Our Sr. EVP dropped by today for a meet and greet . . . he was 45 minutes late, and when he arrived, it was obvious he had no idea who he was talking to.

“Is this the IT group?” he asked.

It was explained to him that some of the people were from IT, but some were from the call center and tech support.

“And do they all report to you?” he asked the senior manager in the room.

Here’s a little trick I’ve picked up over the years: When you’re addressing a group of people, take a few minutes beforehand to learn who they are. It will make them feel less insignificant.

After this fiasco, he went off to a catered meeting with other highly compensated executives, and I went out to buy my own lunch.

Prediction: This meet and greet will be mentioned in at least two exit interviews in the not-too-distant future . . .

Thus spoke The Programmer.

If our Director of Project Management took the time that he spends fine-tuning his goatee, his eyewear and his hair color, and put it into reading one or two of the classic software management texts, I probably wouldn’t get so squeamish every time I have to look at him.

Thus spoke The Programmer.

We have some vending machines at our office, in a small alcove off the development area — the kind that have the snacks lined up between spiral rods, so when you buy something, the appropriate rod rotates and the snack drops down for you.

This is obviously a horrible design for a couple of reasons:

1. I don’t want my M&Ms dropped from a height because it breaks them; and
2. Sometimes the packaging of the snack gets hung up on the rod and the snack doesn’t drop.

When that happens, the victim usually rocks the machine back and forth trying to dislodge the snack. This often works, but not on the first couple of tries.

It also makes an incredible racket.

I’ve heard that vending machines are extremely top-heavy and tip over easily, but so far — despite my fervent hope that someone will be mashed flat as a lesson to other machine-rockers — that hasn’t happened.

Today, a young woman was in the process of shaking one of the machines when our dim-witted Lothario of a CTO wandered by and said, with absolute sincerity:

“Can I help you with that?”

The Hierarchy of Needs

Abraham Maslow posited a hierarchy of human needs, in which “lower-level” needs like food, water and shelter must be met before moving to “higher-level” needs like esteem and belongingness.

If we apply this theory to the workplace, I think it’s fair to say that before knowledge workers can be innovative or creative or anything like that, they’ve got to at least be able to hear themselves think.

Thus spoke The Programmer.

Cast of Characters

Manager, the leader of a software project that is floundering because his needlessly complex design cannot actually be implemented.

Programmer, a programmer on the project.

Manager: Keep working hard, and I will protect you should things break down.

Programmer: Protect me from what? That sounds kind of ominous.

Manager: Some people may be worried that if the project fails, they may get a bad review, or not get a bonus. But I’m looking at whether or not people are working hard, even if the project isn’t going well. So as long as you’re not goofing off, and you don’t have a bad attitude, you should be all right.

A “bad attitude” in these cases is defined as pointing out that 20 people have been working on the project for two months without producing a single working line of code, because they’ve been asked to yoke together a set of incompatible products and technologies selected by people who are not qualified or interested in assessing the technical implications of their decisions.

This, unfortunately, has become an increasingly common scenario in our business.

I should also mention that, in my experience, people are highly demotivated by opportunities to work hard in situations where they are predestined to fail.

But don’t worry! As long as you’re willing to keep beating your head against a stone wall of incompetent management, you’ll be as safe as Humpty Dumpty . . .

‘Why if ever I did fall off — which there’s no chance of — but if I did … Here he pursed up his lips, and looked so solemn and grand that Alice could hardly help laughing. ‘If I did fall,’ he went on, ‘the King has promised me — ah, you may turn pale, if you like! You didn’t think I was going to say that, did you? The King has promised me — with his very own mouth … to … to … ‘To send all his horses and all his men,’ Alice interrupted, rather unwisely.

— Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass

Thus spoke The Programmer.