Slashdot Mirror

Anyone trying to put a bill through like this should be able to answer this question first. Preferably in essay form, and then present something comparable to a thesis defense.

"Yahoo officials said that their Do Not Track implementation has been in development since 2011 and that it will be a simple way for consumers to turn on the DNT option."

Link

and yet, this one did get published.

http://www.dilbert.com/blog/entry/the_one_that_didnt_get_published/

Talking about nuclear power, Ayn Rand, or libertarianism on Slashdot is about as productive as trying to discuss Zionism on Wikipedia.

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1998-06-14/

Are the people running for office the best ones that this country has to offer? I mean, what if that were true, that that's really the best we can do.

I think Dilbert applies here.

but its not just a phone, its a time machine

I'd pay for the DSN channel in addition to my regular ones, and switch to it during the commercials. And leave it to Dogbert to handle Microsoft or whoever the content provider of the advertized channel is.

Not XKCD, but still relevant:
Dilbert gives credit card to waitress.

Something similar to this maybe? http://dilbert.com/dyn/str_strip/000000000/00000000/0000000/000000/20000/8000/700/28774/28774.strip.gif

Reminds me of this Dilbert comic

The cheapest smartphone AT&T offers without a subsidy is the thoroughly mediocre HTC Status, for $349. To add insult to injury, it's only available in mauve.

But, but but..... you mean it doesn't actually have more RAM?

As usual Dilbert has is right.
http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2012-02-23/

OB Dilbert:

http://search.dilbert.com/comic/Leveraged%20Synergy

A long time ago, I used star trek ships
then I used colors

Does Mauve really have more RAM?

"I'm gonna write myself a new minivan this afternoon!"

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1995-11-13/

Also:

http://thedailywtf.com/Comments/The-Defect-Black-Market.aspx

Dilbert figured it out already

Yes yes but any large enough org starts to stop acting like a single company at some point, and more like a country. Sure there is some central group who speak for everyone and claim singular direction and vision, when the reality is, they are full of different and often competing interests.

It would surprise me more if they had all of the source for all of their software hosted on an unsecured FTP server...just because its unlikely there is a single company-wide repository...or even if there is one.... that it, in fact, contains everything it should. Hell I would not be surprised if there were several unsecured ftp servers, each run by individuals or groups who, if asked, would say they are the single central repository.... and when asked about eachother, don't even know that they exist.

Dilbert explains the concept well:
http://www.dilbert.com/strips/comic/2009-03-05/?CmtOrder=Rating&CmtDir=DESC

I can't see how there could not be a possible downside. Note to employers, do not hire anyone with the ethics (including work ethic) of Wally.

True Slashdotters link to the Fast version ;)

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2012-02-23/

From just four days ago.

This is somewhat appropriate here I think. Frequentlyt, Dilbert is on-target when management is not.

See the February 19, 2012 Dilbert for some insight on where this is going:

http://www.dilbert.com/

I prefer this one:
http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2001-10-25/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKms4cveAgY and http://search.dilbert.com/comic/Hi%20Jack ... ;)

http://www.dilbert.com/fast/2008-04-15/

Spot on!

http://www.dilbert.com/fast/2008-04-15/

There are hundreds of examples where Dilbert mirrors what has happened in my career. You can learn a lot from Dilbert, in both what can and will happen, and get a head-start on thinking of how you would really handle the issue.

http://www.dilbert.com/

As usual, 'Dilbert' seems apropos...
http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1994-10-12/

Dilbert did it best.

I agree. I work in an open plan environment, and wish that I was in a room by myself. The 'scrum' as you call it is great for sharing the overview to let everyone know some of the detail from other people's work, so that there are not clashes or double-effort. Otherwise, give me a quiet and uninterrupted environment; even give me the high-walled cobicles of Dilbert!

On agile development

Because yarn is cheap, right.

Or maybe http://www.dilbert.com/ where you will find out how the true professionals do it.

Funny how nobody mentioned that guy ;) http://search.dilbert.com/comic/Mordac%20The%20Preventer

Take a blow to the head and start growing pointy hair.

Take a blow to the head and start growing pointy hair.

Time to answer call, time to resolve ticket, abandoned tickets (unresolved).

In business school it is a common theme in various classes that you get what you reward, not what you ask for, not what is necessarily best for the organization. Here is a highly relevant Dilbert cartoon illustrating this point, http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1995-11-13/.

The underlying problem is that metrics applied to humans leads to people working towards the metrics, not necessarily doing good work. It is a classic environment for unintended consequences. Its not even that the people are necessarily being opportunistic, there is also a certain amount of practicality. If you are being measured by some metric and keeping your job or getting a raise is dependent upon that metric you may quite rationally decide to act to that metric rather than what is necessarily in the best interest of customers.

Are you measured by resolved tickets? Then tickets will get resolved quickly. Not necessarily thoroughly, completely, or robustly resolved. Which leads to related followup tickets because of a minimal effort put into resolving the original ticket. I saw this in a programming environment where the tickets consisted of new features or bug fixes.

Are you measured by abandoned tickets? Then tickets will get resolved, even if they don't reasonably deserve to be considered resolved. You will get things unnecessarily classified as "unable to duplicate", "insufficient information", etc.

In these two examples, where is the difficulty of the task factored in? Not all task, tickets, are equivalent. Furthermore sometimes there are external dependencies, a part is being shipped, where is this factored in?

The metrics you offer are reminiscent of stats from call centers. There such metrics are a little more reasonable, not perfect but perhaps OK, given that the calls are somewhat equivalent in the amount of effort required, a small number of minutes not hours, and that they are randomly assigned. Over the period of say a month the large number of calls handled by any operator will resemble a normal curve with respect to effort required. For an IT organization the evaluation period may need to be some number of years to get to a normal curve with respect to effort required.

This problem was aptly portrayed in the classic dilbert comic strip in 1995.

I'm going to code myself a minivan.

It's (pseudo-)random. Just because a particular sample is nonuniform in distribution does not mean that the governing process was flawed.

Random ?

865
865

Random ?

Obligatory XKCD
Obligatory Dilbert

But what if you get paid to debug the 500 lines of error filled code? http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1995-11-13/

I had this on my office wall at a former employer where I was in a similar situation.

I can't quite believe I'm pasting a Dilbert strip here, but it's entirely appropriate:

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1994-02-01/

Dilbert said it best:

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2011-10-18/

Obligatory Dogbert reference:

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2005-11-18/

Anon, cause I've moderated the thread.

And here is the random number generator in action: http://search.dilbert.com/comic/Random%20Number%20Generator

Obligatory xkcd: http://xkcd.com/221/

Obligatory Dilbert: http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2001-10-25/

Dilbert did it first, and better.

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2001-10-25/