The 14 Commandments of a Mad-Techie©
Last Updated on 26 Nov 1999

1. Do not get in the habit of returning e-mails or phone calls with any urgency. This way, your failure to respond on any particular day can never be construed as deliberate.
2. Finish all of your assignments way in advance of the (known) deadline, but don't report their completion until forced (see Guideline #1).
3. Never, EVER, start a job a half-hour prior to the time you wish to leave for home, since a 10-minute job will take over 1.5 hours during this period (kind of like the last 2 minutes of a sports game taking 30 minutes).
4. If at all possible, get official work hours that let you show up 1 hour after the LUSERS arrive, and depart 1 hour after they leave, so that their end-of-day deadlines are not your end-of-day deadlines.
5. Don't get in the habit of being more than 80% productive during any given working day, since you'll end up working more than 8 hours, anyway.
6. If you get in the habit of giving 100% or 110%, you will be severely criticized when you have an inevitable off-day. Also, everyone will come to you for all the work, since it will be highly apparent that you are the only person capable of accomplishing anything of importance. Instead, aim for 75% percent, which will enable you to appear equally productive even when you are physically impaired or just under the weather, and you can always look like a superstar by having an occasional 85% day.
7. Try to give everyone the impression that you are continuously busy with work for someone else. No matter what you appear to be doing, if you are approached for a favor or assistance, the appropriate answer is:
   
   "Let me get back to you in about 20 minutes or so...", not
   
   "No problem, I'll be right over!". 
   
   With this approach, you will swiftly become the 3rd option when people are looking for help, since they will come to the conclusion that you are ever so busy. At least, the more intelligent ones will.
8. If someone comes to you for assistance, particularly if they manage to get you to respond right away, then they blatantly ignore your sage and effective solutions, you should promptly make yourself unavailable for any further assistance, or delegate some annoying HB/HG (yes, that was redundant) to fix their problem STEP-BY-STEP. If this problem was caused by a PHB, then get yourself into a meeting, or find some work to do on the machine of his/her boss.
9. Always play LUSERS and PHBs against each other. At the very least, never intervene in their conflicts with one another, or provide them with any indication of whose side you would take.
10. Know how to play office politics, but avoid it unless absolutely necessary (such as near BONUS time).
11. In order to keep people from knowing when you're late, do the following:
    1. Make a habit of showing up for work at erratic times, plus or minus 45 minutes of the time you normally get to work
    2. Don't report in to anyone when you finally arrive.
    3. Don't stay anywhere near your desk during the first hour or so after you get in.
    4. Always leave some article of clothing or a bag in your office.
       
       On days when you are more than an hour late, people will automatically assume that you are somewhere else in the building.
12. Strategically plan all your vacations for the year as early as February. Even if you have to change the dates within a month of actually taking the vacation, the fact that you got the vacation approved since the dawn of time will give you a leg up on your procrastinating cow-orkers.
13. Use your home situation to your advantage. It is extremely interesting to see how much influence the stated desire of a spouse/significant_other/offspring to go away on vacation can have on your PHB's acceptance of the idea. The impact is the same whether or not the spouse/so/offspring has actually made such a statement.
14. The following groups of people (for lack of a better term) should always have the following impression of you:
    1. LUSERS -- You are highly competent, even deity-like, but you have virtually no spare time for anyone or anything.
    2. COW-ORKERS -- You are not someone to be trifled with, but your skill level is only a little better than theirs, thus they don't have to come to you for answers that they can work out on their own.
    3. PHB -- Your best work is done in solitude, you have a high-level view of your job and its responsibilities, and you're too technical to be working directly with end-users.
    4. PHB's Boss -- You are an awesome Team Player, with incredible people skills, and an amazing asset to the organization who should be given sufficient time and resources to grow career-wise.
    5. HR -- You are an awesome Team Player, with incredible people skills, and an amazing asset to the organization who should be given sufficient time and resources to grow career-wise, but is seriously underpaid.