Topic: A result of the parasitical nature of corruption and cronyism and laziness...

[Libertas]

Sad but true...

[benb61]

In the Engineering world there is a saying that Contract Engineers use, "Chaos equals Cash".  I have seen contractors create bad designs so they can get a contract extension to fix them.

[Libertas]

In the industries I've been in...it is usually top execs bringing consultants in...and it is for two primary reasons - 1) the idiots under them that suck at the financial performance responsibility aspect of their job descriptions can continue to suck at the financial performance responsibility aspect of their job descriptions because they are good cheerleaders for the executive vision and mission which is full of the latest and greatest progressive buzzwords, useless socialist-engineering team building events and sundry other wastes of productive time (thus sheltering this group of favorite pets from real responsibility or criticism or accountability) and 2) to lay the burden of implementation and performance on everybody else without having to admit either their culpability in creating the problems in the first place by their actions (their hires, their policies, their decisions) and avoiding the unpleasant task of holding their pets accountable when the consulting process and failure to achieve results can find the appropriate scapegoats.  Bottom line it is chickenshyt leadership.  And the more expansive it is the more likely it is that it will make everything worse.  This isn't to say that it is universally true all the time, some well led well managed outfits with good personnel top to bottom can benefit from some fresh eyes and some sensible suggestions...but even they can screw things up by hiring the wrong outfit, focusing on a problem that isn't a problem and avoiding an area that is a problem, etc etc.

In general my experience with consultants is mixed...some a total mess at inception, others benefiting only in parts...the ones most likely to succeed are limited in scope, specific to need, understandable and achievable in goals/processes/methods and seen by directly affected operational staff as worthwhile attempting.

[Alphabet Soup]

In the Engineering world there is a saying that Contract Engineers use, "Chaos equals Cash".  I have seen contractors create bad designs so they can get a contract extension to fix them.

I uncovered an instance of this exact thing. I knew that it was deliberate sabotage because I recognized that their plan wasn't going to work as designed and told them so. When news that the plan had been approved and work scheduled I dutifully alerted my immediate superior of the snag - as per SOP. Since he was more of a project manager than a technical manager he was unable to understand or appreciate what I was telling him. Since he was a low-grade imbecile whom I had sparred with repeatedly he heavily discounted anything that I said. I even supplied a heavily-footnoted analysis in the hopes that someone with the common sense of a housefly would be able to see what was wrong. You guessed it - my protests were completely ignored.

Instead I was admonished to "be a team player" and nothing was done about the defective plan.....until it was implemented and failed in the field. Fortunately they didn't assign me to clean it up.

[Libertas]

Ayn Rand (born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum in St.Petersburg) described these people to a "T" 62 years ago in Atlas Shrugged...but one would expect someone who witnessed the February Revolution and the subsequent Bolshevik Coup branded as the October Revolution and the horrors that followed would know exactly how to describe a socialist...one would not expect that a hundred years later and millions of dead bodies later we here would have such terminal contamination tolerated at any level.