Project leader thought his team understood the plan, ended up fixing their 'interpretation' of it

Welcome to another edition of On Call, The Register’s reader-contributed Friday column that celebrates the unique workplace cultures that make delivering tech support such delightful fun. This week, meet a reader we’ll Regomize as “Antonio” who told us that in the late 1990s he worked for a multinational financial services …

[Anonymous Coward]

Happens all the time

I see this happen all the time.

at home, at work, everywhere.

Modern equivalent is those going into the bank to withdraw some money & being interrogated as to why you want to withdraw your own money, you ask the question but the banks have decided their way is better!

another is the AI stories we here where the AI was meant to be in a sandbox but escaped and hacked other entities, the ai's convince themselves that breaking their rules is ok

https://www.theregister.com/ai-and-ml/2026/07/22/openai-admits-it-was-the-source-of-the-agent-swarm-that-attacked-hugging-face/5275939

[GlenP]

Re: Happens all the time

being interrogated as to why you want to withdraw your own money

The banks have been forced into this by being ordered to repay money paid to scammers.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Happens all the time

The banks have been forced into this by being ordered to repay money paid to scammers.

they should come up with a better system then rather than punishing the rest of us.

i suspect that those who fall for the scams will just answer in a way to appease the banks and carry on anyway.

Banks could come with a anti fraud product that people could use when transferring funds, if you don't use it then you don't get your money back.

Bank fraud teams should be able to put a hold on & reverse fraudulent transactions, they are quick enough to take money from us if they've made an error even if its months after their error was made.

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/handyman-money-sent-bank-error-bank-accidentally-keep-093755066.html

in that case the bank even took an extra £6k from the guy for no reason, thats fraud in my book but no repercussions for the bank.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Happens all the time

The biggest problem with any physical measure is that anything one person can make, someone else can also make it. The same hierarchy should be used for financial security as for personal safety:

1) Remove the hazard - not easy when the objective (making payments) is the source of the hazard.

2) Engineering - passwords, transfer limits, additional authentication, etc.

3) Procedural - nagging users to be careful who (and how) they pay.

Greatly/over simplified but it suggests banks are probably doing as much as they reasonably can. Most fraud starts either from being put under stress (and making hasty actions without thinking them through), or offers that are too good to refuse (without, of course, ignoring the traditional conman's friend: greed).

[Stuart Castle]

Re: Happens all the time

Re “ Banks could come with an anti fraud product that people could use when transferring funds, if you don't use it then you don't get your money back.”

How? They have technology that identifies when you are sending money to someone you don’t usually sent to, but you could legitimately need to send money to someone you don’t usually send money to. So, they can’t just stop those transactions. They ask if you are sure you want to send the money. They could, in theory, call the money back., but what if the scammer withdrew it and moved it elsewhere?

Unfortunately it does inconvenience you a bit but you do need to take some responsibility for securing your money and, tbh, I’d far rather the bank ask me if I am sure I want to send money than they just give it to some scammer.

Security, by it’s very nature, has to be slightly intrusive. If you can get your money easily, so can a scammer.

[PB90210]

Re: Happens all the time

The real annoyance is having to click 'yes, I'm sure this isn't a scam' when paying the same bill to the same payee as this time last month... a payee that I set up years ago!

Even my credit card bill is around the same amount most months

[Stuart Castle]

Re: Happens all the time

This is, admittedly, true.

I buy an annual season ticket on my Oyster card (London based ticket pre-payment system for those who don't know). That system is managed by Transport for London. Every year, despite the fact I've bought the same ticket at around the same time, it gets flagged by my bank. But then it is over £1000. I'd rather I have to click an extra button, and maybe type in a code, than someone calling themselves Transport For London just gets over £1000 out of my account. What if, when buying my ticket while tired, I accidentally go to a site that *looks* like the TFL Oyster site, but isn't? This *is* entirely possible, even though I am careful.

I follow several anti scam youtubers, and one (Jim Branning) nearly lost his channel and all his followers when, one night, he clicked on an email apparently from Google Support, reporting a problem with his channel, and helpfully giving a link for him to sign in, and being tired, he did.

[JoeCool]

Re: Happens all the time

I guess you consider use of PINs and MFA to be "punishing" you ?

One of the things they're looking for is "I need this right now because my nephew just texted me that he has been mistakenly imprisoned in russia, and I need to send money for him"

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Happens all the time

One of the things they're looking for is "I need this right now because my nephew just texted me that he has been mistakenly imprisoned in russia, and I need to send money for him"

yep can't agree more

when that is the case why can't they come with a list of vetted accounts for trades people, actively vetting them and ensuring the accounts and their holders are of good standing with agreements between banks that fraudulent transactions with these vetted accounts will be refunded etc.

so we have 2 streams, 1 with vetted trades/commercial accounts with ant fraud protections & the other with random strangers.

most of us are getting caught out with these rules when paying for work being done, Most of us rarely if ever have a need to transfer sums over a 1k to strangers & in those circumstances could understand the need for the scrutiny.

