Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

The stereotype of the scientist and engineer is someone who would rather be with technical things than people. Here are a few tips.

As an engineer, this holds for scientists as well, there is one fundamental question we must always be prepared to answer (two words):

what’cha doin?

The answer does not need to be elaborate. We do, however need to have the answer. Replies like, “Same old stuff,” and “You know, the usual,” aren’t acceptable. State specifically what you are doing and how that task fits or why it fits.

For example, “I’m looking a cloud computing options to see if they would give us a place to perform experiments,” or “I am trying the new features of the software so I can demonstrate them to our users.”

Now that we have the introductory interpersonal communication course behind us, let’s move on to the advanced course. In this, we answer a three-word question:

When’ll’ya be done?

No, they aren’t prying. No, they are being a bureaucrat. This is a fundamental question that question askers ask. Have an answer like, “I think I need two more days.” If you really want to impress the other person, follow that with something like, “Is there something else you want me to do now or in two days?”

See, this really isn’t that difficult. Know the introductory and advanced questions and their answers. Life can be good—even with these question askers around.