Interview with Product Manager in 2024 [Corporate]

Product Manager [Corporate]
Part II for a coffee on / programmersarealsohuman
Interview with a Product Manager with Josh Doe - aired on © The Product Manager.
Programmer humor
Product Owner
Corporate Humor
Salesforce
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Atlassian
Agile humor
Agile jokes
Agile memes
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Scrum jokes
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agile manifesto
planning poker
waterfall
software development
#software #agile #corporatehumor

[@Hobbitstomper]

I worked for Blizzard back in 2007 in support for 6 months (GameMaster for WoW). None of our managers ever played WoW nor were they familiar with video games at all. One of the managers was even outspoken against video games. He often said he will never let his children play video games because it robs them their creativity and that instead he'd rather play 20 hours of Dungeons & Dragons than 2 minutes of WoW. I witnessed the same behavior in other big tech and gaming companies throughout my career. It was quite an eye opening experience to witness that many employees within big companies who are not technical and work in a management position, often don't use or care about their own products.

[@ozturkberkayy]

That's why AAA games nowadays are garbage. Almost all great games started off by a bunch of nerds who loves video games (like Ultima Online, Diablo etc.) Now though, it's different...

[@yourlocalhuman3526]

@@ozturkberkayy that and because parent companies want video games to fail on purpose so that they can sell them off for quick money for investors

[@agentgreen3790]

I've worked in tech for 20 years. Every time the company hires a non technical manager to manage technical people, I start looking for a new job. I started recently managing technical people and finally understand why bad decisions and unrealistic timelines get pushed onto employees: managers that don't have technical skill are incompetent and unable to fully understand problems.

[@chavzone]

One of my colleagues used to work for Blizzard too! She was there more recently (within 10 years) and said it wasn't even the sexism that made her move on (though it was really bad), she said what was way worse was the way they worked them all raw with unreasonable hours and terrible conditions. Tbh this is a systemic issue for way more than just the videogame industry. Business schoolers and the senior management caste know the price of everything and the value of nothing, so it's no wonder that the actual artistic and cultural merit of games, music, cinema and TV are suffering at the hands of Josh Doe and his cult of the dollar. When everything is just a cost-benefit analysis, we inevitably end up in a race to the bottom: the most insipid, lukewarm, diluted product possible, delivered at the lowest possible price, to the widest possible audience that is only just barely, barely palatable enough for the consumer to pull out their wallet and buy it. The worst thing is when people falsely attribute this to DEI and progressive movements. No, that's unrelated, that's the marketing deparment deciding to capitalise on pinkwashing their corporation. Rainbow spraypaint isn't the issue. It's the economics of it. We're minmaxing society, and it's hell.

[@Therealpro2]

to be fair as an avid wow player, i woudnt let my kids play wow either

[@impossibur]

"I have never used our product" accurate

[@XDarkGreyX]

Is there a Diablo joke here I wonder

[@JeremyAndersonBoise]

Emotional damage, not a joke.

[@PhilippBlum]

It's not even funny any more. This is too real . . .

[@tobias3581]

The founders of a product I built didn’t use the product for at least the first year 😂 the product was their core business income!

[@anthonybarnes]

So real

[@s1v7]

"politics over progress, processes over logic, emotions over process" - the base. the essence of any enterprise.

[@monad_tcp]

In the enterprise you have to choose what you are going to lose. Ethics or Hope or Sanity, you start with ethics and hope and sanity, but you can only keep 2 of them. I lost all my hope in one job, then I regained it and lost all my sanity in another job. Then I regained it and now I shove down ethics on the drain, I didn't create this stupid game. I am not sane and hopeful, without any ethics ! Either way they take your soul. (maybe I really lost it all and have no hope, sanity or ethics anymore, such is the life)

[@blueghost3649]

@@monad_tcpprofile picture checks out

[@jna6536]

Too fuckin real lol

[@DR_1_1]

It's some curse on humanity, it's not that enterprises are doing this because they are intrinsically evil, but it's the only way to succeed in life...

[@PrincessKushana]

@@monad_tcp I stood my ground on all 3 and got fired.

[@snocoldman]

“I’m not saying they know what they’re doing, I’m just saying I really don’t care.” Honestly, based.

