Vice president of iconography

Last week was the weekly meeting for a product team whose offering is targeted at third-party customers who want to use our tactics and methods without obviously using our tactics and methods. I can count the number of these customers on one hand.  Twice.  Both are technically savvy.

El Jefe, who is seeking to display his alpha Vice President of Yatta Yatta status, is not. He is still stuck with trans-facts.

He kept the team meeting going on an hour late because he got a burr up his ass that the OEM module needs special icons, an user-friendly installation program and … a special font developed using off-shore resources.  Okay, I’m extrapolating that last one based on my interaction with him last week…

I was not actually in that meeting, thank Buddha, but heard from two people that the room went silent as the team searched for a diplomatic way to tell him he didn’t know what the hell he was talking about.  They can’t just say “you’re fucking clueless, let us do our jobs, Pointy-Haired One” to his face.  They report to him and worry about retribution if he ever took an interest in doing regular employee reviews.  (He has been under pressure to start these.  I predict he does only one round.)

They tried: “there is no place to put icons” and “there is nothing to install” to no avail.  I know they wanted to say “you completely ignored our best case estimates and signed us up to deliver this two months earlier than we said it could be done.  Will you wave your magic wand and make this work complete itself, or will you change the date?”  This might have worked better.
I secretly hope someone asked him to prototype the icons so they could “better understand the concept he was teaching them. ” (Translation: keep him busy and out of the way.)