• King of England (unregistered)

    British managers relish in being snobby and condescending, because it's hiding how useless and fucking incompetent they are. What a bunch of retards.

  • Jake (unregistered) in reply to ratchet freak

    "Since you have refused to answer my perfectly reasonable question and insist that I make the decision myself, and as I am not a tax accountant, I will simply engage an outside tax accountant at €xx per hour and bill it to the project."

    Problem solved.

  • (cs) in reply to skotl
    skotl:
    This is to present me giving you a VAT invoice, pocketing the 20% VAT cash, then making a fake invoice that doesn't show VAT.
    Freudian slip?
  • That guy (unregistered) in reply to Pastebreath
    Pastebreath:
    If Tim was too insignificant and Reggie too important, how come there was nobody inbetween that could take responsibility for this?

    The position was still open after the last time the company needed someone to be responsible for something.

  • (cs) in reply to eViLegion
    eViLegion:
    I don't understand why Reggie didn't find a shiv unexpectedly poking him in the back of the neck gently but firmly, before hearing the whispered words:

    "Don't turn around. Simply pay attention. We are the people who keep your world revolving. We have the skills to bring you crashing down. Fuck with us and we gain the motivation to ruin you... Or we shiv you in the back of the neck while you think you're safe in your office."

    There's no way HR wood ever believe that happened.

    They would if they ever had to deal with Reggie.

  • Adam Smith (unregistered)

    TRWTF is VAT. TRRWTF is the additional cost of compliance which is passed onto consumers. Everything else is minutia.

  • foo AKA fooo (unregistered) in reply to Brondahl
    Brondahl:
    Forgive me if I'm being naive, but how exactly do you get multtiple ways to calculate VAT?

    If the value of the VAT is different(10% vs. 15%, or whatever) that's not a difference in the calculation, it's just someone setting/updating a configured value?

    If it's a question of which items incur VAT, then surely that's again a configuration on a per-item (or per category) basis, and again is a data issue?

    Perhaps this is a US/UK thing? (I'm in the UK?) but I really don't see how there can be options for applying the VAT?

    Obviously the manager's approach is wrong, but from where I'm sitting the broad theme "How can you possibly get 'applying VAT' wrong" seems valid? Again apologies if I've missed something obvious?

    There are only two options here: either you did your job and read other comments before you wrote, or you’re an incompetent and you didn't. In the first case, you would have seen plenty of examples. In the second case, you should be banned from this site. So which one is it, Brondahl?
  • s73v3r (unregistered) in reply to Steve The Cynic
    Steve The Cynic:
    Tim has to bear *some* responsibility for this, unfortunately.

    Sure, the finance guy should have given more guidance, but since that guidance wasn't given, Tim should have been more diligent in his research rather than relying on a gut feeling.

    Especially on VAT. (VAT isn't a thing I've ever heard of US states having. It isn't the same as sales tax - the only thing they have in common is that they are taxes charged the purchase of goods or services by consumers. Oh, and that both of them are forms of double taxation, in that you are taxed when you spend money that you have already paid taxes on.) VAT is everywhere in the European Union, and the required calculations are complicated by a freaky assortment of cross-border considerations, combined with the fact that some goods are liable for VAT at different rates (on the same item) in the same country - books are zero-rated (not the same thing as unrated, mind you) in the UK, but if a book includes a CD-ROM with software on it, that CD-ROM is liable to non-zero VAT on its notional value.

    And the VAT authorities (especially in the UK) are grumpy about companies getting it wrong.

    So no, the notional WTF (Reggie's refusal to give Tim a useful answer) isn't credible. Reggie may bear (if he is a financial director rather than merely a head accountant) a personal criminal responsibility for the VAT being done wrong, and he would have a strong interest in the calculations being right.

    And yes, Reggie could (and probably would) have been held responsible within the company for the fuck-up because it was clear that he refused to give requested guidance.

    But Tim should have done his research properly rather than just guessing.

    No. Fuck that Finance guy. He can take full responsibility for this.

