On T-Shaped Engineers and Hardware Development: Transparency and the Generalist Path

When I spoke with Jami Friedman, Executive VP at Leaf Labs, one phrase jumped out:

“The programs that turn out really well are the ones where we are really on point with being overly communicative about how things are going, whether that’s good or bad.”

That idea of being “overly communicative” is not something you read in a textbook. It sounds clunky at first. But the more I sat with it, the more I realized it captures one of the most overlooked truths in engineering: transparency is not a luxury, it is the difference between momentum and disaster.

Anyone who has been through a prototype run knows what I mean. Imagine a return path mistake on a high-speed net. The schematic looks fine, the simulation might even pass, but on the board the trace jumps a split plane and suddenly the loop inductance spikes. Crosstalk shows up. The eye diagram collapses. By the time you see it in the lab, the damage is already done. That’s thousands of dollars and weeks of delay you cannot get back. Catching it earlier requires not just expertise, but a culture where someone feels comfortable saying, “this via placement doesn’t look right, here’s why.”

Transparency isn’t just about being polite with updates. It’s the only way to surface problems before they multiply into failures.

Silence in Hardware Costs More Than Money

In most engineering environments, silence is the default. Engineers speak up when they hit a blocker or when the prototype is working. Everything in between is treated as noise.

But in hardware, that silence can be lethal. If you wait until the prototype fails to share what is happening, the team has already lost weeks. If you tell the client only what is going well, you rob them of the context they need to make better decisions.

Leaf Labs pushes against this by showing clients the messy middle: photographs of a desk cluttered with boards and cables, updates when something feels stuck, a note when a part is printing in the back room. These aren’t polished updates. They are real ones. And real is where trust comes from.

I’ve been on teams where the culture was “only share progress once it’s clean.” That never ended well. Clients don’t expect perfection, they expect honesty. They can plan around honesty. They cannot plan around silence.

Transparency Buys You Time

Software teams can roll back changes in hours. Hardware teams cannot. Once a design is fabricated, you live with the consequences. Lead times stretch for weeks or months. Every hidden error multiplies its cost.

This is why transparency in hardware is not just a communication style. It is a survival mechanism. Early honesty gives you options. Late honesty traps you.

The lesson is simple: the sooner you share, the more room you give yourself to recover.

One way to think about this is to treat hardware in “development mode.” In software, development mode is where feedback loops are fast, changes are expected, and iteration is constant. The trick is bringing that spirit into hardware without ignoring the physical realities. Agile practices help: break programs into smaller increments, test early with prototypes, run short design sprints, and share updates as if they were commits. No sprint demo is too small. When you borrow Agile’s cadence, you don’t erase hardware’s constraints, but you do shorten the distance between decision and adjustment. Transparency is what makes this rhythm possible.

The Generalist as the Backbone of Small Teams

The second theme that stood out in my conversation with Jami was the way Leaf Labs builds its team. With just over 20 people, every engineer wears more than one hat. Firmware developers also touch PCB design. Hardware engineers also think about encryption and security. Everyone stretches outside their comfort zone.

This is not a watered-down generalism. It is an intentional choice to build engineers who understand entire systems. At Leaf Labs, the value of an engineer is not how sharp their siloed skills are, but how well they can connect the pieces.

That runs counter to how most of us were trained. Engineering school tells you to specialize. Get so deep in one domain that nobody else can touch your level of expertise. Be the antenna person. Be the power integrity person. Be the FPGA person.

And yes, mastery matters. But what Jami and her team show is that generalism is not weakness. It is glue. A generalist can see how one trade-off in layout changes the timing requirements in firmware, or how a choice in encryption cascades into system-level architecture. That connective tissue is what keeps projects alive.

The Trap of Over-Specialization

Mastery has a seductive quality. It gives you identity and status. You know exactly what you are best at, and others know exactly why to call you. But mastery also has a trap. If your expertise is too narrow, you struggle to see the system outside your domain. You can become so focused on being the best at one thing that you lose sight of how it interacts with the rest of the stack.

In a company of hundreds, that can work. There are buffers and handoffs to catch those gaps. But in a small team building complex hardware, those blind spots become cracks in the foundation.

Generalists don’t erase mastery. They balance it. They allow the system to breathe.

Why T-Shaped Engineers Are the Future of Hardware Development

In the world of engineering, the term T-shaped engineer has become a shorthand for the kind of talent modern teams desperately need. A T-shaped engineer combines deep expertise in one discipline (the vertical bar of the “T”) with broad knowledge across multiple domains (the horizontal bar). This blend of mastery and adaptability makes them uniquely effective in hardware development, where systems thinking matters as much as individual skill.

What Makes a T-Shaped Engineer Different?

