Business Development Math



  • Today during our bi-weekly 'Department Meeting' (read: All software folk in one spot so we can all be yelled at at once), one of the high-up bigwigs dropped by to tells us about the 'exciting new direction' the company will be going on. Which is really the same as the old direction, only with less people doing more work, but I digress.


    Part of the 'new direction' somehow required us to watch a pair of videos put together by the Business Development people. Basically these boiled down to sales pitches to our customers (Government) to try and get them to buy our stuff as an alternative to more expensive options. It was great, they had diagrams and clips of the first Matrix Movie, as well as pie charts. One of the pie charts showed the results of a group of people training using our software/hardware and their pass/fail ratio for a test given afterwards in comparison to the 'legacy' method of training that task.


    According to the pie charts, the 'legacy' method passed 52% and failed 48%. That doesn't seem too far off, so we'll say it's correct.


    However, the 'new' method our company is pushing passed 94% and only failed 14%, the first time!


    We let the video play a little longer, everyone sitting there with the same dumbfounded look on their faces (except for Mr bigwig, who hasn't noticed). Finally someone speaks up, the video gets rewound, and the bigwig turns this interesting shade of, 'Oh shit'. Apparently the video has already been emailed out to the customers.


    It's astounding that it was missed, the ONLY THING on the screen is these two HUGE numbers...


    I'm also a little concerned that they kept prattling on and on about these exciting new business things that we are going to be doing that they read about in a magazine a few weeks back. Uhm... seriously, the company seems to restructure every year or two, I'm starting to think our management is really a bunch of cats and someone standing nearby has a freaking laser pointer.



  • @CodeNinja said:

    ... and the bigwig turns this interesting shade of, 'Oh shit'.

    I must put this in my book* of metaphors.

    * and by book I mean memory**

    ** and by memory I mean ... oh, fuck off



  • What? Only 108% tested? Not 111% or 1000% like the nice HR people want you to give?



  • Explain to them that they can send 94% of your paycheck to your personal bank account and 14%to your wife's bank account.



  • @CodeNinja said:

    Uhm... seriously, the company seems to restructure every year or two, I'm starting to think our management is really a bunch of cats and someone standing nearby has a freaking laser pointer.
     

    I think that is what's called "best practice". Seriously, all companies I've worked in that weren't in startup phase seem to match this description. Quite a few managers got that far by having the biggest mouth and that doesn't really translate into good management, just into random acts and panicking.



  • @CodeNinja said:

    Uhm... seriously, the company seems to restructure every year or two, I'm starting to think our management is really a bunch of cats and someone standing nearby has a freaking laser pointer.
    This is going into my signature



  • @TGV said:

    @CodeNinja said:

    Uhm... seriously, the company seems to restructure every year or two, I'm starting to think our management is really a bunch of cats and someone standing nearby has a freaking laser pointer.
     

    I think that is what's called "best practice". Seriously, all companies I've worked in that weren't in startup phase seem to match this description. Quite a few managers got that far by having the biggest mouth and that doesn't really translate into good management, just into random acts and panicking.


    This adequately describes it, and I've heard it pitched before that a company that doesn't completely restructure every 6 months is going out of business. Myself, I'd prefer if they'd refrain from telling us that we are going to -stop- building what the customer is asking for and start building what we think they want. That doesn't seem like a best practice to me.



    @TheRider said:
    @CodeNinja said:
    Uhm... seriously, the company seems to restructure every year or two, I'm starting to think our management is really a bunch of cats and someone standing nearby has a freaking laser pointer.
    This is going into my signature



    Sweet! Got sigged!



  • Well 94% and 14% can add up to 100% if they are determining the relative speed of two objects approaching each other with their velocities measured in % of speed of light.



  • @CodeNinja said:

    clips of the first Matrix Movie,

    You working for the government of China?



  • @Anketam said:

    Well 94% and 14% can add up to 100% if they are determining the relative speed of two objects approaching each other with their velocities measured in % of speed of light.


    No....
    s = (v+u)/(1+(vu/c^2))
    or in this case
    s = (.94c + .14c)/(1.1222)
    which is 0.95348c. Which is not 100% of c. If you want two velocities which total to 100% of C you could solve for s = 1c and marvel at the results...



  • @Anketam said:

    Well 94% and 14% can add up to 100% if they are determining the relative speed of two objects approaching each other with their velocities measured in % of speed of light.

    Last night I put eight ounces of uncooked rice and eight ounces of water in a twelve-ounce cup and it didn't even come close to overflowing.  Addition is TRWTF.

     


Log in to reply