Topic: The Expert

[AlanS]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg#t=101

[Alphabet Soup]

One of the u-toob commenters made me chuckle when he said,

"You've all been in this meeting. And you all think you are Anderson. But not everyone is Anderson. Some of you are the other characters. Trust me."

In truth I am Anderson. I am the expert. And I do work for idiots like Walter and his clients. Years ago I worked for a guy who taught me an interesting perspective on meeting expectations - especially totally unrealistic ones.

Whenever he was asked if he could create or provide something his answer was "Yes, but it will cost you". He invariably made certain that the consequences of the request were factored in. And why? Because we work with idiots.

They'll ask you to refill the paper tray and build a full-size exact replica of the Queen Mary with the same lack of regard. They have no regard for the gravity of their demands because they don't have to - that's what we're here for.

So I always say "Yes, but it will cost you" because it satisfies two personal requirements - it acknowledges that I am willing to entertain their requests (no matter how foolhardy) but conditional upon their acceptance of the costs and risks (which I pad as necessary).


Edit: altard-proofed

[Libertas]

That's just damned cruel, 'Soup!  Make them justify the expenditure (Capital or operating, you don't care!) and thus be accountable for the final result?!  That's just mean, man!

        

[Pandora]

I don't know how y'all do it, working with the publickkkkk, but kudos to you.

The publickkkkk is safest when I'm sequestered at home.

Transparent red lines.  Yeah, okay.

[Weisshaupt]

I am also Anderson.  I was always the "expert" ( sales engineer)  who was in there saying  what we can and cannot do with the product. Also , if you aren't introduced as the "expert"  and you aren't the one directly  responsible for the deliverable.. you are one of the other characters..

 The Sales guy would also cringe when I said we couldn't do it- but sometimes we just couldn't.  Of course you don't say no. My variation on "it will cost you"  was "that would be a feature request"  - but in my case when they ask for the replica of the Queen Mary its because the people in the meeting have so little understanding of their own problem, they they don't have a clue what they are asking for.  When confronted with this group I would have simply fallen into "We'll try and I will get back to you on that " mode hoping to find someone technical enough that they would understand the answers when finally given. Bottom line with this group you could have delivered anything and they would have accepted it, because they had no clue what they wanted other than getting this check mark achievement taken off their performance goals.

Life is so much easier when you stop trying to do things right and simply let people (morons)  screw themselves.
 

[Weisshaupt]

I don't know how y'all do it, working with the publickkkkk, but kudos to you.

The publickkkkk is safest when I'm sequestered at home.

Transparent red lines.  Yeah, okay.

Actually in my experience in retail this happened far less often with the "public" - who are used to following a certain script  in certain venues.  This scenario is far more common when meeting with fortune 500 Companies because some edict to draw 7 red lines comes down from on high because some CEO saw a buzzword presentation on it in the stockholders meeting or in talking with "market analysts" This edict gets transferred to a group who inflates balloons. They then try to outsource the effort because no one in the group understands it - after all  - they inflate balloons. So  they don't care out it turns out, they just want to be able to tell the CEO the Red Line project is underway and going well.   Meanwhile, they have a balloon that needs inflating,  but they are pretty incompetent at that as well, so they take a hard balloon job ( like making it the shape of a kitten)  and  try and sneak that work onto the table and get it funded under the CEO Red Line project so at least they get something out of it.

I used this video this morning to explain to my children what "daddy does"  - and they seemed to walk away with a bit more respect

 BTW I posted this same thing under the funny things I saw on the net thread so a merge is probably in order.

[Pandora]

The conversation is here, so I'm thinking we can leave it as a double post.

[Glock32]

This is every software requirements meeting I have ever been in.

[whimsicalmamapig]

I am sorry, I have run my own business since 2003 and have never been privy to any such meeting as this. Then I read from you guys that it is representative of what passes as business meetings. I am amazed the whole world isn't in gridlock by now. Do people like this really get paid to "do" this type of work.  I feel sooooo out of the loop, please assure me this us just a SNL type parody of life.

[richb]

I am sorry, I have run my own business since 2003 and have never been privy to any such meeting as this. Then I read from you guys that it is representative of what passes as business meetings. I am amazed the whole world isn't in gridlock by now. Do people like this really get paid to "do" this type of work.  I feel sooooo out of the loop, please assure me this us just a SNL type parody of life.

Lucky you.......

The world is in gridlock.   heh heh heh

The bigger the company the more of these meetings you go too.   If you don't have things to do,  meetings are great because they are the best source of wasting time on the clock.   If you have things to do,  meetings like this are maddening, because you will have to work late.

