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fracus 4 days ago

This article asks various Navy men their thoughts. This one by Lieutenant Commander Jeff Vandenengel stuck out.

- Office Space is the best submarine movie. TPS reports, multiple bosses, a defective printer, coming in on Saturday, the oversight team of “the Bobs” that are “there to help,” and the engineers are not allowed to talk to normal people. Incredibly accurate!

Xmd5a 13 hours ago | parent | next [-]

>the engineers are not allowed to talk to normal people

why?

globalise83 12 hours ago | parent [-]

Because engineers can't talk to customers. They need a project manager to receive the requirements sent over from the customers, and then bring the requirements to the engineers (or have someone bring them over).

octo888 12 hours ago | parent | next [-]

And PMs can talk to customers but don't, because it's better for their career to align with the executives and implement their amazing ideas

ghaff 11 hours ago | parent [-]

Which isn't my experience at all. I've always seen PMs spend a bunch of time on the road talking to customers and in executive briefing centers. (And I was one in hardware at some distant point.) Engineers, sensibly, don't really want to spend that much time with customers--and even if they talk to one or two it sort of colors their opinions by that one customer's requirements.

theoreticalmal 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Whoever thinks this way probably has a brilliant product idea in their back pocket. If they can ever catch a break to try and prototype it…

10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]
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rwmj 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You might want to add some indication if this was sarcasm. If it wasn't then that's wrong - engineers should be directly talking to customers, at least some of the time. It's by far the best way to get direct feedback on what real problems customers are having with the product.

spullara 12 hours ago | parent | next [-]

it is basically a quote from the movie

wanderingstan 10 hours ago | parent [-]

The relevant scene: https://youtu.be/hNuu9CpdjIo

swayvil 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Because engineers generally fail to catch such subtleties, righr?

rusk 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I think they were describing “is” as opposed to “ought”

rwmj 13 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It's disappointing though perhaps not surprising that submariners now follow "Agile" practices.

ta1243 12 hours ago | parent [-]

> the engineers are not allowed to talk to normal people.

That sounds the complete antithesis of agile to me.

Is a "agile" now a term like "woke", devoid of all useful meaning

darkerside 11 hours ago | parent [-]

Both are like the term aladeen. They mean something and its exact opposite. You can only determine from context.

https://youtu.be/NYJ2w82WifU

bookofjoe 10 hours ago | parent [-]

also "nonplussed":https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/nonplussed

op00to 10 hours ago | parent [-]

always nonplussed, never plussed.