Friday, December 12, 2003

Ways to Create a Deathly Silence* on a Conference Call

I am working on 3 different projects currently and I’ve heard 2 different project managers create 2 deathly silences this week.

Project 1
Project Manager: can you detail where we stand with the bugs relating to such and such.
Tech Lead: well, ah.. I need to talk to the QA lead and I’ll send you the details via email later today (note: these bugs have existed for over 2 weeks, so there is no excuse for him not being able to speak to these issues.)
Project Manager: Well, I have to go report to the steering committee on these issues, could you at least give me a sense of the severity of the defects.
Tech lead: Well. Ah.. they’re severe.
…deathly silence…

Project 2:
Project Manager: ok, the conversion process has run into some problems. Right now the theory is that the database has become corrupted. If that is the case, we will need to fix the database and rerun the conversion, which will take 7 days. What that means is that testing in staging will at best be able to begin Dec. 20. Now, let’s talk about resources for the week of Christmas for testing. (said with complete calm as if she were asking about resources for a week in Sept., not a week where there is a major holiday and technology is usually in a freeze, which allows most people to feel safe in planning time off, in fact most people save up their vacation to take that week and up to new years off). Ok, starting with so and so.. what day’s will you be in that week? (note: not to put anyone on the spot or anything, eh?)
…deathly silence…

* defined as over 20 seconds where no one speaks and you start to wonder if people are still breathing it’s so quiet.

Yet another heavy sigh

I just returned from a meeting in which I was the only female. A man from another dept. came to the meeting and when he arrived, he went around the table to introduce himself and shake hands. He skipped over me and then came back and introduced himself to me last. Then he spent the entire meeting staring at my chest. I was staring back at him open mouthed. I couldn’t even listen to anything he said in the meeting because I was so amazed. And it wasn’t as if he was an older person and you might be able to say that was just how he was raised (not to say that is an excuse).. he was maybe 40. I like being employed, but I hate my job.