Doing the Hard Part

A conversation I just observed:

Project Manager: Have you finished building that new car yet?

Engineer: Yeah.  It's basically done.

Project Manager:  Well, there's no emergency brake.  And the fuel gauge doesn't work.  And you can't replace the air filter - it's super-glued in.  And the duct tape that's sealing the exhaust system isn't going to last long.  And there's nothing here to keep the driver from shifting to reverse while they're going forward at 90mph.

Engineer: Yeah.  But it starts and got me around the test track once.

Making things work is the easy part of my job.  Making them work right and fail gracefully is the hard part.

Don't tell me that the job is basically done when the hard part is still undone.

Comments

[Bill]

With this entry, you have blessed our return to the blog, Jared. I was looking through the archives and found that in the first week of Drink Upstream blogging there was an eerily similar story. Not similar in details, but in theme.