Re:Your statement is correct but misses the point
by Tade0 on Monday April 13, 2020 @02:04PM
(#22858248)
I had a real-life example of this joke years ago when I was hiking in the Carpathian Mountains with, among others, a mathematician:
"There's no landmark in sight. Where are we even?"
"In Ukraine"
"Yes, I know that - what kind of reply is this?"
"It's the most precise answer I could come up with."
Re:Your statement is correct but misses the point
by xg15 on Monday April 13, 2020 @11:59AM
(#22856959)
Gotta admit, I only knew the joke in a variant where it stops after "you must be an engineer" to make fun of the exact kind of attitude the OP bemoans.
Looks as if, instead of taking the advice to heart, the suspects tried to make the joke into a "no u" instead.
I think there could have been better uses of their time.
Re:Your statement is correct but misses the point
by el_don_almighty on Monday April 13, 2020 @12:48PM
(#22857455)
I prefer the "Microsoft" version...
"Now I know where we are, we are right over the Microsoft campus."
"How did you know?"
"Everything they said was completely true and totally useless"
Re:Your statement is correct but misses the point
by hinkley on Monday April 13, 2020 @02:22PM
(#22858436)
Aka "You are in a helicopter."
Re:Your statement is correct but misses the point
by DerekL on Monday April 13, 2020 @06:17PM
(#22860809)
By the way, those coordinates are in the Atlantic Ocean, with no land in sight.
Re:Your statement is correct but misses the point
by _opc6 on Monday April 13, 2020 @09:18AM
(#22855557)
This comment will play extremely well on this website, which engineers frequent. And it's admittedly a great joke. But only tangentially relevant to the author's point.
The author's point is closer to the old adage of not shooting yourself in the foot. That is, however true your statement is, if it denies further thought it becomes a useless point.
Re:Your statement is correct but misses the point
by Scarblac on Monday April 13, 2020 @10:04AM
(#22855898)
So it's 100% a good joke, but misses the entire point.
Re:Your statement is correct but misses the point
by jpm_sd on Monday April 13, 2020 @11:23AM
(#22856613)
The joke is making fun of the "engineer" as well as the "manager". The engineer's pedantic, irrelevant response that does not invite further discussion is exactly why the parent article reminded me of this joke!
Re:Your statement is correct but misses the point
by koheripbal on Monday April 13, 2020 @10:03AM
(#22855889)
This comment makes me think of Theranos [1]. The founder was a master of manipulation and business-speak, and created a multi-billion dollar (valued) start-up based on an impossible and non-existant product, and so strongly blamed the engineers/scientists beneath her for not delivering on her unrealistic promises, that one of them committed suicide.
[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8488126/
Fake-it-'till-you-make-it form of management (FiTYMi?) is becoming more and more common.
Re:Your statement is correct but misses the point
by lonelappde on Monday April 13, 2020 @10:27AM
(#22856111)
How many theranos employees died by suicide? There were up to 800 at peak, so one suicide might be within the normal base rate.
Re:Your statement is correct but misses the point
by lisper on Monday April 13, 2020 @11:10AM
(#22856489)
You might want to do a little basic homework before you post a comment like that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_the_United_States
from which we learn that:
"The annual age-adjusted suicide rate is 13.42 per 100,000 individuals."
Doing the math to figure out how plausible it is that "one suicide in 800 might be within the normal base rate" is left as an exercise.
Re:Your statement is correct but misses the point
by vntok on Monday April 13, 2020 @11:59AM
(#22856956)
You quote the annual age-adjusted rate for regular people. What's the rate among startup employees? Surely in startups where the future is particularly highly uncertain, employees feel a lot more pressured than those in boring companies. Ceteris paribus, why would the suicide rate be the same as that of the regular folks?
I think you would need to do a subtler analysis before commenting in the condescending way you did.
Re:Your statement is correct but misses the point
by lisper on Monday April 13, 2020 @04:18PM
(#22859569)
You misunderstand. I'm not taking a position on whether or not the OP's hypothesis was reasonable or not. All I'm saying is that before you take a position you ought to at least do some basic homework.
