Re: "They have that kind of money"
Likewise
How many boxes with blinkenlights have ever been wrapped around a tree or lamp-post when the ego outstrips the control skills...?
2781 publicly visible posts • joined 25 Jul 2008
I had something along similar lines, but more mechanical.
Coming out of uni, did the usual milk round which included an interview with Rolls Royce in Derby (aerospace engines).
Turned up and the morning was a tour followed by an "engineering test" due to last an hour. So I sits down and looks at this, and it's stuff like here is a train of gears, if i turn the first one clockwise, which way will various others in the sequence turn? They did try to throw a curve-ball or two in there (for example 3 gears meshed together in a triangle - the answer being none of them can turn).
So I'm there thinking "these guys make the engines that keep planes flying and they give tests like this?", but I look around at my fellow candidates and they all seem to be struggling or just looking dazed and confused. it was the weirdest experience I've had in such a situation. Especially given I think I finished the test in 20 minutes, then had the invigilator sit there looking at me and wondering what to do with me for the next half hour or so.
Anyway I finish the day up and a few days later I get a letter starting "Congratulations. When you start with Rolls Royce...".
As in I've passed the interview, and they seem to be just assuming I'm going to take the job because they'd offered it to me.
In fact they were one of four possibilities I had, and that letter combined with that test immediately put them at the bottom of the heap.
I ended up with offers from all four, and the chosen one is still my employer to this day, over a quarter century later...
In my quarter-century here I've seen at least 3 HR managers/directors depart, and at least two of those were during rounds of redundancy (the third being announced around 3 days after she departed, with no prior warning or announcement to the rest of us).
Make of these what you will...
The end of Air Force One also springs to mind, for those who prefer aircraft to boats...
Didn't that get released in 2019?
Yup, as I often say when I'm teaching some of our new recruits on troubleshooting, there's never been an investigative tool or procedure produced which is better than the mk 1 eyeball.
It's amazing how often we get called in by customers to downed machines that have been that way for days (or even weeks) and they've done all their meetings, model based problem solving, devising of tests to run and analysis of data etc in nice cosy meeting rooms and have never actually ventured into the cleanroom (for background, I work for a semiconductor equipment maker) and looked at the damn thing.
Then you walk in there, take one look and have a "there's your problem" moment (to quote Adam Savage) when you see something on the floor or hanging off that shouldn't be...
We have something very similar here, although in our case with travel.
Before there were a couple of part time ladies who handled it all for us, we just told them what we want and they valiantly fought with Concur and various travel sites and got it done.
Both more than worth their weight in gold for what they did, but certainly not paid that much or indeed anywhere near what they were worth.
Then bean-counter central (who never travel anywhere) decided it would be a good idea to get rid of them and make us all do our own travel arrangements etc.
So now we all have to spend 3-5x as long as our former travel gurus did as we don't know the systems as well as they did (and we're really getting to loath them as well), not to mention our hourly pay rate is probably also somewhere between 2-10x what they were originally on I would estimate (given this rule applies all the way up to director and VP level for self-booking).
Now quite where is the economy or the job satisfaction here again, especially given I spent more time travelling and out of the country last year than in it?
Not only the lowest common denominator of hardware, but also in the range of common usage scenarios.
We had something recently here which when rolled out royally screwed up everyone working in the field.
Everything had been "tested" of course before roll-out, but always from the comfort and safety of the company LAN when sat in a cosy office.
But when run on-site with the customer breathing down your neck and access only via VPN into the mothership network, the less than optimal speed and other under-the-hood differences between the connection methods were enough to completely screw up the remote users.
And given all this was actually aimed primarily at field usage, there were some interesting questions asked at the post mortem as to why it hadn't actually been field-tried before release...
1. In person. "What are you doing to get this fixed ?" Reply: "Talking to you"
The better answer is: "What are you doing to get this fixed ?" Reply: "Currently nothing, because I'm having to talk to you instead"
It semi-subtly gets the point across, without the aid of a clue-by-four to the cranium.
Doubly so when they insist on PowerPoint presentations, pretty graphs and all the other nonsense required to prettify the data enough that their brains can parse it.
Or perhaps not even then, and you have to spend extra time explaining the basics, and then when another manager joins half way through then doing it all again from the beginning.
Leading to the oft repeated mantra of "Do you want me to do this update, or just waste my time actually fixing the issue?"
Based on my experience with some engineers, any two items can be made to fit...if they don't, then you just need to use your hammer some more.
I was going to say something similar, except normally it's manglement rather than engineers, and they will be made to fit by use of increasingly excessive force to jam one into t'other.
And of course, once they are "fitted", normally they will neither be removable ever again without breakage, nor will they work either as they now are or when actually put into their correct orifice.
Apple, Google, Samsung, Microsoft et all all agree on a single universal cable and connector design that will work for all devices and applications for data, power and communications.
A handful of such cables are included for free with every new device sold.
All such new devices sold will be easily openable and repairable by anybody, with parts available at a sensible price and availability.
A 230 error sounds more like something for the dentist to fix....
Mine's the one with the terrible 80's pun jokebook in the pocket.