Kraut joke

Seen under ‘engineer jokes’ at Quora, but not really about engineers.

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A Mercedes engineer and a Jaguar engineer are arguing about who has the best quality control.

Mercedes engineer says let me tell you how good our quality control is, there’s a test we do. We’ll pull a random car off the production line lock a cat in the car and leave it overnight.

When we come back the next morning if the cat’s suffocated we know the seals on the doors and windows are good. We do this 50 times a year, in the last year only 1 cat has survived. Not perfect but that meets our standards.

Jaguar engineer laughs and says that proves nothing, we do the same test. Like you we pull a car off the line and lock a cat in the car overnight. When we come back next morning if the cat’s still in the car we know the doors and windows are closing properly. We do this 5 times a year, in the last year only 2 cats have escaped.

Not perfect but meets our standards.

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Kraut standards are OK for cars but terrible for life. British standards make far more sense for life.

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Later thought. The tech tyrant idea of quality control is perfectly Schrodinger. For the last few weeks Facebook has been mostly missing. Occasionally it will let me see part of the first item, then blank after that. Once a day or so, I can actually scroll through the whole page without blanks.

The Facebook engineer laughs and says that proves nothing, we do the same test. We pull several user experiences off the assembly line and put a cat in. If the experience simply disappears including the cat, we know the UI/UX is perfect. If it allows the user to see and pet the cat for a few seconds the UI/UX is imperfect, needs improvement. If it allows the user to sit there for a while and enjoy the cat, we destroy it instantly.