Perfecting the art of fooling bosses

Yesterday while I was introspecting about my 5 years in the software industry, I thought of a few things….
The first thing that came to my mind was "During office hours how do I get time to enjoy life...?"..Does that mean that i don't have work ....?Or is it that i am too efficient?.. Neither of the options seems to be correct to me... Its just that i seem to have (nearly) perfected the art of fooling people ...!!..(touchwood!! :-))
At a macro level, I feel that we spend every single day fooling others...be it our Superiors or be it Subordinates...
Being a Software developer this is what I could think of....
As far as Fooling Superiors is concerned -- Being normal human beings as we are, we have a tendency of shirking work and taking out time to relax. From that angle if you see, you just need to act well. And I mean ‘Acting’ for real. Just act as if the work given to you is actually difficult and will take lot of time. And if you ever feel the need to communicate with your superiors, use the expressions such as:
"Ya sure definitely..."
"No Issues"…
"Ya sure I will get it done by Tomorrow EOD". (Tomorrow never comesJ)
"Actually I am checking out the impact that this small change will have on all the code..."
and the last but not the least
"Ya, I am going through the whole code so that in future if there are some changes then I should be able to handle them well. So it will take some time..."

Believe me, these Excuses do work. These are tried and tested formulae...!!
As far as Fooling Subordinates is concerned:  I can't give many tips because I haven't got any Subordinates. I am at the lowest level of the hierarchy. I am a software engineer.L. No one listens to me. Only the Office boys and the Canteenwallas listen to me. So if I am in a bad mood, I go straight to the canteen and order something and try finding faults in it; faults such as "Namak jyaadaa hai..."(this is so damn salty!!),”teekha kum bola tha” (I had told you not to make it so spicy!) or "Kadak Dosa bola tha , ye itna naram kyun hai..."(I had specifically mentioned that I wanted a thoroughly baked Dosa. Why is it so soft?) And the Canteenwalla meekly listens to me. It makes me relieved. haaaaaaaah!. kisiki kaa gussa kisipe! L (How does it matter!!) J People at the lowest level are normally dressed down. Like if my Project Director gets grilled by the Top Management then we software engineers get grilled the next day! Its what I call Propagation of the negative energies in the Top-Down order...don't I sound like some BABA (on some ASTHA or SANSKAR channel) guiding his disciples? J
In general , if you want to survive in the software industry then try the following 12 commandments.!!

The 12 commandments of working…rather acting are:

1) PIXEL COUNTING: Just keep staring at the Monitor as if you are trying to fixate your mind on something and are thinking hard about some issue related to your office work. I know that it might sound like a dumb suggestion because the other person (probably your project manager) would feel that you are counting the pixels on the screen. Be sure that you don’t overact because you will be highly embarrassed if he comes near you and asks for a small piece of paper and then writes a number like 860x680 pixels….and then he leaves, smiling at you…I am sure you would wish that the water bottle on your desk had a circumference of 40 inches(this is waist size of a normal software engineer!!) so that you could jump into it and end your life to get out of the embarrassing situation …and don’t worry , no one would care even if you disappeared into the bottle because anyways you were not working…right?

2) SCRAMBLING: Whenever your Project manager comes to your desk, get up instantly and start scrambling as if you were trying to fix something wrong with the PC. Stretch yourself a bit and try touching the cord connecting the Monitor and the Mains supply and then shake your Monitor a bit and then show a bit of frustration on your face as if your monitor does this kind of treachery everyday. If this is not enough then lift your keyboard and then check its connection with CPU. If you still find that your project manager has not left then take the ball out the Mouse and then try to clean it, until the project manager feels guilty of wasting you time and leaves your desk so that your may continue your work peacefully.

This is basically an acid test to know whether your project manager wants to let you work or not. Because the more time he spends around your desk, the more time he would be wasting of his useful resources. I am assuming that at least your Project Manager assumes that you are a useful resource for the project. But yes, one thing’s for sure that he will always call you a USEFUL resource in front of the Client (however stupid you may be!!!)

And anyways if your PM has a heart of a normal human being then he will realize that this all stupid acting is what he might have done few years ago, when he himself was a software engineer. So this type of acting will surely help in shooing away your Project Manager away from your desk.

