“Oh, and one more thing…’The team is “very confident” about getting the expansion done for September 5th.’ That doesn’t sound good to me. That means there’s a possibility they wont.”
“The word is positive? THAT MEANS DISASTER!”
Bio Break
“Oh, and one more thing…’The team is “very confident” about getting the expansion done for September 5th.’ That doesn’t sound good to me. That means there’s a possibility they wont.”
“The word is positive? THAT MEANS DISASTER!”
They should have said that “The team is very confident that the expansion will not be done before the 5th of September”.
massively is slowing (well not even that slowly) sliding into trollfest territory (think mmorpg.com)
the comments on TSW articles are shocking…
Maybe he’s looking for a double negative to feel better. Like, “The team is not not confident that the expansion will not not be done before the fifth of September.
I must admit I’ve had the same feeling about it.
When I read “we are very confident we’ll be on time”, I hear “we are scared as Death to be late”…
Not saying anything would have been less anxiogen for me. No news, good news…
Clearly you have never managed a software development project. Too often, in my experience, “very confident” is a step down from “on track” and means the team in question has hit some sort of problem, but they don’t want the project manager getting into the details of their problem or exactly how far it has caused them to get off schedule. You don’t flag that feature yellow on the status dashboard as being at risk, but you certainly start keeping an eye on it.
Software devs, especially young software devs, are often “very confident” that they can resolve any outstanding issues right up to the point of no return. I was on a team once that was “very confident” that we could resolve our final outstanding issue in two weeks, and remained so for six full months until it was actually solved. “Very confident” practically means “behind schedule” in that environment.
That said, when the phrase is used for public consumption, I don’t think it should cause the same level of alarm. But when you’ve heard that phrase enough, it is hard not to assume the worse.
I agree with Wilhelm — the term “confidence” means something a bit less than actual confidence and comes across sounding like a hedge (as if they were unwilling to fully commit to anything but wanted to make it sound as if they were doing so anyway, at least to laypeople). But guessing how it was meant by the interviewee is sort of an exercise in futility. It could have been throwaway PR speak. People freak out over anything.
“Very confident” from a junior techie – project could be in almost any state, he’s not experienced enough to realise what could or could not go wrong.
“Very confident” from a senior techie – that’s excellent, senior technical people are the most jaded and cynical beings on the planet with an amazing talent for conjuring up disaster scenarios. If we’re confident, then only an act of [insert deity] can prevent success.
“Very confident” from a project manager – danger, Will Robinson, danger! These are weasel words that almost certainly mean “we’re up shit creek but I haven’t grown a big enough pair to report my project as red yet”
“Very confident” from a community rep – give the poor guy a break, he’s a liberal arts graduate who is just trying to find words that imply confidence in a successful delivery
It came off as a very positive answer when I heard it, but in any case, it’s the natural state of the Massively commenter to hear good news and assume the worst.
@Syp – Well, that is a key factor, nobody reading the article heard it the way you did. They only saw it there in quotes. And those quotes, the way you injected them there mid-sentence without attributing them to any individual, could mean that you were repeating exactly what somebody said, or could be seen as Justin making ironic air quotes around a dubious statement.
I swear, the written language is so imprecise I am surprised that the I am surprised that the internet works at all. Sometimes ambiguity helps… but not as often as it used to I fear.
Anyway, you are correct. No matter how you presented it, somebody would have taken it as bad news. I think that is a sign of success on the internet, that your comment section has become so bad that it is not worth reading any more. The pros pretty much stop reading them at that point I hear, and just let some intern moderate the worst stuff.