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A nationally known outdoor equipment company contacted me about helping them solve a problem. They use handheld wireless point-of-sale terminals, and they were having problems with intermittent performance.
I went to a meeting with several of their staff from IT and sales management. Around the table in the conference room, they described the problem to me. In a few minutes, I was reasonably sure that the problem was on the payment processing company’s side, and not at the store level. Of course, the payment processing company had already said that no one else was experiencing the problem.
I was mentally laying out the series of tests I’d need to perform when the IT Director said, “I think it’s probably got something to do with TLS latency. Are you familiar with TLS?”
I smiled and said, “I work with the RFCs all the time. If testing indicates that the problem is related to Transport Layer Security, I’ll be an expert on TLS before the project is finished.”
The meeting ended. They all shook my hand and said, “We’ll let you know.” I didn’t get the gig.
Months later I was talking to one of the managers who had been in the meeting. I said, “I’m assuming I didn’t get the assignment because I didn’t claim expertise in TLS.” He said, “What? No, that’s not it at all. Just a few days after…