[dreen]

I feel Star Trek is based on an engineering environment found most commonly on places like submarines. There certain elements of this environment may be needed, because lives depend on it. A different kind of environment is needed for a company making apps for instance. If there is one thing I notied from bad tech directors is that sometimes their delusions of grandure really do seem like they think they're running a submarine or a large ship.

[SketchySeaBeast]

No one has to see the boring stuff, where Scotty spends the next two weeks AFTER the emergency rewiring things to work right again, or the month they spend in dry-dock replacing burnt out parts. I can only image how the C-suite would feel if they were told they have to stop development on the project for six months to perform all the fixes and maintenance their demands for heroics cost them.

[dreen]

True, which is why usually rewrites are a bad idea if we're talking about a project with a team and a schedule. Either way I think Star Trek shows starship captains actually listen to their senior staff, which makes sense in any environment.

[bcoates]

I mean, who wants to feel like they work at a bullshit job where nothing matters? If you can sell putting on a show of dramatic urgency at any level you'll find lots of buyers (at least until the disillusionment sets in)

[PaulHoule]

It's also a work of fiction where Spock says "we have a 13.653% chance of surviving this" but they always survive. That is, it is driven by pataphysics instead of physics, metaphysics, etc, or like looking at Batman or The Punisher for advice as to how to fight crime.

(I do wish Spock had been a Bayesian and said something like "the probability of us surviving is β(17,82)" since you kinda need error bars for your probability estimates if you are putting them to work.)

[jareklupinski]

I always felt that this is just because TV shows (and any story, really) happens to follow the winners of these improbabilities :)

The first or second crews to have been wiped out (even if their chances of survival were higher) would have made for a much shorter story.

[icedchai]

The dramatic urgency doesn't fool everyone. Your smarter people will see through it, then you have another set of problems on your hands when they all leave.

[dreen]

It's also a great way to ruin trust within an organisation, if such urgency is too often used without merit.

[stantaylor]

That was my thought, too. The real problem here is that the CEOs making these unreasonable ultimatums think that the fate of the galaxy is at stake when in fact, the company will just make a little less money or something.