management Memes

The eternal corporate software development cycle in its natural habitat! First, a manager drops the mystical term "vibe coding" without any actual specifications. The dev somehow translates this cosmic brain request into actual code, only for the manager to "test" it without reading a single line of what was built. Then comes the inevitable bug complaints, followed by fixes, followed by more not-reading-the-code, and finally the chef's kiss: "good job but be faster next time" or a complimentary verbal beatdown. And just like your favorite trauma, it repeats indefinitely! It's like playing technical Whac-A-Mole where the mole is wearing a tie and has the power to schedule more meetings.

Ah, the classic engineering manager to PM transformation. One day you're writing code and solving technical problems, the next you're wearing a ridiculous duck costume asking "can we just add one more feature before launch?" and "what if we pivot to blockchain?" The awkward smile says it all—they know they look absurd but they're committed to the bit. Just like how every engineer who temporarily takes on PM duties inevitably starts speaking in buzzwords and drawing product roadmaps on napkins. The costume change is just making the internal transformation external.

Turns out the bar for project management is so low you could trip over it while looking for your missing semicolon. Just mindlessly repeat "How's the project going?" every few days and congratulations—you've mastered 90% of the job description. The other 10% is creating Gantt charts nobody will ever look at and scheduling meetings that could've been Slack messages. Meanwhile, developers are over here solving actual problems while the parrot—I mean PM—gets all the credit for "driving the initiative forward." But hey, at least the parrot looks good in that graduation cap.

That's not a hamster wheel, it's a developer wheel. Sprint 385 and still running on empty promises. The poor LEGO dev thinking "just one more story point and I'll get that promotion" while management watches with that smile that says "keep running, we've got shareholders to please." Seven years in and I'm still waiting for that mythical 20% time to work on technical debt. Meanwhile, the Agility cards scattered around are just decoration for the investor tour.