Douglas Quebbeman wrote: I don't believe that being stupid or out of touch with reality is a requirement to be part of management (although historically people with those -er- qualities have flocked to management, presumably because there wasn't enough demand for telephone sanitizers). However, it's clear that success in management often has more to do with being politically astute than with producing meaningful results, hence some of the mind-numbing stupid management tricks. Some of my favorites: Moving crap to the other side of a painted line on the loading dock so it can be claimed as "shipped" in the financial roll-up when in fact nobody has ordered the stuff. Shipping code with known defects to customers in order to placate them -- never mind the fact that once crap like that escapes the shop all development stops because everyone is running around pissing on fires. Closely associated: shipping stuff with known defects but making it all better by affixing the label "alpha" or "beta" (or my personal favorite "pre-alpha", whatever the hell _that_ is). Producing schedules based on what marketing/sales has committed to the customer without bothering to consult engineering. There's one guy who has been a thorn in my side for months -- a (I am not joking) former penile implant salesman who not only tells customers that we have functionality in place when nobody has even though of writing specs for it, but then doesn't bother to tell anyone that he's done so until 48 hours before the product is due at the customer site. All of these behaviors are the consequence of lying -- if not to the customer, then to the board, the shareholders or to themselves -- all in an effort to close a deal or deflect criticism. Everything is optimized to the present, long-term consequences be damned. Because I've never stopped doing engineering. While I do a lot more architecture than code slinging these days I _still_ write code. I don't last long in situations where I'm asked to do "pure" management (i.e., put on a tie and spend all day in meetings, pre-meetings, pre-pre-meetings, kickoff meetings and other forms of corporate circle jerks when not out grin f*cking customers); likewise I have a low tolerance for corporate form-and-function when it gets in the way of delivering quality product to the customer on something resembling schedule and budget. If things are screwed up I try to fix them, if I can't fix them I pull chocks and move on. Chris Who actually received "Chris should be more tolerant of corporate form and function" on a review...) -- Chris Kennedy chris(a)mainecoon.com http://www.mainecoon.com PGP fingerprint: 4E99 10B6 7253 B048 6685 6CBC 55E1 20A3 108D AB97