Dilbert Strikes again

[yakers]

Generally I liked where I worked and would have stayed on if health were better. But........on the bad days this was why I wanted to retire:

Dilbert comic strip for 08/08/2013 from the official Dilbert comic strips archive.

 

[BigNick]

But........on the bad days this was why I wanted to retire:

This was mine:

 

[Animorph]

We were always asking the "marketing" guys what they need us to design. They never gave us a clue. We just designed stuff that seemed like it would work from what we personally knew of our market. Probably why they got out of that business and let me retire.

 

[ls99]

Isn't marketing's job to create couriosity and interst about the stuff the engineers designed and the worker bees created?

Or are they supposed to figure out what folks might want and create a buzz for it, even though it does not yet exists?

I was a techie most of life life, don't know much about the advertising/trolling business.
Ducking under the chair nnow.

By the way the apathy towards figmental CEO goals is a large measure why I exited the gainfully employ'd crowd.

 

[aja8888]

Marketing is trying to find out what customers will buy. Sales is selling it to them. Engineers build it. Senior management takes credit for it.

 

[Nemo2]

I recall, from my telco sales days:

Sales Manager: "The engineers have built 'this' - sell it.

Sales Reps: "The customers don't want 'this', they want 'that'.

Sales Manager: "The engineers have built 'this' - sell it.

 

[M Paquette]

"A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them." -- Steve Jobs

 

[veremchuka]

My name isn't Bob (Bob is the dinosaur's name) but I was in charge of Y2K remediation for the legacy system I supported)...

 

[ERD50]

My name isn't Bob (Bob is the dinosaur's name) but I was in charge of Y2K remediation for the legacy system I supported)...

Great! Thanks for posting that. True story:

My wife mentioned to me, circa 1999, that one of her friends who had been a stay-at-home-mom wanted to get back in the work force. But she was concerned because her skills were so outdated - DW said she used to do computer programming on old room-sized machines with something that was a pretty shade of blue, maybe "Cobalt"?

heh-heh, I said she will probably have no trouble finding a job to do Y2K work. DW actually (where was the tape recorder!) told me a week later I was 100% correct!

I recall, from my telco sales days:

Sales Manager: "The engineers have built 'this' - sell it.

Sales Reps: "The customers don't want 'this', they want 'that'.

Sales Manager: "The engineers have built 'this' - sell it.

At my Mega-Corp, marketing was kind of on both sides, getting input from customers to take to engineering, and marketing the product to the customer.

The pendulum swung between being engineering/tech focused ("this is cool tech, build it and they will come"), to being marketing focused ("they want it no thicker than 0.2435" - so build it that size or smaller, I don't know/care that standard components mean a limit of 0.2436" and that last 0.0002 inches will increase the cost by 40% and cut the reliability in half - that's your problem").

"A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them." -- Steve Jobs

Very true, and I've heard that was the case with Iacocca and the Chrysler 'Mini-Van'. Though I do think Apple took it too far, and could have used/listened to some customer feedback (I could go on for hours about the 'Finder').

-ERD50

 

[youbet]

Marketing is trying to find out what customers will buy. Sales is selling it to them. Engineers build it. Senior management takes credit for it.

I always thought engineers focused on designing things that couldn't be built and made of unobtainium. Manufacturing guys (including manufacturing engineers) submitted ECN's until the product would eventually run down the assembly lines and the materials could be purchased.

Maybe it just seemed that way when we were introducing new products into manufacturing.

 

[aja8888]

I always thought engineers focused on designing things that couldn't be built and made of unobtainium. Manufacturing guys (including manufacturing engineers) submitted ECN's until the product would eventually run down the assembly lines and the materials could be purchased.

Maybe it just seemed that way when we were introducing new products into manufacturing.

I worked in a Manufacturing plant as an engineer. It's a joint effort, for sure!

But the real bugaboo is when the Marketing guys pre-sell a product that can't be built, no matter what! And then promise delivery in jig time.

 

[Khufu]

The surprising thing to me about Scott Adams is that, although it must now be decades since he was a cuberat at PacBell, he hasn't lost touch in the least with the atrocities of the work world. I wonder how he does that.

 

[Alan]

The surprising thing to me about Scott Adams is that, although it must now be decades since he was a cuberat at PacBell, he hasn't lost touch in the least with the atrocities of the work world. I wonder how he does that.

He says he has the best job in the world because he sits at home, reads letters and e-mails from people telling him about their work experiences and chooses some to put into cartoons.

 

[Free To Canoe]

I recall, from my telco sales days:

Sales Manager: "The engineers have built 'this' - sell it.

Sales Reps: "The customers don't want 'this', they want 'that'.

Sales Manager: "The engineers have built 'this' - sell it.

This is a little closer to my w*rk experiences:

Dilbert comic strip for 05/07/1998 from the official Dilbert comic strips archive.

 

[Nemo2]

This is a little closer to my w*rk experiences:

Dilbert comic strip for 05/07/1998 from the official Dilbert comic strips archive.

Ah...but I was in sales.........Marketing & Engineering conspired against us to introduce products that they thought were 'neat'...whereas the customers were looking for practicality.

 

[cj]

LOVE Dilbert! When I was preparing to leave w*rk, I had a really, really good relationship with my manager (and the whole chain of command) and my coworkers. I had a lot of knowledge from many years and documented the heck out of it, but we were all concerned about making sure that my main project would continue to go smoothly. They did end up hiring a guy who turned out to be amazing. But in the meantime, this Dilbert appeared in the paper, and we all had a good laugh about it.