PowerPoint Engineer

During the course of selling your soul for pieces of silver, there may come a time when the powers that be request that you sell out just a little more of yourself.

Yes, they give you underlings. Soon, you will discover that all the skill and pride that you’ve carefully nurtured over the past many years will vanish in mere months. Where once you took pride in your ingenious cleverness, now you take care of babysitting disgruntled ex-peers who look upon you as an obstacle to their inventive genius.

The complex computer modeling of the nano-world is replaced by Gantt charts and bar graphs. You start attending meetings, lots of them. Meetings with the boss. Meetings with your peers. Meetings with underlings.

Food starts to taste funny; the flatulent co-worker seems to smell less; staring at the sun directly is no longer a problem; underling complaints seem to sound like muffled adults in Charlie Brown cartoons. You find that your senses have dulled as if the gerbils that run the little wheels in your head are lacking air.

You start attending presentations. In fact, your start giving presentations — lots of them. Presentations to reassure your boss, “sure, things are right on schedule.” Presentations to reassure your subordinates, “no, the company is not planning any more layoffs…*cough*.” Presentations to reassure your customers, “sure, the project will not only come under budget, you’ll be amazed at the outcome.”

Your fingers get itchy. You brain starts to swirl. You’re confused. You yell to a Fluxidiot to come and show you his latest design. You see it, it looks familiar, but you don’t understand it.

A moment of epiphany tinged with fear flashes through your mind. You’ve become a PowerPoint Engineer.

Reposted from Flying Flux.