Priorities Sorted (By Executive Golf Outings)

OH. MY. GOD. The absolute BETRAYAL! 😭 You know what's worse than a dog bite? Having your precious code MURDERED by management! You spent HOURS—possibly DAYS—crafting that beautiful feature with your blood, sweat, and tears... only for some suit to casually declare it "unnecessary" like they're deciding what toppings to skip on a pizza! The dog didn't bite you physically, but management just took a chainsaw to your SOUL! And the worst part? This happens EVERY. SINGLE. SPRINT. I'm going to need therapy after this one!

Ooooh, the scariest costume of them all! 👻 This IT Manager package comes with everything you need to haunt your dev team's nightmares! Just slip it on and watch your coworkers run screaming from the "free pizza" that mysteriously only appears when you need them to stay until midnight. The empty promises accessory pairs perfectly with the "we're like a family here" speech you'll give right before canceling everyone's PTO requests. Truly terrifying how accurate this is... I'm having flashbacks to my last job where my manager's idea of career development was hiring his golf buddy instead of promoting anyone internal. The costume even includes the special ability to develop selective hearing loss whenever a developer mentions "technical debt" or "burnout"! 🎃

Adding more project managers and consultants to a sinking project is like adding more people to the top deck of a sinking boat. "Why aren't we moving faster?" asks the clueless executive as the poor dev in the water desperately tries to paddle. Classic corporate solution: throw more management at the problem while the actual workforce drowns. The Brooks' Law special – adding more people to a late project just makes it later. But hey, at least there's plenty of people to document the failure in a retrospective PowerPoint!

Oh, the brutal truth of project management captured in one glorious image! The joke cuts deep because in many organizations, the primary qualification for becoming a PM seems to be the ability to ask "How's the project going?" without actually understanding the technical complexities involved. Just like a parrot mimicking phrases without comprehension, some PMs simply relay information between stakeholders without adding substantive value. The graduation cap is the chef's kiss—suggesting that this minimal skill somehow qualifies as advanced education in management. Every developer who's had to explain the same technical blocker to a non-technical PM for the fifth time just felt this in their soul.

The perfect representation of code review culture in the wild. Guy 1 frantically points out someone's terrible code like it's a five-alarm fire, while Guy 2 delivers the crushing reality check: absolutely nobody gives a damn. The same devs who'll argue for hours about tabs vs. spaces will happily ignore a production codebase that looks like it was written by randomly mashing a keyboard. Welcome to software engineering, where we're simultaneously perfectionists and completely fine with duct-taped solutions that "just work." The duality of programmer.

Ah yes, the classic "let's rewrite decades of legacy code in a few months" fantasy. For those who don't know, COBOL is the programming equivalent of that ancient Nokia phone your grandpa still uses – outdated but somehow keeping entire nations running. Converting tens of millions of lines of COBOL that handle checks notes just the entire Social Security system to Java is like trying to transplant a whale's brain into a dolphin over a weekend. What could possibly go wrong? Just the financial security of every retiree in America. The best part is the "DOGE wants it done in months" bit. Nothing says "I've never written a line of code in my life" quite like thinking you can replace a 60-year-old system that processes trillions of dollars before your Jira subscription expires. Fun fact: The last time someone tried something similar, they spent $100 million and got absolutely nowhere. But hey, this time it'll be different because... reasons.