Engineering Quotes and random observations – Direct quotations from my company, after 2 years of effort and a $3.9 million investment.
“We’ve got a box full of crap right now, that’s better than a truck load of crap…”
“Instead of spending $400 on a production table, he ,(The 2nd CEO to be fired,), spent it on a dinner!”
“ I wouldn’t sign off on manufacturing until we had 100 systems in the field for a month”, Statement made on June, 27th, 2011, 30 days before projected end of company, 30 in field, 15 working thus far – sort of…
“Engineer 1 has had the software calibration solution for months, however he is so overwhelmed with putting things into X-Tuple, he has not been able to utilize it.”
“Producing 25 units per week is where we need to be, whatever happens after that happens, otherwise we only have a picture of a prototype.”
“90% accuracy sounds pretty good however put it with twelve sensors, your lucky if you got one out of twelve.”
“There is only one thing that is saving us – we have 2300 units worth of components.”
“We are burning our relationships with our suppliers, if we pay them, we will be out of money. We owe $160K right now and what we are on the hook for is huge..”
“I’m getting lost in the minutiae of it”
“We’ve always known the sweet spot, unless this is out of your permutation”
“ You’re climbing a hill and you’re gonna fall off if you don’t reach the next plateau”
“ We are going to a new currency, you know.”
“ What typically happens, is as you do this and get details to put the project together, you get it done over the weekend.”
“ I have spent zero time on testing and it is a major thing…”
“ We just lost 1/3 of our senior engineering staff, that was a major hit..”
“ There is a higher level thing, forget about all the details, from top level management, there are still the external reviews, we are at a product review date…”
“What are we testing, what do we need to test?”
“We’re never going to meet the deadline, so why don’t we just go home now.”
Head engineer answering the question from the primary investor - ‘When is the product going to be ready?’ answer -“Between now and never…”
Engineering -“ The reason we haven’t met our goals is because we don’t have a plan” answer from VP – “ You had a plan last November and you fucked it, you had a plan last March and you fucked it, you had a plan this April and you fucked that”
Customer support speaking to engineering “You know our product just shut down Brighthouse cable service to an entire block?” Engineering response, “Awesome”
“I’m not really concerned about our accuracy, I’m just concerned if there is consistency to our inaccuracy”
“One of these plans is going to be zero”
Standard answer for question of “when will the product be ready?”
6 months in - “Three weeks”
12 months in -“Three weeks”
18 months in -“Three weeks”
Number of official launch dates since company inception = 7. Number of successful launches = 0.
Number of employees hired and fired in 18 months = 10
Number of people in company = 12
Quote from office manager “…I wish they would just lay me off”
“We’ve spent $112,000 in burn or scrap, that doesn’t sound right…” – our accountant
“You’re not gong to make it…” – our accountant speaking about our future success.
From the 2nd fired CEO, “It’s The Founders'’s fault”, The Founder is the lead engineer and one of the inventors of the system.
“Those boards that came in last week, we never built any of those right?”
“Phone calls are an incredible waste of time, texting is the only way you should communicate unless it is urgent”.
“I get confused easily”
“What are the tasks that we have?”
“When you tell us what not to do, you don’t tell us what to do”
“The only real value of anything is what you collect a month, that’s all that matters”
“Real estate values are going to collapse – again”
“Our money is based on nothing – you can’t just keep printing it”
“ We ,(United States), are headed for collapse, it is just a matter of time”
“I’d rather be home writing software code – that’s what we need to get done”
“We’re better off just starting over”
“I think we need to go back to the drawing board, the product is not ready to ship and only works in 1% of the homes”.
“We’ve got a problem, we now have a reset issue – the units will not start up”
There is something going on very , very strange here…”
“Have you seen the new Star Trek episodes, they’ve re-mastered them all in HD!”
“In the laboratory you can always get something to work”
“We have readings, we don’t have storage or handshake accountability”
“If everyone turned their power off at the same time, you would have a major outage”
“If you can make it non random, you can make it do anything….”
“When we see the water heater turn on, we have a delta in the mains, that gives us enough information to calibrate those sensors against each other, so all of the load deltas can be confirmed” – this ground breaking insight was realized 2 weeks before cash zero (end of business) …call me stupid however it seems that it would have been useful a year ago, unless you’re just eternally tinkering in the lab….