[@SuruLereinLasGidi]

i need this as a mug STAT! 😂

[@KnightMirkoYo]

"We have a tool to consolidate our documents... my downloads folder" So accurate

[@JetJockey87]

Also "We can't expand the infrastructure, I'm already used to Trello"

[@aerialsnack]

This one actually hurt me when he said it because... I mean... we've all been there...

[@strangecalibur]

Beware, young Padawan. Politics over progress leads to stagnation. Processes over logic leads to inflexibility. Emotions over processes leads to chaos. And OKRs over all... that is the path to the dark side of management.

[@soccermaniac2819]

The constant "I don't have access." "Make sure you get access." Is too fucking real. I have been waiting over 2 months to gain access to a Microsoft dashboard to do a part of my job. Damn agile environment

[@kugeltmg]

The access request has to go through 6 different departments. All of which are disorganized, underfunded, and bloated with nonsense (aimed at appeasing VPs); and none of which have any incentive to approve your request.

[@geesysbradbury3211]

that's not agile. agile is dead. it has been eaten by egomaniac bureaucrats and what they shat out is what we now call "agile".

[@ImperialFool]

I did a corporate internship where I had nothing to do for 2 weeks because I was waiting for database permissions.

[@MEMUNDOLOL]

over 2 payed months

[@Salantor]

Corporations are great at burning money.

[@adamfrank5183]

"I'm gonna issue a Jira ticket, but I'll send it by email... so you will forget." God damn you, product manager.

[@yashaswikulshreshtha1588]

i don't understand why do they do it though? Like aren't things supposed to be smooth or something?

[@mike200017]

He could have added: "I'm gonna ignore all Jira tickets or bug reports not filed by me, and in three months I'm gonna present, to upper management, the handful of irrelevant Jira tickets that I created and buried, and pretend that was all the work that was done or had to be done this quarter." I've learned that the best strategy as a developer is to make sure about 1 week before some sort of quarterly review to go through all the irrelevant and trivial tickets filed by product / project managers and do them (which is usually very quick and easy) to keep everyone happy and off your back so you can do the real work. You don't want to do them as soon as they are filed, though, because that will just bring more irrelevant work your way. And if you had to hack the feature in and it later gets in the way of other things, you can just remove it and I guarantee you no product manager will ever notice it's gone.

[@rokker333]

I swear, this YT channel is Dilbert for a modern world. Insanely accurate. I don't get a salary, I get pain compensation.

[@adogmn]

Dilbert without all the racism

[@TheBashar327]

@@adogmn , Dilbert never had any racism. Nice try, comrade.

[@ellielikesmath]

​@@TheBashar327 dilbert has become tainted with racism due to the author's outspokenly racist views.

[@TheBashar327]

@@ellielikesmath , the Dilbert's author's views are not racist taken in full context. There's more racism coming from the Left the past few years- do you call that out. You can't live inside your little bubble trying to speak into existence a fantasy. Try again, comrade.

[@TheBashar327]

@@ellielikesmath , the author's views are not racist if you understood the context of them. No more than any black person talking about "white America". Even black people have commented the same and many have agreed with Adams. There's more credibility to President Joe Biden and Justice Sotomayor being racists than Scott Adams. Try looking at the world with a critical adult mind rather than a child's mind spoonfed on what to think.

[@practical-dreamer]

I’m surprised this video upload made it past corporate security.

[@konberner170]

He told an worker that they needed to check with corporate security. This obviously doesn't apply to him.

[@James-nd2yk]

I'm not surprised it went past security...

[@practical-dreamer]

@@James-nd2yk clarification: I’m surprised cyberSec gave their blessing for this video to be uploaded given our organizations data classification policy…

[@datadrivendev]

"I get paid to remind the engineers of that" epic

[@sstranger1007]

The first sentence "I identify problems in the project early .. and silence them." Gold!

[@jpbastyr]

scarily accurate "nobody has a clue what we're doing"

[@PrivacyRevocation]

"we did not meet our OKRs this quarter, we need to change our OKRs". Just came out of a company where this was actually the case.

[@GSBarlev]

Pretty sure *every* company that practices SAFe ends up doing this. I worked for a company that spent millions on agile trainings, millions more on switching us all to SAFe... and then fired every single agile delivery lead.

[@Eagle3302PL]

@@GSBarlev Let me guess, the CTO is a Gen X career salesman that has never worked in tech? That's the case in the little slice of hell I am in now.

