{"id":1192,"date":"2012-02-10T16:17:21","date_gmt":"2012-02-10T23:17:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bilgebucket.com\/?p=1192"},"modified":"2015-11-07T13:17:58","modified_gmt":"2015-11-07T20:17:58","slug":"corporate-sports-a-marriage-made-in-hell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.bilgebucket.com\/?p=1192","title":{"rendered":"Corporate Sports – A Marriage Made in Hell"},"content":{"rendered":"

One more post with our Sports BS retrospective and the beginning of our Corporate BS retrospective. Well whaddya know…here’s an article from our September 17, 2006 issue that combines BS from the sports world and<\/em> BS from the corporate world in one convenient article. Who wouldn’t want to work at this company?<\/p>\n

Innovative Boss Makes Computer Programming Spectator Sport<\/h3>\n

G. Terrance Wallace, the Vice President of Technology at software company Conglomeris, located in the Cactus Corners Ocotillo Office Park, recently instituted a novel new program geared at increasing productivity and visibility for his employees as they toil away on a daily basis in their cubicles. Taking a cue from the sports world, the innovative boss has made the cubicles into an arena and has invited people in to watch and cheer on his software engineers as they code and debug programs.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a revolutionary move,\u201d commented Wallace. \u201cTime after time, my programmers complain that they\u2019re working harder than any of those professional athletes and they\u2019re smarter than those athletes but yet they earn decidedly less. Well, I can\u2019t give my programmers a million dollars. That would be ridiculous!\u201d Wallace then chuckled for several minutes and continued. \u201cSeriously, I can\u2019t. But what I can do is increase the appreciation level for their work. Therefore, I\u2019ve built a spectator arena where fans can come and watch these guys work their magic. I\u2019ve built a concession stand where we sell hot dogs and sodas for fans. I\u2019ve given the programmers numbered jerseys, with the Conglomeris logo of course. I\u2019ve managed to coerce Vera and Ruth from Accounting to be cheerleaders. I\u2019ve even printed trading cards with the programmer\u2019s pictures and programming stats on them. We\u2019ve come up with stats like lines written per hour and bug fix quotient; it\u2019s a stat junkie\u2019s wet dream. We\u2019re also in the works for bobbleheads. I predict that this will be the new trend of the future in high tech industry.\u201d<\/p>\n

Senior Software Engineer Larry Deaver said, \u201cThis is like a dream come true for me. I was never very athletic in school. I was on the chess team, but no one ever came to our matches. But I could code\u2026code like the wind. Now, I\u2019ve got cheerleaders rooting me on with chants like \u2018Debug debug go go!\u2019 Nothing motivates you faster than those foxy accounting babes egging you on. I fixed ten Class B bugs and five Class A bugs today. I was as they say \u2018en fuego\u2019.\u201d Deaver then pumped his fist and accidentally hit it against his desk. \u201cOoowwwwieeeeee! Ooowwwwieeeeee! I hurt my mouse hand! Injury time-out! Send in the medic!\u201d<\/p>\n

Cheerleader Ruth Rubinowitz said, \u201cOh this reminds me when I was a wrestling cheerleader in high school; I\u2019m used to cheering at empty arenas. Hey, the boss is giving me an extra dollar an hour to do this gig so I don\u2019t mind. That one programmer with the coke bottle glasses, Dan Schlueter, is kinda cute. Sure he leads the department in introduced software bugs, but he\u2019s due for some bug fixes. C-O-D-E Coooooooode! Yeah!\u201d<\/p>\n

Not all the programmers were enthusiastic about the new program. Scott Majewski said, \u201cThis is so frigging lame! Look at the cheerleaders. Ruth and Vera both got to be in their late forties.\u00a0 I\u2019m sorry, baggy sweats just aren\u2019t sexy or motivating. The stands are empty. The hot dogs are staler than the ones at Kwik-n-Easy. The only reason Wallace is doing this is to get on the cover of TechNews. Terry\u2019s a complete egomaniac. Not only that, he\u2019s a bonehead. He wouldn\u2019t know good code if it bit him on the ass. He doesn\u2019t care about good programming practices, he just wants software ready for demos so he looks good to headquarters and to do that, he\u2019s got to push us like sled dogs with gimmicky tricks like this heap of dog dung.\u201d<\/p>\n

Database programmer Rick Oswald echoed Majewski\u2019s sentiments. \u201cScrew the trading cards. Pay me what they pay professional athletes and I\u2019ll work my ass off. Hell pay me what they pay minor league athletes and I\u2019ll work my ass off.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since the arena was opened one month ago, only two people have showed up to watch the programmers; one was a man who was waiting for a bus and had an hour to kill, the other was a homeless man who wandered in for a hot dog, but soon after eating it, became sick and left.<\/p>\n

But Wallace is determined his vision will ultimately succeed. \u201cOh this will work,\u201d said Wallace confidently. \u201cIf the programmers don\u2019t want their jobs to go to India next year, they\u2019ll produce and I\u2019ll be named Executive of the Year by TechNews.\u201d He then laughed maniacally and rubbed his hands together.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One more post with our Sports BS retrospective and the beginning of our Corporate BS retrospective. Well whaddya know…here’s an article from our September 17, 2006 issue that combines BS from the sports world and BS from the corporate world in one convenient article. Who wouldn’t want to work at this company? Innovative Boss Makes … Continue reading “Corporate Sports – A Marriage Made in Hell”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[379,358,60],"tags":[340,383,388,382,20,389,387,390,384,386,322,385],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bilgebucket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1192"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bilgebucket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bilgebucket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bilgebucket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bilgebucket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1192"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"http:\/\/www.bilgebucket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1192\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4357,"href":"http:\/\/www.bilgebucket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1192\/revisions\/4357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bilgebucket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bilgebucket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bilgebucket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}