Negotiator Tales

Hello!



I started with the developer, now I head the department of software development and often participate in negotiations on various projects. For the most part, we are talking about implementation details, that is, it is not sales, but a discussion of projects with the customer. But still they have fun. For example, recently our man felt rather uncomfortable when one of the Skolkovo residents explained that the blockchain was not needed in the project. They looked at him askance, and the feeling was that he was convincing them that instead of newfangled electricity, everything could be decided on steam or horse-drawn power.



On the other hand, frequent negotiations mean many trips. Sometimes lucky. Here in Dubai, the weekend is Friday and Saturday, and Sunday is a working day. At the same time, flights on Sunday are expensive, and it is much more profitable to fly on Friday. The meeting about our developments in machine vision for drones was on Sunday, and when our negotiator flew in, the customer apologized and said that it wasn’t working, and had to be rescheduled for another couple of days. So he got an unplanned weekend. Well, then he naturally went to the beach and fell asleep. After which he told everyone that he had burned out at work. But this is not interesting: the fact is that another colleague of ours was just stuck in the middle of the tundra. This is approximately two hours by helicopter from Novy Urengoy, and, except for the helicopter, there is no transport there. He had a blizzard - and, as a result, bad weather. He arrived, examined the hoisting ropes and could not fly out. By the beginning of the story, I already sat there for two days. Weather forecasters promised to open the site only three days later. For entertainment, he had food in the dining room at the mine, table tennis with shift workers and SMS on the phone. So they complained to each other who and where were stuck.



DRPO - software development department, respectively. We have about 400 people in development, and we are committed to writing software for customers in Russia and abroad, doing a lot of innovation for the industry, see Industry 4.0 . Further tales from the life of people in our department. Part of the details has been changed so that it is impossible to identify specific customers.



On one project, there was a team from a bunch of people who went to talk about a solution to protect a network segment. The representative of the vendor then promised the customer a function to protect the content: this is when it is impossible to print documents from the workstation, send them or somehow get it. The customer caught fire and really wanted to. At the same time, nobody cared that you could take a picture of the screen, and this is much faster than hacking all the protection. When we left the meeting, the vendor admitted that this part of the solution is alpha, and it is still slightly damp. And at the sale stage, he showed a prototype, not a commercial solution. Well, here are some cartoons even show. Further, of course, they undertook to finish it under the client, but we got great experience working with the Hindu contractors of this vendor. They are wonderful. Like in jokes. We set the task, they read it a few hours later (taking into account the difference in time zones), did the function, we explained how to redo it. Repeat 200 times.



Of the fun fakaps was like that. The IT departments of the two banks were combined, and one was located in Moscow, the second beyond the Urals. Moscow "absorbed and merged" regional. The question was solved about how responsibilities will be shared and how to build a workflow. Some controversy arose, and the regional department suggested appointing a conference call for everyone. And for some reason they appointed for seven in the morning and refused to shift. Muscovites invited all the leaders to the meeting, including financiers. Very serious guys with boilers came to the VKS room more than all the equipment in the room. An order of magnitude. Everyone has it. They had gloomy, very gloomy faces, because they had never seen a city so early. Brief results of the meeting: the IT block on that side was gone. Emotional reasons were added to the rational ones, because nobody wanted to repeat the bullying. This is how expanding the composition of the meeting for the first time in my memory helped speed up the decision.



Bank Hackathon in Oman. We have very good face recognition solutions (you probably read either about the terminator cat , or about thieves in stores , or about the epic at a construction site with a balloon explosion ). We decided to make a service when a person photographs himself at home with a webcam or front-end phone with a document in his hands, then separately a document, then separately a large face. All this is processed, verified automatically with a good response from the neural network, sent for re-shooting if the network is poor or manual moderation if it is not reliable enough. Actually, there was nothing unusual in the hackathon itself, except for the fact that it was Oman. Five people arrived in a group, they gave everyone the usual numbers, but the first on the list allocated a family suite. The idea of ​​a family in Oman is different. The room has three bedrooms, three bathrooms, a large living room and a room for servants. Usually there is still a built-in chapel, but it was a European room in a European hotel (even a steak was served), so the chapel was external. Near the hotel was a halal McDonalds with very spicy food and a warning that the Europeans would be hurt twice. The hackathon itself began with a discussion of the conditions. Then the people went to pray - men separately, women separately. Then I had to sit and write. Our team went to the hotel, closed in this huge living room and set up a headquarters in it. There was enough space for all five with laptops, and snacks were arranged on the table nearby - they were regularly worn by hotel staff. They did not notice how the day, night, the next day passed. The guys just did not go out of this room. Then the day came when it was necessary to show the solution. Let's go to the bank. We thought of everything except the demonstration on the main stage. They could not photograph a person due to spotlights. I had to step aside. But we got forgiven for this, as a result, we still got a contract at the bank. They say that this accommodation was "for guests", and by the time of delivery, the conditions will be the same as for "dear guests". I suspect that there will be every chance to get lost in the room and drown in the carpet.



