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Failure Is Always an Option
Logic Bomb writes "The New York Times has a short but elegant op-ed regarding the different perspectives of engineers and managers and the role that plays in accidents like the space shuttle Columbia disaster. It's the sort of article you'll nod all the way through, then print and leave anonymously on your supervisor's desk. Any tech managers in the Slashdot crowd might have some interesting comments on how the right balance is struck." Henry Petroski has written several good books on engineering and failure.
I guess failure is indeed an ooption.
A: Failure Is Always an Option
Q: Alex, why do open source programmers keep trying to compete with MS?
We're gonna need a bunch more astronauts up in here.
Sounds like a poster I've seen somewhere. That article title should definitely be made into a Demotivational product.
bytesmythe
Hypocrisy is the resin that holds the plywood of society together.
-- Scott Meyer
I guess its the pessimist side of engineers that floats up through their minds when they tries to do their work. We at management have started to see this as areal problem we have address by trying to innovate our management skills. In other words we have to convince them that nothing is impossible when developing software, its only old thinking and old views that holds you back.
The problem is that many engineers, as well as developers tries to find negative or limiting facts about a project and I belive that this limits growth and new thinking at many companies.
Proud patriot and republican voter.
If I anonymously placed this on my manager's desk, he would wander out and ask absently:
who are those slashdot people? they swept over like Mongol-Tartars.
I opened this at work, and the title bar reads:
"Failure is always an option - Microsoft Internet Explorer"
Gotta love it!
Acts of massive stupidity are almost never covered by warranty. --me.
(blatantly stolen from fortune)
I work for an auto supplier. In one of the prototype plants, there was a banner for one of the new car's engineering team.
"Failure is NOT and option."
It struck me as odd at the time. It just doesn't sound like motivation. It strikes me as a negative way of looking at things. There was no "We can succeed together!" or "Hard work will pay off in the end!" Nope. Failure is not an option.
Later I saw the perfect response in a magazine, and was disappointed that the banner was taken down before I could add it.
"Failure is not an option; it comes standard with every vehicle."
"...At the end of the day"..."when everyone goes home, you're stuck with yourself." RIP Layne Staley
Actually, he said that "Genius was 10% inspiration, and 90% perspiration." He meant that you need just one good idea, and then the persistence to make it work.
I don't think comparing Thomas Edison to a late 80's rock band does either much good. Edison was smart, but he couldn't play the guitar. Tesla can play a good version of Signs, and Getting Better, but to my knowledge, never invented anything that'll change mankind forever.
"It's better to have a gun and not need it than need a gun and not have it." ~ Christian Slater, True Romance
wouldn't you have to have it translated into a dilbert cartoon first?
I resent that.
This is not how professional software developers behave.
What a real professional would say is one of....
The price of freedom is eternal litigation.
We'll fix it in one of the upcomming service packs.
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You're grammar sucks.