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Just What Do These People Do All Day?
A new era of busywork, but it’s not human resources this time.
As a software developer deeply immersed in the grand game it’s pretty easy to describe in 12 words or less, as is usually required by a generic project manager out of their own depth at a daily standup meeting¹, what I’ve been doing during my indentured servitude period of the last 24 hours.
Perhaps I’ve been solving actual problems, as is my want, researching the solutions to new ones, mentoring junior progressives, or just avoiding unnecessary meetings in order to get some actual work done.
It’s pretty easy, therefore, to catalogue a long list of things that I’ve done that have directly contributed to the pockets of the CEO, sorry, I mean contributed to the bottom line of the business.
The other day, however, when experiencing yet another tedious² ‘no show’ from one of the notional management ranks I got to wondering what do all of the other people hanging around the office actually do all day that they’re so busy as to ignore a meeting and subsequently ghost me afterwards?
Sure, a fair few of them sell stuff (I’ve seen the landfill, sorry, swag lying around as evidence of this) to unsuspecting customers once in a while, whilst others keep the monetary wheels oiled such as operations and finance, and then, well…