The Face is the blankness that drops over, whilst the internals are savagely fighting one another for the right to KILL the stupid person that is talking complete and utter bollocks on the other side of the room.

The only reason I got my now job was the General Manager liked the fact that during the interview, the so called “expert” on the panel was talking crap and I was not afraid to tell him so. I reminded him of him.

I used to HATE getting invited to meetings as the ‘expert’ when, in reality, my expertise wasn’t actually needed…

i remember once getting invited to a meeting where some security company (Spin or Swivel or something I think it was called) were demonstrating their alternative to two-factor auth to the company I worked for. Half way through the meeting, I was asked what I thought so far and I said I didn’t think it was very good and described how to obtain a user’s login credentials if you have control of the network they are calling from. (you just need a fairly simple proxy at the router and to recognise a couple of requests. You don’t even need to be able to read the content, it’s vulnerable even if connection is SSL…)

Amazingly, I actually got ‘told off’ by my boss at the time for not being impressed by the product :-/

Can’t win.

Rachel

I can recall a meeting where I was repeatedly kicked under the table by my boss.

Funny that all the ‘experts’ are busy on this thread. Presumably all the marketing and sales team are out doing some proper work!

You told me I need a server, so tell me which one I need, how much it costs and then go and buy it, install it and take some responsibility for it then performing as it should. Or maybe that’s just me.

Not just you….I’ve had that conversation too….in the end I refused to pay for the contract architects time, and asked a friend who knows about these things for the answer and pretended I had spec’d the server myself and that I no longer needed their experts ‘help’

Funny that all the ‘experts’ are busy on this thread

It’s a fair cop.

Not at work. 😉

In Engineering, we get this a lot. Customers and managers are not experts but they are in charge. They say inaccurate things of which they do not really understand the meaning and implications, and need you to make sense of them.

Anderson’s analysis and explanation was crap and he was at fault for confusing them and being disrespectful. IMO, the best option was to draw seven visible blue lines radiating from a point.

* We only have blue ink, but blue better reflects your core values (phew!)
* By radiating, the lines meet at once place: the heart of your initiative, which is what the creative guy probably meant anyway
* Good quality normal ink looks good and is used by your competitors for a reason: transparent ink makes printing too expensive.

All the ‘experts’ need to try seeing things from another person’s perspective. The video was a bit of reductio ad absurdum, the main problem I experience isn’t a lack of understanding from non-technical people, but a lack of flexible thinking, and intellectual bullying from ‘experts’.

It’s fine being an expert, but if you can’t explain things to people then you need to change your personal style. Likewise, it’s all very well demonstrating your expertise through highlighting the faults in any solution, but if you can’t collaboratively think around the problem and evaluate alternatives then you’re no good either.

Some people on this thread appear to have hindered their own career/progress through being unable to moderate their own behaviours to be more compatible with others – you can definitely get useful training for this. I thought it was useless until I did some courses which identified exactly what I did wrong in this sort of interaction, and why my actions caused negative reactions in people with a different style/approach, was quite an epiphany even though I’d always thought I was quite self aware.

Fortunately, or maybe it’s unfortunately, I never get invited to those type of meetings.
I’m the guy on the shop floor in boots and overalls who gets given a tin of green paint and a triangular template then gets told to paint seven perpendicular red lines.

Fortunately, or maybe it’s unfortunately, I never get invited to those type of meetings.
I’m the guy on the shop floor in boots and overalls who gets given a tin of green paint and a triangular template then gets told to paint seven perpendicular red lines.

Nods in sympathy…

We all had a 3 hour skype call last month in which the only words used were “Oh person X has disconnected” “Hello, can you hear me?”

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYu_bGbZiiQ[/video]

I’m off work with the lurgy at the moment. A colleague is filling in for me. I’ve just got an email from him, “Do you have to deal with this crap every day? It’s driving me mad, I’m going round the bend.”

Yup.

bainbrge – Member
I thought it was useless until I did some courses which identified exactly what I did wrong in this sort of interaction, and why my actions caused negative reactions in people with a different style/approach, was quite an epiphany even though I’d always thought I was quite self aware.

Amen. I’d be very grateful to you, bainbrge, if you could tell me which ones helped?

Haha