  • s73v3r (unregistered) in reply to Steve The Cynic
    Steve The Cynic:
    Geoff:
    No Tim is a developer with his own competencies, responsibilities and deadlines. Its most certainly NOT his job to understand legal requirements about what VAT calculation to use when only to be able to correctly implement the business rules he has been told to. Someone from legal or finance needs to understand what VAT calculations rules need to be applied. Tim needs to then understand those identified rules well enough to correctly implement them in software.
    There are many ways to be diligent in one's research. Asking competent authorities is a very effective way, and the company's collective knowledge of VAT rules surely did not reside entirely in Reggie's head.

    You also seem to belong to the camp who thinks that understanding the problem domain is unnecessary for a programmer to be effective. This is the biggest line of bullshit imaginable.

    Geoff:
    As a developer Tim should not be effectively authoring the spec.
    No, he should not, but when the spec is as vague as "calculate VAT in an appropriate way", he should not just invent something based on random intestinal babblements.
    Geoff:
    This is problem with the spec and the stake holder is being unhelpful.
    The word you're looking for is "obstructive", possible extended to a phrase, "actively obstructive".
    Geoff:
    What Tim needs to do is take his E-mail directly to his manager or director; and explain the situation. Its that persons job to then march back over to Finance and explain to them they can either find someone to help or consider their project on indefinite hold.
    Good luck with that. You'll need it.

    You know what? When you get some asshat like Reggie stating he doesn't have to make clear specs? Fuck him. He doesn't deserve a working system. And he deserves every bit of blame that comes from it.

  • bill (unregistered) in reply to Chris Q
    Chris Q:
    I had to deal with very complex VAT calculations - the company I worked for sold gift vouchers on behalf of a lot of major retailers.

    Because the VAT varies depending on what you buy, the Inland Revenue calculated VAT rates based on th espectrum of sales from the retailer. For example, if you bought a £20 Marks & Spencers voucher, you could spend it on food (zero rated) , Children's clothes (zero rated) or adult cothers (20% rated). The revenue looked at M&S's sales and calculated a pro-rata VAT rate of 13.5% iirc.

    For other retailers such as Comet, their vouchers would attract the full 20%.

    why calculate VAT on the voucher? Shouldn't it be calculated on the transaction that uses the voucher?

  • s73v3r (unregistered) in reply to 1234
    1234:
    Yet another story where TRWTF is that the protagonist just did something without checking with his management.

    I've dealt with many users like Reggie, when something like that happens, you run it up your own management ladder. There has to be someone who can say, "Hey, we need specs or this project is not going to happen"

    You don't just wing it. WTF?

    He did check. Management was a big bag of soggy dicks. Management got what was coming to them.

    If Reggie doesn't give enough of a shit to answer a simple question, why should anyone else?

  • john from a non-VAT country (unregistered) in reply to jrgrizz
    jrgrizz:
    So using the German McDonalds example, if I order my meal to go and then decide after receiving said meal that I'd rather eat it in the dining area am I breaking the law? If so, I think I just gained a little understanding of the anarchist's mind set.
    Not really. The tax is on the takeaway meal (they'll package it in a bag instead of on a tray). Where you decide to eat it is up to you. The fact that you're using Maccas tables is between you and them, not you and the tax man.
  • Anonymous Bob (unregistered)

    TRWTF is the VAT. Just go with a retail sales tax so every step of producing something doesn't create yet another tax collector for the state along with the necessary wasteful overhead.

  • fdasrkt6 (unregistered) in reply to skotl
    skotl:
    Chelloveck:
    skotl:
    Firstly, there are three effective VAT rates right now; 0%, 5% and 20%. Once you realise that then it is obvious that VAT needs to be applied to each line item, rounded, then totalled.

    How is that obvious? Seems to me that the proper thing to do would be to subtotal the items in each rate category separately and apply the appropriate VAT to each subtotal.

    Of course the real right answer is "do it however the law tells you to." And I don't trust any politician to write a law in a way that's "obvious" to anyone else. I'd be thrilled to just find that the law wasn't self-contradictory.

