My old boss told me my drafting was 'too clean' and I was mad for a month

He said I was spending too much time making lines perfect instead of getting the design right. Hated hearing it but he was right. I used to line up every hatch mark by hand. Now I rough things in first and only clean up once the engineer signs off. Has anyone else had to unlearn a perfectionist habit like that?

2 comments

2 Comments

lee.diana1mo ago

Oh totally. I once spent two hours aligning all the text labels in a wiring diagram so they formed a perfect arc. Like a rainbow of wire numbers. Foreman came by and said "did you do this or did the font do this?" Real punch in the gut. Now I try to do the messy version first. But sometimes I still catch myself straightening a single line for way too long. Old habits die hard, mine just happen to be really well organized.

park.iris1mo ago

Nah, I'm gonna push back on this one. The old boss might've been right in some contexts, but "too clean" is usually just code for "I don't have time for quality." If you're spending an extra 15 minutes making hatch marks look nice while the engineer is still changing the layout every week, sure, that's wasteful. But if your drawings are clean because you actually understand the design and you're putting in the care upfront, that's a feature not a bug. I've seen too many projects fall apart because someone rushed through the details and then had to redo everything twice. Trust me, a clean draft can catch mistakes before they become expensive problems. Your mileage may vary obviously, but I'd rather work with a perfectionist than someone who half-asses it and calls it efficient.