Question: The other day at work I almost got fired for speculating on Slack that we needed a better training program for our framework than just “send ‘em all to Stack Overflow and let ‘em figure it out”. The framework is really well-engineered, really solid, it’s just not that easy to learn, so why pretend that it is?

Answer:

“Never call somebody else’s baby ugly,” said my project manager, during my tag-team beat down that occurred over the telephone, out of the blue, like 2 weeks later. “The client can call their own baby ugly, but you’d better drink the Kool-Aid.”

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Question: Can I use Pickup Artist tactics to bend my team managers to my Will?

Answer:

No. PUA only works for obnoxious males who have, or pretend to have, a power advantage. The tactics consist of veiled insults designed to induce a state of uncertainty. If you’re a manager, these tactics are tailor-made for you, but you probably knew that already. If you’re rank-and-file, use “The Rules” instead.

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Question: After years of membership in my local professional organization, they finally roped me into serving as an officer, which means a lot of meetings where nothing ever gets  done. I thought leadership would be more glamorous somehow.

Answer:

Not everyone gets to be an Elon Musk or Steve Jobs type of leader, with apparently absolute power and authority to scream obscenities at his senior engineers who somehow continue to put up with it. Most of real leadership is service: in the trenches, often between equals. This means persuasion or indirect prodding rather than shouting, although competence  with things like web site management can allow you to take over entire committees without anyone objecting.

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