But if you think that we only fly to other countries and sell Russian IT there, drinking juice in sun loungers, then this is not so. More precisely, this is so, but it happens less often than we would like. More common are quite Russian tasks. For example, we drove our automatic diagnostic terminal (a tool for automating pre - shift examinations at remote sites and before the shift for drivers, pilots, military and NPP operators). They showed it a lot where, and now the moment came when it was necessary to put it on a very prestigious exhibition in Moscow. And he comes from another prestigious exhibition outside the Russian Federation in three days. And half the way, it was driven by domestic movers. These got especially stubborn: it feels like they sanded it with sandpaper on the road. It was urgent to repaint. The time was only to do it yourself in the office. We have a special area for testing our not the safest equipment on the ground floor. There used to be a warehouse. Now we fenced off a zone of boxes there, changed our jackets and ties for chemical protection suits (more precisely, dust protection) and robes, and began to paint. They did the task, although they took a fire extinguisher with them to work, and from the person responsible for fire safety just epic luli flew to the whole team. But the man understands: he says, there was a choice to give out the lyuley right in the middle of the process or wait 20 minutes on the camcorder and with the fighters in the corners of the basement and let us finish the job. Therefore, the next time when it was necessary to paint 26 blue “coffins” from the factory, which were slightly delayed on the road, in the company owner’s signature colors, we already did everything wisely. Perhaps this is just what the project manager in Russia should do.





An elevator was planned behind the fence for automated parking machines, but due to the development of car sharing, the load on our parking lot decreased, and so far we have slowed down the project. The arrow is now just four meters down.



Or here’s another exhibition, we’re driving an automatic key keeper there, which is equipped with a breathalyzer. It turns out that there is only one girl going there, a sales manager. She and the device. The movers hit the piece of iron along the road, despite the fact that we wrapped it in a bump, sawn and cardboard. I just cracked the screen, I suspect vibration and violation of the temperature regime. And this is important, because she has control from the sensor. Waiting for a new week. The current president of the Russian Federation walks at the exhibition and is eyeing innovation. This immediately gives +20 to my colleague's engineering skills, and she, using a screwdriver, a pen cap, Vatsap and a second-line support engineer, manages to fix the screen: the port is broken there, and it is possible to find the position in which it works.







Nearby in the nearest stationery a USB mouse is bought, which made 95th year, judging by the design. In general, we showed innovative products and made some conclusions, then to build processes on their basis and adhere to them. But I am sure that this is not the last such case.



By the way, about support. They introduced iron once in the production. From there, constant complaints that the thing freezes. We can’t reproduce it remotely. We are going to the object. It looks like this: a plant worker is standing near the screen. They deployed a web-based management interface on IE on an old computer (in fact, anyone came up, so they put it cheaper on the workshop). A man takes aim at the button with the mouse, clicks on it, and waits for the result. A delay of about three seconds. After about two seconds, he begins to insanely hammer Enter, and does it about 20 times, so that it definitely gets to the computer. IE has a deep technological feature about parallelizing processes. In general, IE has many deep technological features, and as a result, after all this, the system hangs. For obvious reasons, the tester could not repeat this, because he did not represent the user's logic. The user was taught to wait another second after the first press. It has stopped hanging. That was a couple of years ago - then we realized that we needed to create a beautiful interface with a bunch of intermediate statuses: to be clear, respond to clicks and immediately change something, without waiting for the return package (at least it showed the load) and so on. Now, in general, we first draw the prototypes of the interface before implementation, show everything in steps to the customer, he nods. Then they created an internal framework for the exchange of experience - what happens in what conditions in production.



Another example of a case from the knowledge base: in the production is an automated process control system that works on a database. The database is spinning on hard drives. In the test procedure and TK, it was assumed that the complex could be disconnected due to the loss of the power beam from the city, and we closed its UPS. But what was not supposed in the methodology was the fact that a plant employee could maliciously turn it off directly from the UPS. Usually, users do something out of stupidity, less often - purposefully, to circumvent any limitations of the system. And then there was a real sabotage. At the factory, security talked with this person, and we added malicious tests to the framework. It works like this: there are the usual testing methods, and there are output tests on real cases from factories and other implementations.



They also talked about “beautifully screwed up” - they automated the scanning of documents in St. Petersburg, where people bring papers, they must be quickly recognized and put the results in XML next to the source. There was a software failure due to our fault (I can not disclose details at the request of security personnel). It was almost like iron was falling asleep on one of the servers, and the balancer began to overwrite over another fileshary. Severity of seven thousand files with documents. It was necessary to take all the papers, scan, recognize again and verify. The event is tied to dates, so if you go out in 72 hours, there will be a scandal. As a result, we spent the whole development sitting all night and doing paperwork. They did everything in a day, but people fell asleep on the keyboard.



