Ryan Olson
3 HN mentions · mentioned in 3 months, 2019–2022
1:19 · 3M views · May 20, 2007
A one-minute clip from the film Office Space in which consultants ask an employee what he does here. It is a widely shared workplace comedy moment.
Used purely as a joke reply when threads discuss pointless roles, management or architects.
3 comments from Hacker News
> I don’t understand your point about PMs. You’re saying that the responsibilities of an EM should be that of a PM. So you’re just arguing for a name change? Or something else? Well, its not just a name change, but generally Yes. The biggest thing is from the Org Hierarchy perspective. I want to preface what I'm about to say to be perfectly clear: This is not true in every company. EMs have the final say on resourcing for code-related tasks; but poor understanding of the code, systems, etc because the Lead/Senior devs live there. EMs have the final say on product decisions from PO/PMs under them; but a poor understanding of the product because the PO/PMs/etc breathe that. EMs have the final say on designs; but a poor understanding of UX because the designers have that. The best EMs always have some background in one of the roles I outlined above. They come from an IC background, they were due a promotion, burned out in the IC role, ran out of promotions in the IC track, whatever. But in many situations the role of an EM becomes a mediocre mashup where the one thing they're actually good at is navigating the politics of org hierarchies; or if you want to be Business Proper, call it Communication. Ask any high school guidance councilor where "Communications" lands on the list of Valuable College Degrees and you'll get a pretty consistent answer. But: EMs somehow escaped this destiny, because tech has a weird distortion field on incomes right now. Here's the sinister part: Becau
Serious questions I have: * Are senators/house reps being paid? If so - Why? * If the government is going to shit on people like this - then why are those people required to pay a tax (which is money extracted from the population to pay for services which the government provides - if the government refuses to provide those services, then why would you be obligated to pay a tax - thus the shutdown should be filed as an exemption during tax season) * How in the fucking world is it that someone can "shutdown" the government in the first place?? * If you had a CEO who was embroiled in this much scandal - wouldn't you question "So, what is it you'd say you actually do around here?"[0] -- What is the actual NORMAL day-to-day expectation of a POTUS which has not been done bythis POTUS in the course of his employment? * How can you claim to be a country based on rule of law with such shenanigans? Such that it undermines the willingness of the people to follow the rule of law in ever aspect of the spectrum. this video
> People with managerial backgrounds have....what? Nothing really. Reminds me of “What would you say you do here?” this video