes representation of what I was seeing on the screen. "But I don't get it, how do you connect what is on the screen to this thing called an array?" He went on to explain it more to me, I still didn't quite get it. But I wanted to learn more and kept asking him questions.
Then he showed me how he could detect mouse clicks in each of the 9 boxes and take action to display an X or an O in a given square. Again, mind blown, my appetite to learn more kept increasing! It was so amazing to me that my dad knew how to do this especially since this was the early 1990s when not many random people knew how to program computers to do things.
I don't know how many others kids get introduced to programming a computer from someone like their dad whom they really looked up to. But these early moments with him absolutely changed my life by introducing me to something that felt like it had infinite possibility for learning and creative expression. Just like drawing, and tree fort building, and model car painting and assembling, programming a computer became an outlet that fulfilled my voracious appetite to explore and create.
I'm not entirely sure that I would have discovered the world of computer programming had it not been for my relationship with my dad. If not for him being in my life, I might have found myself meandering when it came time to choose an area of study at a university. I might have become an architect instead, or maybe something far more unlikely like attempting to become a professional baseball player (I practiced signing baseballs when I was a young kid, I kid you not). But instead, because the relationship I had with my dad gave me a safe and connected place from which I could ask him questions and explore on my own, I found something that deeply resonated with myself. It became a primary way that I chose to express my desire to create and bring things deeply embedded within my imagination out into the world. And because of his leadership as my dad in my life, I also went into a career where I can earn a great living, travel to many parts of the world, and make an impact on people around me.
Many technologists aren’t accustomed to thinking about the things we do as creative, relational, and leadership endeavors, but I’ll give you some thoughts for why I think what we do are each of these.
Creative
If you’ve ever created a piece of software that decodes and renders an MP4 movie file to a screen, or designed an electrical circuit to do something amazing like delicately moving a robotic arm, or even created a simple mechanical advantage machine using a series of pulleys and ropes to lift something extraordinarily heavy, you understand how technology, engineering and science can be creative acts.
Where some might see a boring, mechanical calculation and design that solves utilitarian problems, I see a creative act of imagination, resourcefulness, and mastery of a craft. We’re artists of a different kind than those who use paint or clay to bring about their creations. This is a really important point, again stop and think about this for your own life.
Relational
The stereotypical image of a software developer, engineer or scientist is someone who loves spending time alone, stuck deep in thought completely oblivious to other people around them. While much of what a technologist, engineer or scientist spends their time doing can require a lot of focused mental time, how is that any different than say a painter or a sculptor?
What if I said that some of the best, most thoughtful and genuine people I know are software developers, engineers and scientists? Sure, they’re not typically what come to mind for the most outgoing kinds of people, but that doesn’t make them any less relational than someone in a different and inherently relational career like sales. We just do relationships differently, but we’re capable of learning and doing them extremely well.
Those of us trained in the sciences are just highly practiced at listening and thinking about what our senses tell us, and this is a good thing. When we share our opinion with others, or say how we feel, you can trust that you’re getting something very genuine from us.
I’ll be diving a lot more into this topic in particular for future articles, because we’re capable of so much relational excellence but we’ve been convinced by society that we’re rubbish at them. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Leadership
And because we’re used to listening and thinking deeply about a lot of different things including people, we can also be quite good at leading others. Great people leadership comes from having a lot of experience creating, but also from listening to many people over time and considering a broad set of viewpoints without being defensive.
I hope my own story deeply resonated with you and helps you begin to realize that we have so much potential to help the people in our own lives for the better. No, technology, engineering and science aren’t the answer to everything, but the creativity, relationships and leadership that we gain from our science-centric crafts help each of us to be the catalysts for positive change. Nothing should be done outside of the pursuit of better human relationships, including technology, engineering and science. And I firmly believe that we can be some of the best relationalists if we apply our thoughtfulness and incredible listening skills like we do our incredible creative and analytical ones.
Maybe you have a similar story of how you got introduced into technology, engineering or general science. I’d love to hear your story in the comments below.