Pick Your Poison: Waterfall Or Agile

The corporate-to-English dictionary nobody asked for but everyone needs. After 15 years in this industry, I've developed a finely-tuned BS detector for job listings. "Cutting edge technology" just means you'll be using React like literally everyone else. And that "fast-paced environment"? Translation: your hair will be on fire while management keeps asking why you're not coding faster. My personal favorite is "urgent need" – code for "our last developer rage-quit and left zero documentation." The whole "rockstar developer" thing is particularly rich... sure, I'd love to work 80-hour weeks for the same pay as 40! And don't get me started on "self-starter" which really means "we have absolutely no idea what we're doing, but we'll blame you when it fails." Print this out and keep it next to your desk for the next time you're job hunting. You'll need it to decode what you're actually signing up for.

That magnificent dragon app you've been architecting in your head for six months? Yeah, it somehow shipped as the Chrome dinosaur game. The gap between our grand technical visions and what we actually manage to implement is the most reliable constant in software development. Still counts as a finished project though, right? Just tell the stakeholders it's "an elegant solution optimized for resource constraints."

Job security in the age of AI isn't about your coding skills—it's about clients who say "make it pop" and "you know what I mean" in the same breath. After 15 years of translating "I want something simple" into 47 database tables and a microservice architecture, I've realized our greatest defense against automation is clients who can't articulate what they want beyond "like Amazon but better." The day clients can write coherent requirements is the day I'll start worrying about AI taking my job.

The cardinal sin of software development: finishing your tasks early. That sinister smile is the universal "I've got more work for you" face that haunts developers' nightmares. Pro tip from a battle-scarred veteran: never announce you're done until 4:55pm on Friday. Otherwise, that backlog of "nice-to-have" features magically transforms into "critical for this sprint" faster than you can say "but I estimated correctly." The real sprint is always the one away from your manager's desk.

Developer: "The interface is super intuitive." Meanwhile, the user is trying to enter the doghouse through the roof because nobody bothered with a user manual or tooltips. Happens every sprint when UX design is an afterthought and the PM is breathing down your neck about deadlines. The real intuitive interface was the friends we confused along the way.

Just like Santa promising dragons, managers promising "productive standups" are selling fantasy. The moment you think they'll finally cut the 45-minute status theater where Dave drones about his JIRA tickets, they hit you with "what color do you want your dragon?" – asking about irrelevant details of a project that'll never see the light of day. The only thing more mythical than dragons is a standup that actually stays standing.