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Idle Diffractions Blog
For those of us who are engineers, here is someone who would be the ideal boss. He had interesting, imperative projects (“please save the world, and hurry”), an infinite budget, literally (“bring the receipts for things over one million dollars”), and no schedule (as in, “simply finish before someone vaporizes the entire planet”). Face it--we love no schedule. Bissell didn’t meddle, he didn’t micromanage, and whatever you needed he would get you one. Simple example of the projects he had: they built a U2 in Burbank in 6-8 months (an entire U2, from scratch!), and an airbase was needed somewhere less public, so he built one… in the Mojave Desert.

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Paul F.
The more you read about the Skunk Works, the more incredible (and more unbelievable) what they accomplished was...

The modern aerospace industry (with some exceptions, of course) couldn't produce a 1/2" BOLT in less than 6 weeks, much less go from a couple blank pads of paper to a flying U-2 in eight months!

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cbelt3
Paul.. Racer could attest to this too, but it's the multiple layers of BS that keep the industry down and 'control' by politicians. "Black" projects ALWAYS come in early and under budget. I worked on a few. It was some heady stuff... nobody in your way, you can do the science and engineering without having to wait for 'stage gates' or 'status meetings'.

I worked with a guy who worked the Manhattan project.. it was much the same way. You needed something ? Boom.. you got it. No memos and justification. Just results.

In the end of the day bureacracy never adds value, and always adds delay. Take that idea to heart the next time you want to start a project. Don't start by showing powerpoints of reporting schedules and status report forms, project accounting hoo-ha, that sort of stuff. Start a project with Imagination.

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mattkime
i think this is why gov does tech so poorly.

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cbelt3
Paul.. Racer could attest to this too, but it's the multiple layers of BS that keep the industry down and 'control' by politicians. "Black" projects ALWAYS come in early and under budget. I worked on a few. It was some heady stuff... nobody in your way, you can do the science and engineering without having to wait for 'stage gates' or 'status meetings'.

I worked with a guy who worked the Manhattan project.. it was much the same way. You needed something ? Boom.. you got it. No memos and justification. Just results.

In the end of the day bureacracy never adds value, and always adds delay. Take that idea to heart the next time you want to start a project. Don't start by showing powerpoints of reporting schedules and status report forms, project accounting hoo-ha, that sort of stuff. Start a project with Imagination.