[@GSBarlev]

@@Eagle3302PL This company's culture very much is business analysts and consultants all the way up to the top. McKinsey, Deloitte, Booz-Allen... very much revolving doors when it comes to leadership's prior stints.

[@gorak9000]

I work at the company that invented OKRs, and they just brought back in OKRs a couple of years ago - it's the stupidest waste of time I've ever seen in my entire life

[@NNokia-jz6jb]

What is OKRs?

[@brokula1312]

Remember kids, the less you work, the more you'll earn.

[@rokker333]

Not knowing creates leisure time.

[@XDarkGreyX]

The more certificates the more you are entitled to do little

[@grimonce]

Especially if you compare it to the effort made... xD

[@Spoonbringer]

To be fair I know some of managers who work long hours. I'm not sure what they do and we would probably be better off if they were all fired, but they do put in hours.

[@michalsvihla1403]

I see you were inspired by Nvidia marketing :)

[@sean6793]

The fact that I didn't realize it was a joke initially when he said, "I don't have any new ideas that's a different department", because I've worked in several businesses where that is quite literally the case made me sit back and stare at the ceiling for a bit.

[@Kagotza]

first time I saw this guys videos I also thought this is real and only just veeery slightly odd

[@NorthernRealmJackal]

"We define the requirements at the beginning of the project. Changes come in through change-requests. We do have the agile manifesto hanging on the wall, so to me it sounds like agile." Imma hang _that_ on the wall, right under the agile manifesto.

[@zenitsuagatsuma3155]

"I barely know the names of most of the people on our team" accurate

[@nocturne6320]

Not the fucking Teams "incoming call" sound 😭

[@sylvan186]

Traumatizing sound...

[@nocturne6320]

@@sylvan186 The morning stand-up humiliation ritual sound

[@ahmedexmor]

Haha brilliant and sad 😢​@@nocturne6320

[@darksidedevil2]

That got me off guard !! So rude !!!

[@DobromirManchev]

You can actually change it, i found out that recently. It helps with mental health

[@pravkdey]

Patagonia jacket, check

[@alkumhcounseling8634]

I'm always dressed to jog to the office, but I like to stay ready to pivot in case I want to traverse a glacier

[@redkeyspoke]

Ok, but is his name Chris?

[@alfred493]

Bruhh the product director at my org has one. Apparently it's a thing now loool.

[@sethstor]

"This was a management decisions and I will not question it... I am not saying they know what they are doing, I am just saying I really don't care"

[@MrAntraxico]

I remember on my first job talking to a manager about Agile. I complained about how nobody was implementing it correctly and that everything was cascade with a mask of Agile. He just looked at me quizzically and said "what do you mean? We have been doing Agile this whole time. We divide our problems into 2 week sprints!" I just sipped my coffee and forgot why I was even complaining.

[@alilakhwaira]

I snort-laughed at this.

[@Ikbeneengeit]

When you plan your waterfall tasks in two-week chunks, it becomes ✨Agile✨

[@Thorinbur]

How else can board of directors approve project if you dont have full roadmad and estimations? Then you split the roadmap between multiple teams ignore dependencies between them, and make sure that the team will start 2 other projects at the same time, because when testers test, programmers can start the next project, and the analists can do the third one so everyone is busy, busy, busy. Maximise those resour.... teammembers. Just make sure you have plannings and 2 weeks sprints so you can call it agile. And hire one scrum master per 5 teams, but dont actually listen to the SMs, they are there as therapists for the weakminded devs.

[@JohnVance]

"One must not be predictable" this destroyed me it's so accurate

[@MrNoBody114]

JIRA

[@aniblaze]

Also loved the “Mmmmmmmicrosoft”

[@BB-te8tc]

Repeat after me: Atlassian Atlassian Mmmmicrosoft Salesforce

[@Unga_Bunga]

KZbin added a "Translate to English" under your comment for me. When I click it, the text doesn't change, at all. JIRA

[@pawemotylski9278]

@@Unga_Bunga processes over logic

[@OviDB]

“I take in 9 hours of work toxicity every day - show me an AI that can do that” BRILLIANT 😂

[@SimGunther]

"The engineers and customers use the product so I don't have to" - Every PM ever

[@jankoodziej877]

Haha, engineers using the product, good one.