    And the law, according to the link I posted, states that you apply VAT to each line item and tally them up. What it doesn't say, but is implicit, is that the rounding errors will get progressively worse. Your solution, of course, is the sensible one. That's why it's also the wrong one.

    you apply VAT to each item - does that imply you round at that point? Just because each item needs to be DISPLAYED in a whole number of euros/cents/whatever doesn't mean you have to lose the precision for the calculation....so you can still total and then round (of course, tyhen customers will get confused why adding a whole bunch of stuff together gives a slightly different result to what they expect, but who looks a receipts anyway, amirite?)

  • Marcus Hughes (unregistered)

    TRWTF is so many people getting het up about whether Tim or Reggie deserves more blame, and asking where all the in-between staff is, when it's abundantly clear (and has been for some time) that extreme artistic license is used in extrapolating these stories from what actually happened into a full page story.

    The story was probably submitted as something along the lines of: [quote user="story] One time when I was working in this organisation, they sent us a requirement spec that was wrong. We went to the customer to clarify the requirement, and they shrugged their shoulders and said "That requirement's as good as it's going to get, and if you don't understand it you;re stoopid". What douche bags! [/quote]

    And while vague requirements are a bit of a WTF, they're hardly out of the ordinary in the "Real World" (TM). For what it's worth, I think Remy has again shown he's better than some of the other authors on this site at making a story out of nothing. (sorry if that reads like a backhanded compliment - I enjoy Remy's stories).

  • (cs) in reply to fdasrkt6
    fdasrkt6:
    you apply VAT to each item - does that imply you round at that point? Just because each item needs to be DISPLAYED in a whole number of euros/cents/whatever doesn't mean you have to lose the precision for the calculation....so you can still total and then round (of course, tyhen customers will get confused why adding a whole bunch of stuff together gives a slightly different result to what they expect, but who looks a receipts anyway, amirite?)
    I vaguely remember that the other important thing is that you must remit everything that you claim is tax to the tax authorities, even if you calculate the value to be higher than the actual legal requirement. Whatever you do, don't fraudulently claim non-tax parts of the price to be taxes, as that comes very close to maximizing the shit that you're immersed in. (Plain getting the calculations wrong is actually less serious, provided it is a genuine mistake or one of the nasty edge cases that have yet to be clarified in court.)

    I really don't want to write e-commerce code.

  • Norman Diamond (unregistered) in reply to MrOli
    MrOli:
    I'm going to show some ignorance here, I'm sure someone will correct me:

    There is only one way to calculate VAT - you find out the item's VAT rate and multiply by it... (currently) 1.2, 1.05 or 1 for 20%, 5% or 0%, respectively.

    On that matter, another comment already corrected you before you posted. But that's not the WTF that I'm going to mention in a minute.

    MrOli:
    So not sure why the article is talking about 2 ways. If there are "2 ways", one of them is wrong.
    If there are "2 ways", two of them are wrong.

    Now for a tangential WTF. This took place in a province that had sales tax and the federal government didn't yet have VAT, but those details didn't matter. This also took place in the days when overseas phone calls were expensive and billing wasn't completely automated.

    One of my roommates made an overseas phone call. The sales tax was supposed to be 7%. A few months later, the province enacted a temporary stimulus by reducing sales tax to 4% for a few months and then reverting it to 7%. A few months after the reversion, the phone call showed up on the phone bill. The phone company charged 4% sales tax.

    By the way, the phone company's subsidiaries would be worthy of many front page artiles on this site. The biggest subsidiary survived longer than it should have, before going bankrupt. Somehow the phone company itself still carries on.

  • Snickers (unregistered) in reply to capio

    In Australia it's call GST and based on 2 (for each article billed). We developed some software and the client system we exported to the data to was expecting 1 (for the total of the bill). We ended up having to have a meeting with them and a tax expert who told them they were wrong.

  • Norman Diamond (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward:
    Fast people. http://dilbert.com/fast/2003-01-10/ It's for people who aren't thick. Which I guess Remy is a bit...
    Off topic for your quote but on topic for this web site: The Dilbert site gave me an advertisement for a fake spyware program. Or more likely, a fake detector that installs genuine spyware. Of course that's nothing new for the internet, but doesn't it seem kind of out of place on Dilbert?
  • Community Banker (unregistered) in reply to Chris Q
    Chris Q:
    I worked on an order processing system in the UK and asked the Customs and Revenue Service if we should round up or round down on VAT calculations. Their answer? "We don't care as long as you are consistant"

    It was years ago, but something similar in AUS. Or perhaps it was the round first/ round last decision. Anyway, I think they finally realised that nobody was thanking them for not defining those rules.

