Monday 24 August 2009

Dammit Jim! I'm a Hardware Engineer not a miracle worker!

I really enjoy working with people from different cultures and countries. Not only does it widen my horizons but also affords the opportunity to meet new people with very different points of view.

However there are some truths that are universal.

I was dealing with a desktop machine that had lost its networking capability. A pretty easy fix...just need to install a new step card and install the drivers. This card was not on the NT4 HCL (hardware compatibility list) and therefore the device drivers had to be installed by hand.

As I was several thousands of miles distant from the machine I needed to engage with the local hardware engineers. So I call them and state what the issue was and what I needed to have done. Which was really to install the step card and put a floppy (install disk) in the disk drive.

They were more than happy to do the install. No problems. Until I came to the part about the floppy.

'Sorry but we are hardware engineers. We don't 'do' software'.

Picking myself up off the ground after hearing this, I replied that that was a very interesting answer and that while yes indeed they were hardware engineers driver installs are a part and parcel of the job.

Much too-ing and fro-ing ensued regarding this. The engineers were resolute that they should not be installing any software or middleware or any other kind of ware.

Eventually the end user herself installed the entire thing including drivers in about ten minutes.

Last I heard there were two hardware engineers looking for work. They did not realise that the machine they needed to fix was actually their bosses. Oppps!

Lessons learnt – well for the hardware engineers I'd say the top one is to find out who has a problem before playing games.

3 comments:

Maneesh Kalra said...
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Maneesh Kalra said...
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