How do I break my scrum/project manager friend?
I'm meeting up in a few weeks with a close friend I haven't seen in around a decade, who went hard into scrum and project management in the intervening years.
How can I cause the most psychological damage and work flashbacks in a single sentence?
I'm gonna hopefully assume y'all have a joking nature and he'll appreciate this ?
Yup. Kind of surprised how people seem to have jumped to the idea this is something toxic.
I'm not talking about anything seriously crossing boundaries, I just want some fodder for domain specific teasing. Maybe worded things a bit extreme.
Might have been, I have a similar relationship with my fiancee and sometimes people get confused
Some of these are more than just one sentence, sorry.
"I just do what I'm told. That's why I'm paid the big bucks."
"Yeah, I quit because the management wouldn't step in to help me with , so the team was just completely run by the biggest personalities."
"They don't pay me enough to be on call outside business hours."
"Yeah, I never turn my camera on in Zoom meetings." (Particularly good if you have a remote position. Triggers scrum people because "Face-to-face conversation is the best form of communication".)
"Oh yeah, all the tickets where I work are super detailed. Really helps avoid distractions like having to go talk to the person who filed the ticket." (Have you heard agile people "working software over comprehensive documentation" or "a ticket is a placeholder for a conversation"?)
"Why? Oh, I don't know why they wanted me to do . I just did it because they asked me to."
"How is the business supposed to plan without the dev team coming up with an estimate in days up front?"
"Yeah, we've gotten better with our daily scrum meetings. They're only like an hour now-a-days."
"Yeah, we do demos every sprint. They go a lot better now that product doesn't attend any more."
"Yeah, is the person who always works on the sprint goal. Everyone else works on whatever they're a SME in."
"Yeah, we missed the Big Deadline(tm). It was 's fault."
"I think it would be better for the company to outsource its IT department."
"Our JIRA board columns and swim lanes are standardized across the department ever since the JIRA Enforcement department took that over."
And this next bit is just me editorializing. I personally have mixed feelings about agile in general. I've seen it completely disregarded to great peril, and I've also seen it taken extremely seriously in ways that actively cause problems. (Problems bad enough to be dealbreakers that prompted me to leave that particular employment position.) I also have great respect for the agile coach at that place, but there were definitely things he did that pissed me off too.
So, in the debate of agile vs. not-agile, I guess I think what's best is for everyone to just appoint me supreme dictator for life so I can teach them all the right way to do things. 🫡
This is objectively the best & most comprehensive guide. Thank you for making me laugh so hard I peed a little. Sincerely, an ex systems architect.
I do not miss this kind of toxic friendships.
Pretty presumptuous to assume this is in any way toxic or mean.
I just wanted to tease him about his job, like when other friends ask me about my work week as a systems admin/engineer and then follow it up by making up absurd reasons for people to request admin rights.
Build up your friend, do not tear him down.
You would not do well in trades. We rib each other all the time, we love it, and everyone knows each other's boundaries, there's certain lines you don't cross
Some of you love it. It's also famously toxic and pushed people out and away. "Nobody wants to work in the trades". I have a theory...
Forgive me if I don't quite believe someone who hasn't lived that life
I can very easily say "nobody wants a desk job"
That opinions kind of hollow since i haven't had a desk job. I know what I wouldn't want to have, it doesn't allow me to make blanket statements though.
Strange you would assume I haven't lived the life. I have.
I'll just leave these here for your reading pleasure.
https://www.innovatingcanada.ca/industry-and-business/workforce-future-2024/building-bridges-fostering-inclusion-in-the-trades-industry/
https://www.canadianaffairs.news/2025/05/15/pain-pride-and-pills-why-canadian-trades-workers-are-dying-in-silence/
https://www.reddit.com/r/skilledtrades/comments/1an4uu4/the_people_who_work_in_the_trades_are_the_biggest/
https://academic.oup.com/annweh/article/68/3/231/7505293?login=false
I'm going to reply as jokingly sarcastic as I interpret this question and agile in general.
Just ask how his last PI planning went.
Show up late and say “oh I thought we didn’t have any deadlines”
If we were talking Product Manager, I'd gladly help. But this just sounds mean.
What is a scrotum manager?