Computer Engineers Anonymous - part 1

Hello, my name is Jean and I am a computer engineer. Hi Jean, I hear you utter in a fake caring voice.

I have had over 150 employees and more than half were Computer Engineers (CE). In this multi-part series (à la Discovery Channel), I will open a window about certain particularities I learnt of the CE in the wildlife of the Corporation. It's based on my own experiences and not on clichés I picked up.

I will use the we as to avoid being branded as a CE hater. Being one myself, I have full CE humorous-observation immunity.

We first and foremost learn to build specs and then apply them to systems to satisfy our own needs. Then, and only when our livelihood depends on it, we grudgingly do what the boss and clients asks of us.

When something doesn't work, we try to quickly find the bug...
if we can't find it, we restart all the systems...
if that doesn't work, we patch with a lengthy and risky workaround...
if we can't workaround, we try to find someone to blame. Since there are many actors involved in the product, we have a large variety of choices. The by default one is 'The client changing his mind'...
if the blamed won't take it, we call our work a demo version with a 0.x number attached to it...
if the spinners in marketing can't make that work, we innocently blame them...

If all else fails, we declare that the market, the clients and the consumers never understood how much of a brilliant product we created.