Imagine asking a subject matter expert. What a concept!
As an IT guy, a chef, and a jack of all trades and master of few, that happens far more often than I would care to admit. I have literally had people tell me, "Well, yes you know more about [blank} than anyone I’ve ever met, but your analysis doesn’t {make line go up] so it must be wrong, because [line must always go up.}
Fucking Jack Welsh. I wish I could build a time machine and shoot that shortsighted asshole between the eyes just before he laid off his first GM employee in the name of imaginary profit.
I’m an Analyst. The amount of times I’ve had to tell people how their business works based on the data they had me analyse and prove their own preconceptions wrong…
“I was under the impression it should work that way”
Great! I’ll whip up a report showing just how often it doesn’t.
“Those are edge cases”
They make up about 35%
“Can we filter them from the final report?”
Then your figures will be way off and I get to justify the error when inevitably someone spots it and will blame the data for it. Fix the issue in the source, if you don’t want it screwing up your numbers.
That happens to men who are considered experts in their field as frequently, statistically probably more frequently. Men get asked more frequently, and are absolutely ignored by everyone that asks them constantly. I’m a jack of all trades, a master of few, and a doctor of some, and 95% of the time that I am asked for my analysis in business or politics I present a masters level thesis, and get paid a ridiculous amount of money to do so. So far, because my analysis has consistently claimed for 334/336 contracts that their proposed ideas would cost them money, they decided to pay my fee and ignore my thoroughly sourced analysis.
