by 3040Krag on 20 May 2010 23:06
WRT the phone programs, it's not the developers and programmers, it's business and product managers at the direction of executive officers. Dilbert is a successful cartoon because it really does mirror the IT world.
One group I worked with (I'm a former developer and system administrator) had project coffee cups made up. They had the project name on them, of course, but on the other side was a cartoon of the space shuttle mounted on the launch rocket upside-down. A tech is trying to delay the launch but a manager is telling him "A schedule is a schedule. Don't be coming to me now with your problems."
Too true, and the same idiots that put out crap to meet a schedule also "design" the system objectives and goals. Regardless of common sense.
Here's another one that makes me roll my eyes. In the 1990's I worked on a project for cell phones. A cell has to run flat out all the time, but people don't call all the time so there's always spare, or "free" bandwidth built into the system. The cell rates cover the cost of running at 100% but some manager wanted us to come up with a way to use the bandwidth not utilized. In short, SMS was born, AKA texting. Yup, the "free" bandwidth already paid for by each of us through our regular cell phone fees is now one of the biggest profit makers for cellular providers. At 100% profit.