Like the protagonists of Damnation Alley (a contender for best science fiction film of 1977), you will face in your career a long, deadly journey across hostile terrain in a vehicle that hopefully will allow you to reach your personal goals. I recently attended an excellent retirement planning seminar which described many of the things I should have been doing over the past decades. This seemed like sub-optimal timing: like explaining to someone how to drive after the trip is virtually complete. How better it would have been to outline some key features on how to engineer your Financial Assault Vehicle in your 20-30s, where you can take advantage of lessons learned and the compounding of time to have far greater impact. In that spirit then let’s set out some tools for younger engineers that may not have had some of these aspects explained to them to date.

To illustrate these concepts, we’ll do a walkaround of the magnificent Landmaster vehicle from Damnation Alley. Like you and your assets, the Landmaster is a rugged, multipurpose and resilient vehicle capable of handling all manner of threats. Like us, it faces challenges at times – internal and external, but with a flexible approach to problem solving and access to scrapyards it can convey its cargo to a refuge. These observations and lessons learned are from my experience with a specific country and company, so they may or may not be broadly applicable, but should be useful for those folks navigating similar terrain. Let’s step through each of these seven aspects of the Landmaster, with some actionable tips.

Your Landmaster

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