
Famous Last Words by Bosses I've Had - edw519
http://edweissman.com/famous-last-words-by-bosses-ive-had
======
edw519
OP here. I just threw this together to have a little fun on a Friday morning.
I knew I wasn't alone, but it's still nice when you guys remind me how much
I'm not. It seems like there are two worlds for programmers these days: never
having enough time to crank out that which must be built and dealing with
alternate human reality in some institution.

These were just the tip of the iceberg. I'll probably have a bunch more next
week.

Some specific feedback:

georgemcbay: When different stakeholders don't agree, I've learned 3 things:
1. You rarely make progress. 2. The only way to get them to agree is to put
them in a room together and don't leave until they do agree (That's one time
when you DO need a meeting). 3. My boss rarely understood (1) or (2). He was
just worrying about his personal likes/dislikes. It's tough enough to convey
this in a serious piece, but obviously a lot tougher in a light piece. Thanks
for the feedback.

RyanMcGreal: I enjoyed Dilbert until the stories started striking too close to
home. They became too real to be funny. Sad but true.

veyron: Actually, this company used 6 digit Ticket numbers. I shortened them
for clarity. Remember it's a sequential numbering system, so that's the number
of tickets since the beginning of time, not currently open tickets. Sadly, a
typical meeting:

    
    
      Joe: How are we doing on 112182?
      Fred: I don't have that Ticket.
      Joe: Oh, maybe it should be 112128.
      Mary: No, that's in Ron's group.
      Fred: I must have written it down wrong. I mean the MJC Project.
      John: The MJC Project is on hold.
      Joe: Sorry, the MCJ Project.
      Mary: Who brought a laptop?
      Sue: I did. I'll search for MCJ.
      Fred: No, you'll get 500 tickets. Search for Joe Smith, open.
      Sue: OK, here it is. Ticket #118128.
      edw519: Kill me now.
    

EDIT: I am NOT making this up. Five minutes ago:

    
    
      Customer: I called you 10 minutes ago but you didn't answer.
      Me: I was here. Sometimes the IP phone doesn't ring.
      Customer: Why? Is it raining there?

~~~
mcantor
By "last words", did you mean, "last words before they were fired/quit/'laid
off'," or "last words before I, edw519, quit"?

~~~
rufibarbatus
I interpreted the title as "'famous last words'-material that my bosses tend
to say."

------
jroseattle
Here's my favorite personal story. I was a consultant, brought in on a project
on-site at a client's location. This is my first day, and I'm meeting the VP
of Marketing.

    
    
      VP: We need to get these Cognos reports up and running.
      Me: Hmm, ok. What can you tell me about these reports?  
      VP: Mostly that we need them up and running.  
      Me: Who uses these reports?  
      VP: Not sure. Ask so-and-so.  
      Me: What information is on these reports?  
      VP: Look, let's not get buried in details. We just need these reports up and running, mmm-kay?

~~~
vq
Reports with undefined intervals and the only "requirement" is the title?

That's easy, shouldn't take more than a couple of minutes. Empty reports with
just a title are really friendly for the author and reader both.

~~~
derefr
I like that: "Test-first requirements analysis." A bit like shooting a monkey
into space in an uninsulated tin can to see if there are any problems with
that.

------
jonnathanson
Oh man, these almost hit too close to home to be funny. True story below.

Me: So, just to remind you, I'm going in for surgery on Saturday. They're
removing a gland from the side of my neck, so the recovery time will probably
be three or four days.

Boss: Will you be back in the office on Monday?

Me: Probably not. Like I said--

Boss: --When will you be back?

Me: The recovery time is three or four days, so hopefully Tuesday or
Wednesday.

Boss: Will you be taking any meetings on Monday?

Me: I will probably be bed-ridden, and I won't be able to speak.

Boss: That's not what I asked.

~~~
jpadkins
Not to nitpick, but a lot of people would appreciate clear, concise
communication. Ideally, communication to your boss should have been:

"Just to remind you, I will be out next week until Thursday. I let the team
know, and declined all the meetings scheduled"

all the other details are unnecessary. Let em know what they need to know, and
take care of things that need addressed before you go out.

~~~
thebrokencube
Maybe, but it's a little silly that they can't take a second to listen to what
you said.

~~~
Natsu
Bosses seem to hate being forced to reason out the answer, even if it should
be readily apparent from what you said.

If you're annoyed and want to annoy them back, you can do the reasoning for
them to point out how simple it is, e.g. "three days from now is Thursday" or
"not being able to speak would make meetings useless, therefore I will not be
able to take any."

------
georgemcbay
_"Me: You've been invited to a meeting with 3 department heads to hash out
their differences on Project 249.

Boss: I hate meetings."_

A couple of the boss responses listed here are totally reasonable and their
head-scratch-inducing inclusion weakens the piece.

Meetings are a (sometimes) necessary evil, but I'm pretty skeptical of anyone
who doesn't, at some level, hate them.

I mean, fuck, who wouldn't hate the idea of going to a meeting of 3 department
heads to hash out differences? Sounds DREADFUL.

