Stories

Field reports from the universe of Manager OTG. Glossaries, short stories, annotated screenshots, taxonomies of meetings.

FAQ

Your Questions About the Q3 Offsite. Answered.

Manager OTG sent the invite at 9:43 PM. It had a PowerPoint attachment titled "AGENDA v1" that said "TITLE HERE." The offsite is in six days. You have not booked a flight.

Profile

Priya Has Been Running the Product Roadmap for Fourteen Months. Manager OTG Has Presented It Five Times.

She migrated it from Google Sheets to Confluence to Notion to Linear. She ran the April launch from a Notion war room doc while he was in Phoenix. He sent a 🙏 each time.

Field guide

A Field Guide to Manager OTG's Calendar Blocks

Teal for external. Purple for internal. Orange for "Focus Time." A taxonomy of the blocks your manager asked you to respect — and what they actually mean.

Internal comms

Re: Exciting Updates Regarding Our Team Structure

Manager OTG sent an all-company email Thursday at 3:47 PM. The effective date was "[date TBD]." Nobody replied to point that out.

Annotated document

Manager OTG's Annual Performance Review Self-Assessment, Annotated

He rated himself 5 out of 5 on Communication. He uses a mouse jiggler. Greg rated him 3 out of 5 and left the comments field blank.

Annotated thread

Manager OTG's Sunday Night Slack to #general, Annotated

Q3 priorities. Six bullets. No follow-up. Kyle replied in 42 seconds. Greg's 👍 is below the fold.

Profile

Greg Has Been Here Four Years. He Is Running Everything. Nobody Has Noticed.

A profile of the IC who fixed the pipeline, never misses a deadline, and has had his 1:1 rescheduled eleven times.

Field guide

Manager OTG's Out-of-Office Reply, Annotated

A line-by-line reading of the most aggressive auto-reply in your inbox.

Glossary

A Field Guide to Corporate Jargon, As Used by Manager OTG

Circle back. Take this offline. Ping me. What he thinks they mean, and what they actually mean.

Field guide

The 11 Slack Channels Manager OTG Created and Forgot About

An archaeological survey of the dead channels in your sidebar.

Field report

I Sat Through Manager OTG's All-Hands About "Q3 Vision."

53 minutes. 47-slide deck. One new initiative name. Zero decisions.

Field report

Your Manager Is in "Three Back-to-Back Meetings." He Is, In Fact, on LinkedIn.

The gap between the red dot and the green dot.

Taxonomy

The 4 Meetings That Should Be Emails (and the 1 Email That Should Be a Meeting)

The quick sync. The standup-that's-a-meeting. The alignment touch-base. And the org-change email.