Ten Commandments of IT Slackerism

Version 2.02

Michael Bolton: Peter, you're in deep shit. You were supposed to come in on Saturday. What were you doing?

Peter Gibbons: Michael, I did nothing. I did absolutely nothing, and it was everything that I thought it could be.

Office Space (1999) - Quotes - IMDb

1. Stupidity is not the same as the lack of intelligence... It's an independent dimension, quality of its own. It's unwitting self-destruction, the ability to act against one's best interests, social blindness...  It's a a typical quality of gifted programmers/system administrators and you need to cultivate skepticism and your sense of humor in order to fight this disease before it destroys you...
    
2. There is a very fine line between software development as job, as hobby, and as mental disease. Thou shalt cultivate other interests to ensure that evil software development spirits do not fully possess thy soul.  There's much more to life than developing software day and night including open source software. Remember about warning signs of a software developer addiction:

   "My personal appearance went downhill. I didn't care. My girlfriend left. I lost my job. I didn't care. I had become, yes, a open source programmer!". 

   Remember that sacrificing your life for developing some semi-useless and duplicative open source program might be not the best way to realize yourself as a person. Developers pay for OSS, and they often pay a heavy price. Just ask Larry Wall.
    

3. Value your time and use the highest level of language possible. Program in scripting language unless it is absolutely necessary to use compiled language or Java.  If your program does not work or is useless it is not important how efficient it is. If it is useful,  people will use it even it is slightly slower then compiled language version. Also, typically 20% of code consumes 80% of time, therefore concentrating on those you can speed the program much more that writing everything in lower level language.
   
   Ignore the proliferation of OO programming languages (all of which seem to have stolen countless features from one another). It makes it difficult to understand why all those features are needed, and, especially, why the hell you should study them.  That's not a warning sign that you cannot cope with the University program. That actually may means two things:
   • You are still normal despite studying software engineering for some time.
   • In software fashion rulez no matter what.
      
4. Thou shalt know by your heart that all software sucks, but Unix sucks less the other OSes. Beware of those who say that their software does not suck, for they are either zealots or liars or charlatans. There is no silver bullet in software engineering.  That includes Microsoft products, GCC, Linux, Solaris, Java, etc.  Most of the books/articles that worship some fashionable trends that promise some kind of breakthrough are either intentionally (written by software engineering charlatans)  or unintentionally ( written by religious zealots) misleading and will be forgotten in a decade or so.
   
   The only true revelation of the art of programming is contained in  The Art of Computer Programming written by Donald Knuth. In operating systems domain Unix is more elegant and sucks less that other OSes, but it still sucks.  Especially as a desktop. The necessity to tinker with OS to make some device work is a good training exercise during college days, but it became annoying and distracting masochism  later. Both Microsoft Windows and Linux are to operating systems what McDonalds is to gourmet cooking: too much fat.  Thou shalt try other OSes including minimized Linux distributions, OpenBSD/FreeBSD, etc, it is has features that make it more suitable to the task in hand. Never assume that any particular OS is good for all tasks.  
    
5. When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other. It's better to destroy your health while you are being handsomely paid, that do it for free. Paradoxically a lot of great software was written by trying to meet tough deadlines in the commercial project.
    
6. Beware of "this needs to be rewritten" trap. More often that not this is just a manifestation of  "Not invented here" syndrome, which is a powerful motivator for doing stupid things. I've never seen an good programmer who examined the code and did not say or think "Well, this crap needs to be rewritten!" If code works, it usually doesn't need to be rewritten despite the fact that it doesn't fit your prejudices. Value your time and don't rewrite things that does not make sense in any language... unless absolutely necessary
    
7. When you encounter ideas pushed by higher management that politely could only be described as “ridiculous” think twice before trying to enlighten those poor smacks. The chances are reasonably high that the "the one, the only" whom you try to enlighten is a sociopath and you will inflict severe punishment on yourself for your own stupidity.  Instead of boiling about stupidity of the idea, think about (possibly covert) ways to convert completely stupid suggestion into something at least workable without irritating stupid jerks. Or at least benefiting personally from this stupidity.  Moreover in ten years differences much be negligible as everything will be swiped in the sea of obsolesce  by a new wave of technologies.
   