~~~
raganwald
It’s perfectly rational to hate meetings. But if you hate meetings, you should
not be a Boss. In our business, part of the Boss job is going to meetings in
order to protect your team from insanity.

If you hate something that is a core part of your job... This is a recipe for
unhappiness. Now, I do not enjoy many of the meetings I attend. But I do enjoy
some, and I get satisfaction out of doing the meeting part of my job well.

All that being said, I’m pretty sure I’ve said those exact words myself: “I
hate meetings.” So yeah, it’s reasonable for a Boss to say those words. But
not to believe them 24/7/365.

~~~
georgemcbay
"But if you hate meetings, you should not be a Boss."

I disagree. If you cannot tolerate meetings to the point where you avoid them,
you shouldn't be a boss. But if you hate meetings -- be a boss. Be _my_ boss.
Because I want a boss that only calls me into meetings when it is absolultely
necessary.

~~~
raganwald
Oh, I hate dragging _you_ into meetings. That’s why I go, and that’s why I
make sure that they are productive enough that we don’t need to have
ridiculous conference calls with ten people on each side that range from grand
visionary pronouncements to discussing individual tickets with developers :-)

~~~
gbog
Ok, everyone and his dog hates meetings, am I the only one hating not being
part of a meeting?

~~~
matwood
Hah...you only think like that until you're a part of _every_ meeting. That's
really the issue. There are good meetings that I need to and should be a part
of. Then there are the other 90% of my meetings that are a complete waste of
my time.

------
babebridou
This quote from the OP hit home.

    
    
        Me:   The program was written with 3 SQL selects 
        inside a loop. It ran OK when we had 500 parts. 
        Now that we have 10,000 parts, it runs real slow.
        Boss: I don't understand.
    

I could say "true story" here... with a twist. Saying "I don't understand" is
basic social engineering & management 101. The boss actually understood every
single word and implication in that statement, he just wants to buy some time
to decide silently on the best answer. Saying "I don't understand" puts the
pressure on the dev who is lead to believe it's his fault and needs to think
of a better description, maybe less technical and more to the point to express
the problem. While the dev reformulates, the boss has finished thinking of an
answer and can give it instantly. In the end, the dev has managed to express a
problem with "simple" words, and the boss has proved he has great skills at
solving problems once they are reported in the correct form.

I hated my boss when he did it to me, but I have to admit I used this in turn
countless times when I became "the boss", to the point it's become a private
joke in my former company, anyone saying "I don't understand", whatever their
position, instantly got thrown balls or clips in their face.

~~~
delinka
Boss: I don't understand

Me: Call me when you do.

/me walks out

No, seriously-- I don't have time for this kind of bull. I'm not managing my
boss, I'm working. And this gets in the way of working.

~~~
babebridou
Well, as much as I agree with you from a personal perspective, I'm afraid it
is part of your job to manage your boss, just like it's part of your job to
build your team, build yourself, build your product, build your users and
build your customers.

Anyway I walked out due to interlocutor stupidity exactly once:

    
    
        Random guy that one of ours helped (for free) a year
        before barges in and asks to talk to the manager, 
        someone points him at me.
        Guy: I *demand* to talk to you about what someone from
        your team did last year. It's bad.
        Me: Sure, I'm not familiar with the story as I took
        charge only last month, and I'm in a pinch for some 
        urgent business. Your thing looks urgent too, let's
        schedule an appointement at noon.
        Guy walks out mumbling to himself.
    

Noon - the following are EXACT QUOTES:

    
    
        Me : So how can we help?
        Guy : you guys did this last year. We can't use it.
        Me : what's the problem? Did something new come up?
        Guy : I think the problem is that whoever did this is
        incompetent.
        Me : woah, I didn't expect I'd have time for lunch 
        today.
        /me walks out, goes to superior, tells story, the next
        day the guy in question gets shelved.

~~~
gcr
I don't understand... Besides failing to enunciate exactly what was wrong,
what'd the guy do to earn the ire of you and your superiors?

~~~
babebridou
"I don't understand", eh :P, well, allow me to expand then, my English level
isn't good enough to get my point across in a couple sentences.

\- The guy barges in uninvited as if all hell broke loose and goes directly to
the tech manager instead of passing through our customer service. Bad manners.

\- When I patiently and openly ask him about the nature of the issue, I expect
a bug, a missing feature, an accident, something that I can fix. The only fix
this guy has in mind is me firing my "incompetent" dev.

