Corporate Bull

Rewinding to year 1998 ...

 

I am an excited developer and am presenting my prototype to a manager at a company. A relatively new employee (and soon-to-be my lead), intent on impressing me and the manager, barges into our private dialogue.

 

Here is an excerpt of the proceedings. Names changed for privacy reasons

 

 

Me	So Sirji what I am saying is that we have made an exit in the code so that the user can customize it according to their requirements (What I really wanted to say was that there is nothing in the code, it is left for the customer to write what they want)
Manager	No, No, No, I'm not clear. Can you restart from beginning?
Me	<< Shit! It's already an hour of waste>>
Intruder	What Sujith is saying is that we can leverage the customizing technology in the core system so that the customer can tailor it as per their business exigencies
Me	<< WHAT?!!! And this fellow understood that line in a second?!! >> (And almost spraying out the hot coffee from my mouth)
Manager	Aah! OK
Me	Okay?!
Manager	But what I really wanted you to do was to conceptualize a sort of 'Flexi-Developer' system
Me	And what should that do Sir-ji?
Manager	You see Sujith, The challenge we have is that our company continues to engage in multiple custom developments within implementations these days. And so my tool should enable our customers to quickly build new modules, reports and screens
Me	<<Duh! Isn't that what Developer Workbench is supposed to achieve?!>>
Me	But Sir-ji that is not possible! How can one program that?! (Looking at the two pitifully)
Intruder	No problem, I understand what Sirji is asking and will help you Sujith. We will create one higher level of Table control which we can categorically split into its reflective views.

 

...

 

Like it says in the Dilbert strips, all you need for a corporate conservation is a shuffle between the Most-Frequently-Used words. Note all the highlighted words above, it helps me even today.

 

Sujith has matured a lot since ; but to this date cannot comprehend the connection between any of the words in that last line.