Engineer Humor (yes, they do have a sense of humor)

Introduction

Engineers can be hilarious – albeit a bit dry and cynical. Engineers are problem-solvers by nature. Much of their humor involves problem solving. Here are a few things that came up this morning that I thought would be worthwhile sharing here.

Troubleshooting Phases

I had a hardware engineer in my group who had a 12-step problem solving process that he used EVERY SINGLE TIME. He wrote code for Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs), so his problem resolutions always involved changing some FPGA source code. Here is his troubleshooting process.

12-Step Troubleshooting Process
Step Number Name
Step 1 That Can't Happen, It Must Be a Test Problem.
Step 2 Blame Software
Step 3 Doubt - Could I Have Made an Error?
Step 4 Blame Software
Step 5 How Did This Ever Work?
Step 6 Despair
Step 7 Hope
Step 8 Deep Despair
Step 9 Blame Software
Step 10 The Return of Hope
Step 11 Intense Effort
Step 12 It Was a One-Line of Source Code Change

Quality

We had a discussion this morning on software quality. It became obvious that there were levels of software quality. Here is what I gleaned from that conversation.

Levels of Software Quality
Level Description Comment
Level 1 Crap-Like The software has some good points, but there are some serious issues.
Level 2 Crapola The software appears to have some good points, but deep-down it really sucks.
Level 3 Polished Crap This is software that really does suck, but people have worked really hard to make it seem like it doesn't.
Level 4 Crap The software is so bad that it really does stink.
Level 5 Total Crap How does code like this get written?

Problem Solving Progress

I had a manager under me that used the following scale to describe how close we were to solving a problem. His approach also came up in a meeting this morning.

Nearness of a Solution
Level 1 Description
Level 1 We have no idea where the problem is; it could be anywhere.
Level 2 We have the bug isolated to a hemisphere (Eastern or Western).
Level 3 We know the bug is somewhere in this area.
Level 4 We have the bug cornered.
Level 5 We have the bug in our cross-hairs.
Level 6 The bug is begging for mercy.

Yes, this was a typical morning.

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