At one marketing-overrun startup, the suits were calling two hour meetings every afternoon and then wondering why I wasn't getting any work done.<p>So I installed a cuckoo clock in that meeting room. The CEO loved it; he even helped wind it. I knew I'd succeeded when one of the marketing types looked at the clock and said, "I hate that thing." I don't remember if the meetings got any shorter or less frequent, but they were a little more enjoyable.<p>[I invested some money in that place. They pulled some shenanigans, and my piece of a billion dollar company got zeroed out. But I still have the clock.]
Some of the comments here claim this is just showing how engineers think they are the only smart ones, or how there's equal frustration pointed back at engineers.<p>However, this is illustrating a particular problem that only[2] affects engineers -- engineers are the ones at the end of the day who have to make a solution reality. This particular weight doesn't fall on any other role. It's easy for anyone, including engineers, to misjudge a problem when simply talking about it. This makes non-technical meetings about technical problems particularly difficult.<p>But yes, it's true, every role has stereotypical flaws, and it's healthy to be able to laugh at them[1].<p>[1]: <a href="http://i.imgur.com/YiuSeRE.png" rel="nofollow">http://i.imgur.com/YiuSeRE.png</a><p>[2, edit to address comments]: Only affects engineers, of all the roles in a work pipeline involving engineering.
Moving beyond the exaggeration of the sketch, the irony here is that being the only engineer in a business meeting puts you in an incredibly powerful position - if you see the opportunity and know how to take advantage of it.<p>Learning to interact with non-technical stakeholders and finding ways to deliver solutions perceived as adding value to a business is one of the best ways to make real money in this industry. For the average person, it is quite literally the difference between making $150,000/year as an employee "engineer" and practically as much as you'd like on your own terms/as your own boss.
Glad to see this finally making it on the front page. I'm particularly impressed with the actors' ability to capture the subtle facial expressions and other mannerisms that the various characters tend to make in real life under various situations.<p>Direct YT link: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg</a><p>============================================================<p>My favorite bit...<p>PHB: "That's it. Now you've confused everyone. So what exactly is stopping us from doing this?"<p>Anderson the Engineer: "Geometry."<p>Client: "Just ignore it."<p>PHB: "We have a task. Seven red lines. It's not 20. It's just seven! Anderson I understand you're a specialist of a narrow field; you don't see the overall picture. But surely it's not a difficult task to draw some seven lines."<p>Walter the PM: "Exactly! Suggest a solution. Now, any fool can criticize --no offense-- but, you're an expert. You should know better."
I think the best way I've found to combat these types of meetings and cut through the talk is simply to ask "Why"<p>Find out pretty quickly (generally) what they are actually wanting and nobody needs to print things in transparent ink... (usually)
Textual version of the story - but I highly recommend you watch the video. Dare you not to get that creeping feeling of frustration...<p><a href="http://www.morna.nl/post/4185018780/a-business-meeting" rel="nofollow">http://www.morna.nl/post/4185018780/a-business-meeting</a>
Stupid engineer...just draw the thing in an 11-dimensional space, and he would have gotten transparency and perpendicularity. No wonder he got talked down by management.
You can have as many perpendicular lines as you want on a Poincaré disk.<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poincar%C3%A9_disk_model" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poincar%C3%A9_disk_model</a><p>(credit goes to my coworker dmvaldman)
There is no mention of engineering in the original short story. I think it's more general, it's about being the guy who will do the actual job versus all people who manage this guy.
This video highlights two separate problems: unacceptable behavior, and ignorance. One should never <i>sneer</i> at one's coworkers, or openly mock them or undermine them. Doesn't matter if it's an engineer or a janitor, in my view. No-one should put up with being treated like that, ever, and I think you'd be better off just quitting, on the spot.<p>The matter of the project ignorance is itself is another matter. When faced with well-meaning but confused stake-holders, the correct solution is not to throw errors like a compiler (which is what the eng in the video does), but rather to probe for more information to understand the context of the request, and work toward a workable solution. Ignoring line ink and geometry, step back and ask: where will these lines be drawn? Who will see them? What information are they trying to convey? Of course, these are the same questions that would ruin the conceit of the sketch, but that's the solution to this riddle.
I've been the only engineer in meetings often. At one company I regularly attended senior staff meetings (President, CFO, VPs, etc.). I observed all the traits and foibles one might expect in a Dilbert cartoon strip. During one heated discussion they were arguing over the implications of some data that one of them had drawn on a graph; I had to walk over to the whiteboard and explain that the reason they couldn't interpret the data was that they had reversed the X and Y axes on the chart!
Both requirements could be solved:<p>1) In Hollywood they draw red ("blood") lines with transparent inc all the time.<p>2) There is no problem to draw 7 mutually perpendicular lines as long as lines are not straight. Moreover, clients never asked for mutually perpendicular lines.<p>There are other solutions too, such as 7-dimensional space and imaginary lines.<p>The "expert" looked quite inexperienced when he started his answer with "No".
Awesome.. I have a similar situation regarding the project manager in the video :) we have a small team of 5 members and i don't think we need a "project manager" considering only 5 members working on a not-so-big project and the team members are efficient enough to self manage.<p>I dont think a small project with a small team even needs a project manager.
I've been in this meeting myself. The situation is nicely rendered in a scene[0] from Cryptonomicon in which a main character feels like a dwarf among hobbits.<p>[0] <a href="http://www.euskalnet.net/larraorma/crypto/slide8.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.euskalnet.net/larraorma/crypto/slide8.html</a>
This shouldn't be too hard. Just draw lines in 7 dimensions and accellerate them away from the viewer such that the color shifts so it is red. in fact, you only need to do three, because the other four can be discussed as being drawn in transparent ink and aligned in higher dimensions.
I can relate to this video. In the mid-2000s I worked as an art director at 2Advanced creating over the top Flash sites. We had a client who insisted that we add a red, invisible hexagon shield on top of the animation to prevent "forces" from attacking the site.
I have already watched the video multiple times! can't help but notice the dumbest clients i have come across asking the silliest things!
And the worse part is they do not and i mean DO NOT EVER understand the tech part
I think it's like being a man in an all-girls gathering. You can either be awkward or the center of attention. It depends on your perception and how you would present yourself.
Now here's another vid showing what everyone else feels like dealing with techies... <a href="http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x557tg_nick-burns-your-company-s-computer_fun" rel="nofollow">http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x557tg_nick-burns-your-comp...</a><p>What's the commonality between both vids? Just enforcing negative stereotypes & emphasizing the weakness found in the worse case scenarios of each group.