Did You Know -

That 30% Of Start-Up Businesses Go Bust?

Conrad was curious about a story I read on Quora, and checked on the statistics, because that's the kind of hair-splitting pedant I am.  

     So, let me recount you a tale from Quora about a programmer who was working at a business venture which he didn't name, and was quite vague about.  Conrad is guessing a Non-Disclosure Agreement is lurking in the background somewhere, not to mention sharp-eyed and -eared lawyers eager to make a killing.  Art!

     This, apparently, is computer code.  Personally, it makes as much sense as hieroglyphics (because I can make a fair stab at Greek) so I'll just take it as read that it is, indeed, code.  Bad code.  Code with bugs in.

     You see, Original Poster was very scathing about the company he was working for.  There were five major problems.

BUGS IN THE CODE: OP spent twelve hours a day tracking down bugs in the software and eliminating them, getting done with as many as two per day.  This did not please his boss, because the time spent meant it was a manifestation of another problem -

BADLY-WRITTEN PROGRAMS: The software was so poorly crafted that it needed a mercy killing and being re-written from scratch.  Obviously - of course! - OP's boss didn't want to hear this as it would mean more delays and expense.

CREAKY HARDWARE: The people designing the actual physical system - which OP was careful not to identify - had absolutely no background experience or practice with this hardware.  Thus, it only operated at 10% of the required speed and could only be got up to 20% at best.

'EXPERT' CONSULTANTS: They were hired to jazz up the company website, which, according to OP, meant creating unreadable fonts at vast expense.  Art!

MANGLEMENT: Not stated in the post, this is implicit thanks to the above.  Decent management would have tried to resolve the problems long before they got to this state.  On the other hand, incompetents happy to get a big fat salary and blame others for the poor state of affairs, would just fire people at random for 'not being part of the solution' or 'anti-team player' or 'wears the wrong kind of socks'.

     Things came to a head when Idiot Boss, who had long disliked OP, abruptly fired him when on a remote meeting.  OP probably ruined IB's day by laughing out loud at him, because, as he so accurately said, the bugs remained in the code, they weren't going to go away, miraculously get better or become inconsequential.  Not even if IB crossed all his fingers and toes.  Prior to this, OP had expressed to IB's boss how unhappy he was at the company, so this was probably a smart move on his part.

     The postscript that OP added was that, eighteen months after he'd been fired, the company was still in a state of complete meltdown.  They had NO finished product to sell or even promote - let me guess, none of the problems above had been addressed, much less solved?  Plus, they had been funded by venture capital to the tune of $130 million, most of which they had burned through by the time OP posted.     Make no mistake, this is a colossal failure; a company in this kind of straits would be desperate to get a product out, even if it doesn't work as advertised, because otherwise investors will pull the plug.  Art!

     Also, the salespeople will have been talking the product up a storm and - there's nothing to sell.  Here's guessing this company became one of the 30%.

Conrad Is Satirical

You might not know this if all you've ever seen of Ruffia is Moscow and Saint Petersburg, but barring those two metropoli and a few other cities, most of Ruffia looks like a third world country - after suffering a zombie apocalypse and a nuclear attack.  Art!

     This is a Finnish map of Finland, or 'Suomi' to them.  That area in red limned with a grey line is Karelia, which the Sinisters occupied after the Second Unpleasantness.  The Finns had to move 400,000 people out of it, because none of them wanted to live under Sinister rule.

     Do they want it back?  Do they Dog Buns!  Under the Sinisters and the Ruffians it's an impoverished backwater completely undeveloped since 1944.  Art!

     That's one of the houses the Ruffians are proud of.  No running water, electricity or indoor toilets.

     ANYWAY Your Humble Scribe, never one to pass up an opportunity to tweak Putin's short yet sensitive tail, commented on this picture of a provincial Ruffian street - Art!

     "Finally, corruption and lack of investment caught up with the Moscow suburbs"

     Conrad has no idea where this is, but note the houses to starboard that appear to be sinking.  And the three traffic bollards in the middle of the <ahem> 'road'.  There are telegraph poles to port, so these people may even have electricity!  And inside toilets!  No battling with spiders in the dunny out back.

Conrad Is Lyrical

No!  No need for musicians and bands and singers to duck and cover, this is nothing to do with A Little Musical Critique.  Perhaps I should have put 'waxes' lyrical, as we are going to have another BBC Astronomy photograph, which showcases the cosmos.  Art!

Courtesy Ethan Chapell

     Yes, that is Mars. And yes, that's the Moon.  The latter passed in front of the former, allowing the photographer to acquire this shot, which must have taken some painstaking astrophysics calculations, and a powerful telescope.  Love that worn-down look the Moon is wearing.  Constant bombardment from space over billions of years means that the mountain ranges and crater rims on our satellite are all very eroded; none of the harsh, jagged outlines so beloved of sci-fi artists from the Thirties onward.  Sorry, chaps.

"City In The Sky"

Ace (and Douglas) are en route to An Important Meeting.

The twilight gloom had been held at bay by banks of solar battery-powered lights in the central atrium of Lichfield, where chairs of dull plastic or woven wicker and bamboo were laid out in a semi-circle.  A small table stood alone facing the chairs, most of which were now occupied.  Ace and Douglas found vacant places and sat.  Gradually all the places were taken, at which point a small figure wearing a familiar hat stood up and trotted to the centre of the impromptu lecture theatre, politely tipping his brim to those assembled before placing a laptop on the table, plugging it in to a set of wires.

     ‘Pleased to meet you all,’ he announced.  ‘I’m Doctor John Smith, better known simply as “the Doctor”.  He indicated the portable computer.  ‘I’ve got a presentation to show you.  If you have any input, don’t worry about interrupting,’ and he brandished a scavenger microphone.  ‘What I have to show you is going to be very disturbing, I make no apologies for that.  It may raise more questions than answers, and it demonstrates that your position here is very, very precarious.’

     A whisper of conversation went around the massed audience.  At the press of a button, a projection of Earth’s nothern hemisphere sprang to life on the wall of the atrium’s common room.

      Our favourite Gallifreyan is not beyond a little grandstanding, is he?

Finally -

Time is marching on, so I'd better re-post the daily blogs, find out what my schedule for next week is and box up the Sunday Stew.