There is a moment, every time, right before we start.
There’s no tripod. My wife is holding the phone. I’ve said the first line four times to nobody, and I take a breath.
Then, from behind the phone:
“Opet?”
Again?
The person filming me is the person asking.
No Jira ticket. No carefully framed feedback. Just one word, one raised eyebrow, and my entire content strategy is under review.
I’ve worked with senior engineers who couldn’t deliver feedback that efficiently.
Before this, I shot with Hrabri Dabri and filmed weddings: bad light, no second chances, people who didn’t want to be filmed. I knew how to shoot and edit.
What I hadn’t met was this crew: nobody hired, nobody fireable, everyone with opinions.
The most honest QA team I’ve ever had
At work, feedback gets calibrated, softened and scheduled. By the time it reaches you, you need a debugger to understand what anyone actually thinks.
At home, feedback ships directly to production.
“You say actually too much.” “Why are you talking like that? You don’t normally talk like that.” “That one was funny.” “This one is boring.”
My daughter watched twelve seconds, said “this is boring,” and walked away.
She was right. I deleted it.
My family also has a complete impression of my “hook voice”: slightly too loud, slightly too confident.
They use it at dinner.
“In today’s video—PUT ON YOUR SHOES.”
They know when I’m going to point at something that isn’t there. They say “second take” before I’ve finished the first one.
Then, when nobody is performing, one of them asks:
“Did your video do good numbers?”
That’s when I remember: they’re watching.
Not just the videos. They’re watching me make them.
What the mockery hides
My wife films everything I publish. Not as a favour, not after negotiation — she picks up the phone before I ask.
She isn’t an engineer, and half the jokes about sprints and estimates land somewhere behind her. She films them anyway.
She also has veto power. Once a month she uses it, with one sentence: “You’re not posting that.” She has never been wrong. I have argued every single time.
And the kids. A house with children has a permanent noise floor. Shouting, laughing, someone falling off something.
Except when I sit down in that chair. Somebody whispers “he’s recording,” and the volume drops.
Not entirely, and not for long. Thirty seconds later it’s chaos again and someone walks through the shot on purpose. But it happened.
The dog is exempt. He wanders through the frame at his own pace, in every take, with the calm of someone who has never been reviewed.
Nobody bothers to make fun of something they don’t care about.
What they learn while watching
My children won’t remember a single sentence from these videos. Not the hooks, not the gestures, not the point about engineering.
But they see something else.
They see the first version and the tenth version.
They see me start before I’m ready, record something bad, watch it back, change one thing and go again. They have learned, without anyone explaining it, that there is always another take. That the first attempt is never the final one.
That’s the job. Engineers don’t arrive at the answer. We try something, watch it fail, change one variable and try again. Trial and error with better vocabulary.
The gap doesn’t close in one heroic moment.
It closes through repetition.
One video doesn’t change much. Neither does one correction. The difference is invisible from one day to the next.
But the work compounds. The camera feels more natural. The message gets clearer. What once took twenty takes eventually takes three.
Months later, someone who watched from the beginning says: “That one was actually good.”
Coming from my family, that’s an industry award.
The clean version
A while ago the washing machine stopped mid-cycle and locked shut. My wife didn’t call anyone. She looked it up, pulled the filter out, ran it again, got the same result, took it apart again and found the real problem. By evening it worked.
Our daughter watched the whole thing from the kitchen floor.
A few days later, while her mother was lining up another shot of me in that chair, she said:
“Daddy, engineer is like Mom.”
I’ve written about that sentence before. What I didn’t write is what it leaves out.
That is the clean version of the job. A problem appears, someone competent shows up, it’s gone by dinner. No drafts, no takes, nothing visible except the fix.
That is not what she gets from me.
She gets the part that doesn’t resolve in one afternoon. Take four. Take nine. A man in a chair repeating the same sentence while the dog walks past.
My wife fixes things. I write about fixing things, and need eleven attempts to say it out loud.
She saw her mom solve the problem. From me, she gets to watch the solving.
The real return
They mock the opening lines, they hold the light, and they do both in the same minute.
Nobody in my house has ever asked me to stop.
I make the videos one at a time. But in the background, something else is compounding: my confidence, my ability, and the example my children are quietly collecting.
My kids don’t need to see me know everything.
They need to see me keep learning.
Maybe that’s what engineering really looks like: not knowing, trying again, and letting the people closest to you watch you learn.
By order of thebeanengineer.com — get help from your family. Be an engineer. 🚀