   IT management jerks control much less that they think and circumventing them helps to polish your architectural skills ;-).  Think strategically and try to understand simple fact that in 3-5-10 years nobody will care about the fact that those jerks moved electrons in wrong direction. It's all like creating a beautiful painting on a sand beach -- the next big wave will wipe everything anyway. Chances are that during the project you might have an opportunity to change the direction in some kind of covert action; also think about what you can learn while doing the project independently of the results and what training you can get  as a bonus for not questioning stupid higher up judgment.
    
8. Initiative in any large corporation IT department is a punishable offence. You will be much better off writing open source software as a hobby under pseudonym, or taking a couple of courses at company expense, then trying to break the bureaucracy walls in your current company. Actually self-education including but not limited to writing open source software might get you faster to better position, salary, etc in a different company that might value your skills higher then current.
    
9. Remember that in any project the most suitable programming language is the language that project leader knows the best.  Don't fight such  idiosyncrasies even if you hate the language. You can always generate one language from another and create a prototype in the language you like (without advertizing this transgression ;-) and manually translate it into a target language.  Think strategically: the language is just one tool in the tool chain and if it has a good debugger  it's an OK language.  Otherwise try to find other people who share your resentment and present facts about debugger quality in an objective non-threatening to the ego of the project leader way.
    
10. Thou shall never believe that by clapping hands and chanting "La! La! La! Free/Open Software is the best!" long and loudly enough, it'll come true. That's Raymondism. Choose free over non-free only when it is better suits your needs or you have no money to buy commercial software and thou art willing to fix what is broken. Choose a license of thine liking for software thou writest and do not blame those who choose differently for software they write. Remember that Unix is more than 30 years old, GNU is more then 25 years old, and Linux is more then 15 years old. Never refer to anything that is more then ten years old as revolutionary. You should just laugh at those poor jerks who call  Linux a "the revolutionary operating system".  Linux is  "the last century operating system" and no better or worse then other flavors of Unix; it just more bloated :-).  Ask yourself if it really make sense killing yourself trying make it better or promoting it in your crazy corporate IT environment. Whatever flavor of Unix is present in your environment might suit you just fine :-). Open Standards are not equivalent to open source and are more important than open source. Like people benefit from knowing more than one language, programmers can benefit from knowing and using at least two OSes: one for the desktop and the other for the server. Monoculture of software is bad, diversity within reasonable limits is good.  Never put all eggs into one basket, be it Windows or Linux, Java or Python.

Acknowledgements

[Mar 09, 2012] Hat tip to an anonymous reviewer who pointed out several inconsistencies in the text.

[Aug 10, 2010] Hat tip to Mark Gilsdorf for suggestion that "The software language that a developer uses will be the one recommended as the best language to use for any project. " that was converted in Commandment No. 9

[Aug 14, 2009] Hat tip to Mikkel Alan Stokkebye Christiansen for several spelling corrections...

[Sep 21, 2008] Hat tip to Paul Cubbage who suggested Commandment No. 6

NEWS CONTENTS

• 200109 : Office Space (1999) - Quotes - IMDb ( Office Space (1999) - Quotes - IMDb, )

Old News ;-)

Office Space (1999) - Quotes - IMDb

===

Dom Portwood: Hi, Peter. What's happening? We need to talk about your TPS reports.

Peter Gibbons: Yeah. The coversheet. I know, I know. Uh, Bill talked to me about it.

Dom Portwood: Yeah. Did you get that memo?

Peter Gibbons: Yeah. I got the memo. And I understand the policy. And the problem is just that I forgot the one time. And I've already taken care of it so it's not even really a problem anymore.

Dom Portwood: Ah! Yeah. It's just we're putting new coversheets on all the TPS reports before they go out now. So if you could go ahead and try to remember to do that from now on, that'd be great. All right!

===

Peter Gibbons: The thing is, Bob, it's not that I'm lazy, it's that I just don't care.

Bob Porter: Don't... don't care?

Peter Gibbons: It's a problem of motivation, all right? Now if I work my ass off and Initech ships a few extra units, I don't see another dime, so where's the motivation? And here's something else, Bob: I have eight different bosses right now.

