By Nishant Kothary CHAPTER 12

Chapter tWelve · by nishant KOthary

The DeSign of PeoPle

am going to get you fired!” yelled Prakash^1 , the heavyset, smooth-
talking and very politically savvy engineering manager, so loudly
that I could feel my desk vibrate. I’d just returned from lunch and was
clearing out my inbox when he marched in looking like Mount St. Helens
right before it erupted. He was livid that my executive status report (a
weekly report that I sent to all the stakeholders of our project, including
the vice-president of the company) announced that the overall project
status was “red”, compliments of Prakash’s team letting a few critical
milestones pass. In other words, we were going to miss our launch date,
again. We were over six months behind schedule now.
My brain flashed back six months to a conversation with my manager,
John. “We need to chat,” John began cautiously. I instantly braced for
bad news. Thanks to his lackluster bedside manner, it went south pretty
quickly from there. In the next thirty minutes he delivered a message in
almost undecipherable corporate-speak that amounted to: You really suck
at your job, it’s making me look bad, and if you don’t get your act together
soon, I’m going to have to fire you.

1 All names have been changed to protect the guilty.

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