“The inaccuracies are in both directions so they cancel each other out”
“Averaging out is a function of the law of statistics”
“As long as it’s not systematic and it’s random, not linear – that’s how the power company gets away with sloppy meter readings ”
“The thing to do is to mine the data, process the data and remove the anomalies”
“The word ‘release’ has been use out of context, who wants to create the product release document?”
“By the end of the month, we are supposed to have some sort of product specification – we will not get money until that is done, we have enough money to run one last payroll.” -VP speaking to engineering
“What does a product specification look like?” – engineering…
“ I am beginning to hate engineers” –business development
“Realistically we have not been operating in engineering mode, we have been operating in a ‘quick spin’ start up mode….”
“I think one of our scenarios needs to include configurations”
“There is a huge difference in US residents and ‘target markets’, we need to define the details, what do those homes look like?”
“If we don’t work in 90% of the homes, we are by nature, problematic”
“If, if…if”
“I think we have made some good and useful conversation”
“We have to have good, working hardware and I think we’re getting real close to that” (..said 2 weeks before cash zero day…)
“It’s behavior, the button activates the behavior, then the behavior ends”
“The biggest thing that’s wrong is the sensitivities, inherently the biggest number you’re going to be wrong is zero”
“We can alternate it and complicate the issue or we can make the adjustments”
“That’s part of the gimmick, right - trying to prove the box works…”
“All this talk about signal rates and noise ratios, you need an error free rate of .995%”
“There has been no significant progress”
“Unless there is a miracle, we’re probably done in a couple of weeks”
“I’ve been in companies whereby if you were employed for at least a year, they had to go through five levels of management to fire you”
“We started out being synchronous but when we tried to track the frequency it was a nightmare”
“…crap...”
“Our detect ability was much lower, the linearity looks pretty good, I’m going by the waveform that I saw”
“It was working, I don’t know why it quit, it is rather scary”
“By next year, the reliability of the power grid is going to zero”
“The Chinese bought an entire years supply of corn last month – 550 million metric tons”
“The power companies cannot maintain the network, they are failing at the rate of 2 hrs per month, that’s a terrible failure rate.”
“They, (utility companies), can’t meet the demand at the price, so they just take the failure”
“When the bombs fall, the windmills will just get blown way”
“The earth is a big place, people can withstand anything except the stupidity of government”
“Typically, what happens is that there is a discontinuity in the error rates, when they reach .995% they are 100%.”
“What we are seeing with the box is not representative at all, we are trying to do real time, the system is transferring in 15 minute intervals”
“When you can hear each other, by definition, you can hear each other”
“Time can drift… we need to slip or gain a cycle… depending on where the real time is”
“ There are no engineers left in the power grid, they have all retired”
“They, (the company), wired the last payroll to the wrong account, luckily the account was closed, otherwise they would have never got it back”
“It’s only the impedances that are appearing on the whole panel, but I don’t think that’s killing us…”
“What happens is, we’re so lucky, that you get out past 120, you then get resonances”
“You can’t put RF in the box, there’s no way you can get away with that”
“This company was dead a year ago”
“Well, we might be able to string them along with conference calls to potential investors-to keep the payroll going…”
“I see some signal there….it all comes down to are we gonna be plus or minus ten percent accuracy or not…”
“The first 20 systems we get back from the contract manufacturer will not work”
“Federal employees’ income tax should not be counted in the GDP”
“Are we talking..?.. this is continous…”
“The patents are in pending status, Galtronics would just shelve this thing if they don’t go forward, they’ll just bury it…It happens all the time, more often than not”
“The trouble is that I cannot amplify my signal, I’m recognizing it, we’re just not controlling it..”
“I think we’re really close. .we need to kick up the gain a little bit and look at the new software…”
“You’ve got a 50% chance of being within 50%..”
“In reality, nothing ever is continuous”
“All of this code and these branches are just garbage and need to be thrown out”- (mentioned 4 days before the end of the company…)
Direct quote from the founder of the company when asked about status of product-
“…I’ll have to meet with you and the office manager separately because when I speak with engineering there is probably going to be some F-bombs and people might get fired…”
"There is a hurricane coming.. we could tell the investors that we can't work in these conditions, maybe it'll buy us another week or so..."
delayed product launch, engineering problems, funding, mechanical issues, out of funding, product design issues, product development, start up, failed start up, problems with engineers
"There is a hurricane coming.. we could tell the investors that we can't work in these conditions, maybe it'll buy us another week or so..."
delayed product launch, engineering problems, funding, mechanical issues, out of funding, product design issues, product development, start up, failed start up, problems with engineers
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