Yeah sure, blame the engineers. In my experience as an engineer, the full story goes more like this:
1) Engineers come up with new idea for a better product.
2) Take idea to management.
3) Management says to scope it out, estimate time and materials, do a project plan, all that.
4) Project plan completed. Management says cut time in half. Keep all features. Cut budget in half. And by the way, keep up with your other projects. Engineers (who know better now than to say it can't be done) say they'll do their best, but won't commit to the new dates.
5) Engineers complete working prototype.
6) Marketing, who wouldn't participate up to this point because it wasn't their idea, now demands lots of changes. Feature creep begins in earnest.
7) Engineers push back, try to nail down features. All agree. Marketing publishes their specs anyway, and as a bonus publishes new date even tighter than the one before, that itself was unmakeable.
8) Engineers stomp into management offices as a group to complain. Management says "what can I do, it's already been published?" Now everyone pissed off.
9) Management meets with engineers one by one to tell them that they have a "bad attitude" and that they aren't "team players." Morale improves greatly of course. Passion for project fades. Resumes float. Leaders transfer to new projects if the can. Schedule slip is guaranteed.
10) When it becomes obvious even to management that the dates aren't even remotely possible, they want to cut features. Engineers explain that this is adding work to the project and is in fact pushing the date out farther. Management doesn't understand. Marketeers livid.
11) When the published date comes and goes, customers want to know what the problem is.
12) Marketing is genetically wired to deflect blame. Since it can't be their fault... BLAME THE ENGINEERS.
The best part is, the people who really get screwed are the QA people. They don't get their hands on a working production unit until well after the ship date. Every day they have the product is a delay in the ship date. Talk about pressure! And an abbreviated QA cycle = buggy product. So ultimately it's you and me who get screwed.
At this stage if I were seriously interested in the M1, I'd be looking to wait at least a year after it actually ships before buying one. I'm not big on being unpaid QA for anyone anymore.
And no, I'M NOT BITTER! I'm not. Really.
And the truth is the truth, bitter or not. I'm just saying...
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