this post was submitted on 12 Sep 2024
588 points (97.6% liked)

Science Memes

10853 readers
3270 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.



Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.



Research Committee

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (3 children)

It doesn't have to be like that. Sure, context is important, but parroting phrases or other crap that the client has in the RFP is bullshit. They don't want you blowing smoke up their ass, they want a technically sound product that addresses the exact issues they asked you to address. They also want you to show them how you're going to get there, and achieve the objectives they set out.

I realize you're on the tech side; I'm just venting my frustrations with the corporate/PM spheres.

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

I thankfully don't have to deal with RFPs anymore, but when I did, I'd either go line-by-line or ignore the prospect's text entirely. There is an in-between, but it's wishy-washy crowd-pleasing nonsense, and even the people entrenched in those bureaucracies see straight through it.

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

That, and parroting makes it sound like you don't know what they want, or that you're stupid, and the best that you could come up with is their own text with slight variation

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

Well, actually you're kind of wrong, at least in some contexts.

So I'm not sure, how that works in other countries, but here in Germany, a large bid for some public contact has to parrot the requirements. The process includes a bloke essentially ticking all of the boxes in their request, and if you say (just for example) "we will deploy that in our k8s cluster" but they require a cloud ready solution, the bloke will not tick the box. Yes, that's incredibly stupid.

Apart from that, who reads the bid texts? Not technical people, but bean counters and MBAs. The technical people on the other side are only asked for comment, they have no say.

I wish you would be right, but in a world full of people desperately trying to justify their existence, fluff is essential.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I work in IT, and by now, every single 3-letter-abbreviation makes my eyelid twitch.

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

My industry is three-letter-acronym (TLA) heavy