    But that is at the invoicing / billing end, where you have to tell the customer how much VAT has been taken.

    At the other end, where you report annually/quarterly/monthly to the tax office, it's actually a great relief to know that as long as you aren't doing anything dodgy, they aren't worried about a few dollars here or there.

    It means you can simply use whatever totals you have, that you are using. You don't have to create some new massive de-rounding and de-totalling machine to calculate the corrected total tax remittance.

  • Norman Diamond (unregistered) in reply to noname
    noname:
    When you decide to hit german taxes please regard that the german tax laws is probably the largest document in human history. No one can get it right. It only matters that no one notices that you did it wrong.
    The US is worse. Tax laws contradict each other and it's impossible to get it right. Even more illegal than everything else, it's illegal to describe what you can't get right; you have to declare under penalty of perjury that you got it right even when you know that you didn't. If you're honest you get screwed.
    VictorSierraGolf:
    hartmut:
    Yes, you can be punished for having payed the tax authorities *too much* in that case ...
    Himmelherrgottverdammtnochmalundzugenäht... And people give me strange looks when I tell them I want to move as far away as humanly possible...
    Lucky you, you can sove it by moving away. With the US, it isn't enough to just move away.

    And the US knows it: http://www.taxpayeradvocate.irs.gov//userfiles/file/TAS_arc2011_execsummary.pdf Pages 14 and 17.

  • Treasury (unregistered) in reply to fdasrkt6
    fdasrkt6:
    you apply VAT to each item - does that imply you round at that point? Just because each item needs to be DISPLAYED in a whole number of euros/cents/whatever doesn't mean you have to lose the precision for the calculation....so you can still total and then round (of course, tyhen customers will get confused why adding a whole bunch of stuff together gives a slightly different result to what they expect, but who looks a receipts anyway, amirite?)

    In AUS, they eventually clarified those questions. The great advantage of that is that you don't waste time with this kind of question: there is a correct answer.

    But apart from that, fixed point was traditionaly used for financial calculations, and big old boys like the tax office still expect the numbers to be in dollars or cents.

    So when you say 'for display', that is 'for display to the accountants, tax accountants, tax department, and management'. The only reason for using floating point internally is for consistancy with Excel, and the tax office doesn't use Excel as much as the rest of the world does.

  • Norman Diamond (unregistered) in reply to DaveK
    DaveK:
    Oh good, time for a non-WTF. This is a relief.

    One time I told my boss I found a solution to a problem. He said "Make it so." I said "Dammit boss, I'm a computer programmer, not a sewing machine repairer."

  • (cs)

    Finance in a nut shell:

    "What is two plus two?" "Whatever you want it to be."

  • Norman Diamond (unregistered) in reply to anonymous
    anonymous:
    capio:
    There are two ways to calculate VAT: 1. from the total of the bill 2. for each article billed

    Because of the necessary roundings to full cents you will have differences between both.

    Retail items are marked with the full price with VAT already added. If something is priced at €2,50 and the VAT is 20%, then the store receives €2,08 and the VAT is €0,42. There is only one correct way to add those numbers, and it isn't to add up the base price of every item and recalculate the VAT based on the total.
    I agree, and now I think the actual setting of the article was in Japan. A certain famous company opened some branches in Japan and they were calculating VAT wrong. Some time later they started calculating VAT right.

    Now, that company is famous for NOT being a WTF. This could explain why they didn't fire Tim. But it doesn't explain why they didn't fire Reggie. In a non-WTF company, one would expect Reggie to be fired.