Bob Slydell: I beg your pardon?

Peter Gibbons: Eight bosses.

Bob Slydell: Eight?

Peter Gibbons: Eight, Bob. So that means that when I make a mistake, I have eight different people coming by to tell me about it. That's my only real motivation is not to be hassled, that and the fear of losing my job. But you know, Bob, that will only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired.

===

Michael Bolton: PC load letter! What the fuck does that mean?

===

Peter Gibbons: So I was sitting in my cubicle today, and I realized, ever since I started working, every single day of my life has been worse than the day before it. So that means that every single day that you see me, that's on the worst day of my life.

Dr. Swanson: What about today? Is today the worst day of your life?

Peter Gibbons: Yeah.

Dr. Swanson: Wow, that's messed up.

===

Bob Porter: Looks like you've been missing a lot of work lately.

Peter Gibbons: I wouldn't say I've been *missing* it, Bob.

===

Bob Porter: We're gonna be getting rid of these people here... First, Mr. Samir Naga... Naga... Naga... Not gonna work here anymore, anyway.

===

Milton Waddams: The ratio of people to cake is too big.

===

Joanna: So, where do you work, Peter?

Peter Gibbons: Initech.

Joanna: In... yeah, what do you do there?

Peter Gibbons: I sit in a cubicle and I update bank software for the 2000 switch.

Joanna: What's that?

Peter Gibbons: Well see, they wrote all this bank software, and, uh, to save space, they used two digits for the date instead of four. So, like, 98 instead of 1998? Uh, so I go through these thousands of lines of code and, uh... it doesn't really matter. I uh, I don't like my job, and, uh, I don't think I'm gonna go anymore.

Joanna: You're just not gonna go?

Peter Gibbons: Yeah.

Joanna: Won't you get fired?

Peter Gibbons: I don't know, but I really don't like it, and, uh, I'm not gonna go.

Joanna: So you're gonna quit?

Peter Gibbons: Nuh-uh. Not really. Uh... I'm just gonna stop going.

===

Tom Smykowski: Well-well look. I already told you: I deal with the god damn customers so the engineers don't have to. I have people skills; I am good at dealing with people. Can't you understand that? What the hell is wrong with you people?

===

Bill Lumbergh: Milt, we're gonna need to go ahead and move you downstairs into storage B. We have some new people coming in, and we need all the space we can get. So if you could just go ahead and pack up your stuff and move it down there, that would be terrific, OK?

Milton Waddams: Excuse me, I believe you have my stapler...

===

Bob Slydell: You see, what we're actually trying to do here is, we're trying to get a feel for how people spend their day at work... so, if you would, would you walk us through a typical day, for you?

Peter Gibbons: Yeah.

Bob Slydell: Great.

Peter Gibbons: Well, I generally come in at least fifteen minutes late, ah, I use the side door - that way Lumbergh can't see me, heh heh - and, uh, after that I just sorta space out for about an hour.

Bob Porter: Da-uh? Space out?

Peter Gibbons: Yeah, I just stare at my desk; but it looks like I'm working. I do that for probably another hour after lunch, too. I'd say in a given week I probably only do about fifteen minutes of real, actual, work.

===

Joanna: You know what, Stan, if you want me to wear 37 pieces of flair, like your pretty boy over there, Brian, why don't you just make the minimum 37 pieces of flair?

Stan, Chotchkie's Manager: Well, I thought I remembered you saying that you wanted to express yourself.

Joanna: Yeah. You know what, yeah, I do. I do want to express myself, okay. And I don't need 37 pieces of flair to do it.

===

Peter Gibbons: It's not just about me and my dream of doing nothing. It's about all of us. I don't know what happened to me at that hypnotherapist and, I don't know, maybe it was just shock and it's wearing off now, but when I saw that fat man keel over and die - Michael, we don't have a lot of time on this earth! We weren't meant to spend it this way. Human beings were not meant to sit in little cubicles staring at computer screens all day, filling out useless forms and listening to eight different bosses drone on about about mission statements.

Michael Bolton: I told those fudge-packers I liked Michael Bolton's music.

Peter Gibbons: Oh. That is not right, Michael.

===

Peter Gibbons: You're gonna lay off Samir and Michael?