\- Labelling someone in my team as incompetent, without any names, means
labelling me an incompetent, regardless of whether I was in charge back then.
Helping him would be equivalent to taking the blame and would put me in a
position of inferiority. Over something we basically did for free as a favor.
One full year ago.

Best case scenario: for a full year he was in front of his product and raging
over the dev's incompetence without telling anyone => incompetent product
owner

Worst case scenario: something came up in the recent past which makes our
product dangerously unfit under these new conditions. The best move at this
point is to ask for improvements & fixes, workarounds or alternatives, or
request through the chain of command to have us all replaced if it was really
that bad. He simply ignored all that and thought he would solve the situation
by barking baseless insults at my face => incompetent manager.

What the guy did was the professional equivalent of Trolling. I did what I
usually do, I squelched him, sent a mail to abuse@theguy.com, told my system
to filter him out, and moved on.

~~~
gcr
Oh. Thanks for explaining. That does seem quite unprofessional.

------
orbitingpluto
Boss: _How long will it take for you to make the program? We're running low on
other work._

Me: _30 seconds._

Boss: _That's too long. #### could have it done in... wait, what did you say?_

Me: _Well that sheds some light on your style of management._

~~~
zem
i have to know - what was his reaction to being caught doing this?

~~~
orbitingpluto
There was a very long pause. He then found his words and asked how it was
possible for me to finish a project (that would have normally taken 8 hours)
in 30 seconds.

I had approached a previous similar project with a heavy focus on re-
usability. The skeleton just needed XML added to customize it. And that could
be added quicker than workers could get to that section requiring it. After
that he actually asked why I had done that without permission.

Me: _Because you wouldn't have been able to understand it. And because of that
you would have said no._

I have an innumerable number of examples from this guy. I could start my own
PHB cartoon. He kept his job because loyalty is often more valued than
competence. (And in his case loyalty meant routinely fudging timesheets and
not paying the grunt workers their full pay.)

I had transferred from a satellite branch to the main branch. I stayed a year
under this doofus out of loyalty to the manager from the satellite branch who
had recommended me. I quit at exactly 1 year. Contracted for them for 4 more
months and oh was I glad to be gone.

Several months after I left I made some friends who used to have the doofus in
their social group. He was ostracized and no longer welcome because he had
stolen money from coats and purses piled onto a bed at a get-together.

I was also responsible for training my two replacements. I recommended that
they not keep one of them. They did. After I had left this other guy managed
to do a "rm -rf" on the primary SCO UNIX server that dispatched work to
everyone. He also managed to improperly rebuild a RAID array on a W2k3 server
and wipe everything. He also...

Wait. I feel the PTSD kicking in. Needless to say, it was a very dysfunctional
work environment.

~~~
aaronbrethorst
Sounds like you should've said eight hours, delivered in four, and spent all
but 30 seconds of that polishing your resume.

------
mattmanser
Hang on a sec.

Not liking mornings or meetings.

Or forgetting what you'd prioritized someone to do.

Or being spam CCed by 'useful' emails.

I think when you look at a lot of these from the boss perspective and change
the words slightly, they're totally normal human responses.

~~~
epo
Except that these are normal aspects of their job. Not liking the sight of
blood is a normal human response too, but shouldn't be if your career choice
is butcher or surgeon.

~~~
silverbax88
Yeah, I know a lot of these hit close to home, but on the emails - you've
never been a boss.

1 - Get 1300 emails a day (not an exaggeration) - 8 am

2 - Get 50 emails from executives who basically want to fire you OR someone
who works for you and you have to act fast to stop the bleeding. - 10 am

3 - Get another 400 emails that are related to an ongoing discussion with
managers on your level who are trying to stick your department with more
work/blame/responsibility without letting you in on it. React at lightning
speed to ward off evil. 2 pm.

4 - Attend many, many meetings in which executives will try to blame you,
other managers will try to blame other managers, and long, tedious initiatives
are discussed in hushed tones. Fight urge to nod off/strangle people/demand
clarity. Pay attention because in six months one of these hapless bastards
will claim everyone agreed to something preposterous in the meeting. - takes
place: Every available minute. Including lunch, because "that was the only
time everyone had available for some reason."