  • Norman Diamond's cat (unregistered) in reply to Erwin Schrödinger
    Erwin Schrödinger:
    Andrew:
    MrOli:
    So not sure why the article is talking about 2 ways. If there are "2 ways", one of them is wrong.
    It's completely possible that both ways are wrong.
    Both ways are both right and wrong. Just don't open that box and you're fine.
    Even though I don't know if you're a bastard or not, you are one.
  • moz (unregistered) in reply to johann
    johann:
    moz:
    Failing that, and assuming that there was no easy way for Tim could get advice from a company lawyer, Tim should try to find out what their existing sales channels use so he had a slightly better explanation for his choice than the one in the article.

    In other words, Tim should repeat the same error made by the last person who asked (or didn't ask) Reggae about VAT.

    Pretty much. The last person hasn't made any mistakes which have been picked up yet, so your version should last long enough for you to find a workplace with a more constructive management style.

    Or at least as long as it takes to find out that they never actually used the system Tim emulated.

  • hugo Z (unregistered) in reply to Treasury
    Treasury:
    fdasrkt6:
    you apply VAT to each item - does that imply you round at that point? Just because each item needs to be DISPLAYED in a whole number of euros/cents/whatever doesn't mean you have to lose the precision for the calculation....so you can still total and then round (of course, tyhen customers will get confused why adding a whole bunch of stuff together gives a slightly different result to what they expect, but who looks a receipts anyway, amirite?)

    In AUS, they eventually clarified those questions. The great advantage of that is that you don't waste time with this kind of question: there is a correct answer.

    But apart from that, fixed point was traditionaly used for financial calculations, and big old boys like the tax office still expect the numbers to be in dollars or cents.

    So when you say 'for display', that is 'for display to the accountants, tax accountants, tax department, and management'. The only reason for using floating point internally is for consistancy with Excel, and the tax office doesn't use Excel as much as the rest of the world does.

    ORLY? It seems almost every contracting company that has fingers in the ATO pie (and there are a lot of them) seems to just write Excel Macros for them.....

  • (cs) in reply to hugo Z
    hugo Z:
    Treasury:
    The only reason for using floating point internally is for consistancy with Excel, and the tax office doesn't use Excel as much as the rest of the world does.
    ORLY? It seems almost every contracting company that has fingers in the ATO pie (and there are a lot of them) seems to just write Excel Macros for them.....
    Yes, but that's still not as much use of Excel as in the wider business community.
  • S (unregistered) in reply to noname
    noname:
    When you decide to hit german taxes please regard that the german tax laws is probably the largest document in human history. No one can get it right. It only matters that no one notices that you did it wrong.

    I doubt that. Granted, I don't deal with Germany, but if you've never developed a billing system that spans a dozen different states in the US, take my word that it's an absolute nightmare... different taxes at the federal/state/county/city levels, all of them regularly changing, and each of those jurisdictions with their own unique and complex (and also ever-changing) reporting rules.

  • Adrian (unregistered)

    I was fined 25UKP for paying too much one quarter.

  • MacFrog (unregistered) in reply to Reggie
    Reggie:
    Either your comment is frist or your comment is incompetent and you should be fired.
    You got that wrong: If your comment isn't frist you should be fried.
  • gnasher729 (unregistered) in reply to S
    S:
    noname:
    When you decide to hit german taxes please regard that the german tax laws is probably the largest document in human history. No one can get it right. It only matters that no one notices that you did it wrong.

    I doubt that. Granted, I don't deal with Germany, but if you've never developed a billing system that spans a dozen different states in the US, take my word that it's an absolute nightmare... different taxes at the federal/state/county/city levels, all of them regularly changing, and each of those jurisdictions with their own unique and complex (and also ever-changing) reporting rules.

    German tax system is complicated, but at least it's consistent all over the country.

  • (cs)

    Not an accountant but I assume that the VAT rate is applied on each item, but you don't have to round up to the nearest penny until after all the VAT amounts have been summed.

    At present VAT in the UK is 20%.

    If you buy an item that costs £4.99 without VAT then you add £1 VAT.

    If you buy 5 such items you will pay £4.99 VAT not £5.

    When you calculate the VAT on the £4.99 item you will calculate it as £0.998 of course.

    It can get trickier when you are discounting VAT that you have paid. If you buy from an EU country you pay VAT at their rate. So my subscription to Microsoft Office was at 15% VAT as I bought that from Luxembourg.

