This is a great passage from Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson:

“Your younger nerd takes offense quickly when someone near him begins to utter declarative sentences, because he reads into it an assertion that he, the nerd, does not already know the information being imparted. But your older nerd has more self-confidence, and besides, understands that frequently people need to think out loud. And highly advanced nerds will furthermore understand that uttering declarative sentences whose contents are already known to all present is part of the social process of making conversation and therefore should not be construed as aggression under any circumstances.”

I don’t think the above is always true but there are a good number of our fellow nerds for whom this is pretty accurate.

Over the past weeks I’ve been watching a team form. Its been a joyful experience. They’ve gone from being a set of individuals with no commitment to each other and very little trust to a true team that trusts each other’s expertise and motivations.

I think that a few things have helped this particular team form:

1. The team members realising that while they worried about each other the project was getting late.
2. The addition of a new team member who shook up the existing relationships enough to allow the team to re-form.
3. The acknowledgement and recognition by the team that it was up to them and that they have the freedom to decide how they will do their work. Nobody else was going to do it for them.
4. The injection of some agile management principles and ideas (courtesy of Crystal Clear).

The new team member is going on a long holiday in a couple of weeks. Hopefully, this won’t drop the team back into its old habits. I’ll keep you posted.

P.S. Perhaps someone should phone Steve Yegge and ask for his opinion on whether this is good agile or bad agile. I guess it must be bad agile since I don’t work at Google.

So you find yourself in your boss’s boss’s office. He’s sitting there in his nice suit and cufflinks smiling nicely. Its been about 5 seconds since you finished answering his question about that troublesome project you’re managing and he hasn’t said a word. Not one. Maybe you didn’t answer the question? Perhaps he’s annoyed at you? Maybe he didn’t understand? Perhaps you explained yourself so poorly that he’s stunned?

Probably not.

He’s probably just an arrogant jerk playing power games with you. You see there’s this technique that “important” people sometimes use on those who they are sure are in awe of their power and all round importance. They stay deliberately quiet when you indicate using non-verbal or verbal queues that you’ve finished talking. The hope is that since you are a normal person inbued with social graces that you’ll pick up the slack and keep talking. Then, as you grope around your little brain, you’ll spill the beans on your secret plans or whatever. After all you’ll be so flustered.

What should you do. Don’t panic and choose one of these two options:

1. Talk about anything even obliquely related to the subject. Go into enormous, banal detail. If you’re talking about a project schedule then list every task you can think of. Don’t forget to give a history of which people have had anything to do with each individual task. Most importantly, try not to pause for too long for at least a few minutes. The idea is to apply a bit of aversion therapy. He goes silent. You babble.
2. The alternative is to sit there quietly as well. After all he asked a question and you answered. If Mr Bossman has more questions then he should be able to ask shouldn’t he? After a while if he doesn’t get a flustered reaction from you he’ll probably not try it any more.

Hopefully you’ll never face the situation. I’ve only had it tried on me a few times. The first time I was flustered and madly groped around for a while trying to answer the question. By the next time I’d worked it out by reflecting on how uncomfortable I was the first time. I used the babbling technique which worked - no more attempts from that guy. The last time, with a different person, I tried the going silent technique. I also tried to smile knowingly at him. He gave up on the discussion (probably because he thought I was a deranged axe murderer).

P.S. If you’ve ever used this technique on someone then please stop reading my blog. We don’t want your kind around here.

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