[@Tuckerslam]

@@jankoodziej877 He meant as a punishment.

[@kalaiselvanra]

“Downloads” folder for consolidating the documents 😂

[@datadrivendev]

"Miro? Sounds like a virus to me" 😅

[@DS-nv2ni]

Well it's kind of. Many freaks now like to use it "to visually organize", but it's a waste of time, by having it in the company pushes people to make all sort of unnecessary graphs, presentations and whatever, subtracting even more time from what really matters (designing into detail and developing the product).

[@segarallychampionship702]

"28.3 million? that sounds like a made up number. i'm sure you can do it for much less. 1 million. i'm sorry that's all we have right now. this is a lie, we have infinite money" since i work for a government org now, i expect any budget discussions to go like this

[@nonamehere1626]

Gov orgs are king at it, between the embezzlement and the insane amount of paperwork needed to justify every cent, you'll get that vibe all the time.

[@segarallychampionship702]

@@nonamehere1626 exactly, someone at the finance ministry comes up like "yeah here's your yearly budget, it's fucking nothing, we gotta slash expenses somehow" and then the person goes out to buy another ivory backscratcher for themselves as another piece of plaster falls down, that is precisely the experience i am having

[@switzerland]

I‘m gonna take the transcription of this video and insert random quotes in my conversations. Nobody will notice.

[@zhandanning8503]

I love the way the dude is speaking into the pic without listening to the earphone

[@antoniobaianosvizzero764]

MMMMMmmmmmmmMicrosoft

[@radekBednarik]

This is triggering a huge PTSD episode for me

[@bertoman1990]

"I can build the entire app with Excel" PMs loving the flex on what they can't do

[@Langeta-kun]

They're really really good with excel though

[@laurasenko952]

omg the CONSTANT access issues....😂

[@wherami]

Yes I have to make a power point every quarter lol you nailed all of this with key words

[@dubhd4r4]

"If we can clarify in an email I set up a meeting, if we need to set up a meeting, I send an email. One must not be predictable"

[@JeremyAndersonBoise]

“I barely mastered Trello” 😂😂☠️

[@StefanoOttolenghi]

"If we can clarify in an email, I'll set up a meeting."

[@Gabriel-lg2xo]

"I'm not responsible for the process, I'm just executing it" 💀

[@yrtepgold]

"I align stake holders, various cross functional teams, listen to their needs and requirements... And silence them." 😂😂😂 Top Tier Product Management.

[@sismith5427]

We need a scrum master one with meetings about the meetings we had about last week's meetings to set the agendas of the upcoming meetings so the team can agree our definitions of done. Daylies that we can talk about how sick their cat was and retros to talk about what we should stop and why retros aren't working. Explaining how we break work into incomprehensible blocks because we need to sprint to a finish line that isn't a finish line, where the finish line moves and the race keeps changing. And if a dev team is successful but is too large we break it up into smaller unproductive teams as it's agile... I may be suffering PTSD... Post traumatic scrum disorder

[@Komeuppance]

Why are most scrum masters useless... I don't understand.

[@mertzanakia]

this should be the top comment

[@Puschit1]

@@mertzanakia Not really because Kai already did two of those, "Interview with an Agile Coach - Sprint1" and -Sprint 2. It's even with the same character, "Josh Doe".

[@Hiro2k10]

Sick cat got me, this week IRL stand-ups had it lol

[@Ikbeneengeit]

This sounds like us, except the scrum masters were too expensive so we got rid of them 😂😂

[@Insignia_]

Waiting for the vim ex-faang engineer to react to this

[@MarcLucksch]

He won’t understand it, he never experienced this life. If he would understand, he would talk differently about agile. Poor guy has no reference..

[@Salantor]

Poor or lucky, I am not sure which one.

[@stoffni]

Excuse me... Neovim!

[@AGLubang]

Probably never even heard about Power Automate, Tableau and stuff...

[@jaydee499]

They would wonder why the company hasn't completely refactored its code to implement some unecessary performance optimization using a cheeky novel algorithm they memorized off leetcode.

[@ediimanto]

We don't need Notion. We have a tool to consolidate all our documents. My Downloads folder.

[@grvndkmr]

I'm ded

[@ihunte1337]

I put the video on the agenda for next week!

