Idle Bits Of Wisdom

[JadziaKathryn]

The one who dies with the most beads wins.

Kind of late to enjoy the prize, I think.

[evcake]

The one who dies with the most beads wins.

Kind of late to enjoy the prize, I think.

I'm working on plan to take them with me.

[Mitchell]

Never purchase the First Run!!!
Let some one else be the damn guinea pig when it comes to New products, or Machines.

Farmers will always Curse out the "Great" Inovations, Ag Engineers come up with for Machinery. I know Ive wanted to Hunt down an Engineer or two in My life for comin up with a piss poor design.

[hth2k]

The engineer was likely not the root cause of your pain. More likely the management set too tight a schedule, under staffed the project, didn't do enough research (the "R" of R&D), didn't allow enough development (the "D" in R&D), developing use models and user testing probably got cut, and don't forget budget constraints.

Having had the pleasure of working for a company that did it right for many years and seeing how MBA types "improved" the process makes me sad.

HtH

Design dinosaur incompatible with modern business practices

[Linda]

Yeah, engineers usually aren't the problem. Let them do their jobs! And there is a saying that in any civilization where the lawyers outnumber the engineers, that civilization is doomed, my husband said. Something about 10 engineers for every lawyer is health, but 10 lawyers for every engineer is unhealthy. Looks like we should add MBAs to the lawyer side of this statement!

[blacknblue]

I can't help but think of Challenger. The engineers TOLD NASA not to launch. They said it was too cold. They said there was a danger that the O rings would shrink. The managers overruled them because they needed the PR to keep the funding coming.

[Emberchyld]

You put it so well, hth2k!

Sadly, most management people in many companies don't have an engineering background, so what they understand are the $$$$$$ given to them by marketing, etc about sales and time to market. And we're not really given much of a chance to design in a design/prototype/manufacturing loop as backup, so there's a lot of pressure to get things out-- fast, cheap, and good. Unfortunately, you can't get all three in real life.

Worse, if everything goes right, marketing and sales gets the glory, but if anything goes wrong, it gets dumped right on the engineers (Of course, you so don't want anything to go wrong... even the dumbest little thing like rivets, can endanger people's lives!)

I don't envy the NASA engineer's job-- imagine being the person on the ground who has to make the call as to whether a shuttle is safe enough to re-enter the atmosphere because a 3 inch piece of insulation broke off (using pictures and video images)?

[Navigator]

Never, ever volunteer to help a friend put in the beds for a garden. Twenty railroad ties later - we had the right tools and everything but there is nothing like pounding foot long nails through one tie into the second (yes, we pre-drilled the first tie) with a sledge hammer. How many pennies is a foot long nail? And yes, I am sore.