5 - Developer says he CC'd you on several emails related to the XYZ system and
is baffled as to why you aren't completely up to date. Don't tell him that at
10 am the CEO was demanding he be fired (from a cannon). 6 pm.

~~~
OiNutter
Hmm, while I agree that it can be hard to keep on top of you emails in that
kind of volume, if you're a boss, and you're bothered enough about being kept
up to date on a project, perhaps some email rules that filter emails about
that project into a seperate folder so you can see, quite easily that there
are emails about that project, might be a good idea?

I occasionally get similair situations to this at work, which is why I request
read receipts. Makes it even more satisfying when an account manager is having
a go at you for not emailing them something and you point out they sent you a
read receipt for it, they just obviously didn't actually read it. My account
managers hate my read receipts :)

~~~
hullo
What you don't get here (and he didn't really spell it out because I guess it
seems obvious once you're in that position) is you don't have time to (nor
should you even want to) follow every email thread about every project that
you (should, theoretically) already have complete faith that your employee is
successfully executing. If you need an update, you just want an update (hey I
noticed Bill's getting a little antsy, here's the status of project 127:
"status") not to find and trace back through a discussion of x y and z aspects
of implementation or marketing or whatever.

~~~
silverbax88
Bingo - you have to trust that the people working for you know what they are
doing. This means going to meetings and being belligerent with other managers
at times as they try to claim your people are screwing everything up, without
even checking with your people. You always defend first, never call anyone out
by name and never let any other manager talk derogatorily about your
employees. Part of your job is to protect the people who aren't there to
defend themselves.

This also means that if your developers drop the ball, you're screwed. You
can't possibly know if someone is sticking bugs in the code as they race for a
deadline, but when the system misses deadline because of it, guess who's
responsible?

Doesn't help when you stick up for a dev for weeks or months and then they
burn you by introducing shoddy code or not testing thoroughly, and their
response is 'well I sent you a bunch of read receipt emails, so those browser
bugs I introduced aren't my fault - you should be paying attention'.

This experience is why I work so hard to back up my boss or lead when I'm just
a developer on a project.

------
Periodic
This really happened to me in the last month. I was contracted with a company
that has a contract to build a company for a bigger client with customers.

PM: We need you to fix a bug. One of our client's customers couldn't complete
the form. Me: What error did they get? PM: I don't know, but it's very
important we fix this. Me: Do we have steps to reproduce it? PM: No, can't you
just fix it? Me: Did they retry the submission process? PM: I don't know. Me:
Does it happen often? PM: Just this one customer as far as we know. Me: Well,
do we at least know when it happened so I can find it in the logs? PM:
Sometime last week. Look, this is really important to the client, can you just
make this top priority? We want it fixed ASAP.

The "bug" has not been fixed because the devs still don't even know what the
error is. We had another high-priority bug shortly before this because the
client didn't understand that something wasn't allowed according to the access
rules in the spec they (theoretically) helped write.

~~~
davidhansen
I'm not calling you a liar, but I'm skeptical about stories like this. I can't
even fathom any scenario in which someone more intelligent than a cucumber
could behave in this manner. How does this PM manage to get and maintain any
job at all, let alone one that requires the ability to understand software
development process and constraints?

~~~
Natsu
It wasn't a PM or anyone technical, but I can confirm that people of
"cucumber" intelligence do, in fact, exist in management and that I have
personally met them and been ready to tear my hear out during exchanges like:

"We had an error!" "What error?" "Who cares? Fix it!"

In an unrelated note, I think I'm going to start calling such useless reports
cucumbers.

~~~
joshAg
Just once, I'd like to respond to that with, "OK, give me the bug number and
I'll fix it right now by marking it resolved."

------
monochromatic
Boss (via email): Email me the results as soon as this thing is finished.

Me (replying to email within less than a minute): It's already done. Here you
go.

    
    
        [Hours pass.]
    

Boss (via telephone): You're still not done with this?

Me: I finished hours ago. I replied to your email right away.

Boss: Oh, I didn't read your response. I thought the results would come via a
separate email with a different subject line.

Me: ...

~~~
spiffytech
Headdesk moments like these can be irritating, but if you pay attention when
your boss says stuff like this and learn to communicate with them on their
terms (e.g. communicating through subject lines where possible for this boss)
you will see a world of difference in the ease and efficacy of interacting
with them.

------
phzbOx

      One month ago: 
      
      me: Hey, everything is alright with project X?
      boss: Yep, perfect.  
      
      Next monday, employee call me.
      employee: Can you walk me through the code.
      * me explains everything* 
      employee: Ok, just to let you know you are fire.
      me: :-/ Why?
      employee: Boss will call you
      me: ok
      
      next day, boss don't call
      I write an e-mail
      No answer
      Another email 6-7 hours later
      Boss: Sorry, I'm really busy. Calling you tomorrow  
      
      *Tomorrow*
      no call
      *next day, for a week*
      no call.
      
      I go to the office to talk to him. 
      boss: I have a meeting, I have to run. I'll call you when I get back.
      
      And he still haven't call me back, and I have no idea why I got fired.

~~~
littlebird
Your name isn't Buttle is it?

~~~
phzbOx
I don't know if it was a joke I didn't understand, but no my name isn't
Buttle..

~~~
eCa
It's from Brazil: <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088846/>

------
hkarthik
Me: This vendor software you purchased is not going to scale well on EC2, it
needs physical hardware to work well. Boss: Well, we don't have time to go
purchase physical hardware and get it racked. That'll take 3 months.

