work that matters

This is a long post is going to piss some people off.

I had an early morning meeting a few weeks ago that I’ve been mulling over in my head. An old acquaintance told me over breakfast about the work that his firm is doing in healthcare financing and insurance estimation. It’s very high level policy oriented work that is front-and-center with healthcare reform, and it’s a lucrative prospect. He asked me if I would consider joining him and his team – because not only are “we changing the game in how we fund healthcare, we’re going to make a lot of money doing it.”

Work right now is all-consuming. I’m barely above water trying to figure out how to launch a major medical device. There are questions of technical assessment, market strategy, brand positioning, and a thousand things that I’m ultimately responsible for that I’ve never done before. And since January, it’s been a thousand miles an hour with no breaks. I’m stressed.

But what I do is create technologies and systems for people in their most vulnerable moments. I spent thirty minutes telling him why I didn’t go into consulting or hedge fund trading (and I had the opportunity). Sure, I could have made more money. But money isn’t what I was chasing.

It IS possible (but not always easy) to do what you care about and make money.

So to be asked, point blank, to leave and do something else for the money? I was almost insulted.

I’ve heard all the arguments that you can make money first and then use it to make real change in the world – a la Bill Gates or Warren Buffett. Or that you need to work at a place like a consulting firm to “get exposure” and “learn the industry” before you can do meaningful work of your own.

Please. I went to a top five engineering school with a footprint at all the major consulting firms. I served on an Advisory Board alongside lawmakers and CEOs of major corporations. It wasn’t for lack of opportunity or exposure that I chose the route I chose. It was because I didn’t want to wait for four years of exposure and experience (and a fat paycheck) to do work that I found meaningful.

I’m not saying that I love every piece of my job. The past five months have left me ready to pull my hair out at times. But what’s important to me is that moment of quiet joy when I stand at a patient’s bedside and a doctor introduces me as the engineer that made sure the medicines made it into your body.

Some people genuinely enjoy working at consulting firms or finance houses (and I have lots of friends that do). That’s fine. But I also have friends that have deluded themselves into thinking that working where they are is what they actually want. The point here is to not turn down something you love in favor of something you aren’t passionate about. Real passion – passion for the work – not just passion for the money (Penelope Trunk has a related post – about falling in love with a person, not falling in love with money). Don’t justify to yourself that you’re passionate about something if you’re doing it for the name, the prestige, or the paycheck.

Here is a story from Ramit Sethi (I believe the link to the story requires a free subscription).

A few years ago, I was a senior in college, deep in interview season, and one of the guys in my dorm had been talking about working at a company (let’s call it Company A) for months. It was an awesome company where he would be doing cutting-edge work — IF he could get an offer. 

He was OBSESSED with the firm. He spent weeks prepping, doing informational interviews, researching them, talking to alumni who worked there… and put together a phenomenal interview strategy. And FINALLY, after all his hard work, he received a great job offer from them. 

…but then he received a job offer from Company B for about $5,000 more.
Company B was basically a financial chop shop where they took elite grads and forced them to work for 16 hours/day doing Excel and Powerpoint. It has a prestigious name, but the work is a joke (and everybody knew it). Yet they pay top dollar and pick off people like my friend year after year. 

It was amazing to watch him change overnight. “Yeah, Company A is pretty cool…but B is doing some REALLY interesting things. I could totally see myself working there for a few years, then doing what I really want. Maybe an MBA? Or starting my own firm?” 

I’ll never forget thinking that it only cost $5,000 to buy his dream and squash it. 

Back then, I hadn’t developed my philosophies about Conscious Spending and honestly, I was more judgmental than I am now. So keep that in mind when I tell you what happened. 

“Why would you turn down your DREAM JOB for a little extra money?” I asked. 

“It’s not just about the money,” he said. “The work is really interesting and I think there are some good opportunities once I finish my two years there. And it is an amazing brand on my resume. Yeah, the money is good, too…” 

This was a guy who’d spent months CONSUMED with getting into the other company. He knew exactly what he would do there. We used to joke about these big-name companies that just swoop in and buy the best talent, but then stick them in jobs that a monkey could do. Plus, he essentially had his pick of jobs and was graduating debt-free from Stanford (thanks to his parents). He could work anywhere and not worry about money. 

Now this is going to sound a little arrogant, but I said it back then, and I still mean it today.
“Dude, $5,000?” I told him. “In the grand scheme of things, that’s NOTHING. If you make the right moves, you’ll be able to make that in a month…or even a day.” 

But even though he loved this company, and had psychologically committed to working there for MONTHS, when he got slapped in the face with a fat job offer he changed overnight. It’s hard to turn down that amount, even if it only adds up to about $100 per week. It’s difficult to imagine your friends making thousands more than you do… even though you “could” have made that much. 

And so he went to work there. He hated the job. But he made money, and now he’s become yet another finance guy.

This is the part that will upset people. I know I’ll get some emails from people in finance and consulting telling me how much they love what they do and that I don’t understand because I’m one of the “lucky” engineers that does what they want. But this isn’t about finance and consulting. This isn't about people who actually, legitimately feel like the work they do is fulfilling. This is about being honest with yourself about what fulfills you - and making the conscious decision to pursue just that.

We are responsible for designing the lives we live.

this video will never get old

Take four minutes and watch this.

