Telco compares merger to Challenger space shuttle
Top brass at Thus are celebrating their merger with Cable and Wireless by modestly telling staff through the medium of leaving large cardboard junk around offices that "a new era of telecoms" has begun. So far, so tedious consolidation. But an eagle-eyed Reg spy noticed their equally modest choice of metaphor - that of billions …
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This may be a good metaphor...
..... for current Thus staffers.
Posted anonymously whilst waiting for the judgement to come down from above :(
Mine's the one with the CV in the pocket please.
How apt
As a refugee of Cable and Wireless and Thus I think the choice of shuttle is dead on. Except this time we know the O ring is going to go.
There are IT Managers who weren't even /born/ in 1986
One may be managing you now. Just cry quietly to yourself.
Was this really accident...
...or a graphic artist with a sense of humour?
Look on the bright side.
Their office party should have the most lavish display on Guy Fawkes' night.
That is a pretty clanger!
Oh and on a side note, I had forgotten about this, anyone got a replacement ISP for my connection with Thus? That has morals and doesn't Phorm preferably.
epic fail
thus are crap, we take the service from them and are rubbish at billing and their adsl fault call centre are pap too. this can only mean more doom and gloom for us SMEs dealing with em
abandon ship me harties yaaarr
See also
A local cab firm in (presumably) a bid to get to the top of yellow pages, chose the first 'A' word they could think of:
http://graeme.woaf.net/pics/taxicard.jpg
Apollo 1 went about as well as challenger, just slower and more horrifying. Just the image I want when climbing aboard a mini-cab.
Maybe there's further similarity ...
... between Thus/C&W and Challenger - somewhere, in a darkened office with papers strewn everywhere, is an engineer knew 5 years in advance that the parts don't fit and it's just a matter of time before there's a terrible accident ....
Aside: When I first read the accounts of Challenger and the SRB design, I said "They did what!? They designed a f*cking SRB with multiple f*cking 'click-on' sections sealed with f*cking rubber O-rings!? What the f*ck were they thinking!?" NASA managers, like in some businesses, aren't as smart as we'd like to believe ....
"For the young and the ignorant"
Wow, that was 22 years ago... now I really do feel old!
Mines the jumpsuit to the left, thats the one..
My comersiations
My Comersations to all Thus employees, C&W took over the company i worked for oh and how fun that was.
Get use to those posters, they come out with new ones all the time (they spend more on posters they they do fixing leaky toilets)
Dont worry though that JP "what a guy", remember every 10 people he "makes redundant" he gets that much closer to his what must now be a 30Mill + bonus.
Re: That is a pretty clanger!
"anyone got a replacement ISP for my connection with Thus? That has morals and doesn't Phorm preferably."
I'm currently reserving judgment at the moment, but I've got Zen in my sights for if/when Demon's service tanks.
is it any wonder?
that the telecoms industry is in the bin with attitudes like this. negative, negative, negative.
As someone who has been fighting to beat BT and improve telecoms services since 1989, this is a great moment for Telecom.
Change isn't for everybody but opportunity surely is?
Time to jump..
Think it's time for me to jump ship from Thus (Demon) before the "O" ring blows!!
Think SKY might get my business now...(no limits :D)
Mines the one with the bailout parachute on the back...
Bloody admin!
Anonymous coward, you're not the only one to thing that bureaucracy gets in the way of "good" designs. In the post-Titanic era, her new sister ship was fitted with huge gantry lifeboat davits that could reach across the deck and get lifeboats from the other side of the ship. That way, if the ship listed to one side, the lifeboats on the other side could be used....
....except that the gantries were placed on either side of the funnels, making them useless for retrieving boats.
@Maybe there's further similarity ...
"They did what!? They designed a f*cking SRB with multiple f*cking 'click-on' sections sealed with f*cking rubber O-rings!? What the f*ck were they thinking!?"
Which worked perfectly if you launched in the temperature range they spec'ed.
It's like saying they designed this f*cking server with f*cking parts that fail just because the watermain bust and put our machine room under 6ft of water.
FYI
If you have Demon mobile broadband, I personally guarantee that your service will not go tits up... I run the billing for it!!!
Better get your resumes in shape
Before C&W's "Titanic" bandwidth sale is announced....
Ya gotta wonder ...
... if this sort of thing is an editorial comment made by people at the publishing house.
Flawless failure
Uh, isn't the Space Shuttle due for retirement?
@@Maybe there's further similarity ...
"Which worked perfectly if you launched in the temperature range they spec'ed.
It's like saying they designed this f*cking server with f*cking parts that fail just because the watermain bust and put our machine room under 6ft of water."
But they Chose to launch outside of the temperature range... more like saying the f*cking manager told us to move the machine room to the bottom of a swimming pool.
Mine's the scuba-gear with the cable-tester in the pocket...
This is hardly uncommon
I've personally sat through a BT all-hands meeting full of space shuttle imagery and its supposedly "dynamic" and "innovative" connotations. When the white-elephant, designed-to-death-by-committee, crash-and-burn etc. in-fucking-bad-taste connotations were pointed out to the country manager responsible he just went "pish tush, don't be such a spoil-sport, you non-team-player". I've heard similar stories from other companies. Frequently such imagery turns out to be unintentionally apt, in hindsight.
@Paul Berry
If you're old enough to make comments like that you should understand that just because someone is old doesn't mean they know cat shit from tootsie-rolls.
meh
thought cable and wireless uk meged with ntl. then became virgin media.
I was at C&W during the first round of mergers
If their performance a good 10..15 years ago was anything to judge this one by you're in for a fun ride. I must say that in the years since I have yet to come across another bunch of middle management morons who are even half as incompetent (well, OK, with the exception of some Blairite apparatchik who have enlightened our lives -and wasted tax money- with gay abandon).
Do you know any other supplier who gets handed a monopoly on government data connections and then milks it so much (and pisses off so many people at high level with their incompetence) they lose the contract and have to buy the company that acquired the new contract to hang on to the (vast) profits?
No? Thought not.
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