...3 months later...

Boss: This stuff isn't scaling, we need to all come in over the weekend to
work out the kinks with the production servers. Me: Purchase some hardware and
get it racked. EC2 just isn't working out. Boss: I can't. I already sold our
executive team on the cloud and we don't have room in our budget for hardware.

...Another 3 months go by... Boss is gone.

~~~
PanMan
A lot of places rent out physical hardware, meaning you won't have to buy it.
It might take more time if you have specific needs, but some providers can
deploy hardware in minutes.

~~~
hkarthik
Agreed. I knew his 3 months excuse was a straw man argument but I wasn't in IT
so I couldn't argue against it.

The truth came out only after another 3 months of failed scaling when we found
out that he'd oversold the benefits of cloud based scaling to the nontechnical
leadership.

------
elliottcarlson

        Boss: You did great this year. I'm giving you a 2% increase.
        Me:   I hate you. I quit.
        Boss: Then I'll give you a 4% increase.
        Me:   I still hate you. I still quit.
    

Had the same situation years ago - fought tooth and nail to even get a review
- by the time they gave me one I was accepting a position elsewhere and the 2%
they offered was a joke.

~~~
johngalt
It's exceedingly rare to get a huge raise just for doing the job you were
hired for. The best place to demand dollars is in the interview. Inside a
company your best bet is to clearly delinate role changes, and make your
demands parallel to that change. Don't ever fall for the "do the higher level
work now, get the raise later".

~~~
malux85
Really? I have had 3 jobs in my 7 year career as a developer. In each job, I
have always given 110%, solved every problem given to me, and been 'the guy'
who can fix things quickly when they break. I'm a PHP developer by trade,
recently our iPhone developer quit. I learnt Objective C in 2 weeks and am now
maintaining two large iPhone apps as well as doing my PHP duties as a senior
dev.

I have never asked for a raise, in my first job I started on 30k and was on
80k in 1 year (new zealand dollars). In my second job I started on 40k pounds
and was on 50k in 6 months. In my current job (been here 3 months) I'm looking
at a 20% pay increase in the next month.

Never asked for a raise. I just shine and get the karma back.

~~~
elliottcarlson
Your experience will vary from company to company - while my initial post
mentioned the company that I had to fight to get a review at, I later on
worked at a company for over 4 years where I was given a yearly raise that
exceeded the percentage cap that was in place - I was appreciated and they
made sure to show me. Every company and every boss is different - it's great
when you work for the good places.

------
bartonfink
"Foreign keys don't buy you anything - I leave them out. If we program right,
we'll never have inconsistent data anyway."

"Superclasses don't buy you anything - you should just copy the code
everywhere that might need it."

"Unit tests are nice, but we should be able to write code that works and not
need to rely on tests to tell us that."

No, I'm not there anymore.

~~~
MrFoof
I keep running into DBAs and data architects that keep trying the "we don't
need foreign keys" argument. I always ensure they lose that argument (and
stuff gets better, amazing!).

Though in all seriousness, what alternate universe are these people crawling
out of?

That and the types who call their j-random database a "data warehouse".

~~~
bartonfink
This guy's experience was almost entirely with front-end technology (pretty
much just JSP's actually), and it showed in almost every engineering decision
he made. The sad thing is that, there is an argument to be made for
denormalizing data and not using foreign keys. That argument is not "they
don't buy you anything."

~~~
delinka
I worked in a bank for a minute or three. Big one. The production databases
ran without foreign key constraints enabled for performance. In the
development environment, however, all constraints were strictly enforced.

------
clawrencewenham
Boss: "This new feature is similar to one that's already in another program,
so you can just copy that code. You can do that in a couple of hours, right?"

Me (coining a metaphor): "The fuel distributor in a Pratt & Whitney Turbojet
engine will not work in a Norelco Electric Shaver, even though both can be
used to cut grass."

When you combine gross underestimation of effort with the re-prioritization
cycle, you get a monster that probably destroys millions of hours of
productivity every year around the world. As soon as it becomes clear that the
project won't get done as early as expected, the boss re-assigns you to a new
priority. What would have taken 4 weeks to do 3 projects now takes 4 months
and only results in the completion of one.

------
drumdance
My favorite. Back in the mid-90s I consulted on a Lotus Notes project at a
major company. We built a prototype and started showing it various VPs who
would be using it.

One of the VPs was really terribly with a mouse. The tutorial was as much
about the basics of navigating a GUI as the application itself.

Afterwards I asked the project manager "What does that guy do? He doesn't seem
to know anything about computers."

"He's the VP of Technology." (!)

------
singular
"You're just doing X, how can that take Y days?!"