  • (cs) in reply to Chris Q
    Chris Q:
    I had to deal with very complex VAT calculations - the company I worked for sold gift vouchers on behalf of a lot of major retailers.

    Because the VAT varies depending on what you buy, the Inland Revenue calculated VAT rates based on th espectrum of sales from the retailer. For example, if you bought a £20 Marks & Spencers voucher, you could spend it on food (zero rated) , Children's clothes (zero rated) or adult cothers (20% rated). The revenue looked at M&S's sales and calculated a pro-rata VAT rate of 13.5% iirc.

    For other retailers such as Comet, their vouchers would attract the full 20%.

    Nope. Gift vouchers are sold without VAT, then treated as cash when redeemed. Most of the shit people are claiming is complicated/unsolved/unsolvable is addressed with simple rules from HMRC. VAT isn't as big a deal as everyone is pretending.

  • N Gowrisankar (unregistered)

    .. and the Finance department paid for Tim to work overtime and rush through a fix to the VAT calculations... I always like a story with happy ending :).

  • Chris Q (unregistered) in reply to bill
    bill:
    ]why calculate VAT on the voucher? Shouldn't it be calculated on the transaction that uses the voucher?

    Because we had to charge our clients VAT, not the end users of the vouchers who would usually be their staff.

  • Chris Q (unregistered) in reply to boba_fett
    boba_fett:

    Nope. Gift vouchers are sold without VAT, then treated as cash when redeemed. Most of the shit people are claiming is complicated/unsolved/unsolvable is addressed with simple rules from HMRC. VAT isn't as big a deal as everyone is pretending.

    Wrong - we were informed by HMRC of the composite VAT rates to apply to our (bulk) voucher sales.

  • MrBester (unregistered) in reply to Steve The Cynic
    Steve The Cynic:
    Unless the law has changed, food is unrated, not zero rated.
    Given that HMRC themselves call it zero rated, I'd say it changed. Of course, not all food is zero rated (see Jaffa Cake court case)...
  • Rudolf (unregistered)

    The choice between:

    • calculate VAT on the invoice total
    • calculate VAT on each item, and add them up

    is actually a choice between two correct methods. Both ways are allowed - as long as you are consistent.

    Basically, what you have to do is pay the government the same VAT as you charged your customer.

    So, you can't sell 10000 items at £1.48 (+ £0.30 VAT) each (thus charging your customers a total of £3000 VAT), and then tell the government that you've sold £14800 worth of stuff, so 20% of that is £2960, and pay that amount to the government.

    http://bit.ly/LBtxfO

  • (cs) in reply to Chris Q
    Chris Q:
    boba_fett:

    Nope. Gift vouchers are sold without VAT, then treated as cash when redeemed. Most of the shit people are claiming is complicated/unsolved/unsolvable is addressed with simple rules from HMRC. VAT isn't as big a deal as everyone is pretending.

    Wrong - we were informed by HMRC of the composite VAT rates to apply to our (bulk) voucher sales.

    So you're saying a £20 gift voucher cost your client £22.70 (possibly discounted) including VAT? What happens when the customers go to spend it? Is that purchase VAT free, meaning their £20 voucher gets them £24 in adult's clothing?

  • JohnM (unregistered) in reply to beginner_
    beginner_:
    true. Sometimes processes and project management can be used for ones advantage and in that case go through proper channels and wait till a real specification is available. Thats why it's preferable to only use email to communicate with idiots. For proof.

    Actually, you may want to follow up with e-mail, copy your manager and PM, and so on. Tres Roeder has two very good books out: A Sixth Sense for Project Management (soft skills) and Managing Project Stakeholders (technical skills). Both explain the importance of dealing with people, and how to do it; both are required reading for every fucking person on this planet.

    Given the above, you can hit up Amazon before you question me on this.

    7% of communication is verbal. Words convey 7% of meaning. 38% is vocal--intonation, inflection, speaking speed and rhythm, and so on--and 55% is body language--facial expressions, hand movements, posture, the like. You absolutely want to communicate in person if you can, or at least video conference, or phone, or IM, or e-mail as a last resort and an archive. You may want to have the guy on the phone and actually type the e-mail or take notes while you talk for your follow-up.

