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A few years back, I was assigned to a new team and had to run some analysis on a selection of hardware that kept failing quality checks. Was told this was of th
by quartesixte 3y ago
A few years back, I was assigned to a new team and had to run some analysis on a selection of hardware that kept failing quality checks. Was told this was of the utmost importance to the product and that a future production push hinged on solving this problem. I was given a week. The scope of work would entail at least one really late night into the project.
On Day 5 of 7 (sleepless night happened on Day 2 and 3), a passing engineer from a different team stopped by my desk to chat. Saw my screen and said "neat Python code, what's it all for?"
I replied, "oh it's to do some number crunching on that quality problem."
To which he blandly goes: "Oh. Didn't you hear? We scrapped that entire product line 3 weeks ago."
Reader, I almost actually threw my keyboard off the desk.
(If there was ever an argument for in-office work, it's coworkers telling you to STOP working on something and rescuing you from situations like this...)
- jasonjmcghee 3y agoAs useless as it feels, how you handled it, diving in with full focus to the point that you stayed up all night- you're working a muscle many engineers don't and you'll be better for it.
- etherealG 3y agoThe muscle of doing pointless bullshit without understanding that it’s pointless… are you kidding? This has got to be the most troll comment I ever saw in this website.
- quartesixte 3y agoNo I get what the response meant. It’s the muscle of being able to quickly orient yourself in sudden problems and drive towards useful solutions in a focused manner. And to be fair, if the product line hadn’t been thrown out before I started, the project would have been useful in either A) fixing the product or B) providing justification to scrap the product line (probably the more likely outcome) And I developed a nice tool that got used somewhere else later useful.