Re:Your statement is correct but misses the point
by rozab on Monday April 13, 2020 @11:59AM
(#22856960)
Considering Theranos operated for over 10 years and most of their employees were white men of a certain age, it seems entirely possible to me.
Re:Your statement is correct but misses the point
by lisper on Monday April 13, 2020 @04:16PM
(#22859555)
A fair point. But did they have 800 employees for all of those 10 years? (I don't actually know the answer to that. I'm not taking a position on whether or not the OP's hypothesis is reasonable or not. I don't know. The only thing I'm saying is that before you take a position on a question like this you ought to at least do some basic homework.)
Re:Your statement is correct but misses the point
by anchpop on Monday April 13, 2020 @11:56AM
(#22856922)
For anyone curious, the base rate of at least one person committing suicide based on these numbers is `1-((1-(13.42/100,000))^800) = 10%`. I suspect the suicide rate for engineers (who tend to be white, middle-upper class men) is somewhat different from the national average so take these numbers with a grain of salt
Re:Your statement is correct but misses the point
by gonational on Monday April 13, 2020 @12:46PM
(#22857433)
You’re right; upper middle class white males are the most vilified and attacked and hated class of people in the world for whatever reason; I wonder if this makes that demographic more prone to suicide.
Re:Your statement is correct but misses the point
by Izkata on Monday April 13, 2020 @01:29PM
(#22857897)
Men are nearly 4x more likely to commit suicide than women, and "white" is 1.5-2x higher than other races [0], so while I'm not seeing combined stats it's pretty certain that that combination is higher than the general population.
Re:Your statement is correct but misses the point
by gonational on Monday April 13, 2020 @07:18PM
(#22861249)
I know; I wasn’t disagreeing. I was guessing the reason.
Re:Your statement is correct but misses the point
by Udik on Monday April 13, 2020 @12:39PM
(#22857361)
You might want to read again the numbers you just posted and change your tone to a less self assured one, because you're very obviously wrong. Theranos operated for more than ten years with hundreds of employees, so the numbers you posted confirm the gp's point.
Re:Your statement is correct but misses the point
by mistermann on Monday April 13, 2020 @12:59PM
(#22857569)
Maybe it's just the way I look at the world, but I find it ~beautiful in a way when instances of the very phenomenon discussed in an article can be found within discussions on the article.
Re:Your statement is correct but misses the point
by lisper on Monday April 13, 2020 @04:13PM
(#22859530)
> you're very obviously wrong
About what? (And you might want to go back and re-read what I wrote before you answer that.)
Re:Your statement is correct but misses the point
by headcanon on Monday April 13, 2020 @11:08AM
(#22856479)
Case in point for OP. Possibly technically correct, misses point entirely.
Re:Your statement is correct but misses the point
by koheripbal on Monday April 13, 2020 @03:08PM
(#22858977)
The one suicide was the former chief engineer that was called in to be a witness in litigation directly related to the company's failure to produce the product and lies about it.
...so it's not some random data point.
----------
A man in a hot air balloon realized he was lost.
He reduced altitude and spotted a woman below. He descended a bit more and shouted, “Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don’t know where I am.”
The woman below replied, “You are in a hot air balloon hovering approximately 30 feet above the ground. You are between 40 and 41 degrees north latitude and between 59 and 60 degrees west longitude.”
“You must be an engineer,” said the balloonist.
“I am,” replied the woman, “How did you know?” “Well,” answered the balloonist, “everything you told me is technically correct, but I have no idea what to make of your information, and the fact is I am still lost. Frankly, you’ve not been much help so far.”
The woman below responded, “You must be in Management.”
“I am,” replied the balloonist, “but how did you know?”
“Well,” said the woman, “you don’t know where you are or where you are going. You have risen to where you are due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise which you have no idea how to keep, and you expect people beneath you to solve your problems. The fact is you are in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but now, somehow, it’s my fault!”