7.08.2010

Engineering for Dummies

Inspired by this Engineering to English Dictionary I wanted to add my own translation for some commonly used sayings:
  1. "Risk mitigation built into the software" = Rather than fix the problem in the hardware we got the software guys to come up with something when it fails.
  2. "Non-mission critical hardware" = There's no way this will be the component that fails because so much else will fail first, trust us.
  3. "I'm polishing the final report on that" = I haven't even started the report, must stall for time.
  4. "We're focusing on design improvements right now" = The last several designs all failed miserably.
  5. "The vendor hasn't gotten back to me on that" = I forgot to call the vendor.
  6. "I'm still waiting for parts to be delivered" = Oops I forgot to order the parts.
  7. "Another project has priority on the equipment this week" = Some kissass got his project on the schedule ahead of ours.
  8. "I didn't get that email, can you send it again?" = I'm too incompetent/lazy to search my inbox.
  9. "The customer would like to see some results on this" = We'd better actually do some work this week.
  10. "It's powered by an extremely sophisticated algorithm" = Only one guy knows how it works and he's not here right now.
  11. "The solution is in development" = We haven't figured it out yet, hopefully you'll forget about it.
  12. "We suggest a more sophisticated design" = We'd like to charge you more money for this.
  13. "We'd like to arrange a visit to your facility" = We're looking for a boondoggle, and you're located in a nice place.
  14. "We're still testing the feasability of that design" = We don't even understand the design you want.
  15. "We have our best people working on that" = I've already pawned off responsibility to someone else.

3 comments:

  1. FatBigot14:49

    This is spot on. Can I submit it (with attribution) to our in-house magazine?

    ReplyDelete
  2. So true! And you get bonus points for using "boondoggle" in a sentence.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Sure just include a URL, thanks!

    ReplyDelete