S.O.N.A.I.S. Comic Archive

Adil: I still don't get why it is… unirectal to train a model on demo material.
Max: Unethical! It's like giving students both exam questions and answers in advance of a test. They will pass with flying colors, but without validation of whether they can solve other problems.

Max: It can be used as sanity check. If the system cannot even reproduce the training material, then perhaps the network is too limited for the task, but training metrics should already reveal such problems.
Adil: This is sounding like Chinese to me. I guess I should stick to marketing.

Max: It's not bad to get outside of your comfort zone and learn new things.
Adil: … and actually know what I'm talking about when doing a sales pitch? That would be insane!
Max: Yes, it might be a world first.

Caption: The search for a QA engineer…
Steve: How would you go about testing robustness of such object category recognition system?
Candidate: Erm, I would hit it with a hammer.
Steve: I don't believe that's the kind of robustness we're looking for…

Caption: Another candidate…
Heidi: Would you trust a developer saying their code has no bugs?
Candidate: Heck yeah, less work for me!
Heidi: You haven't really read the job description, have you?

Steve: This is exhausting. It's as if we are only attracting all the lunatics with this vacancy of ours.
Heidi: That's not a problem as such. We just need the right kind of lunatic.

Caption: Another QA engineer candidate…
Max: Wow, you prepared a whole test plan in just a few minutes and it covers all core features.
Candidate: I would add some extra tests if I had more time, but I feel this is the most important part.

Steve, Heidi and Max are deliberating.
Max: He's good.
Steve: But, he's Chinese!
Max: Only his parents are, and why would that be a problem?
Steve: Have you ever believed a “QC Passed” sticker on a Chinese product? And, maybe he's a spy!

Heidi: That's a bit short-sighted. China also produces quality, especially these days.
Max: His parents left China because they liked it better here — unlikely that their son became a spy. Just look at his test scores!
Steve: OK, I guess the evidence looks good, but I still have my reservations…

Setting: lunch area.
Alana: Team, let's welcome Zhang Yu as our new colleague. He will focus on QA and process management, but given our flexibility requirements, he'll also help with development.
Zhang: Hi everyone.
Adil: Hi, Zhang. So, you will keep me from doing ‘creative’ things on the website and demos?

Zhang: You can still try, but it will have to get through approval now.
Alana: If you try to circumvent approval, we might seek inspiration in those Quake exit prompts for appropriate countermeasures.
Adil: I'm sure that is uneti… utethinal…

Max: Someday he will learn to pronounce “unethical.” Would you fancy a tour of the office?
Zhang: Sure, I'd love to.
Max: Let's start with the workshop, it has the coolest stuff.