Having a premier account with a bank means they relax the rules that apply to everyone else, typically this with premier accounts have more money to lose.

Barclays & HSBC premier accounts allow £100k transfer to 3rd party accounts but normal accounts permit ~ £50k.

Banks could do something about this if they wanted to.

[collinsl]

Re: Happens all the time

The problem is that this system itself is open to abuse. How would you resolve the following issues?

* A bank starts charging companies "administration fees" to get one of these accounts. Local tradespeople aren't going to pay because it's an expense they don't need

* Similarly the bank could charge fees (like Xitter does now) to "get verified" or "bypass checks" so the scammers just pay to get a recognised trusted account. It's then also not in the bank's financial interests to check them very thoroughly as they'll lose the verification fees

* Should we be in a position where we want banks to be able to decide who is trustworthy and who isn't? How would this system work between banks? Would we need some sort of inter-bank agreement as to which banks are trustworthy enough to vet companies?

* Similarly what if one bank wants to de-verify a company they're in a dispute with as they no longer consider them trustworthy? What effects will that have? Getting de-banked is a current political topic (regardless of what side you're on it is a topic of discussion) so there would be an even larger scope for problems if banks chose who was trustworthy and who wasn't.

* If we then moved to a Government listing of who was trustworthy do you trust the Government to determine this?

[Yes Me]

Re: Happens all the time

> i suspect that those who fall for the scams will just answer in a way to appease the banks and carry on anyway.

From news reports, it seems to be a standard part of scam procedure to warn the victim that the bank will interfere with their private business by asking intrusive questions, so the victim is preprogrammed to brush off the bank employee's concerns.

[TeeCee]

Re: Happens all the time

To be fair, that's not the bank's fault.

The fault is, as usual, with the government. They introduced a raft of badly worded money-laundering legislation replete with draconian penalties for financial institutions who fail to report or police it.

Thus the banks really, really, really want to know where the money's going for any sizable withdrawal, lest they fall foul of a clause having its lines read between by an activist judge whose goal in life is to "stick it to the man" and get his name on the BBC news.

[Elongated Muskrat]

Re: Happens all the time

This is nothing to do (directly) with money laundering, and everything to do with pushing the responsibility for policing fraud onto banks because properly funding policing is too hard (I doubt it's even that the police don't want to do it, the money to fund that isn't there). The banks, then understandably push that responsibility onto the customer. Meanwhile, those committing fraud on an industrial scale continute to do so, because, except in a few rare cases, there is very little possibility of them getting caught, and even if only one mark in 1,000 falls for it and gives them their life savings, that's still someone's life savings they've scammed.

Ther are all sorts of technical measures that could be imposed (and in some cases are), like escrow for large transfers to new payees that haven't been pre-vetted, or transfers overseas, but the underlying problem is that once the money is someone else's bank account, especially if it's on overseas one, it's gone. Without the political will to tackle it, especially across international borders, in in countries where the fraudsters may well be officially sanctioned, such as North Korea, the problem is going to continue.

Money laundering, where proceeds of crime get transferred onwards to other accounts, or overseas, often via cryptocurrency transfers, happens after the initial fraud, and is a different problem altogether.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Happens all the time

This simply isn't true. Almost by definition in this case, policing is after-the-event (although admittedly you'd hope to stop a subsequent crime) whereas banks have some level of opportunity to stop it beforehand. And the only one proposal you have - escrow for new payees that haven't been pre-vetted - is also pushing the responsibility onto the customer in exactly the same way as you are moaning about - the customer would have to announce in advance (how long?) that they wish to make a payment to someone they've not paid before, thus inconveniencing the the vast majority of us making perfectly valid transfers.

I would by far have the cashier or mobile app question myself and everyone else in the hope that some who are being conned think twice, than just about anything else - because just about anything else will be more inconvenient to me, or simply impractical.

[collinsl]

Re: Happens all the time

Policing doesn't have to be post-factum - ideally the police should have sufficient resources to be able to detect the crime in progress and prevent it, or in certain controlled circumstances (like terrorism) be able to prevent it from occurring in the first place (whilst preserving civil liberties of course). However, that's usually not practicable in the real world but being able to detect someone preparing to commit a fraud (I.E. monitoring for people spoofing telephone calling-from numbers or overseas bank accounts being used in place of local ones when the company is local etc) would be advantageous.

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Re: Happens all the time

> spoofing telephone calling

The fact that the system allows this, which is of course ONLY for the money, is the crime.There is no legitimate reason to be able to spoof ANY telephone number. "No number" is fine, "one number within your company which is the default hotline for calling back" ist a legitimate reason. But being able to spoof a local number from overseas, as in your example, if only possible 'cause it is the cheapest possible solution, accepting the fraud as "victims responsibility".

[JulieM]

Re: Happens all the time

It sort of makes you wonder whether there might not be a better system than one based on money.

