Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
Technology/Office type stuff. Yes, Morgan is indulging his rare habit of writing about his vocation, and on a Friday night.
This one just spoke to me, and it’s been in my “tall” stack of stuff ever since. Time to put it where I can search for it, it’s decent enough. And so, so true.
Consider the following 3 step model of project management:
1. Proposal. The engineering team proposes a cool idea for a product that will make millions of $, Rs, Baht or other currency.
2. Random Wait. Management makes a non-committal response and waits a random amount of time. Some management styles encourage their managers to produce an intermittent buzzing noise during this time, to convey to the team that they are working.
The engineering team starts work.
3. Drop! Manager says “No!”. The project gets cancelled.
The job of the engineering team is to get the product finished and in the customer’s hands before the “No!” descends. [emphasis mine]
Right about now you’re double-checking that link to see if I got this from Dilbert. Nope.
The last two lines are killer, and I mean that in a good way.
Survival Strategy: Since projects can get the axe at any time, the only reliable way of getting the project out of the door is to have finished the work before going to management for approval.
Then, once approval is granted, you use the time gained to work on the next project. <grin>
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“the only reliable way of getting the project out of the door is to have finished the work before going to management for approval.”
Um, how are these unapproved projects funded? Petty Cash?
- HoundOfDoom | 07/10/2010 @ 08:00Most engineers are salaried, and implicitly tasked with seeing to it on a daily, weekly or monthly basis that their employer sees as great a bang-for-the-buck as is possible. Under “Management by Random Drop,” they labor under a contradiction especially when M/R.D. is executed incompetently.
So the engineer is tasked with seeing to it the corporate assets are not wasted. And by vocation, the engineer is tasked with coming up with creative, resourceful and effective solutions to problems. The rest is just a logical conclusion to be reached from everything else that has been put in place.
It’s the same situation as one of those old sci-fi movies about computers & robots being tasked to make humans happy, and some central computer somewhere concludes humans cannot be made happy and must be made extinct in order to fulfill the programming. In both situations, the “decider” has dictated that a problem must be solved and failed to consider the possibility that the decider might be interpreted as being that very problem.
- mkfreeberg | 07/10/2010 @ 09:02