You’ve been working 12 hour days for the last 4 months. You’re coming off a night of only 4 hours sleep because all you could think about was the all-hands meeting with the CEO, CFO and CTO the next morning where you’d be reminded that you’re 3 months behind schedule. Your alarm sounds. You drag yourself into work. You’re there in the meeting – just barely – leaning back half asleep. After listening for 30 minutes about how important <this release> is the company, you finally hear it…

We need to find a way to work smarter (not harder).

The ultimate bit of useless advice… work smarter, not harder – or some variation thereof.

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Last night I started reading “The Machine That Changed The World”. It’s a book from 1990 that I’ve been meaning to read for a couple years that documents the rise of lean production through the 1900’s at companies like Toyota. The second chapter called The Rise And Fall Of Mass Production foreshadows a point on specialization that is discussed in detail (I’m assuming) later in the book. I thought it was interesting enough to post here for opinions on how it may or may not apply to specialization in hardware development.

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