The first company out of college was exactly like this parody.   I could have sworn "office space" was written from inside that company too.   It was a huge shock for a recent grad to land in such a dysfunctional company.   The company founder was a good inventor,  but was the worst businessman.   It was a horrible experience and in some ways still clouds my thinking at times.   

Can't imagine the meetings in a government agency.   

[whimsicalmamapig]

My closest situation to this was serving on a local historic preservation commission. Now that was a waste of time, but it was volunteer work that was not critical to anything but the design and style of a business sign. It set me off government work for ever.

I honestly found more fulfillment working in a factory after that, at least you had to produce so much per hour to get paid.

[Alphabet Soup]

That's just damned cruel, 'Soup!  Make them justify the expenditure (Capital or operating, you don't care!) and thus be accountable for the final result?!  That's just mean, man!

        

Mama di'nt raise no foo 

[Glock32]

I am sorry, I have run my own business since 2003 and have never been privy to any such meeting as this. Then I read from you guys that it is representative of what passes as business meetings. I am amazed the whole world isn't in gridlock by now. Do people like this really get paid to "do" this type of work.  I feel sooooo out of the loop, please assure me this us just a SNL type parody of life.

Large organizations become inherently unwieldy.  There is an entire class of apparatchik whose sole function in the organization is to perform tasks that have nothing to do with the actual mission of that organization.  The most obvious examples are the groups responsible for regulatory compliance.  It's a big chunk of the economy, and it produces zero goods or services.  The people who work in those specialties are practically government bureaucrats who just happen to be paid by private companies.  They guard the regulatory regime just as jealously as any civil servant. That's where a lot of this sort of thing comes from.

There's also the inescapable fact that the more intermediaries there are between the one paying the money and the one being paid the money, the more nonsensical and ambiguous projects there are.  Everybody's playing with the firm's money so who cares, right?

What this video absolutely nailed is how these types are incompetent know-nothings, yet always have the absolute grandest self-appraisal.

[whimsicalmamapig]

"What this video absolutely nailed is how these types are incompetent know-nothings, yet always have the absolute grandest self-appraisal."

You cannot afford such waste in a small family run business, everyone pulls their load in a family business, heck, I'm retired and I still pitch in, "just for the fun of it"

Imagine if all this waste could be harnessed for something really productive.

[warpmine]

I am sorry, I have run my own business since 2003 and have never been privy to any such meeting as this. Then I read from you guys that it is representative of what passes as business meetings. I am amazed the whole world isn't in gridlock by now. Do people like this really get paid to "do" this type of work.  I feel sooooo out of the loop, please assure me this us just a SNL type parody of life.

Oh, but the world is hip deep in stupidity. well, not all the world just most of western civilization. Look at what the Germans did following Fukushima nuclear disaster following a seaquake and tsunami. Somehow the feckless central government got the message that wind and solar can take up the slack for nuclear power and now they're paying for that bad insight. Here in this country we have dumb ass after dumb ass claiming global climate change is not only happening but it's man's fault all the while ignoring thousands of bits of information that are directly contrary to the premise.

My only hope, our only hope is for a destructive war that can wipe them all out.

[Libertas]

That's just damned cruel, 'Soup!  Make them justify the expenditure (Capital or operating, you don't care!) and thus be accountable for the final result?!  That's just mean, man!

        

Mama di'nt raise no foo 

I'll give that an "Amen!"!

[Libertas]

I am sorry, I have run my own business since 2003 and have never been privy to any such meeting as this. Then I read from you guys that it is representative of what passes as business meetings. I am amazed the whole world isn't in gridlock by now. Do people like this really get paid to "do" this type of work.  I feel sooooo out of the loop, please assure me this us just a SNL type parody of life.

Oh, but the world is hip deep in stupidity. well, not all the world just most of western civilization. Look at what the Germans did following Fukushima nuclear disaster following a seaquake and tsunami. Somehow the feckless central government got the message that wind and solar can take up the slack for nuclear power and now they're paying for that bad insight. Here in this country we have dumb ass after dumb ass claiming global climate change is not only happening but it's man's fault all the while ignoring thousands of bits of information that are directly contrary to the premise.

My only hope, our only hope is for a destructive war that can wipe them all out.

I guess they missed all the news about the cooling going on, record low highs in Death Valley, etc...

Here's to the Great Wiping!   

[IronDioPriest]

I worked for a guy once who really is an expert in my field. Genius, I'd say without hesitation.