We are preparing a demonstration of the device - specifically our smart helmet for industrialists. The pavilion is 20x20 meters, there is something like an obstacle course, a kind of piece of production with different problem areas. Our task is to show how the helmet works in practice. It is necessary to jump, fall, call for help, run away from the loader, go into dangerous areas and generally depict the best situations from the life of the workshop. And then it suddenly became clear that there were no installers at the site (not ours). And there it was necessary to hang part of the devices at a height of four meters with a stepladder. In the end, they did everything except this part. The developer and I come in the morning to accept the pavilion and understand that now we will have to take off our ties and remember our youth. A safety harness came in handy in the trunk, a house was built in the country, so it remained. It took about three hours. But the demonstration was a great success. By the way, about the developer: Aleksey became a team lead just because he was preparing an analysis of all the vendors on the market before. And as a result of the analysis, I realized that something was missing in the software. And you can do better. As a result, he asked for iron for a prototype, assembled some kind of Frankenstein monster with raw software, but he proved that all this can work.



Another demonstration was not so successful. They flew to Murmansk to show a warning system of the collision of heavy special equipment on people. There they immediately told us that they would not be allowed to power from the on-board network, so we needed batteries. For half a day, we bought a motorcycle (about five kilograms two pieces, the first ones caught) and loaded them in Moscow. Carried with hand luggage. And in Murmansk itself it was -19 at that moment. And the batteries died. Both. And the customer has exactly one hour. They could not show in practice.



Now about heavy metallurgy. They also needed a smart helmet. We had three meetings, and after each, negotiations continue until late at night. The third meeting was exactly five in the morning. We got up barely. My colleague Jura managed to run ten kilometers to the stand and be there on time. He is from the Airborne Forces, he says, training is unique. The customer then asked why the helmet was shown, but not a word about the tests of the cyborg.



A colleague had some cool acceptance tests, when 15 people were sitting in one room, silently looked at a blank screen and were silent. The cornerstone in this test was the issue of performance. The loading operation had to be carried out in certain standards. Files for processing and creating a sample of a very large volume. And so they put a stopwatch in front of the screen and waited for everything to fall. But it did not fall and did not fall. The voltage increased to the last, until the service worked.



But let's get back to the negotiations. Another trick: there was a project in the USA, it was necessary to get up at three in the morning at a project meeting once a week, say “Hello!” And keep silent until the end of the meeting. The customer on their side was very worried about the deadlines and even asked us to make sure that no one had holidays until the end of the project. Then it turned out that people work for him exactly until 18:00 and then they just get up and leave, even if they really need to. It was understandable and predictable, but somewhat strange with such an inequality - we were pulled at night and without holidays, and they just considered 18:00 for the law of nature.



Another comrade left the negotiations with torn pants, then sewn up in the toilet in the office. This served as an inexhaustible source of jokes. In fact, a hefty flipchart was dropped on his back, and he tucked his trousers in a corner.



Once we came to the production of furniture for a meeting. The customer’s manager was late, and we were offered to go to the zoo. It turned out that in the production there is a zoo with live deer, which can be fed by hand. This is one of the few cases when we just wanted the customer to be a little late.



On our past business cards, shurikens were painted with a background picture. And here we come to the customer, and a katana hangs on his wall. We exchange business cards, and here he recognizes soul mates in us and half an hour tells the story of the appearance of the ninja. Exciting and interesting. What you will not find out in the negotiations about ACS TP.



Or here it was necessary to catch a meeting at the Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant. On that day, the entire area was in dead traffic jams. And this same nuclear power plant is located in the city of Sosnovy Bor on the shores of the Gulf of Finland. And it turned out that the fastest way at that time was to get to this place by hydrofoil. And in the office in accounting did not understand with this. The fact is that when you go to Peterhof on this ship, you still need to buy a ticket for entering the park. So they paid 800 rubles out of 1000 for a ticket, and 200 - in no way. The most annoying is that Peterhof was never seen.



After negotiations, they regularly lock us in buildings. The first case was in the business center, in the evening the team arrived, mounted the equipment for display on the tests, they wanted to leave. At this moment, the developer decided to roll the latest update, and he swore and swore that there were no special changes. In general, went down at one in the morning. And fell into the clutches of the security service. They led into a secret room without windows and doors. They demanded a passport, to admit how they entered the building at night and what they did. From our side it looked like this: night, call."We were given the right to one call, take us away from here, we are still at the installation." I had to wake the leader from the customer, got it. It turned out that for night work during the week it is necessary to draw up papers, and they are separate from the usual passes during the day.



Once forgot the developer at the warehouse of scanners . There is a building in which stables were once on the ground floor. They were remade into offices, such wide arched openings, doors turned out. Well, I didn’t catch the phone below these stables. They locked a man there for the night. In general, he wrote an SMS and threw the phone in a packet with a tied wire out through the ventilation window. There, the device caught the network and sent a message.



And finally: at one of the exhibitions there was a cool case about Habr. A man came up who owns a bunch of companies in Europe, we remotely know him, perhaps, only from Forbes lists. He says, they say, men, I’ve translated your article about one of the solutions here. And what can you say about another manufacturer,% companyname%? We: "Well, this is our personal opinion, but the decision for Russia is ridiculous, does not take into account the realities at all." He said: "Oh, sorry." We told him: “Have you already purchased it?” He: “Yeah, just not the product, but the whole company ...”.

References

• Video analytics of our development .
• An epic case about a cat-terminator .
• Clever housekeeper .
• Examples of game from the “come to rescue” orders .
• . .
• — SStrelkov@croc.ru.