[@JeremyAndersonBoise]

Billions. Billions are spent. On this.

[@PavelHenkin]

Nah.. trillions. This is management, at large!

[@csibesz07]

Didn't you know, the future of humanity is: managment. kzbin.info/www/bejne/rJa9hpKrn56rZ8k

[@eckard9597]

I worked with a CTO that was the literal embodiment of this, except worse. Everything was Power BI this, Power BI that, but when I had an issue with Power BI he had no clue how to navigate it. His time at the company ended like this: Me on Friday: Can you get me access to this? I just need these roles in Microsoft Azure under this subscription and project. Him: Sure, I'll get that to you by Monday! Also him: Texts the CEO on Sunday night "I'm out, peace" 6 Months of work lost because we're locked out of Azure

[@harleyspeedthrust4013]

interview with professional time waster

[@BoraHorzaGobuchul]

On the one hand, yes. On the other hand, get rid of him and see how far the other time waters manage to get without him...

[@sstranger1007]

"My computer blocks figma links" 🤣

[@ex1tium]

"I could build the entire app with Excel." I'm currently converting Excel sheets to an app. FML.

[@WillDelish]

Thats a next year project for me! Would been this year, but a team said they’d do it for us without knowing what we did or requirements. I told boss well, delaying this a year helps me & not our fault. 6m in, this team finally ask us for requirements. 3 weeks later they gave up 😂 (they go’n build for someone else)

[@adhalianna]

I have seen an excel sheet that was basically an almost complete back-office solution for an e-commerce platform. I think it might have been only missing the possibility to send emails. It worked like a dedicated GUI with menus, views, etc. I think it was built by a single person. I started to wonder whether Excel might be the best tool for prototyping software.

[@eckard9597]

@@adhalianna I did that for an IMS. Now I'm working out my plan to build it into a webapp :D

[@tunesfortoons6507]

​@@adhaliannaExcel, you have your database right there. Your gui. Your formulas are the back-end. No need for apis. Security and authorisation? -> protected fields. VBA is the perfect design language. I swear this could be a sketch on this channel.

[@PaulSpades]

@@adhalianna Ever since Excel got VBA (30 years ago), it became a complete and comprehensive RAD environment. Not only that, but most of the VBA scripts can just be moved to a new VB6 project, if you want to make it a real application. Easy, fast, streamlined. It's barely any work, you spend more time arranging buttons on forms. Most people just don't learn how to use it, your example sounds like a good exception.

[@BryceWill-mw3il]

1:35 "We didn't hit our quarterly OKRs, so let's change our OKRs" so accurate :)

[@BlanketBaron]

I take in work toxicity for 9 hours a day, show me an ai that can do that

[@GSBarlev]

Fr. I was playing with an LLM, and it turns out if you're toxic to it, it becomes *extremely toxic* right back.

[@PaulSpades]

@@GSBarlev Depends on the model. Some can take your toxicity all day long, every day of the year, no weekends off and spit out spectacularly polite responses. But you're in trouble if you start talking like that to real human beings after getting accustomed to it. The human is always the weak link.

[@Prohxyy]

"It's all in SharePoint" 💀

[@3DGladiator]

fucking SharePoint ☠

[@AGLubang]

Then "You need permissions to access this site". "I'd like access, please."

[@MetalheadAndNerd]

​@@AGLubangAsk any site collection owner if they know where these requests for access are waiting for them and no-one will know.

[@arcynic5404]

0:04 genuinely surprised that this project manager knows what a pixel is... this is the kind of technical expertise I would never expect from one.

[@forwardtwo]

'I'm head of AI now' so damn real I want to die

[@IlkoGood]

"I'm head of AI now". Just ended me finally, thanks :)

[@WeAreEJE]

I like how he is in a teams meeting in the background.

[@Schecterbaby]

This felt like the longest 6 minutes of my life. Spot on.

[@angrybatarian]

"I have never used our product" That right there

[@loquek]

Surprised you didn't have to take that in your car, during launch week... our PM just went on holiday for launch week, after basically just stressing everyone out about deadlines, which are their own doing, by ignoring estimates, and over promising xD they barely touched Jira, or know how to use it

[@replikvltyoutube3727]

Yeah.. no touching Jira is pain. Programmers basically have to self govern...