Bob Slydell: Oh yeah, we're gonna bring in some entry-level graduates, farm some work out to Singapore, that's the usual deal.

Bob Porter: Standard operating procedure.

Peter Gibbons: Do they know this yet?

Bob Slydell: No. No, of course not. We find it's always better to fire people on a Friday. Studies have statistically shown that there's less chance of an incident if you do it at the end of the week.

===

Milton Waddams: Excuse me? Excuse me, senor? May I speak to you please? I asked for a mai tai, and they brought me a pina colada, and I said no salt, NO salt for the margarita, but it had salt on it, big grains of salt, floating in the glass...

Mexican Waiter: Lo siento mucho, senor.

[Under his breath]

Mexican Waiter: Pinche gringo.

Milton Waddams: [as the waiter walks away] And yes, I won't be leaving a tip, 'cause I could... I could shut this whole resort down. Sir? I'll take my traveler's checks to a competing resort. I could write a letter to your board of tourism and I could have this place condemned. I could put... I could put... strychnine in the guacamole. There was salt on the glass, BIG grains of salt.

===

Michael Bolton: Peter, you're in deep shit. You were supposed to come in on Saturday. What were you doing?

Peter Gibbons: Michael, I did nothing. I did absolutely nothing, and it was everything that I thought it could be.

===

Bill Lumbergh: Hello Peter, whats happening? Ummm, I'm gonna need you to go ahead come in tomorrow. So if you could be here around 9 that would be great, mmmk... oh oh! and I almost forgot ahh, I'm also gonna need you to go ahead and come in on Sunday too, kay. We ahh lost some people this week and ah, we sorta need to play catch up.

===

===

Stan, Chotchkie's Manager: We need to talk about your flair.

Joanna: Really? I... I have fifteen pieces on. I, also...

Stan, Chotchkie's Manager: Well, okay. Fifteen is the minimum, okay?

Joanna: Okay.

Stan, Chotchkie's Manager: Now, you know it's up to you whether or not you want to just do the bare minimum. Or... well, like Brian, for example, has thirty seven pieces of flair, okay. And a terrific smile.

Joanna: Okay. So you... you want me to wear more?

Stan, Chotchkie's Manager: Look. Joanna.

Joanna: Yeah.

Stan, Chotchkie's Manager: People can get a cheeseburger anywhere, okay? They come to Chotchkie's for the atmosphere and the attitude. Okay? That's what the flair's about. It's about fun.

Joanna: Yeah. Okay. So more then, yeah?

Stan, Chotchkie's Manager: Look, we want you to express yourself, okay? Now if you feel that the bare minimum is enough, then okay. But some people choose to wear more and we encourage that, okay? You do want to express yourself, don't you?

Joanna: Yeah, yeah.

Stan, Chotchkie's Manager: Okay. Great. Great. That's all I ask.

===

Bob Slydell: I'd like to move us right along to a Peter Gibbons. Now we had a chance to meet this young man, and boy that's just a straight shooter with upper management written all over him.

===

[Stuck in traffic]

Samir: Mother... shitter... Son of an... ass. I just...

[punches steering wheel]

===

Milton Waddams: I was told that I could listen to the radio at a reasonable volume from nine to eleven, I told Bill that if Sandra is going to listen to her headphones while she's filing then I should be able to listen to the radio while I'm collating so I don't see why I should have to turn down the radio because I enjoy listening at a reasonable volume from nine to eleven.

===

Michael Bolton: Samir and I are the best programmers they got at that place. You haven't been showing up and you get to keep your job.

Peter Gibbons: Actually, I'm being promoted.

===

Tom Smykowski: [Smykowski is in a full-body cast] Just remember, if you hang in there long enough, good things can happen in this world. I mean, look at me.

===

Steve: Good evening Sir, my name is Steve. I come from a rough area. I used to be addicted to crack but now I am off it and trying to stay clean. That is why I am selling magazine subscriptions.

===

Bill Lumbergh: [in Peter's dream, Lumbergh is oiled up and having sex] You can just go ahead and move a little bit to the left. Yeah, that's it. Great.

===

Bob Slydell: Would you bear with me for just a second, please?