“The world is not respectable; it is mortal, tormented, confused, deluded forever; but it is shot through with beauty, with love, with glints of courage and laughter; and in these, the spirit blooms.” - George Santayana

photographic inspiration from Cartier-Bresson

There is a captivating Cartier-Bresson exhibit on display at the High. I didn't know who he was before the exhibit, but I found his work enchanting and very real. As the wall tells you when you walk into the gallery,

... each frames a small group of characters in a scene of stunning simplicity.

French Quarter, New Orleans, Louisiana. A simple green door and a captivating shot.

One of my one-year reflections for the blog was that I need to take more of my pictures. I recently bought a new camera (and I highly recommend it, if you're looking for a point-and-shoot). I'm not a serious photographer, but this camera makes me feel like I could be.

Cartier-Bresson strove to capture life and people in the process of living. This is the definition of ethnography, and one of my favorite parts of being a designer.

Playing Holi with friends and family.

On the bridge to the Stent Wing at the High.

Thomas looking artsy outside of an art gallery in the French Quarter, New Orleans.

It is through "living that we discover ourselves, at the same time as we discover the world around us."

the lottery of birth

From getrichslowly:

As I’ve mentioned already, at times I felt guilty too. It’s hard not to feel guilty when you’re staying at a hotel where the average room runs $618 a night — and meanwhile, half a mile from this posh palace, men and women are scratching to make ends meet.

On the road outside of Dharavi, Asia's largest slum.

Four miles from Dharavi, is the Intercontinental Grand Mumbai.

What is my moral obligation to these people? Do I have one? Should I feel guilty for spending money on tourism? Or, as our guides suggested, should I be comforted by the fact that I’m participating in a transfer of wealth from the rich to the poor? What productive ways can I help aside from just throwing money at the problem?

I don’t have answers to these questions.

Ultimately, however, I’ve realized that guilt is not productive. Guilt doesn’t accomplish anything. I can’t change who I am or the circumstances I’ve been born into. I’ve made the most of what I have: I’ve been lucky, and I’ve worked hard to build upon that luck. I can’t change this, and I can’t regret it.

Instead, I feel like it’s my responsibility to do something with this hand that I’ve been dealt. Do what? I don’t know — and I’m not sure I need to know right now. As I travel, I’m becoming more aware of the world around me, and I feel like maybe there’s something I can contribute to make it a better place. I’m not sure what that something is, but I’m willing to be patient until I discover it.

I could have been born to any family, anywhere in the world, under any set of circumstances. I could have been any Indian girl - one of 600 million others.

But I wasn't. I was born to incredibly intelligent and educated parents. Who had families that supported them and career choices that made them successful, in today's terms. Who left the country of their past in hope of a country that could change their futures.

A man sleeping on a makeshift cot placed on a pile of trash near Loni Road in Delhi.

The Bah'ai Lotus Temple is one of the biggest tourist attractions in Delhi.

In Warren Buffett's words, I (like most of you) have won the lottery of birth. It's an incredibly humbling thought. As he describes it, if just before your birth you were put in front of a barrel containing 6.8 billion balls, and you pick one ball - one ball that would determine your gender, your birthplace, your parents - that determined the circumstances of your life. If you had that chance, would you put your ball back in hopes of something better?

I know I wouldn't. That's the hand that I've been dealt. All I can do now is give something back for it.

depth, breadth, and the "real world"

There are two things on Earth that grate on my nerves to no end. One is bananas; the other is when people refer to a certain milestone or experience in their lives as a mark of "the real world." Graduating from college, returning from a trip abroad, or finishing a substantial service endeavor are all good examples of activities that seem to fall outside the realm of the "real world."

I don't know, it looks pretty real to me... (photo courtesy of... and read the headline for good measure)

This phrase always makes me wonder, what fake world were you in before that?

In adult life I think people value professional depth. For most people, school is about creating depth in one subject area to pursue after graduation. Work is about becoming a subject matter expert in one field. Graduate degrees are about depth of understanding in one very specific topic. But although our society encourages to specialize professionally and develop a depth of understanding in a particular topic, it personally idealizes those who do the opposite - who have a breadth of interests and engagements in addition to their (to use another buzzword) core competence. The phrase "the real world" is about experiences that create professional depth. But what you do outside that "real world" is what makes you a great designer.

To be a good designer is to possess depth. It's very, very important to understand fully what tasks are needed to achieve a given outcome. That's depth. That's understanding the realities of the use case. To design products for mitral valve repair, I have to have a complete and thorough grasp on the anatomical details of the heart and the physiology of its components. But to understand the user is a different scenario - what are the pain points in the surgeon's particular technique? How many patients does a nurse see in one day? What are the most challenges tasks on the agenda in the operating room? Being able to address depth issues, or task-specific challenges, is to meet your design criteria. But being able to address breadth issues, things that a user can't necessarily articulate for themselves, things that are tangential to the task at hand but functionally related to the use of a device - addressing those issues is what creates products that defy expectation.

It's one reason that I'm such an advocate of engineers having ethnographic experience in user sites. Understanding the technical details of what you're designing to is one thing; but understanding physical environments, workflows, structures, and attitudes are priceless. Processing these connections in one setting can help us translate dissimilar experiences into useful inputs, can help us come up with good questions to ask when we're designing something new. Even just being able to touch something, rather than hear about it, gives us a whole new dimension on what it is we're designing. Watching a patient being transported into the ICU on an Army base in India has helped me translate the mechanical requirements to keep Foley catheters in place for patients in Belgium. Even if that observation didn't take place in the "real world."