    Tim simply didn't have communication skills here. A lot of noise in the conversation: Tim understands that he has a technical finance problem in front of him; the Director of Finance hears that Tim has a technical programming problem in front of him. Tim is correct, and the DOF is not. Further, the DOF made no effort to ensure that his specifications were correct. Some project manager somewhere failed to engage all the stakeholders properly, and so Tim didn't know his other contacts, and the DOF didn't understand his stake and supporting role--which may be delegated to underlings--in this situation.

    If we want to place blame, we can blame the Director of Finance. Tim simply doesn't have the technical skills for proper communication here; he does have the technical programming skills, and he does have the ability to recognize a finance problem he doesn't understand. Reginald on the other hand is a dismissive, arrogant ass who doesn't take responsibility for his role in the project--he directly failed at his job, he directly failed to apply acceptance criteria and verify so that the PM could properly execute quality assurance, therefor he caused the quality issue.

    Blame is less useful than understanding what happened with Tim, what happened with Reggie, and what needs to happen to correct this. Tim could have made a heroic effort to pester other Finance people, to go to his PM, and to escalate to the Executive Council of the project--mostly Reggie's cohorts and bosses--in search of the correct answer.

    The Project Manager could have formally halted that part of the project due to a Project Issue, initiating a Change process and pulling in the project stakeholders to update the Project Documents, particularly Requirements and the Project Plan. After this little stunt, the Project Communications Plan should have been updated to notate that Reggie is an aloof, useless ass who should be managed, but not relied upon for anything--that would also go into Lessons Learned, so now everyone will know. Seeing as this Project Issue will likely have Reggie's bosses involved, there will be direct authority over Reggie with full understanding of exactly why "Don't bother with Reggie, he is fucking useless" is important project documentation for future projects, whom he can be referred to if he complains.

    Have I convinced anyone that managers aren't useless yet? I know that's hard to swallow.

  • (cs)

    I like Dilbert cartoon. Did you get permission to use that cartoon?

  • (cs) in reply to MrOli
    MrOli:

    There is only one way to calculate VAT

    If you think you know everything there is about VAT, please study this paper (pdf)

    This will hit services like Netflix next year (in Europe, that is).

  • (cs) in reply to S
    S:
    noname:
    When you decide to hit german taxes please regard that the german tax laws is probably the largest document in human history. No one can get it right. It only matters that no one notices that you did it wrong.

    I doubt that. Granted, I don't deal with Germany, but if you've never developed a billing system that spans a dozen different states in the US, take my word that it's an absolute nightmare... different taxes at the federal/state/county/city levels, all of them regularly changing, and each of those jurisdictions with their own unique and complex (and also ever-changing) reporting rules.

    Have you hearing of a company called Vertex Inc?

  • Earlchaos (unregistered)

    Trwtf is, that Tim has obviously no clue, what he's doing and even didn't get fired for this rubbish...

  • Ben (unregistered)

    I think that "Reggie" would've gotten his throat slit.

  • I forgot my passwd (unregistered)

    There's also a fictional story about this:

    http://dilbert.com/fast/2013-02-08

    But, of course, might happen in real world as well.

  • Your Momma (unregistered) in reply to JohnM
    JohnM:
    7% of communication is verbal. Words convey 7% of meaning. 38% is vocal--intonation, inflection, speaking speed and rhythm, and so on--and 55% is body language--facial expressions, hand movements, posture, the like.

    Absolute fucking crap. Is that why your post was 14x longer than it should have been? Because it's only communicating at 7% efficiency?

  • (cs) in reply to Your Momma
    Your Momma:
    JohnM:
    7% of communication is verbal. Words convey 7% of meaning. 38% is vocal--intonation, inflection, speaking speed and rhythm, and so on--and 55% is body language--facial expressions, hand movements, posture, the like.

    Absolute fucking crap. Is that why your post was 14x longer than it should have been? Because it's only communicating at 7% efficiency?

    Then bucks that guy is Tres Roeder posting under a pseudonym.

    Addendum (2014-02-06 17:08): *Ten, damn you Muphry

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