Lie To Your Manager

Based on past history with SkunkWorkPatterns style subterfuge, I strongly recommend conspiring with your management rather than lying to them. If you lie and win, the amount you'll deposit into your "technical superstar" account won't make up for the debit to your "can I be trusted" account.

Besides, there's strength in numbers if/when the final reckoning comes.

-- DaveSmith (3/15/96)

Another advantage of conspiring with your management rather than lying to them is that they can usually make some resources (such as time) available for your "off the books" (non)project.

The environment that is most likely to "encourage" unofficial management participation is when:

The official project isn't getting anywhere (or there is a great risk that it will not deliver when required).
Your management must deliver this critical component.
No-one else has any idea that seems viable.
Your manager trusts your ability because you've always "come through".
Your manager desperately needs a "Plan B" to reduce his/her risks of failure.
Your manager can create "wiggle room" to free up some resources for "Plan B".

(Is this a pattern? Someone care to polish this?)

-- ShalomReich

Sounds like this is what AlwaysHaveOneOnTheBackBurner? (cited in SkunkWorkPatterns) might cover.

-- DaveSmith

Someone somewhere has to, well, perhaps not lie exactly, but withhold/not reveal/divert information from their manager.

If I conspire with my manager, which I'm more than happy to do, he may conspire with his manager, who may conspire with his and so on and so on, each in more vague terms than the last. Eventually, this conspiracy becomes so vague that it vanishes. If it didn't, I might as well go straight to the CEO and work directly with him, mightn't I?

-- JezHiggins

If you have that ease of access to the CEO what are you doing programming? You should be a VP. Then get sacked along with him because the company re-stated earnings for the 3rd time since that development project that was to integrate everything into one ERP did not work. There were rumours that the developers were conspiring with their managers.

And how does lying (or whatever euphemism you prefer) to your manager help in that situation? Better "conspiracies all the way up" than untruths, surely? -- PaulHudson

It depends on how much room your manager has to breath. I worked at one place where technical choices were made 2000 miles away and were killing us. The management were not allowed to give us any slack and were too busy to understand the problem well enough to conspire. We figured it was a choice between conforming and delivering - and delivery always wins. We told the usual white lie that we were prototyping in PythonLanguage and just forgot to finish the job... Six months later, Python was the recognized language. -- SteveFreeman

It depends on the manager. Some like lies, some do not. Also consider that the US is culturally biased against lies, while LatinAmerica? is biased against truth.

See for example BigEstimates. In that scenario, the manager supposes you will give an incorrect estimate (lie or mistake) and then he will cut in half or use another procedure to cut it. If the resulting estimate succeeds, both will have failed, because the manager's manager (may I say MetaManager?), will change its cutting procedure the next time.

In my experience developers more often under-bid estimates than over state them.

I want my programmers to tell me the truth. I make plans based on their estimate, and I make those plans visible to them. This includes big red stars for when payments are due from customers. If their timings slip to the right, so do the stars, and they see the consequences. Programmers for whom this happens regularly are then encouraged to recognise that things generally take longer than they say. After a few cycles of this their estimates become significantly more accurate.
The one thing I won't abide is being lied to.