I once worked in a company where one of the teams was working on a large database indexing routine for a client.
The whole thing took a couple of seconds to run, even with a live data set, which was perceived by the account manager as "too fast" - basically not worth the amount the customer was paying as it was seen as doing too little, so a 30 second delay was implemented in the routine. Did nothing, just waited 30 seconds. Account manager happy, software delivered, client happy.
A couple of years later one of the team, now a contractor was asked to help the client optimise the system as with the increased data volumes the indexing routine was now taking closer to a minute to run.
I don't even want to think what he charged them for the 30 second performance improvement he managed...
I once worked in a company where one of the teams was working on a large database indexing routine for a client.
The whole thing took a couple of seconds to run, even with a live data set, which was perceived by the account manager as "too fast" - basically not worth the amount the customer was paying as it was seen as doing too little, so a 30 second delay was implemented in the routine. Did nothing, just waited 30 seconds. Account manager happy, software delivered, client happy.
A couple of years later one of the team, now a contractor was asked to help the client optimise the system as with the increased data volumes the indexing routine was now taking closer to a minute to run.
I don't even want to think what he charged them for the 30 second performance improvement he managed...