• dextron (unregistered) in reply to BrownHornet
    BrownHornet:
    Jay:
    snoofle:
    Just out of curiosity - has anyone ever embedded a Dilbert strip - or any other source of comedy - in a status report, just to see if anyone would notice?

    Not in a status report, but: I was once told to write up a license agreement for a piece of software my team developed. You know, the kind that comes up during installation and the user has to click "I accept" for the install to finish. This was for a piece of software to be used in-house only, so it was never clear to me why we needed a license agreement between our organization and itself. I put together a license by simply cutting and pasting from the licenses I found on some commercial products we had around the office ... and tossing in a few clauses of my own, including "You agree to sacrifice three chickens to Microsoft before running the software" and "We may cancel this agreement at any time if you violate the terms of the agreement, make illegal copies of the software, or if we decide that we don't like your face" and "You agree to let the lead developer date your daughter." The software was distributed with this license agreement. No one -- not my boss, not any of the users, not even the legal department -- ever said anything about it to me.

    Reminds me of this story. A company put a clause in their EULA that the first person to read this clause and email the company would get $1000. It took 4 months and 3000 downloads before someone finally cashed in.

    And that person was Chuck Norris. Chuck Norris sees a different EULA from the rest of us. It's a simple two parter:

    1. Please Don't Hurt us.
    2. Do you agree to let us send you $1000?
  • masher (unregistered)

    My supervisor at univeristy was made the Head of Department.

    He very quickly found out that the "Urgent" stamps on documents don't mean urgent; he had several documents that stayed on his desk for weeks without them being missed.

    If a document was urgent, it's author would sit in your office and wait for you to read/sign it.

  • El_oscuro (unregistered)

    I once had a status report generating script. It just contained sentence fragments with the appropriate buzzwords for the project. All you did was run it with the number of sentences you wanted, and it would generate random reports in perfect English. Totally indecipherable by your average PHB.

  • KThy (unregistered) in reply to Krisztián Pintér
    Krisztián Pintér:
    the wtf is that the guy had no time to make the reports. wtf? you make the reports manually??? come on! 3 of every 100 things you do is wrong. if you have a 100 step you do each month, it is 3 errors per month. stop doing that, and automate the process.

    How do you propose to automate writing a status report of your work done last week and the work you intend to do this week? (Without resorting to bullshit generators.)

  • Telcontar (unregistered)

    Similar story here... once we had a contractor help out for two months on a project. He did a good job, and I was very happy with him until I heard, ten days before he was supposed to finish, that his company wanted 50 pages of documentation to show that the contractor had fulfilled our requirements. A simple "yes, we were happy" form would have done the job, but it is hard to fill 50 pages with that.

    So we started to include my original requirements, README and INSTALL files, Javadoc, and all the tables that the newly written tool had automatically generated during test runs. Voila - 52 pages of mostly useless information.

    We then attached section headers to the document and pointed out which part of the contract referred to which section.

    The contractor company was happy - at least we never got any complaints from them. I think the warm and fuzzy feeling of holding a solid pile of paper did its magic with their manager.

  • Franz Kafka (unregistered) in reply to KThy
    KThy:
    Krisztián Pintér:
    the wtf is that the guy had no time to make the reports. wtf? you make the reports manually??? come on! 3 of every 100 things you do is wrong. if you have a 100 step you do each month, it is 3 errors per month. stop doing that, and automate the process.

    How do you propose to automate writing a status report of your work done last week and the work you intend to do this week? (Without resorting to bullshit generators.)

    copy the report from the previous week?

  • Dave (unregistered)

    I once was asked for weekly status reports, which I felt were a waste of time. There was, at that time, a unix program going around that generated text in the style that you wanted.

    I fed it some old reports, a couple of unix manuals and a chapter from the bible, generated a report and passed it on.

    The recipient read the first half page, thinking 'This is really good stuff...'. It took him another half a page before he realised he'd been had.

    I didn't get asked for any more reports.

  • (cs) in reply to GrigLars
    GrigLars:
    ...Another set of analysts wanted it to "look nice" in AOL Mail, which was not HTML compliant. They wanted the numbers to align with one another, but AOL didn't always keep fixed fonts for some reason, so we had to make everything align in Arial font size 10, kerning and all (like a "1" takes up less space than a "7").