3) READING NEWS ON INTERNET: For those who can’t do without the daily peek at the news on the news sites, for them there is a very simple idea. Copy the contents of the page that you were reading on the internet and the paste it on the text pad/notepad. Act as if you were checking out some logs to find out the error that occurred in your code. Project managers love employees who try to find out the problems by knowing in and out of the logs generated by the application. Normally Project managers would tend to move away from your desk if you have opened some logs. Because no sensible boss would like to disturb his subordinates who are supposedly working. ”Why waste their time by asking them something irrelevant” -- is what your boss would think and then he would move away. And then you can again do a “alt+tab” and keep enjoying the interesting content on the net…! (Anyway, anything on the internet would be better than the ‘copy-pasted variables and functions’ in your code…isn’t it?)

4) HAVE SOME APPLICATION-RELATED WINDOWS OPENED: The ones like Eclipse (for java developers), Visual Studio (for DotNet Developers), Google with some search related to some very obscure word...Preferably of some exception like null pointer exception/ some other runtime exception…(I would not write much about exceptions, because even I am not sure exceptions and how they are used!!! I am a very bad programmer. Thanks to Google, I have survived my time in this industry.)

5) SCRIBBLING: Whenever you see your project manager approaching your workstation, get a pencil and a paper (preferably one that has something scribbled on it because otherwise that would mean that you have started thinking just now) and start drawing some circles with something written on them and then connect those circles by unidirectional and bidirectional arrows meaning that you are trying to create some kind of innovative solution for a common repetitive problem occurring in the application. Beware about the fact that overdoing of drawing circles can also be harmful incase your project manager asks you about the circles that you just made. And yes, don’t draw too many circles, because that may make your Project Manager believe that you want to change your profile from being a “software engineer’ to a ‘Cartoonist’. Remember one thing- Excess of anything is bad.

6) LOOK OUT OF THE WINDOW: One of the best ways to avoid your project manager is to look outside of the window (You will be lucky to have been sitting near a window). Lower your shoulders and then have some worn-out look on your face as if you have had spent sleepless nights thinking about some really out-of-the-world bug. It should never have crept in your code at least (because the same code worked for your team mate…anyways you didn’t make any logical changes. You just changed the variables from x to a , i to k , and j to m…etc..You start wondering whether changing the variables changes the logic of the code!) Assume such an expression on your face till the time your Project Manager feels that you really have been bugged by the Alien-bug. Just don’t turn around to see if he is there. Just check in the reflection in the glass walls…(I am assuming that your office at least has some glass construction near the boundaries of the office which does make your office an OFFICE and not a JAIL…anyway, cubicles are enough to make the software engineers feel that they are trapped in a jail…!!)

7) HAVING A BAD DRESS SENSE: One of the best ways to avoid your Project Manager is to have a really bad dress sense. Normal people don’t like people who have a bad dress sense. This is just one more test to see if your Project Manager is normal .Suppose that you have a very bad dress sense. Then even if your boss wants to talk to you or insists on your presence in every meeting then be sure that either he/ she is not normal or he/she likes you… (This can be a problem if there is a male-male or female-female combination...!)

So wear something like red jeans with yellow shirt. Odd enough to have the top-most tapori (of your area) feel ashamed of his dressing sense. And as an icing on the cake, you can wear Kolhapoori Chappal that will complement your Tapori look. I can bet my whole career on the fact that your boss won’t ever think of hanging around your desk.

8) WEAR THE SAME SOCKS EVERYDAY: This is one of the tried and tested formulae to keep everyone at bay…There is a saying - ”An apple a day keeps doctor away” On the same lines, I have made a saying- “ The same socks everyday keeps everyone away”…even your colleagues will dare not come near you.. The smell should be so awful that even the strongest and the wildest bison* should drop dead by your presence for 5 seconds in his vicinity.

(*---If you are unable to imagine a strong and wild bison then you can have your Project Manager in place of the “the strongest and wildest bison on earth”…This substitution sounds good enough… isn’t it? J)

9) ALWAYS KEEP YOUR WATER BOTTLE HALF FILLED:

Don’t worry I am not going to talk about the “half water beaker filled-optimism or the half water beaker empty pessimism”. Whenever your project manager is at a distance of 15 to 20 meters from your desk, you get up to fill up your usually half-filled water bottle. And when he is just 2 meters away from me, you tilt my head up to drink the remaining water in the bottle. So by the time you finish the 100 ml or 200 ml water that you had purposely kept in the bottle, you (my project manager and you) have finished crossing each other on your way. And then you are safe…and some other Cubicle-king or queen gets screwed up. Who cares as long as you are safe? J.

