(Design) The scooter that compels you to lend a helping hand

I walked by a fallen e-scooter on the street today. Normally I’m not the good samaritan who goes around setting fallen scooters upright, but this one fell near my van, so my instincts made me pick it up.

My daughter was with me and we were both startled when, a second after I set the scooter upright, we heard it say: “Danke. Vielen Dank!” (Thank you, thank you very much!)

Now I’m going to do the right thing for kicks when I’m with my friends. Maybe even when I’m alone and bored. Good doers get a giggle and Bolt (company) gets to have people help them straighten up their fleet of e-scooters for free. A nice win-win, brought about by a simple design choice.

(Life) National pride is a weird thing

“So, you’re from Singapore? Why come here? Normally it’s the other way around,” he asks with a perplexing voice. His wife nods in agreement.

“Hah… yeah, true,” I respond, a little unsure what he means. I don’t have migration statistics in my mind so I’m not sure what he says is even true. But it sounds right, since there are hundreds of millions of people in Europe and only 6 million in Singapore.

This man’s question gave me good feelings for a moment. Hell yeah, I’m Singaporean! There’s much to be proud of about my country. So many things work better in Singapore than in Germany (cough, bureaucracy, cough cough digital technology, cough safety.)

… then I remembered something that brought me back down to the moment. It’s something I wish more people would understand (and something I hope I will always remember): there’s nothing to be proud of. We didn’t (couldn’t!) choose where we were born. All the accolades of one’s country? Those were attained by our forebears. We can only be proud of them.

To be proud of our nationality is a bit like taking credit for a family heirloom — you can cherish it, admire its craftsmanship, and benefit from its legacy, but you didn’t create it, so it isn’t yours to boast about.

(Career) Downsides of being an Engineering Director

I spoke to an Engineering Director today who works in an old-school German enterprise. He tells me a few things that I need to bear in mind as I plot the next phase of my own career:

• Motivation is paced over the medium to long term. This means it’ll be slow for you to see the results of your work. You have to manage that.
• You’re much more likely to need to be proficient in the local language (German) in order get the job, because you’ll work with stakeholders of the traditional type.

He didn’t seem that happy with his role, saying things like “If I can turn back time I would have specialised in becoming a Software Architect. I’m too old to try now.”