A milestone in my career

[Ghoulish Delight]

For those who don't know, my job is to, well, test stuff. The engineers in my company design new products, write new software drivers and/or firmware for products, etc. I take that software and run it through the paces to make sure there's nothing glaringly wrong and to make sure they fixed what they were supposed to fix before we make it available to customers.

One of the great joys in the life of a veteran test engineer is when marketing comes up with a new product, or new use for a product, for us to test. This is not because we're excited to see the amazing new technology. Oh no. This is because someone, the test engineer with the most knowledge in the areas that the new product deals with, gets the honor of soundly ripping the product to shreds for one (or more) of several reasons. "No one needs that." "It 'solves' a problem that doesn't exist." "That's a stupid solution to the problem." "It's technically impossible and will never work right." "I really don't want to do the work it's gonna take to test this thing!"

Today, my friends, was my day. It was a critique of the "It 'solves' a problem that doesn't exist" variety. I first saw a demo of ths product a couple weeks ago and have been wracking my brain trying to figure out what I was missing. And I finally realized I was missing nothing, that what marketing is claiming this product solves is a gross misrepresentation of how things work. And so today, as I met with managers and a handful of other engineers to discuss our testing strategy, I waited for my moment, and unleashed my assault. And it was glorious. Point by point I showed that from a technical standpoint, this product does absolutely nothing, no matter what marketing says. And in the end, everyone in the room could do nothing but agree with me.

Mind you, we testers never expect anything to actually come of our arguments. In truth, we're marketing's bitches. If they want it to be a product, it will be a product, and we'll test it. Our only goal in making these stands are for, "I told you so" rights when the market doesn't instantly latch on to the product, saying exactly what we've been saying from the beginning.

But oh, the satisfaction of knowing I'm right is intoxicating. And this surely has earned the respect of my peers, as I've now proven myself sufficiently cynical in their eyes.

This isn't to say the product won't be successful. As we all know, the customer may always be right, but they sure as hell aren't always smart. Plus, this product does have some superficial value to it, purely from an ease-of-use perspective. But that's not the angle marketing is pushing, they're pushing a technical angle that doesn't actually exist. For shame.