conference calls - what's the point?

My boss has a rubbish job. He's gone on holiday for 2 weeks and left me in charge of some stuff. Mostly this involves attending conference calls on his behalf.

Yesterday I was on a call with the Chief Technology Officer of the division no less. Poor sod, he was trying to get a straight answer out of Slippery-manager from the far-away-office. After an hour and a half I'm still not entirely sure we got an answer out of him. The question was quite simple, 'how long will it take to do this bit of work?'. The answer should be 'a couple of weeks'. I think in the end he came up with '3 to 4 weeks' but only after prevaricating for a blue-age about utter rubbish 'well, we have to spend weeks testing this random thing on the off chance that we might find a bug' and other nonsense.
Who's idea was this...'on the off change me might find a bug', what a load of rot. I'd never be able to get away with that sort of attitude. Imagine, "I'm not writing that document for you because there is a chance that you are too stupid to understand it". This may be true, but it's no way to run a business.

There's another meeting in a fortnight to discuss that fact that nothing has happened and we're no closer to any decisions being made. Fortunately the boss will be back by then and he can deal with it.

Management - definitely not worth the money.

Conversations I never thought I'd have

yesterday I had a conversation about a carpet. It seemed perfectly natural at the time. Phrases like "that new carpet smell" and "room sized remnant" were used without either party sniggering or holding their head in dispair.

This morning, the whole thing seems almost surreal. Is this really what growing up is all about, sensible conversations about interior furnishings?

We quietly ignore our growing domestication as we get older but it gets us all in the end I fear.

does anyone else get emails like these?

First I sit through an hour and a quarter of excruciating meeting listening to the famous "I'm not technical" manager fail time and again to grasp the easiest of concepts.

Then randomMuppet1 sends everyone an email asking for clarification as to what they need to do:

"perform tasks A, B and C"

Then they ask "so I need to perform tasks A, B and C right?"
I kid you not - why would anyone need to clarify the words "perform tasks A, B and C" with exactly the same wording?

So the response is "yes, as previously stated, peform tasks A, B and C"

and the reply from them is "can I please have confirmation from Daisy that this is ok?"

Christ on a bike, can't anyone do anything without my say-so? I'm only an engineer, it's not like I'm important management or anything.

"yes, go ahead and perform tasks A, B and C"

Then, after a short while, I receive an email "but if I over complicate matters by performing tasks x, y and z as well then this will totally bollox things up for everyone and yet I cannot see how not to do this?"

Just do tasks A, B and C. Do not pass go. Do not collect £200. Do not deviate from the original plan. If you cannot manage this then you should go straight home instead and look for a new job.


I feel a bit sorry for these muppets, after all they have to deal with me sending them a preverbial slap round the ear via email everytime they try and do their jobs. If only we bothered to train people before letting them loose with the code.

Oh well, 'tis the weekend and there is a newly refurbished pub near my house with fantastic views and a nice beer garden.....if the rain holds off.

when you say critical bug....

turns out that my idea of critical and manglements idea of critical are 2 different things.

Monkey1 "this is a critical bug, we must fix it in this release. How long will it take?"

whippingboy1 "it will take Daisy a few hours and me a day and then whippingboy2 will have to test it so add another day"

- err, guys? has anyone checked that we have the information to do this? anyone ask the customer for their input?

thought not.

It can be as critical as you like but if we don't have the right information to add it in to the product then it can go in. It's not rocket science, no really it's not. We take a certain sort of information and turn it into code. If we don't have the information in the first place we can't turn it into code.

and another thing, this doesn't affect functionality so therefore it's not critical.

oh never mind.

I had such a nice holiday and yet it seems so long ago now....