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Hence the classic joke: ---------- A man in a hot air balloon realized he was lost. He reduced altitude and spotted a woman below. He descended a bit more an
by jpm_sd 7y ago
Hence the classic joke:
----------
A man in a hot air balloon realized he was lost.
He reduced altitude and spotted a woman below. He descended a bit more and shouted, “Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don’t know where I am.”
The woman below replied, “You are in a hot air balloon hovering approximately 30 feet above the ground. You are between 40 and 41 degrees north latitude and between 59 and 60 degrees west longitude.”
“You must be an engineer,” said the balloonist.
“I am,” replied the woman, “How did you know?”
“Well,” answered the balloonist, “everything you told me is technically correct, but I have no idea what to make of your information, and the fact is I am still lost. Frankly, you’ve not been much help so far.”
The woman below responded, “You must be in Management.”
“I am,” replied the balloonist, “but how did you know?”
“Well,” said the woman, “you don’t know where you are or where you are going. You have risen to where you are due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise which you have no idea how to keep, and you expect people beneath you to solve your problems. The fact is you are in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but now, somehow, it’s my fault!”
- _opc6 7y agoThis comment will play extremely well on this website, which engineers frequent. And it's admittedly a great joke. But only tangentially relevant to the author's point. The author's point is closer to the old adage of not shooting yourself in the foot. That is, however true your statement is, if it denies further thought it becomes a useless point.
- koheripbal 7y agoThis comment makes me think of Theranos [1]. The founder was a master of manipulation and business-speak, and created a multi-billion dollar (valued) start-up based on an impossible and non-existant product, and so strongly blamed the engineers/scientists beneath her for not delivering on her unrealistic promises, that one of them committed suicide. [1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8488126/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8488126/ Fake-it-'till-you-make-it form of management (FiTYMi?) is becoming more and more common.
- lonelappde 7y agoHow many theranos employees died by suicide? There were up to 800 at peak, so one suicide might be within the normal base rate.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- headcanon 7y agoCase in point for OP. Possibly technically correct, misses point entirely.
- lisper 7y agoYou might want to do a little basic homework before you post a comment like that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_the_United_States from which we learn that: "The annual age-adjusted suicide rate is 13.42 per 100,000 individuals." Doing the math to figure out how plausible it is that "one suicide in 800 might be within the normal base rate" is left as an exercise.
- anchpop 7y agoFor anyone curious, the base rate of at least one person committing suicide based on these numbers is `1-((1-(13.42/100,000))^800) = 10%`. I suspect the suicide rate for engineers (who tend to be white, middle-upper class men) is somewhat different from the national average so take these numbers with a grain of salt
- xg15 7y agoGotta admit, I only knew the joke in a variant where it stops after "you must be an engineer" to make fun of the exact kind of attitude the OP bemoans. Looks as if, instead of taking the advice to heart, the suspects tried to make the joke into a "no u" instead. I think there could have been better uses of their time.
- el_don_almighty 7y agoI prefer the "Microsoft" version... "Now I know where we are, we are right over the Microsoft campus." "How did you know?" "Everything they said was completely true and totally useless"
- hinkley 7y agoAka "You are in a helicopter."
- Tade0 7y agoI had a real-life example of this joke years ago when I was hiking in the Carpathian Mountains with, among others, a mathematician: "There's no landmark in sight. Where are we even?" "In Ukraine" "Yes, I know that - what kind of reply is this?" "It's the most precise answer I could come up with."
- DerekL 7y agoBy the way, those coordinates are in the Atlantic Ocean, with no land in sight.