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My boss is retarded

The company I work for is run by a bunch of metally deficient anthropoids. My boss, an engineer no less, thinks product design begins and ends with a doodle on a cocktail napkin. I have been a product designer in this particular industry for ten years. When this big, prominent company lured me away from a job I really liked, I thought ,"finally, the Major Leagues have called me up."
This company is a fucking joke.
If I was allowed to design products from the ground up, they would be efficiently prototyped, have minimal corrections after prototyping, have predictable and reliable performance characteristics and be as cost effective to make as possible. Instead, I have to start with an exsisting product that was badly designed from the start (you can tell by the number of band-aid fixes and the poor performance) and add pieces from another product that also is a piece of shit to make a "new and improved product". I'm not allowed the time to do the analysis required to head off any problems before the prototype is made. The prototype never gets scrapped. No matter how badly it performs they are willing to pour unlimited money and resources into it to force it to be marginally acceptable. Often this has to be done with every single one of these products through the entire production run. How many of you out there have ever heard the Johnny Cash song "one piece at a time"? It's like taking pieces out of two worn-out jigsaw puzzels and trying to make the picture of your choice from them. It's a waste, and a embarassment, and I'm disgusted. I had to meet a customer on delivery day once, and he was shocked at what a piece of shit it was.
Products are delivered to customers with known problems that only get fixed when the customer complains.
Even if things changed today, (and they won't) a customer and/or his family will (thats WILL) eventually die from one of the crappy products that we have on the market. Any time I ask to do the job right, they tell me that "we don't want to go that direction right now".
The saddest part of the whole thing is that the company I work for bought an old (40 years), respected corporate name in the industry and they're ruining it.

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My boss is a HUMA and the CEO is a SUMA
Submitted by thunderhead19 on Sun, 06/24/2007 - 03:57.

HUMA is an acronym I came up with that stands for "Head Up My Ass", SUMA is an acronym, you guessed it, for "Stick Up My Ass"
Use them wisely my children

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Hate to sound politically inc
Submitted by Xstate on Mon, 06/25/2007 - 21:11.

Hate to sound politically incorrect, but most of your engineer types are stupid. I know there's exceptions to the rule but the vast majority of engineers I've met are shitheaded junkies who aren't really as smart as we may think. The whole field is flooded with engineering types (there's over 250000 out of work as we speak, no shitting) and I don't think they're much smarter than the hillbillies at Walmart.

Xstate
Islamic Republic of South Dakotastan

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Ayyyy! I'm not fat I'm big-boned!
Submitted by thunderhead19 on Tue, 06/26/2007 - 05:38.

Ayyy! I happen to be an engineering type, and my brother is too. We would both agree that you don't have to be good at anything but cheating on exams to become an engineer. My brother is a pencil pusher that does planning and resource allocation and writes reports. He is too anal to do anything sloppy, wrong or not take a job seriously. He's no whiner either. Me, I'm a product designer. I design products in my industry that look sleek and sexy, and I'm pissy about safety, structural analysis and efficient manufacturing processes. I don't complain either (except here). We do what we do as ell as it can be done, and both of have to prove to other people every day that the way we do things is correct and as cost effective as possible. My boss won't spare a minute today to save an hour later, he won't spend a dollar today to make a hundred tomorrow, and he sticks his head in the sand any time people's lives are put at risk. There's a wonderful phrase he used once, "I'd rather not know about that". One of these days I'm going to get him alone in the spare office and beat him with a piece of steel pipe. Once upon a time people like him were hanged or flogged in public to serve as a warning to others.

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