Peter Gibbons: OK.

Bob Slydell: What if - and believe me this is a hypothetical - but what if you were offered some kind of a stock option equity sharing program. Would that do anything for you?

Peter Gibbons: I don't know, I guess. Listen, I'm gonna go. It's been really nice talking to both of you guys.

Bob Slydell: Absolutely, the pleasure's all on this side of the table, trust me.

Peter Gibbons: Good luck with your layoffs, all right? I hope your firings go really well.

Bob Porter: Excellent.

Bob Slydell: Great... Wow.

===

[Peter, Michael, and Samir are chatting as they hang around the printer]

Peter Gibbons: Our high school guidance counselor used to ask us what you'd do if you had a million dollars and you didn't have to work. And invariably what you'd say was supposed to be your career. So, if you wanted to fix old cars then you're supposed to be an auto mechanic.

Samir: So what did you say?

Peter Gibbons: I never had an answer. I guess that's why I'm working at Initech.

Michael Bolton: No, you're working at Initech because that question is bullshit to begin with. If everyone listened to her, there'd be no janitors, because no one would clean shit up if they had a million dollars.

Samir: You know what I would do if I had a million dollars? I would invest half of it in low risk mutual funds and then take the other half over to my friend Asadulah who works in securities...

Michael Bolton: Samir, you're missing the point. The point of the exercise is that you're supposed to figure out what you would want to do if...

[printer starts beeping]

Michael Bolton: "PC Load Letter"? What the fuck does that mean?

===

Bill Lumbergh: Oh, and remember: next Friday... is Hawaiian shirt day. So, you know, if you want to, go ahead and wear a Hawaiian shirt and jeans.

===

Peter Gibbons: Look, I don't know about you guys, but I'm tired of being pushed around. Aren't you?

Samir: Yes, Peter, but I'm not going to do anything illegal.

Peter Gibbons: Illegal? Samir, this is America.

===

Peter Gibbons: Boy, I'll tell ya, some days... One of these days it's just gonna be like...

[He mimics the sound of a machine gun. Brian, a waiter, walks up and does the same and laughs]

Brian, Chotchkie's Waiter: So can I get you gentlemen something more to drink? Or maybe something to nibble on? Some Pizza Shooters, Shrimp Poppers, or Extreme Fajitas?

Peter Gibbons: Just coffee.

Brian, Chotchkie's Waiter: Okay. Sounds like a case of the Mondays.

===

[Peter is wearing shorts, sandals and a paisley shirt, with his feet up on his desk, munching chips and playing tetris on his computer]

Bill Lumbergh: So, Peter, what's happening? Aahh, now, are you going to go ahead and have those TPS reports for us this afternoon?

Peter Gibbons: No.

Bill Lumbergh: Ah. Yeah. So I guess we should probably go ahead and have a little talk. Hmm?

Peter Gibbons: Not right now, Lumbergh, I'm kinda busy. In fact, look, I'm gonna have to ask you to just go ahead and come back another time. I got a meeting with the Bobs in a couple of minutes.

Bill Lumbergh: I wasn't aware of a meeting with them.

Peter Gibbons: Yeah, they called me at home.

===

Peter Gibbons: [talking about the hypnotherapist he's about to see] Hey, he helped Anne lose weight.

Samir: Peter, she's anorexic!

Peter Gibbons: Yeah, the guy's really good.

===

Peter Gibbons: Yeah, I know him. I know him! He's my boss! He's my unholy, disgusting pig of a boss!

Joanna: He's not THAT disgusting.

Peter Gibbons: He represents all that is soulless and wrong! And you slept with him!

===

Drew: I'm thinking I might take that new chick from Logistics. If things go well I might be showing her my O-face. "Oh... Oh... Oh!" You know what I'm talkin' about. "Oh!"

===

Lawrence: We still goin' fishin' this weekend?

Peter Gibbons: Nah, Lumbergh's gonna have me come in on Saturday, I just know it.

Lawrence: Well, you can get out of that easily.

Peter Gibbons: Yeah? How?

Lawrence: Well, when a boss wants you to work on Saturday he generally asks you at the end of the day, right?

Peter Gibbons: Yeah.

