Here is a real world example of what I speak of...
Late 90's and the Y2K scare...working in a corporation with $17 Billion per
year income...one of the largest in the world at that time
All during the outsourcing of design to China & India (main ones, there were
others)....One executive GM in the software division decided to take control of this
Y2K mania he read about in the newspaper...even though his staff had been
warning him of his budget cuts to that department
He decided to kill two birds with one stone...outsource the Calendar and
layoff the whole group (aporox 40 people, as he could NOT understand why
there were so many working on 'just the calendar'). Outsourced it to India
A host of problems ensued (source code issues...on the same server as one
of our competitors, etc, etc) and he asked for my IP lawyer to help out. She
hated that guy, but told her it was for the good of the company and gave
her a big bonus carrot if she completed it well
That moron GM only allotted enough budget for a 10 year deal...
Got laid off from that company and consulting back to them making more money
Received a call from that moron's head Program Manager who dictated the terms
and accepted their product (signed off on it) asking for my help...mainly
saying I screwed up as it was my lawyer...
Turns out they did EXACTLY what that contract said...10 years from the date
of signing and it would NOT work on the new OS revision coming down the pipe
Criminal that, but that Program Manager received a large bonus for the initial
work and knew he would take the credit for it if I fixed it...
Passed to then get several calls from their 'newly' hired software engineers
who found that, that old team was once in my program(s)
Point being...is that bean counter (bottom line) management will NOT understand
what they are managing (Dilbert is right on) and some of these underlying and
foundation stuff seemingly not important...that it might to most
likely be tied to EVERYTHING to do with the OS...
Will mention it, but know most won't understand...just gotta mention it..."Real
Time" is not well understood in the controls industry and even less in the
automotive industry...as of the last few years when checked...ditto
master/slave...
