Many years ago I worked for GTE Sylvania in their Missile Systems Division (can’t tell which missile or I would have to kill you…). I was on a programming team developing Sylvania’s first on-line Bill of Materials /assembly system. We had completed gathering specs and had a preliminary system plan. I was working on designing the input screens. I had finished a prototype and went to see my engineer “user”. At that point, my only experience with engineers was a neighbor who worked for the B & O Railroad, and cousin Lew who then was trying to keep the buses running on time in Cincinnati. No further explanation forthcoming. I was about 30 and the engineer was an old man (maybe 55 – 60!!!). Most engineers then, who were under 45, had taken one programming course and could write the entire re-entry calculation in one FORTRAN (2) statement that was 27 pages long. Those over 45 either did it in their head if they were smart, or used slide rules. I had set up the first screen to do the data flow of an assembly unit. There were about 25 fields, and I wanted to know if the order on the screen made sense to him. The first field was a 10 digit alpha-numeric part number. We sat down and I started to enter in ‘1234567ABC’. “No! no! no!”, he exclaimed. I was startled, because I knew absolutely that the part # was 10 digits a/n. “What’s wrong?” I asked. “If the second digit is a ‘2’ the 5th character is a ‘D’, ‘R’, or ‘U’”. “OK”, I said, “I am looking to see if the positioning of the fields are logical and works with the drawings you are using. We will be editing all the input as it goes in to make sure it is correct. That comes after you agree that all the necessary fields are on the screen and match the drawings.” “No, if the second digit is a ‘2’ the 5th character is a ‘D’, ‘R’, or ‘U’”. 10 minutes later we get to the next field. What I expected to take about an hour lasted 5 ½ hours. I despise engineers to this day. PS. I left there to go to Stone & Webster Engineering Corp. in charge of the computer department on a prototype nuclear reactor (Clinch River Breeder Reactor in Oak Ridge TN). Except for cousin Lew, my opinion of engineers hasn’t changed. This video is a perfect explaination of my career in engineering. (I now do systems for mutual and hedge funds). The Expert tinyurl/p38by3v
Posted on: Sun, 29 Jun 2014 03:25:06 +0000
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