Spend around 5 mins near the water cooler and by mistake if you see your boss again coming to the water cooler then immediately start shouting at the nearby standing office boy for some imaginary negligence of his. Your boss will see that you are really very angry at something and so, I am sure, he won’t dare to play around with a wounded lion/lioness (Again, my assumption is that your boss is a normal human being. I keep on mentioning such assumptions because “BOSSES” and “NORMAL HUMAN BEINGS” have very little common in them…as little a similarity as there is between a wild African rat and a cute pacific dolphin….!!Don’t shrink your eyes…I know that there is not much common thing in between in them except that they belong to a class called as “living things”.. J)

10) GO AND TALK TO A COLLEAGUE ABOUT SOME CODE:

This type of acting hinges on the premise that “No one on this planet called earth knows everything.” So it means that you being a normal software engineer, you would not necessarily know why a null-pointer/memory-low error occurred; which will lead you to take your colleague’s help. So when you are at your colleague’s desk, it shows that you are not a very adamant and egoistic worker who does not talk to his team mate even though he doesn’t know a thing or two. Even though your boss is talking to your team mate, chances are good  that he is simultaneously analyzing whether you are actually coordinating with your colleague to get some software-bug killed ruthlessly….So use proper hand gestures to show you are really frustrated with that software-bug and are seeking a full-n-final solution to get that software-bug removed. But, one word of caution, don’t overact. If you say something like “Oh...yes that is why there is a null-pointer exception” and give a gesture as if the work is going to get completed in half an hour then be sure that following things will happen once the Project Manager moves away from your place:

a) You will get a mail asking you to take the next task in one hour or so because your Project Manager interpreted your reaction as though you will finish the work in half an hour and that you could start your new task in some time…!

b) You have created a bad impression on your Project Manager. Because when you were at your desk you didn’t know how to get that software-bug killed. But only when you consulted your colleague did your query get solved. So it was your colleague who has lots and lots of knowledge to solve queries from stupid co-workers like you. So it was your colleague who did the bug fixing and not YOU..! So…ultimately be ready for a bad appraisal, my friend!!!!...

11) TALKING TO A TELEMARKETER:

Once you see your boss coming, the easiest and the fastest thing that you can do is picking up the phone on your desk and then uttering the words like “Which credit card? What’s extra in your credit card? No thank you I don’t want the card..”…and then finally bang the phone and turn to a colleague and say “ ye credit card waale bhi naa…!!! ” indicating that if anyone disturbs you in the midst of something very urgent then you get annoyed and then can surely not care to start a fight in the spur of the moment…your boss will quietly move away from your desk and will come to your place once you cool down.

Be sure that you try this trick on a phone at your desk and not on your mobile. Imagine a scene when you got up from your place and then were talking on your cell phone to some telemarketer and then suddenly your mobile starts ringing…your colleagues and your boss start looking at you (as if you were some exotic extinct 3 legged dinosaur* suddenly appearing in front of them). I am sure that will be the most embarrassing moment in your life. And you would go to your desk and wish your tea cup were big enough to let you drown in harness…

[*--- If you have any problem imagining a 3 legged dinosaur then imagine a 4 or a 6  legged dinosaur …I don’t mind… J]

12) RESTARTING THE SERVER: Once your boss comes to your desk , before he could ask you anything throw at him the question “boss, can I restart the server?...actually I feel that I have solved the bug that you had assigned to me yesterday.(Note the use of the word “feel”...because if you have actually solved the bug in less time then it wasn’t really a big fat bug which needed your attention and which could have been solved by any moron. Needless to say that you will immediately get a new bug assigned.) “So should I put a mail to all users of this server that I am about to restart it?”---this question will make your boss feel good about you because normal morons work on local machines and not on SERVERS…You are one of the few softies who work on servers. Be proud about it. Though you know what the truth is! Anyways what is more is important is what your boss feels about you than what you feel about yourself!