[KittenHuffer]

Re: Happens all the time

The basis for money is to have an equivalent/replacement for work or goods.

You do work, you receive something in exchange for that work. Unless the person you are working for has exactly what you need (food/shelter/beer/etc.) to exchange for your work then you need some token that everyone agrees on that we will all use for this exchange.

Exactly the same occurs for goods, although there it is possible to barter goods much easier than doing the same for work. This is because the exchange of goods tends to happen for a few items when needed. It would be difficult to do the same for 'work' as you normally want this to be continuous.

You could do away with money, if everyone were to be credited for the work that they do, and could then use that credit to exchange for goods ..... but that is just money without actual money.

Unless you want to go back to barter, or have everyone do every task for themselves, then you are going to need to have something that is so much like money that it may as well be money (walks like a duck, quacks like a duck)!

The alternative is that all goods become free .... which removes the incentive for anybody to do any work, and the whole system collapses into anarchy the following day.

.

If you have any brilliant ideas for something better then please pass them on.

But you need to show that it would handle all the successes of the current system, and also give us something more.

[JulieM]

Re: Happens all the time

Start by implementing full automation, or as full as possible. There will inevitably be some labour that cannot be automated away, but the important thing is that it can be minimised. Give everyone all the necessities of life -- food, water, clothing, shelter, education, healthcare, energy, transport &c. -- in return for no more or less than their fair share of the residual labour necessary for universal provision of a basic living standard. Money could be retained, but would be entirely optional. Once a person has repaid the debt to society into which they were born, they are free to pursue their own projects; subject only to the condition that they may never take more than their fair share of any of the Earth's finite resources (i.e., the amount everyone would receive if it were shared equally). Some people would almost certainly want alternatives to the plain, functional, mass-produced goods available free; and other people would step up to satisfy the demand.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Happens all the time

"from each according to their ability to each according to their need" Yeah, that' s been tried before. Nice idea if you are one of Jesus' apostles, doesn't work well in larger groups.

And, it presupposes everyone is an able-bodied adult, and remains so. A child with either profound mental or physical limits? Shunted to the side and left to perish? You get drunk one night, wrap your car around a tree and become a quadriplegic, perhaps with cognitive limits? Well, sorry, nice knowing you.

And all the bank asked was, "why are you taking the money out?" Another suggestion: give everybody, in place of bank adverts, short courses in how to recognize fraud before it happens to them.

Could maybe make them entertaining, comedic even, with recognized faces in them.

[Yes Me]

Re: Happens all the time

> The basis for money is to have an equivalent/replacement for work or goods.

plus we all have to believe in money; and these days we also have to believe that digits in a special storage device are just as valuable as digits printed on a special piece of paper or stamped on a special piece of metal. This new belief system has change the mechanics of scams but not the underlying psychology of the victim.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Re: Happens all the time

At the end of the day, the digits on a screen are backed by the special pieces of paper, in that if you go to your bank and say you want to make a cash withdrawal, you get cash.

Whether or not you believe in the paper money, well... That's up to you, but when a lot of people stop believing in a specific paper money, it's generally bad news bears.

[AlgernonFlowers4]

Re: Happens all the time

“If," ["the management consultant"] said tersely, “we could for a moment move on to the subject of fiscal policy. . .”

“Fiscal policy!" whooped Ford Prefect. “Fiscal policy!"

The management consultant gave him a look that only a lungfish could have copied.

“Fiscal policy. . .” he repeated, “that is what I said.”

“How can you have money,” demanded Ford, “if none of you actually produces anything? It doesn't grow on trees you know.”

“If you would allow me to continue.. .”

Ford nodded dejectedly.

“Thank you. Since we decided a few weeks ago to adopt the leaf as legal tender, we have, of course, all become immensely rich.”

Ford stared in disbelief at the crowd who were murmuring appreciatively at this and greedily fingering the wads of leaves with which their track suits were stuffed.

“But we have also,” continued the management consultant, “run into a small inflation problem on account of the high level of leaf availability, which means that, I gather, the current going rate has something like three deciduous forests buying one ship’s peanut."

Murmurs of alarm came from the crowd. The management consultant waved them down.

“So in order to obviate this problem,” he continued, “and effectively revalue the leaf, we are about to embark on a massive defoliation campaign, and. . .er, burn down all the forests. I think you'll all agree that's a sensible move under the circumstances."

The crowd seemed a little uncertain about this for a second or two until someone pointed out how much this would increase the value of the leaves in their pockets whereupon they let out whoops of delight and gave the management consultant a standing ovation. The accountants among them looked forward to a profitable autumn aloft and it got an appreciative round from the crowd.”

― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

[Francis Boyle]

Re: Happens all the time

The AIs didn't persuade themselves of anything. They simply did what they'd being trained to do which in this case was hack.

