The Job From Hell

[Benjamin]

I worked for an aerospace company a few years back, writing software that was to be used to analyze data from an environmental space satellite system. It was by far the most poorly managed project I have ever worked on and the managers were the most arrogant people I have ever known. If you ever read the Dilbert cartoons, that’s exactly what it was like. After I finished my portion of the project, I went to work on another project. It’s been about two years since I left. I’ve kept in touch with a few people there and they told me they were behind schedule and over budget. I didn’t realize how bad things were, though. Today I saw a news article about it:

_A new generation of weather satellites being developed jointly by NASA, the Department of Defense and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has gone so far over budget that federal law requires a review of whether it is worth continuing. Even if the program does survive, the first spacecraft in the National Polar-Orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System can't be launched until at least 2010, and probably 2012.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060305/ap_ ... ying_blind

It’s a shame because it’s a worthwhile project and would have provided a lot of valuable information to universities and research facilities.