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Comment by fracus | Hacker News Reader

This article asks various Navy men their thoughts. This one by Lieutenant Commander Jeff Vandenengel stuck out.

- Office Space is the best submarine movie. TPS reports, multiple bosses, a defective printer, coming in on Saturday, the oversight team of “the Bobs” that are “there to help,” and the engineers are not allowed to talk to normal people. Incredibly accurate!

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>the engineers are not allowed to talk to normal people

why?

Because engineers can't talk to customers. They need a project manager to receive the requirements sent over from the customers, and then bring the requirements to the engineers (or have someone bring them over).

You might want to add some indication if this was sarcasm. If it wasn't then that's wrong - engineers should be directly talking to customers, at least some of the time. It's by far the best way to get direct feedback on what real problems customers are having with the product.

I think they were describing “is” as opposed to “ought”

it is basically a quote from the movie

The relevant scene: https://youtu.be/hNuu9CpdjIo

Because engineers generally fail to catch such subtleties, righr?

Someone really needs to watch the movie...

I think we all agree on that; the problem is that some customer relationship management is .. highly political. Lots of face saving and message discipline. Engineers are not trusted to have the skills to do that even if you've got time to keep them fully briefed on what the story you're allowed to tell the customer is.

Sometimes even asking the wrong question can cause an upset. Engineers are prone to thinking or even saying things like, "successfully delivering the project is more important than the ego of a middle ranking procurement manager in the client, right?"

And PMs can talk to customers but don't, because it's better for their career to align with the executives and implement their amazing ideas

Which isn't my experience at all. I've always seen PMs spend a bunch of time on the road talking to customers and in executive briefing centers. (And I was one in hardware at some distant point.) Engineers, sensibly, don't really want to spend that much time with customers--and even if they talk to one or two it sort of colors their opinions by that one customer's requirements.

Whoever thinks this way probably has a brilliant product idea in their back pocket. If they can ever catch a break to try and prototype it…

PM: I am good at talking to people! Can’t you understand that? What the hell is wrong with you!?

Edit: Having been around for a while I’ve learned to appreciate PMs. You have to be very careful what you say in front of customers or focus groups. If you had two engineers and one customer chatting unsupervised it would turn into a brainstorming session, and after 45 minutes we’re building a flying police box that can travel through time.

"English, Doc!" :o)

It's disappointing though perhaps not surprising that submariners now follow "Agile" practices.

> the engineers are not allowed to talk to normal people.

That sounds the complete antithesis of agile to me.

Is a "agile" now a term like "woke", devoid of all useful meaning

Both are like the term aladeen. They mean something and its exact opposite. You can only determine from context.

https://youtu.be/NYJ2w82WifU

also "nonplussed":https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/nonplussed

always nonplussed, never plussed.

You are correct. “Agile” is the antithesis of Agile. The scare quotes are necessary disambiguation.

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