Traditional engineering careers often reward specialization. You might become the best at RF design, FPGA implementation, or power integrity. That expertise is essential, but it can create silos. When a project requires collaboration across firmware, PCB design, and manufacturing, highly specialized engineers sometimes struggle to see the bigger picture.

T-shaped engineers bridge that gap. Their deep vertical skill ensures credibility and technical precision. Their broad horizontal knowledge lets them communicate effectively across disciplines, troubleshoot system-level issues, and adapt when projects shift. In a hardware-rich development environment, that versatility isn’t just helpful—it’s critical.

Why Hardware Teams Need T-Shaped Engineers

Unlike software, hardware comes with physical and financial constraints. A misrouted return path or overlooked signal integrity issue can cost weeks of lead time and thousands in fabrication. T-shaped engineers are better positioned to catch those issues early because they understand not only their own domain, but also how their decisions ripple across the system.

This systems mindset makes T-shaped engineers natural collaborators in Agile-inspired hardware workflows. They can contribute to sprint reviews, explain technical trade-offs in plain language, and step into adjacent roles when the team needs extra capacity. That adaptability reduces bottlenecks and keeps development moving.

Building a T-Shaped Skill Set

Becoming T-shaped doesn’t mean diluting expertise. It means combining depth with translation skills. Here are practical steps:

• Anchor in one specialty. Choose an area—such as power electronics or embedded firmware—where you can achieve depth and mastery.
• Expand laterally. Learn enough about neighboring disciplines to hold meaningful conversations and anticipate constraints.
• Think in systems. Practice tracing signals, data flows, and dependencies end-to-end.
• Communicate openly. Transparency is the soft skill that makes breadth valuable. Sharing the messy middle invites collaboration and builds trust.

T-shaped engineers embody the balance that modern hardware teams need: the credibility of specialists and the flexibility of generalists. They are the ones who keep projects from getting stuck in silos, who connect firmware to hardware, and who turn transparency into momentum. In an industry where the cost of mistakes is high and the speed of iteration matters, T-shaped engineers aren’t just valuable—they are indispensable.

The Real Skill: Thinking in Systems

What Leaf Labs hires for is not the number of acronyms on a resume. They look for people who can think through a system end to end. Can you follow how data flows? Can you see how one design decision affects every other piece of the puzzle?

This ability to reason across layers is surprisingly rare. Experienced engineers sometimes lack it. Younger engineers sometimes show it right away. It has less to do with years of practice and more to do with how you see problems.

And the hard truth is that you cannot fake it. Either you can see the system, or you cannot.

Transparency and Generalism Need Each Other

These two themes, transparency and generalism, sound separate. In practice, they feed off one another.

A generalist has to admit where their knowledge is shallow. That takes transparency. Transparency builds the trust that allows someone to move outside their comfort zone and still be valued. Together, they create the kind of engineering culture where people learn faster, share more openly, and deliver products that feel cohesive instead of stitched together.

When you remove either element, the system collapses. A team of specialists without transparency becomes brittle. A team of generalists without transparency becomes chaotic. Combine the two and you get momentum.

Leadership’s Role in Building This Culture

For leaders, the implications are clear:

1. Reward communication as much as output. Do not just ask whether the board works. Ask whether everyone knew where the board stood along the way.
2. Hire for system thinking. The candidate who can explain how a computer works is more valuable than the one who only knows a narrow toolchain.
3. Show unfinished work. Put early breadboards and rough sketches in front of clients. It signals confidence, not weakness.
4. Don’t force a binary choice between mastery and generalism. Give your people space to grow deep expertise and also cross into adjacent domains.

These are not just HR policies. They are engineering practices that protect teams from failure.

My Own Hard Lessons

I’ll admit this: I’ve fallen into the silence trap myself. In past projects, I waited until I had the “right” answer before sharing. I thought silence would protect me. What it actually did was isolate me. By the time I shared, it was too late to adjust.

And I’ve also felt the pull of specialization. It feels good to be the expert in the room. But I’ve learned that what makes an engineer valuable in the long run is not just their depth, but their ability to translate across domains. To walk into a room of firmware people, PCB people, and product managers and speak a language everyone understands.

That’s what I take from my conversation with Jami. Transparency keeps you from hiding. Generalism keeps you from getting stuck. Together, they allow you to keep moving, even when the terrain shifts under your feet.

A Question for You

So here’s what I want to ask anyone reading this:

• Do you identify more as a specialist or a generalist?
• And when was the last time you were completely transparent about the state of your project?

Because at the end of the day, hardware isn’t just about the boards we ship. It is about the culture we build while shipping them. A culture built on honesty. A culture built on engineers who can cross boundaries.

That is what makes Hardware Rich Development more than a slogan. It is a way of working that treats transparency and generalism as core engineering skills. And if we get that right, the products will follow.