The gunslinger.
The work I do is like that; I spend a lot of time moving from place to place solving otherwise insoluble problems.
The europeans, specifically, who we have come to represent in the last couple of years, have brought documentation to a new art; the wiring diagrams and component documentation has developed enough density that it has crossed an event horizon of complexity from which no actual information can escape. I am a middling troubleshooter; I have been doing so for a long time. I ALWAYS WIN. One way or another.
And I cannot troubleshoot these machines. The europeans can’t either, they just swap parts until it starts workng again. I refuse to force the customer to give me carte blanche to buy whatever parts I THINK might be broke until I find the one he needs.
So far I have been lucky, and I hope my luck holds out. What I wish, is that there were a young punk out there, who has carved my name into a round, and is looking to best me.
But there isn’t. G-d help us.
12 comments Og | Uncategorized
never thought I would say this but unless the young punk had to do without, I don’t think they could cut it
Youre probably correct.
I love when people add complexity apparently for the sake of showing everyone how clever they are.
I’ve been working at a client for 16 years now. There are a series of monthly reports that report on the data in every conceivable, and many inconceivable, manners. These reports all feature SEVEN dimensional arrays to gather all the data. Try adding a new line to a report that’s based on a seven dimensioned array sometime when you have nothing better to do. I, of course, am the only person here who knows the language they’re written in, so whenever the client gets a hair up his ass that he needs a new breakdown it ends up in my lap.
I want to invent a time machine specifically so I can go back in time and prevent the grandparents of the person who wrote these abominations from meeting. Maybe great-grandparents. It’s not enough to go back one generation, the taint is too deep.
The more I learn, the luckier I get.
I’m like you – the technologies I learned in my younger days could be troubleshot using simple tools because there was a known standard that everybody in the business learned before they were allowed to turn their creations loose on the real world.
Such is not the case today. We don’t build, we buy, and often we buy from companies whose design departments appear to be paralleling the senior projects of engineering schools, piling one bright idea upon another in layers with little consideration of that fact that eventually something will fail. It used to be a relay I could see and hold in my hand.
Now it’s something deep inside a programmable logic array or in the firmware that’s almost ready for prime time.
I can still beat it, like you, but I fear for the guys who will follow me in a few years.
MC
(And you kids get offa my lawn!)
Indeed, indeed.
Asimov, the Commie, saw this coming. Read Hober Mallow’s encounter with the tech-man in Foundation.
I see it every day. More and more supposed computing experts can’t even figure out how the OS on their own server works. They’ve gone in 20 short years from being engineers who could troubleshoot to being mere appliance operators who have to cry to higher when something breaks.
I weep for the future.
Aye.
All too many overpaid assholes have forgotten that there is no cleverness in complexity, any damned fool can keep adding on until whatever it is either stumbles across it’s goal line or (much more often) fools enough people enough of the time to enter production.
It takes real genius to distill a thing down to it’s useful essence and make it sexy enough to sell at the same time.
Sure wish someone with that design ethos would go into the camera business.
What’s that saying? “Complexity adds fallibility”?
“What’s that saying? “Complexity adds fallibilityâ€?”
The difference between something that can’t possibly go wrong and something that may go wrong is that when the something that can’t possibly go wrong DOES go wrong, it’s impossible to get at to fix.
And yes, I’ve always believed that a design is complete not where there’s nothing more to add, but when there’s nothing more to take away. I wish more people understood that.
The offshoring posse finally caught up with me 2 years ago. I was a software engineer for over 25 years and have witnessed the ruination of my craft by the H1B monkeys, and even though its been a tough walk since being forced out, Im glad Im finished with them.
Keep it as simple as possible. I have to be able to troubleshoot and repair or replace the component not replace the whole thing.
I hate folks who just shotgun parts & hope. The Navy trained me to isolate & repair cards to component level; while I was in, the chip revolution occurred, & it became cheaper to just order a new assembly than to fix the old one.
I quite understand that it’s more economically sound, but I think something was lost in the soul, or at the very least in the engineering/tech mindset, when that happened.
I remember honing drum-brake wheel cylinders w/sandpaper in a cotter pin, because I couldn’t afford a new cylinder, but could afford a rebuild kit–& I’m only 50. Conservation of assets was drilled into me, but now conservation of money dictates the accumulation of waste.
As usual, those who allegedly care about the planet applaud these “advances”.