“What are you? Mr. Scott?”
“Excuse me?” I reply. Did he just compare me to Scotty?
“You scheduled your last few changes for way more time than you needed.”
“Yeah, I guess so.” So what? I’m busy here.
“Didn’t you ever watch Star Trek, where Scotty would tell Kirk that a fix would take a day and he’d do it in an hour?”
“Yeah, underpromise and overdeliver…”
“Wouldn’t it just be easier to get a 30 minute outage instead of always asking for two hours?”
“Sure, but if things go wrong I’ll need that whole two hours to fix them again. If you want to compare me to Mr. Scott that’s fine, but the difference is that Mr. Scott was usually starting with something that was in a known state: broken. Me? I’ve got twice the work. I’m breaking things, hoping they break the way I think they will, and then fixing them again. Apples and oranges.”
“Are you saying you’re better than Mr. Scott?”
“I think a better comparison would be developers and Romulans, both looking to destroy my ship.”