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Sway said:
Oh, and pretty much every properly successful project I've been involved in. Won a reasonably prestigious national award for my employer, using a team lead by me (no uni - dropped out after a year of Photography) and fifteen others who ranged from a couple of old Poles who were simply incredible at physical problem solving, a physio turned veg chopper, and a few middle aged farm hands...
Could you share a link? I'm curious to know how big a project it was, in terms of budget, staff, timescales, and client.Countdown said:
Sway said:
Apollo.
Plenty of weirdos and misfits, as well as plenty who didn't go to uni as it was before uni was deemed necessary for absolutely everything.
Plenty of weirdos and misfits, as well as plenty who didn't go to uni as it was before uni was deemed necessary for absolutely everything.
Sway said:
Pretty sure the Manhattan Project was similar.
Both of those were projects that had 10's of thousands of people working on them. A quick google (and from my own knowledge of history) most of them were well-known scientists and academics. Why do you say that the majority were weirdos and misfits?I'd also suggest that the majority of Government work is administrative in nature not technical or scientific.
The original question was What kind of projects have been successfully implemented which have been staffed by "wierdos, misfits, people who never went to University"?
Countdown said:
Sway said:
Apollo.
Plenty of weirdos and misfits, as well as plenty who didn't go to uni as it was before uni was deemed necessary for absolutely everything.
Plenty of weirdos and misfits, as well as plenty who didn't go to uni as it was before uni was deemed necessary for absolutely everything.
Sway said:
Pretty sure the Manhattan Project was similar.
Both of those were projects that had 10's of thousands of people working on them. A quick google (and from my own knowledge of history) most of them were well-known scientists and academics. Why do you say that the majority were weirdos and misfits?I'd also suggest that the majority of Government work is administrative in nature not technical or scientific.
The vast majority were time served tool makers, machinists, assembly workers, etc.
Also, the governance and decision making structure was massively different to anything that had come before - compared to the rest of the US public sector, they absolutely operated as misfits.
carl_w said:
Sway said:
Turing was absolutely shunned by society - yet the government were more than happy to utilise him for the war effort, before discarding like a w
k rag.
Weirdo and misfit yes, but he very much did go to university.k rag. The advert isn't asking for people that are all four of the criteria put (the fourth was something along the lines of people who'd dragged themselves out of hell).
He was a weirdo and misfit in early 20C British society. Massively so. Hence the public government apology fairly recently for how he was treated.
Countdown said:
Sway said:
Oh, and pretty much every properly successful project I've been involved in. Won a reasonably prestigious national award for my employer, using a team lead by me (no uni - dropped out after a year of Photography) and fifteen others who ranged from a couple of old Poles who were simply incredible at physical problem solving, a physio turned veg chopper, and a few middle aged farm hands...
Could you share a link? I'm curious to know how big a project it was, in terms of budget, staff, timescales, and client.In terms of budget, approx. £10-12M. Fifteen project staff, subcontracted construction staff of about 40. Somewhere in those ballpark.
Three years to design/implement/realise. Client was the agricultural producer I worked for at the time.
We taught the original designers of the system we were adapting for our use of an opportunity they'd missed, which on it's own paid for the entire project in a single year.
The guvnor got his CBE recently for his endeavours in sustainable agricultural production/processing/distribution.
El stovey said:
Tuna said:
Countdown said:
Could you share a link? I'm curious to know how big a project it was, in terms of budget, staff, timescales, and client.
Really?Especially when a long time ago a PHer came very close to jeapardising a criminal case that fortunately was overcome and lead to the guy that broke every bone in my little bro's skull and left him in a coma for three months getting convicted.
All out of some completely random spite because said
thought I'd slighted him... Countdown said:
Tuna said:
PSB1 said:
I don't claim that this is unique especially, but it really chimed in with my experience that organisations and programmes expend most of their time and effort navel gazing.
A nice counter example is an organisation I recently worked for, run almost exclusively by Oxbridge educated individuals, and advised by leading academics and experts. They have just had to write off a hundred million pound 'transformation' project - all carefully planned for and designed. The monoculture of thought and reliance on traditional organisational structures led to a protracted and very expensive complete failure.You can recognise the same patterns in government every day.
Projects failure isn't restricted to just the Public Sector. It's possibly more noticed in the Public Sector because the size of the projects carried out tends to be so big). I'm not saying there isn't a place for wierdos and misfits somewhere in the CS, (our IT team is full of them) but it's not likely to improve the CS in any significant way.
amusingduck said:
Cheeky! You've moved the goalposts and strawman'd his argument in one fell swoop
The original question was What kind of projects have been successfully implemented which have been staffed by "wierdos, misfits, people who never went to University"?