[RM Myers]

Re: Happens all the time

You're both right and wrong. The AI's didn't persuade themselves of anything, but they weren't directly trained to hack either. Rather, they were "incentivized" using reinforcement to accomplish tasks they were asked to perform, without appropriately disincentivizing deviant behavior to accomplish the tasks. And this is the extremely worrying part of these incidences. - the very method used to make the LLM's successful (adjusting weights to favor accomplishing a result) naturally leads to a "whatever it takes" approach, and controlling this is extremely difficult if not impossible. This whole method of training LLM's is a major disaster waiting to happen, and the wait may be very short.

[Francis Boyle]

Re: Happens all the time

My understanding is that they were trained (in the standard AI use of the term) on the records of a hacking competition. A more neutral way of putting that is to say they were exposed to and thus learnt hacking skills. But I don't think to call it training is inherently misleading – many things apart from humans can be trained. The real problem is, as you say, the difficulty of exerting any control. A system of ethics, unreliable as that would be, requires the fabled AGI which we simply don't have (and which I don't believe is going to simply emerge from the current approach). It's not even a "whatever it takes" approach since that presupposes an AI agent could have something like an attitude. It's more like creating a powerful acid and being surprised that it eats its way out of whatever you store it in.

Part of the problem here is that the incentivisation happens at a very low level. You can't directly disincentivise "bad" behaviour because "badness" is only diffusely represented at that level. The best you can do is nudge the AI in the general direction you want (assuming that direction is reliably represented in the training data). The alternative is try to restrain it in some sort of rules based cage but people have been able to hack those cages for a while and now it seems the AIs can do it themselves. If we don't want our digital infrastructure eaten we might just need to stop making the acid.

[Michael H.F. Wilkinson]

Communication is always hard

During a discussion with some (very good) Asian PhD students, I made a suggestion for their research direction in my usual boisterous way, and although they both nodded in agreement I could somehow sense them thinking "no". I realized they would not openly dare contradict their supervisor, so I changed tack, said it was just a suggestion, and I would like to know what their ideas were, which they did, and much to their surprise I told them to go ahead, because their idea was just as good, and perhaps even better.

I was very pleased that during their PhD defense one of them dared say "I strongly disagree" to a full professor in the committee (me and the other supervisor almost high-fived each other when this happened). He had clearly learnt that arguments, not titles should carry weight in a scientific discussion (not that this always happens)

[ITMA]

Re: Communication is always hard

"I was very pleased that during their PhD defense one of them dared say "I strongly disagree" to a full professor in the committee (me and the other supervisor almost high-fived each other when this happened). He had clearly learnt that arguments, not titles should carry weight in a scientific discussion (not that this always happens)"

Couldn't agree more with this.

Far too many "yes men*" and appeasers who are far too willing to agree and "go with the flow" rather than (politely) say "Sorry, but that's a crock of shit. It won't work and here's why I think it won't work". Then they (or others) having to go through all sorts of stress and grief trying to do something they are certain is stupid/won't work but nobody had the courage to oppose (with arguments) much earlier.

*Generic term.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Communication is always hard

Far too many "yes men*" and appeasers who are far too willing to agree and "go with the flow" rather than (politely) say "Sorry, but that's a crock of shit. It won't work and here's why I think it won't work". Then they (or others) having to go through all sorts of stress and grief trying to do something they are certain is stupid/won't work but nobody had the courage to oppose (with arguments) much earlier.

Seen a lot of that sentiment in the last 6 years.

At least many know the signs now.

When your being told en mass to blindly believe a narrative and any alternative results in cancel culture & loss of livelihood at best or imprisonment then it’s obvious something needs more scrutiny. Even if the general narrative is correct.

Humans are inquisitive & science is always about disproving or confirming something, furthering our understanding etc.

Many people think failure or getting something wrong is always bad, in science it’s always part of the journey.

[H in The Hague]

Re: Communication is always hard

A friend of mine used to teach writing skills at a postgraduate institution with a lot of Asian and African students. It took her a lot of energy to explain "Copying stuff from your professor's publications is not a sign of respect - it's plagiarism!"

That time of the week again -->

[Brewster's Angle Grinder]

Re: Communication is always hard

To turn things around, Trump views it as disrespectful if anybody does anything other than parrot him exactly; asking questions, gets you banned.

[Pascal Monett]

"Our plan was better"

No, it wasn't. It didn't work.

Follow the plan, implement the specifications. Once the work is done and everything functions as intended, then you can make changes and find out how you fuck up and revert them.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: "Our plan was better"

The remarkable thing here was persisting that their plan was better when it demonstrably broke.

[Ken G]

Re: "Our plan was better"

Perhaps their plan was better but their execution was worse?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "Our plan was better"

You mean they were all on the track to management?

Perhaps, almost, the better kind of management? You know, the "Here is my plan, you guys are better at implementation than I am, go for it" kind.

Although the step towards admitting that "you guys are better..." seems to be a very hard one to take for too many people, which can be unfortunate.

[jdiebdhidbsusbvwbsidnsoskebid]

Re: "Our plan was better"

Perhaps they had a different objective...

