I was a "research software engineer" for a major research organisation in Australia. There just weren't the resources to achieve what was desired. It would have

I was a "research software engineer" for a major research organisation in Australia. There just weren't the resources to achieve what was desired. It would have taken me at least 24 months to modify the existing ecological modelling framework to work in the way they were asking for, they wanted it done yesterday, and there was no money to bring on another engineer to spread the load. Instead I got given an intern from the internship program. While I tried my best to give them a good experience, let's just say that wasn't the boon to productivity my manager thought it was going to be. To make matters worse, one of the researchers in the PhD program had been told these changes would be ready shortly before I even started, and the PhD candidate had made a series of choices about their studies relying on those changes being available. Felt bad to have to break the bad news to him after the lab manager had been blowing smoke up his ass for so long.