I'm not sure it is "moving the goalposts"The original question was What kind of projects have been successfully implemented which have been staffed by "wierdos, misfits, people who never went to University"?
Ive worked on loads of projects, some of which contained wierdos or misfits. They weren't anywhere near being in charge of the project (they wouldn't have the people skills for s start). Yes, they did have some unique skills (always in some IT system, usually related to programming). That's a world away from what Sway appears to be suggesting.
To clarify - I have no doubt that there were some wierdos/misfits on the Apollo project (or indeed any other project you care to mention). But having lots of people who are wierd or misfits isn't a pre-requsite or necessary to implementing succesful projects. It's quite possible to implement them without any wierdos at all.
Sway said:
Most of the tens of thousands were well known scientists and academics?
The vast majority were time served tool makers, machinists, assembly workers, etc.
Also, the governance and decision making structure was massively different to anything that had come before - compared to the rest of the US public sector, they absolutely operated as misfits.
So which ones were the weirdos and the misfits? The vast majority were time served tool makers, machinists, assembly workers, etc.
Also, the governance and decision making structure was massively different to anything that had come before - compared to the rest of the US public sector, they absolutely operated as misfits.
Countdown said:
amusingduck said:
Cheeky! You've moved the goalposts and strawman'd his argument in one fell swoop
The original question was What kind of projects have been successfully implemented which have been staffed by "wierdos, misfits, people who never went to University"?
I'm not sure it is "moving the goalposts"The original question was What kind of projects have been successfully implemented which have been staffed by "wierdos, misfits, people who never went to University"?
Ive worked on loads of projects, some of which contained wierdos or misfits. They weren't anywhere near being in charge of the project (they wouldn't have the people skills for s start). Yes, they did have some unique skills (always in some IT system, usually related to programming). That's a world away from what Sway appears to be suggesting.
To clarify - I have no doubt that there were some wierdos/misfits on the Apollo project (or indeed any other project you care to mention). But having lots of people who are wierd or misfits isn't a pre-requsite or necessary to implementing succesful projects. It's quite possible to implement them without any wierdos at all.
Completely turned Apollo (and indeed spaceflight and engineering risk) on it's head - and did things completely differently to what had come before.
Now, would be seen as entirely conventional.
Then? The opposite.
Sway said:
George Low.
Completely turned Apollo (and indeed spaceflight and engineering risk) on it's head - and did things completely differently to what had come before.
Now, would be seen as entirely conventional.
Then? The opposite.
This guy?Completely turned Apollo (and indeed spaceflight and engineering risk) on it's head - and did things completely differently to what had come before.
Now, would be seen as entirely conventional.
Then? The opposite.
https://www.airspacemag.com/space/apollo-8-george-...
What was it about him that made him either a wierdo or a misfit?
Countdown said:
Sway said:
George Low.
Completely turned Apollo (and indeed spaceflight and engineering risk) on it's head - and did things completely differently to what had come before.
Now, would be seen as entirely conventional.
Then? The opposite.
This guy?Completely turned Apollo (and indeed spaceflight and engineering risk) on it's head - and did things completely differently to what had come before.
Now, would be seen as entirely conventional.
Then? The opposite.
https://www.airspacemag.com/space/apollo-8-george-...
What was it about him that made him either a wierdo or a misfit?
Plenty of examples of him doing things very differently to the 'plan' or historic processes/approaches.
He was hugely bold, thought completely out of the box - and managed to persuade everyone around him up to the President.
Hence why he's credited as the sole reason the US won the moonrace.
Sway said:
Read that link!
I've read the link thanks, although I'm not sure you have.Being exceptionally good at your job, or coming up with new ideas and innovations doesn't mean that you're either a wierdo or a misfit. There is aboslutely zero, zilch, nada, nothing in his biography to suggest a career path any different to the other scientists / engineers that were involved in the Apollo project.
Countdown said:
Sway said:
Read that link!
I've read the link thanks, although I'm not sure you have.Being exceptionally good at your job, or coming up with new ideas and innovations doesn't mean that you're either a wierdo or a misfit. There is aboslutely zero, zilch, nada, nothing in his biography to suggest a career path any different to the other scientists / engineers that were involved in the Apollo project.
Anyone with a photographic memory is a weirdo. Anyone willing to buck decades of accepted wisdom on how to do things, is a weirdo. Etc.
But hey, I'll concede the point. Really cannot be arsed about whether you think it's a good idea or not. Nor whether you believe there have ever been examples of it working.
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