    I call BS!! :-P

    "1" and "7" are the same width. All digits in any sane body font are monospaced for presumably this precise reason. Although you will find plenty of fonts that don't follow this (including, naturally, Comic Sans MS) Arial is certainly one of them, along with Times New Roman, Verdana etc.

    Number widths are not really kerning (which is fine spacing adjustment between set character pairs like "AV" and "ij") but simply character widths. Does Windows even support kerning pairs?

  • gvvvvvvvvvv (unregistered)

    LOL

  • SM1979 (unregistered)

    Lovely!

    Back when I was managing my former team, I followed this weekly schedule:

    1. Daily status report to my boss
    2. High level status report on Thursday for the VP and my boss on Thursday.
    3. Status report, with full details of who was working on what, their progress, any issues or risks and upcoming events, due Friday morning to the VP and my boss
    4. Monday morning presentation which contained all of the information from items 1, 2 and 3. These meetings lasted three hours.

    I calculated that I spent 24 hours a week either giving, preparing or collecting status.

    What an absolute waste of time!!!

  • (cs)

    Back in high school CS we had to write up "status reports" on what we did that day, an attempt to get us used to the "real world" I guess. Usually I just wrote something like "I did stuff". My favorite was when I learned how to use friend classes (in C++), my status report consisted of "I learned about friendship".

  • lolnihon (unregistered) in reply to nwbrown
    nwbrown:
    Back in high school CS we had to write up "status reports" on what we did that day, an attempt to get us used to the "real world" I guess. Usually I just wrote something like "I did stuff". My favorite was when I learned how to use friend classes (in C++), my status report consisted of "I learned about friendship".
    Remember, in C++, your friends have access to your privates.
  • (cs)

    HAHAHAH!!!!

    I work for this manager! And I may actually be occasionally confused with the guy doin' the status reports! :)

  • (cs) in reply to snoofle
    snoofle:
    bramster:
    snoofle:
    Over the past 30 years, I've developed a sort-of-guide by which I gage the importance of tasks assigned to me.
    1. If it's on fire, it's an actual emergency
    2. If blood is spouting from it, it's an actual emergency
    3. If a spouse is using "that tone of voice", it's an actual emergency
    4. If neither (1), (2) nor (3) and a project manager is involved, it is not only an emergency, but the work will become easier if you let it sit for a few days

    More often than not, it works (at least for me).

    4. If neither (1), (2) nor (3) and a project manager is involved, it is not only NOT an emergency, but the work will become easier if you let it sit for a few days ???
    You are quite correct - thanks for catching and correcting :)
    Shows that at least someone read your comment.
  • paratus (unregistered) in reply to notme
    notme:
    vt_mruhlin:
    snoofle:
    Just out of curiosity - has anyone ever embedded a Dilbert strip - or any other source of comedy - in a status report, just to see if anyone would notice? (I did, they didn't)

    I had a buddy insert into a requirements doc, something like:

    • The system must be compatible with the ACME brand waffle iron.
      • Waffles must support maple syrup. No other syrups are included in the scope of this project.
      • Under no circumstances shall blueberry waffles or any other non-standard waffle configuration be supported in the service agreement.

    Nobody noticed. He even read it out loud during the review meeting. Nobody was listening.

    (For the record, this was a voicemail company. Nothing at all related to waffles.)

    In a recent project of mine, I had to code a confirmation dialog along the lines of "This is not reversible, are you sure you want to do this?" and then two buttons "Yes" and "No". Just for kicks, I added a third button, labeled "Maybe". Took half a year for anyone to notice.

    That sounds awfully familiar. I think that something very similar has been up on Error'd here. ;)

  • w00t (unregistered) in reply to Daniel Beardsmore
    Daniel Beardsmore:
    "1" and "7" are the same width. All digits in any sane body font are monospaced for presumably this precise reason. Although you will find plenty of fonts that don't follow this (including, naturally, Comic Sans MS) Arial is certainly one of them, along with Times New Roman, Verdana etc.

    Number widths are not really kerning (which is fine spacing adjustment between set character pairs like "AV" and "ij") but simply character widths. Does Windows even support kerning pairs?

    Windows does, but word has it switched off by default, which is one of the reasons why word document look so bad.

