Am I Really That Boring?

I am very grateful that I am able to make a decent living developing software. On the good days, it can be very satisfying and the time flies. Even on the bad days, software development is still better than about 99% of the other jobs that I could imagine myself doing.

But the actual type of software I work on (systems management software) isn’t exactly the sexiest stuff in the industry when compared to, say, consumer applications that the entire world uses (smart phone apps, browsers, etc). It is very specialized, has incredibly long deployment cycles, and typically requires services engagements so the function can be tailored for the individual customers.

As is typical with any product development area, there are the assorted status and team meetings to attend, reviews with various stakeholders, and the normal elements of a large corporate bureaucracy with which one must fight. So lightening up the work environment with some humor would seem to be a welcome respite from the mundane aspects of the job. I have had some spectacular failures in this respect over the last couple of years. The failures were spectacular not in that the humor was in poor taste or offensive – rather that simply nobody got the humor!

This post is about the first failure. A couple of years ago, I was driving this new function into our Common Installer. The details of the function aren’t important – let’s just label it Package Policy. This was something that I designed from the ground up and was going to be the development lead on, so I put together a killer PowerPoint presentation on why Package Policy was good and why we needed to add it to the component. An engineer like me just can’t add new function to a component unconditionally. One has to convince the Important People that the function makes sense and can “be contained” from a release planning perspective.

So this killer presentation was developed and pitched - over and over again. The presentation was given to my peers on my team, to Development and Test Managers, to the Test Team, to Project Managers, and to about 8 other peer teams that would use this function. This presentation was given about 15 times over a 3 month period and was even reviewed with two Directors  (very Important People).

Now, you may be shocked at this, but Your Faithful Servant does not have the most dynamic personality in general and I can’t fake the Geek Charisma deal either (like this douche bag). So, in a presentation of 52 slides, I incorporated one little light moment, hoping to get some (any) reaction from my audiences.

The slide in question was slide 12. The title says it all. This was golden. A bit juvenile perhaps, but if I Google “Size doesn’t matter”, I get 234 million hits, so it’s not like the phrase isn’t in popular culture.

Plus, I had plausible deniability. If anybody actually got offended (not an unlikely occurrence in today’s PC world), I could just plead ignorance. The title is perfectly appropriate for the contents of the slide.

Every time I gave this presentation, I would pause at this slide and survey my audience – trying to detect a smirk, a chuckle, a smile, some feigned indignation - any kind of reaction. Nothing. Nada. Epic. Fail. 0-for-15.

After you give the same presentation 3 or 4 times, you kind of go on auto pilot and can do it in your sleep. By the time I had pitched this a dozen or so times, this little moment at least gave me something to look forward to – something to keep me interested and engaged. Will someone actually respond this time?

Emboldened, by the time I gave this presentation to my Director (my Third Line Manager), I decided to go for broke. Now, a member of the unwashed masses, like moi, never gets to present anything to a Director without the intermediate layers of management also present. For obvious reasons. So in addition to me and the Director, my first and second line managers were also present. The Director was dialing in from Austin. My first and second line managers were in the room with me.

But that didn’t stop me. I was bringing it, incorporating  a different wrinkle this time and introducing the slide with the following:

Moving on to Slide 12….Mr. Director, contrary to popular opinion, size really doesn’t matter.

One would think that this had to solicit some reaction, right? But I got nothing. Blank stares from my first and second line managers in the room and nothing from the Big Guy. At this point, I admitted defeat. There is either a problem with the message or the messenger and I am pretty sure we all know the answer to that question.