Lawrence: So, all you gotta do is avoid him... on the last few hours on Friday, duck out early, turn off your answering machine... you should be home free, man.

Peter Gibbons: That's a really good idea.

Lawrence: Fuckin' A, man!

===

Samir: No, not again. I... why does it say paper jam when there is no paper jam? I swear to God, one of these days, I just kick this piece of shit out the window.

Michael Bolton: You and me both, man. That thing is lucky I'm not armed.

Samir: Piece of shit.

===

Bob Slydell: Milton Waddams.

Dom Portwood: Who's he?

Bob Porter: You know, squirrely looking guy, mumbles a lot.

Dom Portwood: Oh, yeah.

Bob Slydell: Yeah, we can't actually find a record of him being a current employee here.

Bob Porter: I looked into it more deeply and I found that apparently what happened is that he was laid off five years ago and no one ever told him about it; but through some kind of glitch in the payroll department, he still gets a paycheck.

Bob Slydell: So we just went ahead and fixed the glitch.

Bill Lumbergh: Great.

Dom Portwood: So, uh, Milton has been let go?

Bob Slydell: Well, just a second there, professor. We, uh, we fixed the *glitch*. So he won't be receiving a paycheck anymore, so it'll just work itself out naturally.

Bob Porter: We always like to avoid confrontation, whenever possible. Problem is solved from your end.

===

Joanna: I dunno, it just seems wrong.

Peter Gibbons: It's NOT wrong. INITECH is wrong. INITECH is an evil corporation, all right? Chochkies is wrong. Doesn't it bother you that you have to get up in the morning and you have to put on a bunch of pieces of flair?

Joanna: Yeah, but I'm not about to go in and start taking money from the register.

Peter Gibbons: Well, maybe you should. You know, the Nazis had pieces of flair that they made the Jews wear.

Joanna: What?

===

Milton Waddams: Mr. Lumbergh told me to talk to payroll and then payroll told me to talk to Mr. Lumbergh and I still haven't received my paycheck and he took my stapler and he never brought it back and then they moved my desk to storage room B and there was garbage on it...

===

Lawrence: [shouting through the wall from his apartment] Hey Peter, man, check out channel 9, check out this chick.

===

Michael Bolton: You think the pet rock was a really great idea?

Tom Smykowski: Sure it was. The guy made a million dollars. You know, I had an idea like that once. A long time ago.

Peter Gibbons: Really, what was it, Tom?

Tom Smykowski: Well, all right. It was a "Jump to Conclusions" mat. You see, it would be this mat that you would put on the floor, and it would have different conclusions written on it that you could jump to.

===

Steve: I lied. Um... All that stuff I said about being a crack head? It just helps me sell magazines. I'm actually an unemployed... software engineer.

Peter Gibbons: You're a software engineer?

Steve: Yup.

[sighs]

Samir: Things, uh... it must be very rough for you.

Steve: Actually man, I make more money selling magazine subscriptions, than I ever did at Intertrode!

===

Bob Slydell: [telling Lumbergh who's going to be fired] There's two more people we can easily lose, and then there's Tom Smykowski... He's useless.

[laughs]

===

Joanna: Why don't you just call me when you grow up! Oh, wait, you know what, that's probably never gonna happen, so just don't call me, OK?

[Joanna starts to close car door]

Peter Gibbons: Say hello to Lumbergh for me!

===

Michael Bolton: Tom, every week you say you're going to lose your job and you're still here.

Tom Smykowski: Not this time. I'll bet I'm the first one laid off! Just the thought of having to go to the state unemployment office and stand in line with those SCUMBAGS...

===

Peter Gibbons: What if we're still doing this when we're fifty?

Samir: It would be nice to have that kind of job security.

===

Lawrence: Doesn't that chick look like Anne?

Peter Gibbons: Yeah, a little bit...

Lawrence: Hey, she hasn't been over here in a while. You two still goin' out?

Peter Gibbons: Yeah. I guess... I don't know. Sometimes I get the feeling like she's cheating on me.

Lawrence: Yeah, I get that feeling too, man.

Peter Gibbons: What do you mean by that?

Lawrence: I don't know, man. I just get that feeling lookin' at her like she's the type of chick that just...

[shudders]

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