  • Jas (unregistered) in reply to Mike
    Mike:
    I could always tell who read my comments because they'd complement me afterwards.

    Was that a two's complement? Surely that must sting a little?

  • dave (unregistered) in reply to snoofle

    Yes, I did.

    We were required to submit status summaries each week, about a line a day. I had been on vacation in Egypt, but my lead insisted I submit a report.

    Mon: There once was a Pharaoh from Luxor Tue: whose tomb was buried in muxor. Wed: The archeologist did dig, Thu: and soon flipped his wig, Fri: When the mummy jumped up and yelled "Fux0r!"

    The Major we reported to want to know why my lead was submitting BS status reports.

    That's the price you pay for not reading the reports you insist on having :)

  • leppie (unregistered) in reply to akatherder

    I wonder what the manager is suppose to do, if you are managing yourself,

  • Wes Lewis (unregistered)

    Whilst I was in grad. school, one of my professors told me about SCIgen (the automatic CS paper generator).

    Originally, I thought it was odd enough that my professor was the one to introduce me to such a thing, but he told me that he had occasionally used SCIgen to inflate their departmental reports because they had a sneaking suspicion that the the university heads never actually read the report after it was submitted.

    It turns out, he was correct.

  • (cs)

    Status reports are just a form of insurance for the dev and middle management. For normal days and weeks, nobody cares. Just show up, do your job, and don't take too much time.

    However, when the project starts whizzing past its due date then the reports become fodder for explaining that everyone is in fact working.

    Sometimes, the words on the paper don't matter. Just the size of the stack they make when set on a table during a project planning meeting with the big guys.

  • (cs)

    Not quite the same, but similar: for a laugh, I included in an online Help document for my application, under "FAQs" - "How do I make excellent Potatoes Dauphinoise?" and the recipe. Two years later, one of the users phoned me up laughing his head off. But I'm not sure anyone read any of it before that...

  • KG (unregistered) in reply to Wes Lewis
    Wes Lewis:
    Whilst I was in grad. school, one of my professors told me about SCIgen (the automatic CS paper generator).

    Originally, I thought it was odd enough that my professor was the one to introduce me to such a thing, but he told me that he had occasionally used SCIgen to inflate their departmental reports because they had a sneaking suspicion that the the university heads never actually read the report after it was submitted.

    It turns out, he was correct.

    LOL. That SCIGen is awesome, and might be useful for me later on. Thanks.

  • science_gone_bad (unregistered) in reply to snoofle
    snoofle:
    Just out of curiosity - has anyone ever embedded a Dilbert strip - or any other source of comedy - in a status report, just to see if anyone would notice? (I did, they didn't)

    Even better, I used the Catbert Mission Statement Generator to fill out random sections of a First draft of my end-of-the-year performance review at a large telecom. My boss actually came to me and asked if I could make the rest of my performance review sound as good as the random buzzword generator. Even when I showed him how I did it, he really wanted me to do the rest w/ the buzzword generator.

    Is it any wonder that I could not stomach reading Dilbert while I was there?? Too close to reality for my tastes.

  • mikey (unregistered) in reply to snoofle

    ditto my fave is reference to Computer Related Audit Procedures they never worked it out ;)

  • doug (unregistered)

    I contracted in a place where the head of the company required a report every Friday afternoon on what you'd done, what you intended to do next week, and any conditions that were slowing you down. He'd come in on the weekend and read all of them and take action on all the impediments. Of course all the managers read them, knowing that he would be reading them. That's what I call earning the big bucks.

  • Wombat (unregistered)

    Did someone say something about FAQs?

    (For further information, see next comment.)

  • Wombat /advanced (unregistered)

    Did someone say something about FAQs?

    (For further information, see previous comment.)

  • EOF (unregistered) in reply to DOA
    DOA:
    Oh, man does that piss me off. Suits asking for reports that they never read. Because let's face it, nothing boosts productivity like random interruptions for useless crap. My personal favorite is when my boss interrupts me to ask about the exact same thing I wrote in my report the day before.

    That reminds me of the time I had to manually check 500 web crawlers. Some of them were old and web pages change all the time.