Where X is something seemingly simple. What makes it more frustrating is that
it is often very difficult to precisely describe _why_ it is that X involves
so much unintuitive complexity.

Also

"The users don't care about how it's developed"

Except that code quality defines the readability, maintainability, and often-
times performance (deeply coupled code can make optimisations very difficult,
for example) of an application both _during_ development and afterwards.

------
16s
The best compliment I got from a boss once:

"Normally, fuck-ups like this take three guys a week to fix. One guy fixed
your fuck-up in two hours. You don't fuck-up as well as most."

~~~
rokhayakebe
"One smart man mistake, another smart man can fix. One idiot's mistake, 20
smart men cannot fix."

------
ary
On 99% of the projects I've been involved with:

Boss: So you can do <anything> in two weeks then?

Me: No, what I just talked about is a multi-month endeavor.

The reasoning behind this is probably formed from a multitude of influences.
Executive desire, manager's attempts to look good, and a complete lack of
comprehension of what building software is about all rank high on the list.
The one I, for the life of me, cannot understand is why programmers insist on
pushing the "I can hack that together in 48 hours" mythology. Surely it has
had an effect on the management psyche and influenced the mental math used to
conclude that the maximum time it should take any feature to be developed is
fourteen days.

------
kephra
I wonder why 'famous last words':

\- Did someone fire the boss for those? \- Did you quit your job and started a
new one?

imho, famous last words should sound like: "I will not leave it nor depart it
until I am buried in the ground." (rough translation) Mubarak 10th of Feb on
TV.

PS: The most famous last word to quit a job in Germany is: "Ich habe fertig",
you should note the wrong grammar here.

------
Zarathust
Monday : Ticket 453 is your top priority, fix it asap.

Tuesday : Ticket 923 is your new top priority, fix it asap.

Wenesday : Client xyz needs ticket 1921 to be resolved, this is your new top
priority, fix it asap.

Thursday : ...

You get the pattern. Running around with duck tape makes awesome products in
the long run

------
coenhyde
Here's one. I ended up hating this place. I stuck around way too long.

Jim: We need to be first search result on Google by Monday.

Me: It doesn't really work like that. We can buy ads on google though.

Jim: No I don't want to spend any money. What do we need to do to get to the
top of google by Monday?

Me: Well we can implementing some of the SEO improvements we have been
suggesting for the last year. But we won't get to the top of Google by Monday.

Jim: We need to be first search result on Google by Monday. What do we have to
do to be the first result on Google by Monday?

....

Conversation repeats its self 3 times, while I patiently explain how google
works.

...

Me: You really have to stop asking that question, it doesn't work like that.

Business Partner: NO! WE NEED TO BE AT THE TOP OF GOOGLE BY MONDAY!

I was a partner at this place. I left after many repeats of similar
discussions.

Oh god this place gave me nose bleeds. I have to stop thinking about it now.

------
badclient
Boss: Do you know excel? I need to make this graph look better

Me: Okay, what do you wanna change?

Boss: Well I want them to show things going up, especially towards the end so
it shows us really growing to the VCs

Me: How is that possible?

Boss: It's definitely possible. I just don't know Excel.

~~~
rufibarbatus
As a financial consultant, I get a lot of graphs with downright preposterous
aspect ratios on a weekly basis.

------
kellishaver
My own "never have I been so glad to leave a job" story:

Me: I think it's time for me to move on. To be quite honest, I see no
potential for advancement here and I'm being expected to work dozens of hours
of unpaid overtime each month. As we've discussed previously, my hourly rate
is already low compared to industry standards and my experience level, and
you've told me that the funds simply aren't available to rectify that. I
sympathize with your position, and I wish everyone here nothing but the best,
but that still doesn't change the fact that this job simply isn't paying well
enough to cover my expenses.

Boss: I wish I could talk you out of it, but if that's really what you want to
do, I can't stop you... but honestly, I don't think you're good enough to make
it anywhere else.

~~~
Terretta
Noticed you both have to point out when you're being honest, as though the
default is dishonesty. Must have been quite a culture of misrepresentation.

~~~
kellishaver
It was my first job out of college. I was, however, a fair bit older when I
graduated and did have a few years of experience freelancing, but this was my
first time working in a corporate environment.

The whole company culture was one of distrust. We would be told in meetings,
for example, that the we were to lie to the sales team about product details
and were regularly encouraged to infringe on copyrights when doing design
work.

The ethics were a huge part of why I left the company as well, but it wasn't a
battle I was going to win. I'd tried before and failed, so at that point, I
just didn't bring it up.

------
xpose2000
This was one of many reasons why I had to quit my last job:

ME: According to the newsletter stats, more people have opted out than
actually clicked on any links last week.