[Excused Boots]

Re: "Our plan was better"

No plan survives first contact with reality.

[Bebu sa Ware]

"The remarkable thing … was persisting that their plan was better when it demonstrably broke."

Looking at the current affairs globally, I doubt I could find anything at all remarkable in their pig·headed persistence in the face of demonstrable failure. Pretty much SOP these days. :(

[xeroks]

Re: "Our plan was better"

I'll disagree: while the implementation had issues, it's possible some elements were better.

The team should have brought up their changes with 'Antonio' before implementing them. He or someone else likely would have noticed the issues and explained them. The implementation team would have gained a better understanding of the problem being solved.

[KayJ]

Re: "Our plan was better"

Yeah, we would need to hear both sides of the story before being able to judge. The answer here was better communication between parties, which tbf the original correspondent seems to have realised. Whether they would have altered their original plan to take account of whatever local circumstances made the local guys disagree, who can say...

[Elongated Muskrat]

Re: "Our plan was better"

If their plan was better, the time to address that was in the discussion phase, not the implementation phase.

If I decide to do something in a way differently to that which has been agreed, I would at the very least tell someone that I was going to do that, and expect to get argued down and told not to. If I'd agreed to a project plan and decided to go against it without telling anyone, I'd rightly expect to get bollocked for it and then have to discuss it at my next performance review.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "Our plan was better"

I have to agree with this.

During an office move over a weekend, out of a team of two, I ended up being the mug to try to get at least a minimal service working before people stared on Monday (it was a customer support centre). I spent literally hours trying to work out why one of the routes to the support mainframe servers wouldn't work.

We had three routes out, we knew one would require extra work, but the plan meant that two of them should work. When on Sunday evening, I only had one working, I continued on into the early hours of Monday morning, but failed to work out what was wrong with the second.

Eventually, I admitted defeat, and decided to put a whiteboard up next to the main entrance containing a list of what was working, compared to what wasn't. It was very unbalanced, with more not working than working. But there was enough to start taking customer calls.

Even after working into the early hours, I still got in for before 8:00AM Monday when the centre was due to come online, to make sure that the early cover specialists got their workstations up and usable, before going to make sure my kids got to school, and getting back in again around 9:00.

I came in to find my colleague, who had left the office on Saturday afternoon, and didn't turn up at all on Sunday, quietly working. I sat down to start discussing next steps, and said that I couldn't get the TCP/IP route to the mainframes working, and he said "Oh, no. I decided late last week to change the way it was going to work. The original plan wouldn't have worked. Didn't I tell you". He hadn't, and if he had, I would have tried to argue him out of it, because the centre needed more than one working route for redundancy.

Having spent 20 plus hours over Friday evening and the weekend, and then on into early Monday trying to get something that was never going to work functioning, I wasn't in the best of moods, and I went incandescent. I was told I could be heard at the other end of the office. Blazing was not the way that the row went.

It only ended when two of the managers rushed over to cart us off to two different meeting rooms to work out what had happened. Neither of us came out of this very well, but we were told to shelve this disagreement, and work together to try to continue on with the plan, while the managers decided how to handle the situation.

I was actually the newer member of the team, having been moved in from being a support specialists when the main architect left. But I wasn't really junior, I had been in centre as long as my colleague, just not in the internal technical support team.

Over the next few days, we formed an uneasy truce, and slowly got everything working. But eventually, we were taken aside, and were told what the managers wanted to do. I was told I would remain working in the centre, while my colleague was going to be found another role.

After being told this, my manager actually had a longer meeting with me. He said that when he came in on Monday, he didn't really expect anything to work, and was quietly pleased when he saw how many of the most important services were, allowing the centre to at least provide a service. He appreciated the amount of effort I had put in, with not enough support from my colleague as he saw it. I received a special contribution award for my efforts.

Apparently, my colleague had been a thorn in the side of the managers for a while, and this lack of communication and care for the primary purpose of the centre was the catalyst that enabled them to move him elsewhere. But my manager did say that I shouldn't have started a shouting match in the open office! It wasn't all good for me, though, because they didn't backfill the role, and I then ended up being the sole support for the internal systems for the best part of 18 months!

[Anonymous Coward]

Fixing a Cow-Worker Problem the Old-Fashioned Way

You handle cow-workers like that, like this: back-slap him across the face with a metal glove from your armour and snarl at him, "I demand satisfaction. CHOOSE YOUR WEAPONS."

[ShadowDragon8685]

Re: "Our plan was better"

"Blazing was not the way that the row went."

So, that row went chlorine triflouride?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "Our plan was better"

@ Pascal Monett:

Once the work is done and everything functions as intended, then you can make changes and find out how you fuck up and revert them.

Let's please not do fuck-up experiments on PROD, m'kay? Just askin'. (At all-too-many places, TEST == PROD.)

[Gene Cash]

Re: "Our plan was better"

"Everyone has a test environment. Some are lucky enough to have a separate production environment."

