I worked for 27 years as a software engineer. During that time our company never delivered on or before deadline.
Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hofstadter's_law
I saw about 10 years of software engineering myself. This certainly always held true for our teams.
I was once tasked with coming up with a schedule for a task. I came up with 1500 hours using the tools we were supposed to use to do schedules. One of the hardware guys, who liked to dabble in software, looked at my schedule and claimed he could do it in half the time. I refused to shorten my schedule and was taken off the project. My replacement came up with 1200 hours. When the job was done, it took 1800 hours.
Nobody would complain about a reasonable delay for an ASIC preorder I guess, since it seems to be the nature of this game.
I have experienced development in big scale (>200ppl) and you CAN deliver in time.
It's hard, you need skilled devs and very good managers, then things can work out - but I have to admit the average project is late.
However I could never imagine that some from the management or marketing would ever drop statements like
'under promise, over delivery'
'margins upon margins upon margin'
as well as claiming all the time 'on track' and then in the very last days becoming silent
Not even in case it's in store, because there's no reason to advertise sth. for ex like a TV with 100hz, when it's actually 133hz (for the same money).
Additionally there's no valuable info in the last update.
Hope you get an idea now why customers are complaining.
Where are all the FANBOYS now?
?
yes, indeed weird?