我工作中最糟的一天

一次一个关键客户遇到了一个性能问题，我公司组建了一个小组飞过去解决问题。我是其中一员，没想到这一天是我工作中最最糟糕的一天。

A key customer was having a performance problem and our company hadassembled a team to fly down and work on it. I was part of thatteam and this was going to turn into my worst day at work– ever.

This customer had developed their application onour proprietary operating system and it worked great. However, wehad recently shipped a UNIX OS on that same hardware and thecustomer had ported their application to it and itran as slow as mud.

The way they saw it: Same hardware, same application, different OS,bad performance. This must be the vendor’s fault. The way we sawit: Applications ported to new operating systemsoften have performance problems in the same waya human from Earth would have towork extra hard to make it on a different planet.

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So we arrived onsite and the initial one hour meetingwith Mr. Big Cheese and his henchmen was deeplyunpleasant and accusatory. Then we spent the rest of the day in aconference room logged in to the test system looking for somesolution. At no time were we ever left alone. There was always atleast one of his henchmen there asking us what wewere doing and often unhelpfully commenting on our efforts: “Wealready tried that.”, “Anyone can see that this is not theproblem.”, and “You’re wasting time.”

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As the day drew to a close we had a final meeting with Mr. BigCheese and he was not interested in what littleperformance-enhancing crumbs we had found. He used that hour toimply we were all idiots and demand that our company send down areal “UNIX kernel hacker”. Over and over, he made it clear thatonly a “UNIX kernel hacker” could solve this problem. Wewere not that, so he told us to go.

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This company had made two key mistakes with us: One: They werejerks to the people who had come to help them. So we did what wewere required to do, but not what we could have done if we wantedto call in favors, bend rules, and do heroic things. Be nice to thepeople who come to help you, even if they are idiots. Why? Becausethey go back to that company and advocate foryou and spread the word that youare worthy of heroic, rule-bending efforts. Two: They never left usalone. We were never free to work as a group for fear that we’d sayor do something stupid. If experts fly in, give them private spaceto call other experts at headquarters and talk amongst themselves.They will get to any possible solution much faster.

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Weleft at the end of the day as a group and walked to nearbyrestaurant. We ordered a round of beers. When they came, I pickedup my glass and chugged the whole beer in a few seconds, somethingI’d not done since my college days.

Everyone was a little shocked. I set the glassdown and slyly said: “Itdoesn’t do you any f#@king good in the glass.” That brokethe ice and to this day we laugh, and laugh, and laugh about whata really horrible day that was and the fact thatwe are not, and never will be, “UNIX kernel hackers”.

Alcohol is not a solution to man’s problems, but laughter is.

原文链接：http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_c899fc000102uxiu.html

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