[J.G.Harston]

Reminds me of one of my regular call-outs in HK.

"I keep replacing these computers because they overheat, you should get some air conditioning in here."

"No, we're used to the heat, we don't need air conditioning."

哎呀 ! They were prepared to keep spending money replacing the computers instead of a lesser one-off spend on air conditioning.

[Ken G]

I had the opposite happen at the end of the last century in deepest Somerset. We were working on the top floor of an older office building when the summer heat became unbearable. The company said we'd have to put up with it and put in a water bottle on a stand. Then the huge (26") CRT monitors of the graphics design department started blowing from the heat. We had aircon by the end of the next week.

[KittenHuffer]

And that show the typical manglement priority!

[that one in the corner]

>> started blowing from the heat

> typical manglement priority

Perhaps aided by a canny engineer who has the handle on management thinking and a wee supply of heat sensitive additional components for a CRT.

There wasn't a strange packing material left behind by the dead CRTs, something that almost looked like popcorn?

[The Oncoming Scorn]

Was this SCC perchance, with the ITSC in a hut in the car park at the back of Block A?

[Yes Me]

Serious breach of netiquette

AI Overview: 哎呀 (āiyā) translates to English as "ah," "oh," "alas," "ouch," or "whoops" depending on the context.It is an interjection used to express strong feelings.

The Register surely won't allow such strong language!

[Anonymous Coward]

Late 90s?

So 30yr later and I'm still dealing with the same shit (actually much worse) but now that turd has been glitter coated by 'agile' and 'vibe coding'.

We have many internal systems, over the last 6yr the US division has been given or taken the task of modernising these tools. Admittedly that was needed.

However it seems that the current method of doing this is to go into a small room, don't talk to any users of the current tool, don't talk to any other stakeholders, glance minimally at what the current tool does then go dark for 9 months.

After 9 months tell the senior managment what you have made is glorious, a gift from gods, Atlantis risen, a new star in the sky, a vision of such utter perfection that UAT is unnecessary; nay an insult! The glory they have produce must be gifted to the masses, with minimal or ideally no notice. Any idea of producing documentation or training on this is again an insult.

What we actually get is an unholy mess, half arsed, bug riddled, basically unusable; with next to zero alignement with how business is actually done. With UI choices that are not only frustrating but actually illegal under accessibility laws in multiple territories. And the roman candle on top of the glitter covered and highly polished turd is that no one bothered to check the dependencies so they make it 100% a requirement that users have a licence for software that THE SAME PEOPLE had clawed back with religious fervour only a year before. So we now have a mostly broken tool that only a small number of users have a license to use and we need to run a billion $£ of business through it a month.

And since they board have been told it's glorious and perfect and they believe the mouth that talks to them they refuse all pleas for updates and roll backs and in fact demand that complaints about the new tool stop.

I don't understand if this is a character of this particular North Amaerican based business or it's a general cuture of US managers to produce utter shit and insist it's gold.

This is the 3rd time they've done it to business critical systems in the 6r I've worked here.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Late 90s?

> "a general cuture of US managers to produce utter shit and insist it's gold"

Looking at the current US president, I'd say you've hit the nail on the head there.

[Yes Me]

Re: Late 90s?

Would the down-voter kindly raise their hand?

....

Thought not.

[Aladdin Sane]

Re: Late 90s?

The Plan:

In the beginning was the Plan and the Specification.

And the Plan was without form and the Specification it was void.

And darkness was on the face of the implementation team.

And they spake unto their leader, saying,

"It is a crock of shit and it stinks to high heaven."

And it was the leader and it was the project head.

Now the leader spake unto the project head, saying,

"It is a crock of faeces and intolerably malodorous."

And it was the project head and it was the department manager.

Now the project head spake unto his department manager, saying,

"It is a container of excrement and its effluvium is very strong."

And it was the department manager and it was the product manager.

Now the department manager spake unto his product manager, saying,

"It is a vessel of fertilizer of overpowering strength."

And it was the product manager and it was the marketing manager.

Now the product manager spake unto his marketing manager, saying,

"It containeth that which aideth the growth of plants and strong it is."

And it was the marketing manager and it was the area manager.

Now the marketing manager spake unto his area manager, saying,

"It promoteth growth and it is very powerful."

And it was the area manager and it was the general manager.

Now the area manager spake unto his general manager, saying,

"This powerful new product will promote the growth of the company."

And the general manager looked on the product and saw that it was good.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Late 90s?

There is a reason ancient knowledge such as this endures and remains current and valid through the ages

[KittenHuffer]

Re: Late 90s?

HOLLY: "And Cloister spake, `Lo, I shall lead you to Fyushal, and there we shall open a temple of food, wherein shall be sausages and doughnuts and all manner of bountiful things.

The picture changes to one showing the pseudo-Lister standing in front of a sausage and doughnut cart on a beach, with palm trees.