[@Dav-jj2jb]

I once suggested to my senior product manager that we should try to dream a little and make a cool feature, she told that she doesn't dream about work. 🤔Also, she writes down documentation in Word and uploads it to Confluence as a file, i gave up trying to explain.

[@lawrencemanning]

Unless you are paid very well or otherwise enjoy the work, that sounds like grounds to sod off somewhere else.

[@Dav-jj2jb]

@@lawrencemanning I'm starting to think so as well.

[@petarkolev6928]

Parrot promoted to product manager after learning to repeat "How's the project going?"

[@ivolodar18]

"I can build an entire app in an excel sheet". I have found my spiritual animal.

[@ChiefBridgeFuser]

True story: I once build the controls for a manufacturing test fixture in excel macros. That was in the days before VBA as the scripting language. "Mistakes were made"😮😂

[@dave6012]

Taking it back to the roots, I love it.

[@adfjasjhf]

"I record all the meetings so I can sue them" LOL

[@DjEphixa]

Make sure you get access.

[@Endrit719]

I discovered this channel last year or 2 years ago, it's hilarious and on point lmao

[@dekumarademosater2762]

"What's an OKR?" I asked myself. Then I asked a search engine. Then I got "An OKR is a popular management strategy that defines objectives and tracks results. It helps create alignment and engagement around " NONONO NONO NONONOMAKE IT STOP!

[@PaulSpades]

hahahaha

[@MartinZwigl]

"I have a lawyer within the company".... 🤣

[@idanmuze]

This might be the best channel on YT at this point lol

[@tecsmith_info]

Right in the feels... Great video!

[@remy9519]

I like how you're just talking in the mic without even having the earbuds in during the teams calls

[@HideBuz]

All those videos are not satire, they are a documentary.

[@user-nu7jn2wl9k]

This is art - you can tell by the comments that he's put us into the uncanny valley. Kudos -- I lost so much energy watching this, but it was cathartic.

[@steviea777]

"We didn't meet our OKRs last quarter; we need new OKRs." I felt that one.

[@sylvan186]

This makes work tomorrow bearable for me, knowing I'm not alone.

[@internetmaryann]

You’re not. I’m waiting for SharePoint access since two weeks, looking at JIRA tickets, unable to move them due to lack of permissions.

[@AGLubang]

"I'd like access, please."

[@lolfraggles]

"Make sure you turn your cameras on" wasn't in there, I'm seriously disappointed.

[@ShinneyDev]

This is so true. Old, outdated processes that need to be followed no matter what, but no one bothered enough to update them in order to actually reflect or simplify company needs whatsoever, welcome to coporate hellscape!

[@christianb6718]

"i dont have access" - I can relate

[@qualityvideos4856]

> "What's our mission statement?" is the mission statement. 🔥

[@YaroslavFedevych]

I love how he's talking at the team into the microphone, but keeps his headphones out so he listens to no one.

[@conradleonard]

This brings me such joy

[@jamtea388]

I find this relatable as someone who worked as a project manager.

This video is definitely gonna blow up

[@ccj2]

“We didn’t meet our OKRs this quarter. So we need to change the OKRs” is some G shit 😂

[@JonMasters]

Perfection as usual

[@okayssorta]

Keeping the earpieces off of ears during the calls, brilliant, might adopt it too.

[@smallelephant_og]

This is pure gold

[@yxnilI]

Very cool video!

[@sharpenednoodles]

This video gave me PTSD. Bravo 10/10.

[@Bregylais]

That "Jira" cracked me up something fierce. Pure gold.

[@RamirezGold]

That Teams ring tone is triggering PTSD

[@phil-l-tech]

The more I listen to this, the better it gets

[@pauldruhg2992]

We miss the OKR, its the time to change them. Brilliant!

[@patrickcarpenter6258]

"jira" im already dead

[@haldanesghost]

One sentence in … and now there’s coffee all over my keyboard 😂

[@mccafferyfamily]

I do not miss the days working in this style of company, but man you nailed it

[@ErichHafenmaier]

Even though I'm laughing on the outside I'm absolutely crying on the inside because this is so damn accurate. 😆😫

[@marcoose777]

Zero responsibility is always the objective

[@arnbrandy]

I hope the part II has this guy sending some technical explanation generated by ChatGPT to the senior engineers.

[@JeremyAndersonBoise]

This video is what the world needs now.