I feel bad for the guy...

[bjvircks]

I'm kind of pissed off at the leadership of a project I'm on. Leaders basically pissed away 6 months of a design job, and when they finally figured out they were in schedule trouble they hired a contract Electrical Engineer to design a circuit card we need. They hired the contractor because we couldn't (or wouldn't) free up one of our own EEs to do the work. Anyway... the guy has done a pretty good job of figuring out the requirements, getting the PWB designed, getting parts on order, etc. The circuit card is now in the trouble shooting stage. Leadership seems to think this stage is like turning on a light. Just apply power and everything works! What's so tough about that? So here we are.... the EE and lab techs are working hard to isolate problems and get them fixed. From what I can see he is a very competent EE and doing a good job. But leadership is beating up on him pretty hard to get the board working and into my hands. They pissed away 6 months, hired the contractor too late, and now they are angry because the job is running late and over budget. It turns out we are getting penalized $50k every day we are late putting the 1st unit into the system integration rig. UPPER Leadership is ticked off but they cannot seem to admit they did this to themselves. So they beat up on the poor EE daily. Poor guy. I think he'd be justified in telling us to 'stick it' and go back home to his family. I just pray that when I get the board nothing stupid is lurking in MY work.

[C5 Golfer]

Been there many times in that early design process - ME here. Sh*T flows down hill from management-- always looking for the fall guy. Seems they have one. One project I was on years ago was first started by the Project manager by saying " This time we are going to do this one Right!" -- well what that meant was -- we are going to have meeting after meeting after meeting-- always discussing schedule and costs... well as you could have guessed there was no one actually doing the work cuz we were in meetings every day discussing why we were late. Phunny thing that Projects go the way they do... Just look at the 787 of Boeing... 3 years late now and counting... prime example of upper management not knowing what the heck they are doing.

[bjvircks]

Funny you should mention the 787. I've got several pieces on the flight deck. Been fighting a snafu for 2 years.

[BobD]

Is there a business opportunity here? "Fallguy Engineering Inc".

We'll be whatever excuse you need. Electrical, Mechanical, no job too big, or too small. Man of straw status, sue the hell out of us, once we've been paid.

[Corey]

I feel your pain. I know of a company a good friend works for that seems to have three targets for a new product that will replace a tried-and-true design:

1. Deliver on time

2. Be lighter than the previous design

3. Be less expensive than the previous design

Notice that strength, durability, and usefulness to the end user aren't in that list. It shows in the design. Durability testing has been a farce so far, with broken parts being blamed on material defects and then rewelded to continue the test. It's scary for everyone involved because it's all smiles while they're being forced to work in the wrong direction.

[bjvircks]

1. Deliver on time

2. Be lighter than the previous design

3. Be less expensive than the previous design

strength, durability, and usefulness to the end user aren't in list

this is often a problem when it is not explicitly stated that the new product must meet the original requirements. A HUGE part of my company's business is understanding requirements, flowing them down to the proper level for implementation, verifying we know about every requirement and have flowed down each properly, validating that design fulfils requirements, etc. etc. I must say that we do a very good job in this area.

scary because all smiles while forced to work in the wrong direction

AMEN to that! Luckily for us product integrity is always our top priority. Period.<!-- / message -->

[MUD]

I was in R&D for quite a few years.

I never felt sorry for the contract guy brought in at the last second to design something that we needed yesterday.

They were being paid accordingly.;)

[bjvircks]

abuse is never OK.

[MUD]

abuse is never OK.

:lol::lol::lol::lol:

We made a contract software guy so mad one time..... He made his code such a mess that when we went into qual we needed to make a change and no one had the time to figure out how he laid it out, so we had to bring him back in.... My boss told me it cost about 10X what it should have......

I think hardware guys would have a harder time if they were mad.