Re: real challenges still facing human civilisation – regulatory compliance.
Called out of retirement, to fix a technical problem in a product, I told my manager that the problem wasn't technical, but structural.
When there are several competing managers telling one engineer to do three different things before the next day's conference call; when it will take three days to assemble the test equipment, and when they will have changed their minds by the next day anyway; that's not technical at all!
As the outside expert, I was listened to somewhat more readily than I would have been were I still on the payroll; I told them the objective was to put equipment in the customer's hands and what they kindly let the engineer do that.
They've yet to call me back again!
Biting the hand that feeds IT