BOSS: We need to increase subscribers to the newsletter.

~~~
paulhauggis
At my last company (I quit a little over a year ago), we had a newsletter with
a nice opt-in system setup (I set it up during my time there). 5000 active
users I think and 30,000 users that had opted-out.

Well, at one of my last meetings, my boss yelled at me and told me that we
were "leaving money on the table" by not sending emails to the opt-out list.

I explained to him exactly why it was a bad idea to email these people, but he
didn't want to listen. Within a day we were permanently banned from our email
provider.

My boss wanted to sue the mail provider for "disrupting our service". I've had
so many terrible bosses that don't know how to run a proper business, I wonder
how they make any money in the first place.

~~~
rokhayakebe
Man, with a boss funny as this one, I would have never left the job.

------
ArbitraryLimits
Some of these are like Yogi Berra's sayings - they're both stupid and
brilliant at the same time. Compare

""You give 100 percent in the first half of the game, and f that isn't enough
in the second half you give what's left."

with

"No, I meant, 'How do we fix this with software?'"

------
cafard
Cute. But unless a boss describes himself as technically capable, why should I
expect him to understand about 3 SELECT statements inside a loop?

~~~
bartonfink
That's a fair point, but I'd still expect anyone to understand the part about
how it ran fine under a test load, but now runs very slowly under a much
larger load.

------
akg
Boss: We have too many customer support calls. Can you work on fixing the open
tickets so that these issues go away.

Me: Sure thing.

Boss (2 hrs later): Why aren't you answering the phone for our customer
support calls!?

------
RyanMcGreal
Are you sure you didn't just transcribe some back-issues of Dilbert?

~~~
pavel_lishin
I've read a few of Scott Adams' books, and he's mentioned that he has
intentionally tried to put some absolutely ridiculous scenarios in his comics
that could never happen... only to have readers e-mailing him and asking if
he'd worked at Company X, because the exact thing had happened to them.

------
chrislomax
Do you really work at a place where everything is so impersonable that it is
all referenced by project number or was that used to obfuscate your clients in
this example?

None of the comments surprise me to be honest, I find that managers have come
from no background to instruct people on a technological level and are taken
on for simply their management ability.

~~~
devs1010
Referencing things by number is pretty common, I think, a lot of places use a
Jira system where each ticket has a number and its often used for all
development related tasks.

~~~
chrislomax
Our projects do carry a reference, it is usually prefixed by the department
handling it and a number but when we have production meetings they are all
referenced by the client and the job in hand.

I don't think I would like to work at a company where it was just a number, I
like it being personal, it would feel more like a machine with just numbers or
references

~~~
devs1010
yeah, I agree its a bit weird, at the company I work for people usually just
resort to describing the issue when talking about it (when not in front of a
computer), rather than reference the number, but jira ticket numbers are
frequently passed back and worth to refer to specific tasks.

------
doktrin
Humorous, however the following is actually a semi pet peeve of mine :

Boss: I'm really upset that no one has updated me on Project 127. Me: I cc'd
you on all 9 Project 127 emails I sent this week. Boss: I haven't had time to
get caught up on my email.

Depending on the scale and structure of the company / department, getting
"caught up on emails" can range from "completely reasonable" to "fundamentally
impossible".

For example, at a previous job we received no less than 250 work emails daily
and often more. Needless to say, simply being CC'd was not a guarantee the
recipient would be up to speed on the contents of said email string.

~~~
damncabbage
But would you complain that no-one's given you an update? There are better
ways to get status updates than pointing fingers.

------
matwood
Recently...

Mgmt: We need to replace this system ASAP! Me: What does it do? Mgmt: We don't
know. Me: Who knows? Mgmt: Maybe this girl. Girl: I'm too busy to talk, but
make sure nothing breaks.

I did end up writing a replacement system. What I found out was all the people
who were 'too busy' to talk or email me back with information suddenly
responded when I took down their part of the system as I worked to replace it.
I've never had to do a worse project and I'm happy it's over.

------
yuvipanda
You get to the point when you no longer believe a word of what they say.

And then you quit.