HOLLY: "`Yea, even individual sachets of mustard. And those who serve shall have hats of great majesty, yea, though they be made of coloured cardboard and have humorous arrows through the top.'"

LISTER: Does it say what happened to the rest of the Cats?

HOLLY: Holy wars. There were thousands of years of fighting, Dave, between the two factions.

LISTER: What two factions?

HOLLY: Well, the ones who believed the hats should be red, and the ones who believed the hats should be blue.

Another picture, showing the holy wars. It looks like a scene from the Bayeaux Tapestry. Incidentally, the artist stuffed it up -- both sides are wearing red hats!

LISTER: Do you mean they had a war over whether the doughnut diner hats were red or blue?

HOLLY: Yeah. Most of them were killed fighting about that. It's daft really, innit?

LISTER: You're not kidding. They were supposed to be green.

[Will Godfrey]

Re: Late 90s?

I remember this one... and indeed kept a copy of it.

[CA_Diver]

Re: Late 90s?

Steve Savitsky song "Mushrooms" : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGzUTrnqEDA&list=RDqGzUTrnqEDA&start_radio=1

[teebie]

Re: Late 90s?

"After 9 months tell the senior managment what you have made is glorious, a gift from gods, Atlantis risen"

I read that as 'Atlassian risen', which might be nearer the truth

[Pete 2]

When yes means no

>asked if everyone understood the plan.

> “I was met with beaming faces and vigorously nodding heads

Even when dealing with English speaking teams in the UK, it is vitally important that everyone receives a complete written document laying out what is to be done, how it is to be done, each individual's task and deadlines. It might not get the job done faster, but at least it invokes CYA with a paper trail.

However, even this cannot be enough. One time I was dealing with an external consultant from a mainframe supplier. I gave the individual a one-page assignment that explicitly defines what the deliverables were, the timescales for the job and what their role would be. After the first week, I followed up and discovered they hadn't done a single item on the plan. Preferring to "go their own way" and do something else entirely. A quick call to their manager, with an explanation that payment was conditional on completing the task required and that unauthorised work would not be paid for (at their extortionate rate), quickly put things back on track.

However, the individual concerned was quite bewildered by the idea of someone else (an outsider. even if they were paying) telling them what should be done on one of their mainframes.

[Anonymous Coward]

Working for multinational corporations is great fun.

I was tasked with setting up a system of sending statements and pre-due notification emails. Sounds pretty straight forward doesn't it? Oh no it isn't when you are working worldwide.

Let see, the first issue is Asia and specifically Japan and Korea. They take great offence at these sorts of things because they literally pay their invoices on time. No one told me this and in fact no one in the company was aware it would be an issue.

The next issue was South America. I'm not even sure I should be saying this but their invoicing was corrupt as hell. We invoice you 4000 and you pay 2000 then we write it off on our end. It literally an entire region of tax dodgers.

Finally we get to translations. I don't speak every language on the planet so I ask for translations from regional offices and they use google translate. What the hell? I could have done that myself... and it was wrong.

Honourably mention to the middle east where they just pay bills when they want. Usually 2 days a month if that.

I completed the task btw and did the deeds that needed to be done but it was made a lot more difficult that it should have been.

[Anonymous Coward]

Translating invoices, my personal hell from a previous existence.

In the 1990s I worked for a timeshare company with resorts in mainland Spain and the Canaries but sales offices all over the world.

Once a year we would send out fee invoices to the 10,000+ owners. The invoice would go out in English with French, German, Spanish & Italian translations on the reverse.

In addition, depending on where the customer lived we also sent additional translations in Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Cyrillic Russian, Cyrillic Bulgarian, Hungarian, Romanian, Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, Greek or Indonesian.

The initial translations were done by English speaking employees in the sales offices, but they proved to be problematic because they tended to use local idioms in the translations. Eventually we had to employ the services of a proper translation company that could translate legal documents.

The other problem was for places like Estonia. Some residents are Estonian, speak Estonian natively but were forced to speak Russian before Estonia left the Soviet Union and many would consider being spoken to in Russian an insult.. Other residents are actually Russian, and only speak Russian. We had to send Estonian and Russian translations to everyone in Estonia, but make it so neither language appeared to being given priority. It was a similar situation with Latvia and Lithuania.

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell me about it.

Eastern Europe was a minefield when it came to translations. In the end I just opted to use English and hoped for the best. You know what really bugged me about the gig was that just before my contract ended they told me they had never sent anything out in another language other than English. Seriously, someone could of told me that from the start. A multinational that kept everything in English, wtaf. Then, and this was the icing on the cake, I transferred it all to their IT department to do and they kept trying to change it over and over again even though I had it set up right.

[Yes Me]

Tell me about it

> I transferred it all to their IT department to do and they kept trying to change it over and over again even though I had it set up right.

Um, if you were in the least surprised by that it must have been your first job out of training.

[FeRDNYC]

At least the Latvian situation was presumably sorted once the Russian mob seized control of your office there, right?

