A giant ship's engine broke down and no one could repair it, so they hired a Mechanical Engineer with over 40 years of experience.
He inspected the engine very carefully, from top to bottom. After seeing everything, the engineer unloaded his bag and pulled out a small hammer.
He knocked something gently. Soon, the engine came to life again. The engine was fixed!
Seven days later the engineer submitted his bill to the owner: the total cost of repairing the giant ship was $20,000.
“What?!” said the owner. “You did almost nothing. Give me a detailed itemized bill.”
The engineer responded:
1. Tap with a hammer: $2
2. Knowing where to knock and how much to knock: $19,998.
The importance of appreciating one’s expertise and experience cannot be stressed enough. . . Because, that experience is the result of years of struggles, hours of trial and error, experiments, thousands of hours of reading, sleepless nights, pain and even tears.
If I do a job in 5-10 minutes it’s because I spent 20 years learning how to do that in 5-10 minutes. You owe me for the years, not the minutes.