    I made an Excel-sheet with detailed information about what failed, but my manager refused to believe that 1/5 of all scripts failed. This report was just ignored until they got a proper system for testing web crawlers. Then they realised that I was right.

  • bartolo & the nigth breakers (unregistered) in reply to Wes Lewis
    Wes Lewis:
    Whilst I was in grad. school, one of my professors told me about SCIgen (the automatic CS paper generator).

    Originally, I thought it was odd enough that my professor was the one to introduce me to such a thing, but he told me that he had occasionally used SCIgen to inflate their departmental reports because they had a sneaking suspicion that the the university heads never actually read the report after it was submitted.

    It turns out, he was correct.

    An Understanding of I/O Automata with BODY Abstract Scholars agree that symbiotic models are an interesting new topic in the field of networking, and experts concur. After years of extensive research into Scheme, we prove the emulation of multi-processors. We introduce an analysis of extreme programming, which we call BODY.

    Figure 2: The methodology used by our method.

    Figure 7: Note that bandwidth grows as bandwidth decreases - a phenomenon worth constructing in its own right.

  • David (unregistered) in reply to snoofle

    Yes, I've included a Dilbert cartoon occasionally. But it was relevant to the point I was making, and my boss, who wasn't stupid, appreciated the joke. So no WTF there then.

    The problem came later when IT decided to delete all image files from our drives to save space ...

  • JOATMON (unregistered)

    An acquaitance of mine used to write the manuals for military equipment: manual sets that were multi volume beasts. And nobody ever reads them. To prove it, he inserted an appendix that consisted of the Unibomber Manifesto into his latest manual.

    Nobody ever said anything. Somewhere out there is a published manual for a piece of military equipment that contains a full copy of an anarchist's screed against technology. Lovely.

  • Pramila (unregistered) in reply to Cloak
    Cloak:
    vt_mruhlin:
    Ugh, reminds me of my last company and the Unhappy Customer. In a desperate bid to save the failing project, a project manager decided to have twice-dialy status updates meetings with the customer... Many of which I was required to attend, even though I was supposed to be working on actually fixing the problems. "Gee, vt_mruhlin. Why is this project taking so long?" "Because you keep dragging me to these stupid meetings."

    That is exactly what happens to me so often. Daily meetings with the customer followed by a meeting with my own Project Manager followed by a meeting with your colleagues, answering random questions coming from random people on that project. That leaves you 2 to 4 hours a day for doing the urgentissimo work because the PM already promised for Monday next week. It's a funny thing that this only happens when something has to be done urgently. Is there also a rule like the one that adding staff to a project that is late slows it down even further?

  • Multi-cats (unregistered)

    For a former employer's annual report, we changed a project name from its original generic name to: File Acquistion, Reporting, and Translation System, better known as FARTS. Even after pointing out our witty joke to the co-founder and CTO repeatedly (and documenting that we warned him through email chains), the lovely and tasteful acronym made its way to all of our shareholders and the board of directors. The CTO's response? 'No one every reads those things anyway.'

  • TyphoidTimmy (unregistered) in reply to webhamster

    Hehe...sounds like my same job...only I coded a little java proggie to pull together a myriad of words relating to the projects, generate it into a nice little format that sounded somewhat reasonable (i.e. 'PM-614: recoded the CSS to conform to the new standardizations of the I-8 meeting') and fire it off daily.

    Boss never knew the difference and even commented on how detailed they got. I almost got into trouble when I resigned and he asked me why I gave him 3 days worth of reports after I had left.

    I told him they system was playing catch up to all my stuff, telnetted it, and shut down the program. I left it up though with a little note detailing it with something along the lines of 'if you are as busy as I am, use this to get a certain monkey off your back'

    My replacement actually found it a month later and wrote me a nice email telling me that it was a 'work of genius'.

  • Freyaday (unregistered)

    I once filled out a status report with a spectrogram of Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up".

    captcha: dolor Sounds about right.

  • eric bloedow (unregistered)

    reminds me of a story i read somewhere: a manager started demanding detailed status reports, and one worker started writing extremely detailed ones: nearly HALF of each report describing how the same manager wasted hours of his time bragging about his high scores in the video-games the manager played during business hours, and other useless activities the manager did instead of his job...when the bosses read those reports...i think the manager was fired, and the status reports were done away with.

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