I know, I know, who wants to read another “Idiot Boss” rant? But my Idiot Boss is in a position to waste your tax money and endanger both military personnel and American civilians who expect to get decent weapons for the money they lay out.
I work for a major defense contractor that shall remain nameless. We develop and manufacture major weapons systems under contract to the U.S. government, systems that are supposed to harm our enemies and protect our population from foreign attack. My Idiot Boss is the head of the structural analysis group in our division.
My Idiot Boss’s main fault is that he is almost totally incompetent outside his own narrow specialty (and not exactly an expert within it), but he thinks he is a polymath, a modern-day Leonardo if you will. He thinks that sin x and cos x add up to one. He doesn’t know the difference between plane stress and plane strain. He doesn’t understand the newfangled idea that you have to actually check your calculations against test results when possible. He always forgets that although a part may stand up to a 100-pound load once, that same part may not stand up to a 90-pound load applied 500 times rapidly. This man makes far-reaching decisions about how to analyze and test equipment that you may someday rely upon to keep (insert your favorite tinpot dictator) from blowing your house to bits.
Today at 11:30 he asked me to calculate some loads on four boxes that are glued to a rocket motor. I told him that although I could generate numbers within a few days, I did not think the numbers would be very accurate without a lot of further study. He replied that not only was he unconcerned about the accuracy of the numbers, but also that he wanted an answer by 5:00. Mentally noting that
(a) it takes about 7 hours to calculate loads on each box once.
and
(b) it takes several iterations of the method to adjust certain parameters so that the results match up with our test data (where we have it available)
I said that I could finish one iteration on half a box by 5:00. He said fine, do that, and give me the loads so I can tell the materials group how strong a glue we need for these boxes. I said that the loads would be inaccurate after only one iteration, but he says he doesn’t care. In his words, “Our job is to provide answers. We can’t take the position that a question is impossible to answer by the required deadline.” - implying that even if the answer is total bullshit, it’s better than no answer at all.
I would like to argue to him, and to his boss, that this kind of thinking cannot continue if we are to build things that actually work. In fact, in this particular instance, the reason the deadline for calculating the loads is so short is that he botched the initial design, resulting in a product that literally fell apart during a crucial vibration test. In his mind, the way to rescue ourselves is to do yet more wrong analysis and bad designing, but to meet the deadline at all costs.
He is mentally a child. He cannot focus his attention on one topic long enough to hold a technical discussion. He thinks that everything comes down to “politics”, that technical correctness really doesn’t matter. He is notorious in our company for shooting off his big mouth and saying idiotic things; for this reason, he is no longer allowed to make important presentations to our customers. He writes everything in BLOCK LETTERS. But hey, I hear he’s an excellent golfer.
Ladies and gentlemen, your tax dollars at work.