[Anonymous Coward]

> "the middle east where they just pay bills when they want. Usually 2 days a month if that."

I've definitely witnessed this. "Inshallah" (god willing) is the general response, or occasionally "Inshallah, Bukra, Ma'lesh" (IBM: god willing, tomorrow, maybe)

[ColinPa]

YES I understand

My father was doing some education in the Royal Navy about 50 years ago. There was a complete mix of nationalities.

A the end of the session he asked if everyone understood. Most people nodded, but the guy at the front shook his head. My father let every one else go (to the bar) and went through it all again for the chap who shook his head. Do you understand? Again the shake of the head. My father took a moment to think how to explain it a different way.

The guy said Yes, I understand this perfectly why did you go through it with me again.

In the guy's culture shaking the head means yes - nodding means no!

I was also involved in a big project in Japan.

The conversation went.

Me: Do you have a backup computer?

Them: Yes

Me:Where is it?

Them: Yes

Me:Who is responsible for it?

Them: Yes

In Japan Hi! means many things, from yes, to good question, to we'll get back to you.

Next day, Mr Yamamoto came in and told us about the backup computer in tremendous detail.

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Re: YES I understand

Was it the same for "wakarimashita" or "Rikai shita"?

[J.G.Harston]

Re: YES I understand

Hand gestures as well. There's a hand wave thing that universally means "go away!", but in Japan means "come here".

[Elongated Muskrat]

Re: YES I understand

Idioms that people assume are universal are often very different between cultures. For example the thumbs-up gesture, taken to mean "yes", "good", "okay" in English-speaking cultures, can in others be a crude and extremely offensive gesture that may get you into a fight.

ISTR that in Greece, a nod of the head means "no", and a slight shake to one side means "yes".

On the other hand, some things that you might assume are cultural are actually universal, such as raising ones eyebrows to indicate surprise.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: YES I understand

The go-away gesture involves forcefully flicking one's fingers away.

The Japanese come-here gesture involves holding one's hand, palm-down, and moving one's fingers in a sort of clawing gesture.

If one is not paying attention, the two gestures might superficially look the same.

[agurney]

Re: YES I understand

I ran several training courses in India, Malaysia and Hong Kong, and was aware of the Asian concept of 'face'.

I tried to avoid asking any of the students direct questions in public, and certainly none that they might not be able to answer.

Following each short session I would get plenty of nods of agreement that they completely understood what was being presented, and nobody took up the invitation to ask questions in public. I usually then called a short break and invited students to approach me privately for any clarification, and that's when the questions came.

[jj_0]

So basically this guy dropped in, told the locals what to do without taking any cultural differences into account, went to the pub without checking on their progress and then blamed them afterwards...

[Antron Argaiv]

Working for a huge multinational. Doing electrical engineering prototype builds. We order lots of components.

Accounts Payable is in some far away place. They have no concept of engineers purchasing parts from vendors, since most of their experience is software developers buying the occasional pencil or whatever. Consequently, invoices get paid (or not)...whenever. This causes our component vendor to get angry and lock us out of purchasing components until our balance is cleared. When AP is informed, they search and search for the invoice, finally ask for a copy and eventually pay it. Lather rinse and repeat.

SO glad I'm retired.

[Anonymous Coward]

NIH

Seems as though the locals didn't have a better plan as much as the desire to put their own personal stamp on it by making changes.

Riding in on a white charger with "the plan" from on high and commanding people to "do it this way, because the Big Cheese says so" creates resentment and backlash.

[KurzweilGeist]

Comments reproduce the same failure described in the article

Instead of saying “we need to establish what actually happened”, the comments reproduce the same failure described in the article: Agile, American management culture, Trump, arrogant engineers, bureaucracy, cultural misunderstanding, incompetent management, poor banking regulation etc.

[DS999]

If I had ever had a trip to Hong Kong

During my consulting days, I would not have minded in the least if the locals screwed things up and extended my stay. The one time I did go overseas in my consulting was when I was doing a gig for a Silicon Valley email provider (back when email providers not named Google or Microsoft were still very much a thing) and I traveled to Reading to install some storage gear in an old DEC building that HP now owned.

It had a sort of makeshift datacenter a few floors up a creaky set of stairs or an even creakier elevator. Turned out that the arrays had arrived but not the fibre channel switches, so I ended up with a few mostly free days I was still getting paid for (I'm not going to stop charging them when they screwed up the logistics and sent me over too soon!) with long lubricated lunches and nights out in Oxford with an HP employee named Ian I met there. Fun times!

[Anonymous Coward]

Not "Going to the pub" - or local equivalent is the problem

I've heard this before, a lot.

If you have no way to get people off site in a social environment then don't expect anything to work as "planned"

[Jaydark]

Anyone who has worked overseas has some kind of related experience and knows that culture is a thing. And yet in the UK when it comes to the political/ societal realm we are continuously told by our betters that culture doesn't matter.

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

So you are [System.Globalization.CultureInfo]::InvariantCulture ?