GRIPES

[old man emu]

3 hours ago, facthunter said:

Surely it's risk management

A rose, by any other name ...

Call it what you will, but what I was going on about was the idea of making a living by restating old knowledge using different words and claiming to have come up with a world-changing revelation.

 

[onetrack]

OME - Just get ChatGPT to write your answers for you. If you input the questions from the grant application into ChatGPT, and it answers, "WTF does this question mean?" - then you'll really know you're royally screwed.

[old man emu]

14 minutes ago, onetrack said:

OME - Just get ChatGPT to write your answers for you. If you input the questions from the grant application into ChatGPT, and it answers, "WTF does this question mean?" - then you'll really know you're royally screwed.

I just write some gobbledigook using obscure or archaic words and meanings. with a dash of goalless peregrination. I am a disciple of Humpty-Dumpty.

 

I doubt if anyone really studies these application forms anyway. It's all about who you know = petty politics

 

[Jerry_Atrick]

It's what I refer to as the Harard School of Management Syndrome. Every year university schools of management (I use Harvard as it is the most recognised) chuirn out a number of Phd's. The number seems to solightly increase each year, which the universities love as it means more fee paying students. The problem is, in management, a lot has been established, particulary in the 70s and 80s around the psychological and motivational aspects, which are the hardest aspects to master.  Even with other parts of management, such as organisational, developmental, risk management, leage & compliance, etc, there is a lot of understanding out there. It's sort of like ICE engines.. developments are very incremental - there are the odd revolutions (pardon the pun) in design.. but the technoligical understanding is matured. While pshycology still has a way to go, its application to management seems mature-ish.

 

To get one's PhD, one has to perform developmental research and generally theorise, if not achieve some material development in their discipline. If there are only generally incremental theoretical developments to be made amongst the odd material development, then you have to spruce it up, or make up something to get your PhD. Your thesis is published, and someone turns it into a book, the universities add it to their syllabus for what these days are little more than vocational degrees, there are professional journal publications that pedal it, and of course, consultancies bake it into their offering and marketing and before too long it is adopted because it is the right thing to do, but often achieves nought, and sometimes becomes regressive.

 

Two examples - one I agree with, but sadly lacks in implementation, and one which is simply repackaging what happened beforehand.

 

Diversity and Inclusion. It is a good thing in theory, but awfully difficult to manage... if your definition of it is the same as mine. Some organisations and some countries even, have baked in positive discrimination to try and promote it. I have to manage D&I as part of managing my team and is a formal assesment criteria of my annual review. When I was told this, I explained that we cannot be a D&I company if we need to manage it - we are admitting we are not diverse and inclusive and therefore need to introduce explicit management of it. That resulted in a few breaths being drawn in. In addition, we all have to undergo confirmation bias training. I do have confirmation bias.. but not in people. I don't give two hoots about a person's race, religion, gender, sexuality, etc - at least not in work situations (my accountant is a post-operation transexual, for example - had the full chop). If they do a good job and don't disrupt the team, that is all I care about. Period. So, for me, it is a complete waste of time. What they should be doing is gathering metrics on different departments and teams, and where there is an apparent issue, determine if there is one and manage it..

 

The second - Agile projects/software delivery. Again, good in theory. However, as far as I can tell, it simply re-badges what we used to do into different names, but is much the same. It ha spawned a whole industry in itself and "transformed" IT and project delivery. Yet, when you look at the profit and loss (now statement of revenue),  it consumes more or less the same as as far as I can tell, does not result in a material gain in productivity, or quality.  I am "Agile" now (and there are many flavours, which tells me it is a consultant's paradise); my team is Agile (I have been Agiule for some time). The supposed issues it addresses and the way in which it works is not really that much different to the structured way, as it worked on the ground (very different in theory).

 

The point is, in areas that are mature, for people to remain relevant and market themselves, they have to invent "better" ways of doing things, and those "better" methods are usually desasing up the same pig in different clothes. That is my Hardard Sschool of Management Syndrome theory.. available in all good book stores and consultancies - for a fee.

[old man emu]

I agree with your identification of the Harvard School of Management as the root of all evil. Back in the 80's the NSW Police abandoned promotional exams coupled with seniority and replaced it with Harvard-babble - all Key Performance this, and Key Performance that. As a result, the backroom gang took the time to write up applications for promotion saying how they had met the KPs in their current positions. Meanwhile, the coalface workers were trying to implement the procedures that the backroomers thought up to bolster their own promotional chances. 

 

Dealing with drunken yobbos on Saturday nights, and domestics on pay day doesn't give the street cop, who has all the policing experience, time to produce an application worthy of a Harvard PhD. Consequently, the skill levels of the operational police have fallen, but the current police all have a Certificate IV in Policing, and don't know how to put a Brief of Evidence together. 