------
veyron
I'm impressed that there are places that have 432 projects ...

~~~
clawrencewenham
One of them mentions a shutdown from Amazon because they ship too many orders
late. That rang lots of bells for me, because it sounds like IT at an
independent fulfillment company, which will usually have its own web store and
sell through many other companies besides Amazon.

432 projects are a lot to you? Imagine your boss is someone who reacts to
every business challenge and opportunity by creating a new project. Imagine
that every vendor you ship for has re-invented EDI, without ever having heard
of EDI, and it was designed by one of:

A) Someone they found on Craigslist

B) A kid they hired who doesn't comprehend how you can write a program without
wrapping it between <% and %> and loading it in a browser

C) A guy who thinks he's a programmer because he once wrote an Excel macro

Their mechanisms can be so bizarre that you can't really support them by
configuring an existing fetch-n-post, or Extract-Transform-Load system. You
just have to fire up Visual Studio and write Project 433, AKA "Overstock.com
Is Tripping On Acid And Now Requires That We Convey Order Status Via Modulated
Carrier Pigeons".

Some of the weirdest I've been asked to support:

* Moving the order file between different subdirectories on their FTP server to convey status (ie: we log into their FTP site and issue a MOVE command on the file to put it in the /shipped folder). Did I mention that each file contains multiple orders?

* We have to implement a SOAP API to _their_ spec and expose it on the public internet for them to call at-will to send orders and query for status.

* CSV wrapped in XML, but it's CSV with a sub-delimiter because one of the columns has to be treated like an array to convey the status of each line-item.

* Orders that come in an Excel file, but they never order or name the columns consistently from file-to-file.

And that's just for fulfillment services.

~~~
viraptor
Oh joy. Sounds like dealing with telco billing. On one side you get excel
tariff files which change in random ways every month, on the other you get
silly billing data. Can you imagine ITSP getting an itemised bill for a month
of calls from upstream provider? I think it was 3 rather large boxes filled
with printouts. Still not sure why that happened.

------
zem
i can really empathise with the "start the year off right" commenter - my last
boss (ceo of the company) once insisted on several long phone conferences
during the christmas break, so we could "hit the ground running" when we
returned. he was a firm believer in permanent-crisis mode.

------
SeanLuke
Is it me or has this guy quit from an awful lot of jobs? I'm not sure I'd hire
someone so transient.

------
chrisdroukas
Pretty funny list, but this seems like a case of poor management of
expectations. It shouldn't be your job to explain why things matter (as in
'Boss: What difference does that make?'), but sometimes that's reality.

Here's a set of slides on taking control of poor communication situations and
learning to efficiently keep managers in the feedback loop. Sometimes it
doesn't work out ('Boss: I haven't had time to get caught up on my email.'),
though it's certainly a start.

[http://www.fs.cornell.edu/PMT/Communications/Managing%20Expe...](http://www.fs.cornell.edu/PMT/Communications/Managing%20Expectations.pdf)

------
Hominem
One Sunday I got a call from a help desk guy involving an application I had
worked on. This was the first call I had ever gotten about this app. I am
pretty sure I was last on the contact list PM calls me 10 minutes later and
says we need to discuss my level of commitment, Says I have been shirking my
duty and letting everyone else handle support. All I could say is that it was
the first call I had ever gotten, maybe bump me up on the call list. He didn't
know there was a call list they followed in sequence, still I should have been
doing more.

I made sure this guy never PMed me again.

------
16s
I had a boss once who thought IPv6 had something to do with car engines. I kid
you not.

------
AznHisoka
At first I thought these were last words by bosses that died afterwards

------
cosmez
"You're Fired"

that one is pretty famous

------
dsolomon
You work for the government don't you?

------
dawsdesign
A bunch of babies. Start your own company then.

~~~
pavel_lishin
"You had a bad experience with a doctor? Just go to med school and open your
own practice."

------
OoTheNigerian
_Me: The server crashed. IT Services is working to bring it back up._

 _Boss: Don't confuse me with all these technical details._

I bet your boss among those deciding on SOPA.

~~~
OoTheNigerian
If my comment is not relevant, then why is this post at the top of HN?

It is my understanding that the post depicts the irony that those who do not
understand are put in charge.

I should not be explaining my comment, but downvoting without a counter
argument makes no sense to me. It is the equivalent of responding to an
argument or statement with "I don't agree"

Though not a big deal, annoying all the same.

~~~
recursive
#1. It's unlikely that the boss is deciding on SOPA. #2. Your comment does not
contain any particular insight on SOPA or shitty bosses. It's just a
repetition of the meme about SOPA. SOPA awareness is important, but you have
not contributed to it. #3. As a joke, your comment is not particularly funny.

~~~
OoTheNigerian
"#1. It's unlikely that the boss is deciding on SOPA"

It is sad people cannot sense humor except a lol or :) is appended to it.

"#2. Your comment does not contain any particular insight on

SOPA or shitty bosses. It's just a repetition of the meme about SOPA. SOPA
awareness is important, but you have not contributed to it."

I have previously commented on SOPA and it was actually the top comment.
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3251471> . So I fully understand the
implications of SOPA.

I did not read it as a take on "shitty bosses" but as someone reporting to who
had no idea about what he was supposed to be in charge of.

". As a joke, your comment is not particularly funny."

A very subjective statement.

Thanks for taking time to reply. I still reiterate that downvotes in a
discussion forum serves little purpose. If a statement is offensive, flag it.
Don't downvote into oblivion and try to censor anything that goes contrary to
"the official position".

