Photo-Illustration: Sean McCabe

I’ve been writing these columns for IEEE Spectrum since January 1982, and looking back, I can see how my writing has evolved. For better or worse, my columns have become more conventional. Some of the older columns I’d like to disown, and of others I think, “Wow, did I write that?” The Spectrum editors asked me to pick 10 favorites. Here are some that for one reason or another struck a chord with readers.

The Bean Counters

May 1992

This column was a venture into parable. The corporation is a ship at sea and the engineers, in the engine room below deck, have little sense of how the great ship is being steered. The ship’s captain is a financial person—in other words, a bean counter.

The Performance Rating

May 1993

Occasionally I see one of my columns pinned on a bulletin board somewhere. To be honest, it hasn’t happened all that often, but when it does I feel a sense of accomplishment. This is the column I have seen posted the most often. Performance ratings are close to the psyche of any employee, and in my experience no one is happy with his or her own rating. Here I poke a little fun at the whole process.

Special Places

November 1999

I chose this column for the simple reason that the issue of place has been on my mind of late. Given that birds of a feather flock together, what determines where they gather? I had unwittingly come to have a certain responsibility for attracting high-tech workers to my home state of New Jersey. Every other state wants to do the same thing, and I’m wondering why they should come to mine. Anyone got any ideas?

When Giants Walked the Earth

April 2001

It bothers me that everyone knows who invented the electric light but that almost no one can name the inventors of the transistor, arguably the greatest invention of the last century. I’m fascinated with the difference between how we view the engineering giants of the past and how we view our innovators today. Were engineers smarter then, or is it just our warped view of history?

Showing Up

May 2002

Woody Allen’s comment that “Eighty percent of life is showing up” is one of those little assertions that contains a surprising truth. I often feel that the tough part is over whenever I’ve arrived at wherever I’m supposed to be. In the early days of Google, shortly after the Big Bang, my essay was high on the list of hits for the search terms “showing up” + “Woody Allen.” Now there are more than 50 000 hits for that, and I’ve sunk to number 25, where no one is likely to find me.