Engineering Dude

The first post of a new blog and what do I start with? A steaming pile of shit: literally. Welcome to Engineering Dude! Hang with me, I’ll explain the poop.

Years ago I attended a tradeshow with my employer. It was a massive laboratory device event like Pittcon or LabAutomation with all the big pharma companies showing off their bulbous budgets by filling 50′x100′ of surface area with LCD screens, robots, fake plants, and very expensive sales men in suits hitting on Booth Babes while away from their wifes. I was there lending engineering expertise to our own booth exhibit, and enjoying the open bar.

So I was chatting with one of our sales guys, and he says “I know 20 people in this room would buy our product if we could just get the right look.”

That sentence grabbed me. I had to analyze. Was it true? No. Did he honestly believe there were exactly 20 people who would buy for the right look? I doubt it. So why did he say it? Why did he feel compelled to include a false number in his sentence? Did using a hard number help him make his point in any way? Or did it hurt the point he was trying to make? I wondered, have I heard fake number declarations before?

Yuppers. And I started to notice that I hear them all the time.

• “If we could fix that motor start-up glitch, we would reduce out-of-box failures by 30%“
• “Damn it, I’ve seen this problem 30 times before!”
• “Just get it done, it will take you 15 minutes.”

Did any of those sound familiar? I’m sure you’ve heard variants. Why do people try to sensationalize their point by using fake numbers? Are the sentences above any more convincing than these below?

• “If we could fix that motor start-up glitch, we would reduce out-of-box failures.”
• “Damn it, I’ve seen this problem many times before!”
• “Just get it done, it will take you very little time.”

No, of course not. In fact, I began to think I am less likely to believe or sympathize with the root premise of a sentence if I hear an obviously false number. And the speaker’s reputation may even suffer a little.

So, in an attempt to shame potential users away from adding false and meaningless numbers to their speakings, I gave these numbers a derogatory name: Brown Numbers. Why Brown? Because the number was pulled directly out of that person’s ass. A Brown Number is any number used for the purpose of estimation or exaggeration… without the proper clarification that the number is, in reality, just an estimate/guess/imagination.

Some responses to brown numbers include the following:

• “Leave the Brown Numbers in your ass please.”
• “Your breath stinks, it must be all those Brown Numbers you’re using.”
• “Did you find that Brown Number in the toilet?”
• “OOOO that is a smelly Brown Number!”

Go ahead, break one of those out next time your boss tells you he can sell 15% more product if you… [insert design change pertinent to you here].

This has turned out to be more of a rant than I’d initially intended, so I think I’ll end with a positive lesson to take from all of this.

Positive Lesson: When you communicate, especially in a professional setting, it is always best to be as honest as possible. Emphasizing or sensationalizing your statements with inaccurate hard numbers may actually do more harm to you than good. If you must use an actual number when trying to estimate or emphasize a point, then you should clarify that number with an ‘approximately’ or an ‘about’ such as to notify the listeners your numbers are not real. This will reduce confusion and, in the end, improve your credibility.

…which is always a good thing. Eliminating Brown Numbers from your speech will increase your credibility 18% and reduce confusion in daily conversation by 42%. This will enable you to be liked by 67% more people, and this in turn will cause you to have 14 more friends, grow 0.34″ taller, and ultimately live 224 days longer.