[Old Koreelah]

9 hours ago, old man emu said:

I agree with your identification of the Harvard School of Management as the root of all evil. Back in the 80's the NSW Police abandoned promotional exams coupled with seniority and replaced it with Harvard-babble - all Key Performance this, and Key Performance that…

Same also happened in the education sector. The old promotion system appeared archaic- teachers seeking promotion were put through rigorous inspection and if found efficient enough, were placed on The List. When a vacancy came up somewhere, they could apply for that position. This ensured teachers moved around the state, bringing new blood, new ideas to every school. 
 

It was replaced with bulls1t bingo, which encouraged teachers to lie and cheat their way to the top. (Mine is one of the broken bodies they walked over to get there.)
 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buzzword_bingo

 

[nomadpete]

I think we all lament this change. My manager used to get me to read through CV's of the shortlisted job applicants.

A notable example - after filtering all the keywords out from a highly skilled technical application, my assessment was "Aaah, this guy has few skills - he was a call centre operator for an IT company"

 

All job apps were scanned (primitive AI) for keywords and the highest scores got shortlisted for interview. Automated Buzzword BBingo

 

 

 

Edited January 14, 2023 by nomadpete

[old man emu]

13 minutes ago, nomadpete said:

All job apps were scanned (primitive AI) for keywords and the highest scores got shortlisted for interview. Automated Buzzword BBingo

And the people who could communicate using common language, and therefore likely to better serve clients' needs, were ignored. 

 

Unless the five-dollar word is used for drawing a picture of a character for a story, or to be funny.

[facthunter]

Pretty much Put downs and come ons like it  always was. Psychology as making new of the old by renaming it. Promotion's come to those who can suck a golfball up a frozen garden Hose and don't get their mistakes noticed and LOOK "Honest". Nev

[nomadpete]

OME is not one to eschew obfuscation.

 

Except when applying for a grant.

[nomadpete]

18 hours ago, facthunter said:

who can suck a golfball up a frozen garden Hose

Now that's a good one.

[old man emu]

6 minutes ago, nomadpete said:

OME is not one to eschew obfuscation.

Ah! You refer to one of my favorite plays by Francis Bacon, "Taming of the Eschew". Criminally plagiarised by Bill Shakespeare.

[nomadpete]

And there I was thinking you might pick on my grammar!

 

 

[red750]

What's she got to do with it, poor dear?

[facthunter]

The best Hanky is Hanky Panky.  Nev

[old man emu]

1 hour ago, facthunter said:

The best Hanky is Hanky Panky.  Nev

Too true. A bit of hanky-panky is snot to be sneezed at.

[facthunter]

GAAaah Perish the thought.. That'll blow it.   Nev

[old man emu]

I'm going to drift t this thread into unchartered waters. To go where no OP here has gone before. To Infinity, and beyond!

 

I'm going to gripe about aviation historians who insist on publishing the various speed figures of aircraft in miles per hour and kilometres per hour yet fail to also publish those speeds in knots. When I measure a distance off a WAC chart, the number is nautical miles. If I want to find out how long it will take to fly that distance, I have to divide the distance by the number of nautical miles per hour my plane flies. The unit of nautical miles per hour is the knot. That is what I was taught back when I was doing ground courses to let me navigate away from home base.

 

Now that my whizz wheel can't rotate because of the accumulated years of idleness induced corrosion, I like to find out about unique aircraft from the past and compare them with their those I have experience of. So a C-152, or a PA-22 plod along at something like 100 kts. If I look at an aircraft's performance figures given in MpH or kpH, I don't know how much faster or slower it is than those two I know. 

 

I suppose I should find out if WACs in the USA are scaled in statute miles (exactly 1,609.344 metres) and if in Europe they are in kilometres.

[Jerry_Atrick]

Don't tie yourself in knots about it OME. Not only aviation historians but often I will see microlights speeds quoted in mph, and there is the odd C150 that has an ASI calibratedin mph, too..

 

I recently chuicked my old French charts, but I recall them all being marked in nm.. i minute of lattitude = 1nm.

 

UK charts defo nm.

 

[nomadpete]

Yachties have the same gripe.

[facthunter]

Should all be in NM and knots. Using others makes it look faster. Altitude in feet 1,000's. Russia does it in Metres and makes vertical separation more messy.  WAC World Aeronautical Charts are world wide Conformal and othomorphic. (Lamberts based on 2 variously selected parallels. Good for all bar polar regions.   Surface features heights are depicted by hypsometric tinting.. Nev

[red750]

Advertising campaigns that use the phrase "Everything is on sale." Of course it is, otherwise why do they have it in stock? They should say "Everything is discounted".

[facthunter]

Dunno. Even I can understand the difference between "ON Sale" and for sale..  Nev

[pmccarthy]

Fors Ale was a great idea for a British beer brand, their advertising was already on every street. But the brand could not be registered. I tried to Google the story but, of course, got lots of advertising instead.

[onetrack]

I get annoyed at the amount of companies that continually ramp up prices so they can offer huge percentage discounts. You're a mug to pay the "going rate" in todays world.

I never buy anything without requesting a discount or going looking for a discount coupon or offer. It usually only takes a few minutes to find a minimum of 10% or 20% off the regular pricing.