Experiences at Carrier

I manage 70 employees, both direct and Indirect. I have to make sure they follow sop's, safety, quality, tpm's,etc during production. I have 5 direct reports I have to do on a daily basis. I have to discipline employees at times, train and I also lead my employees so they can perform their tasks as needed....

Developed the worlds' first microprocessor controlled high-volume heat pumps establishing the "Infinity" brand in US, followed by wave of first generation controls for other countries. We had to roll our own SDLC tools to do so. Iterative "agile" development BTW - time-boxed, thin functional slices, always releasable product, etc. Also nightly builds about a decade before Microsoft bragged about doing that in the book on building Windows NT....

Software was becoming the majority of the engineering content in the controls and increasingly drove the differentiating features of the product. We had to invent practices, life cycle, tools for what had previously been small & peripheral aspect of the controls, and thus the products.

This is when I first discovered the existing software engineering literature. Chen on the E/R model. Weinberg on reviews, then "The Psychology of Computer Programming." Gilb's "Principles of Software Engineering Management."

Space optimization. 256 bytes of ram.

Software development was so young, we were inventing a lot of practices taught today as basic. Some we invented are now being rediscovered by folks who unfortunately have taken the poor practices in their previous experience as the whole story.

World's first microprocessor controlled residential heat pump. We beat the competition to market and in performance, establishing the "Infinity" brand still going today.

The one I built my third year there - Residential Standard Controls.