His stock line was, "You can have it good, you can have it fast, and you can have it cheap - but you'll have to pick two."

Some people had heard the line before and smiled, usually making some funny comment about wanting all three before choosing two.

To people who were confused he would continue, "You can have it good and fast, but that won't be cheap. You can have it good and cheap, but that won't be fast. You can have it fast and cheap, but that won't be good. If you want all three, you have to pick two."

He did it with a boyish grin on his face with good humor, but in the end he was dead serious, and with rare exceptions, he efficiently managed client expectations with this approach.

[Weisshaupt]

My son's brain kept working on the problem... his solution?
Draw two perpendicular lines  in green ink.
Draw two more directly  over them in red ink.
Then draw the remaining 3 "transparent" lines over the now entirely Red lines
Because there are only two lines visible to the eye, they can still said to be "perpendicular" even though there are "7 lines" there.
My son is apparently an expert.

[Alphabet Soup]

I'm gonna gently drag this back over here ;')

OK, now fess up...how many in the position of the "expert" have dream sequences during the meeting where they pummel every last one of these morons?

 

Truth be known I want the "whimsicalmamapig experience"        I just want to do things, to create things, to make things better. Unfortunately it's not in the cards - at least not for me. I live in a lefty world, work at a trade infested with lefties, and suffer through a time of lefty resurgence.

The interesting aspect that hasn't really been highlighted is how much PC figures into this mess. Discretion deters me from offering up specific details that would reveal too much personal info on an open board, but suffice it to say that in as much as I recognize that some of my clients are (shall we say) "challenged", most of my contemporaries are super-challenged - and the people I work for are just plain idiots.

I can offer up one anecdote. When I first started with this outfit I had a manager who disliked the tagline I use on my email. Now as a "progressive" company management encourages their employees to express themselves (in theory). One of those avenues to self-expression is email. I had noticed that most of my co-workers sported pithy sayings as a signature line to their emails. So I added my own:

"Political correctness is tyranny with manners." -Charlton Heston

I got (and still receive) huge kudos for it but my manager hated it. Several times she suggested that I choose something else. When I would ask why she was never sure but thought it would be "better for me" if I did. She was caught in a leftist dilemma - political correctness dictated that no one should do anything that might hurt the feeeeeeeeelings of a targeted audience, but at the same time she knew that I out produced every one of my contemporaries - almost double in most cases. And my work was peerless. No one ever had to correct my output.

In the end she reluctantly gave up trying to change me. She felt that she would suffer embarrassment from my use of the expression and I think that eventually she was relieved that the embarrassment never manifested itself. We got along well because we came to understand one another.

When she retired her successor was innocuous enough, and favored my tagline. After two years he took another position within the company and was replaced by a twit. This next guy was truly a blithering idiot. A consummate prog, he immediately took offense to my tagline and told me to remove it. So I replaced it with something twice as bad ;')

Soon enough he noticed it and confronted me (in an entirely non-confrontational way if you catch my drift) and expressed concern about my new tagline. I shrugged and smiled and muttered something about brevity being the soul of wit. He asked if I would change it and I said, "I just did". He asked if I would change it to something "less inflammatory" and replied, "Well that would be my Heston quote".

He (again) expressed concern about "what people might think" and I replied "Who gives a damn what 'people' think? Shouldn't you be more concerned about getting things done"? and entered into a Q&A session:

Me: Am I getting the job done?
He: Yes - of course.
Me: Is there a specific area of my work-related activities that concern you?
He: No.
Me: Are you receiving complaints from our clients about me or my performance?
He: No.
Me: Of course not. But are you receiving feedback from our clients?
He: Yes, all very positive.
Me: Have you had occasion to doubt my ability to perform my duties or complete any tasks?
He: No.
Me: So, at a time when you are having serious performance issue with more than half of your staff why are you insulting me and wasting my time with this extraneous bullshyt?
He: I wish you wouldn't use profanity.
Me: Sorry. Why are you wasting time on this non-issue?
He: I think it reflects poorly on our team.
Me: Bullshyt! (Sorry!) C'mon Phil, that's crap and you know it. I'm the best you have - likely the best you'll ever see. I get things done - the things that the rest of the "team" run away from because they are so difficult. I take on the hardest projects. I'm not afraid to tell it like it is - and to anyone. That's why the top brass come to me and ask questions - they know that they will get the unvarnished truth.
He: I know that but you're encouraging the others to misbehave.

I can't win for losing ;')