Re: Jobs at Lockheed Martin

[Jerry Petrey <jdpetreyNOSPAM@west.raytheon.com>]

Ted Dennison wrote:
> 
> In article <39D36ED9.82FB5D14@lmco.com>,
>   William Dale <william.dale.jr@lmco.com> wrote:
> > Not sure where you are located but there is no interest in Ada at LM
> > Mussels and Space, Sunnyvale. THAAD is converting all of its Missile
> > Ada code to C++.   I work on the only piece of new Ada being done
> > here.
> 
> Hmmm. A classic sign of stupid management. The nice thing about Ada
> projects is that idiot managers don't like them, so you don't work under
> as many of them. :-)
> 
> I was in a similar situation in a (thankfully small) group in Orlando a
> few years back. They actually had an entire *new* working commercial
> engine controller done in Ada that they converted to C++ on their own
> dime. Apparently the manager in charge decided Ada wasn't fashionable
> enough. Why a customer would care what language their COTS engine
> controler was written in (as long as it performs to spec) was never
> explained.
> 
> I was actually present in the lab (working on my Ada project) when a
> customer from India was being shown around. When the customer was told
> about the porting effort, he incrediously asked why we would want to do
> such a thing. The answer the manager gave him was, "that's what our
> customers want." (told *to* a customer). I had to bite my lip so hard it
> bled. :-)
> 
> Of course that particular manager was notoriously incompetent. The
> employees would actually take *turns* working for him, as no one could
> stand him for more than a few months. I content myself by thinking that
> if he wasn't ruining our business he might be off piloting a supertanker
> somewhere. :-)
> 
> --
> T.E.D.
> 
> http://www.telepath.com/~dennison/Ted/TED.html
> 
> Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
> Before you buy.


I worked on that project with T.E.D. (in fact I had an article in
"Embedded Systems
Programming" about it) before it was converted to C++.  T.E.D. is right
about the 
management.  It was amazing they chose Ada in the first place.  I
remember once
when the built in test that I wrote kept showing an error with the
EEPROM, they
insisted I comment it out so the customer would not see it.  Later the
CPU board
maker contacted us to say we had a board with a bad EEPROM (part of a
batch of bad
ones they got from their supplier).

Where so many managers like this come from I'll never know.

Jerry

-- 
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-- Jerry Petrey                                                
-- Senior Principal Systems Engineer - Member Team Ada & Team Forth
-- Raytheon Missile Systems 
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