And all those bosses in just one company during the first three years of my IT life.

Since then I’ve had six more bosses excluding my present one. I’ve had an American boss who doubled my salary every six months, an Australian boss who was so ecstatic that I was willing to do overtime that he gave me a very high performance rating, and a succession of Filipina bosses, two of whom qualify to my BOSS HALL OF FAME.

I actually have three bosses already in my hall of fame.  The first one in the hall of fame would have to be my first boss.  He was a geologist turned programmer turned IT department head before being pirated away to head the local operations of an American company.  He was the one who gently introduced me to the harsh realities of corporate life.  I had just come from the NGO world where my idealism reigned free.  It was his fatherly guidance that enabled me to survive the first year.

The two Filipina bosses in my hall of fame introduced me to the addicting world of solid accomplishments.  Both were driven, strong-willed, and very very capable.  They had different styles of management but the results were the same – excellent work done under budget and with lots of time to spare.

When I joined Ms. C’s team, she told me straight off that I came with excellent references and that she expected nothing but my best.  She hit me on the right spot for it was a challenge that I took to heart.

Ms. C was almost always given the task of salvaging projects that were running over deadline.  We were her lieutenants and the work was almost always difficult, varied, and exciting.  It’s a different kind of thrill coming into an almost lost cause and turning it into a winning proposition.

I believe the best project managers attract the best programmers and in our case it was true.  We were programmers from different countries, cultures, and levels of experience and the synergy was just great.  We had technical and even philosophical arguments but at the end of the day we’d still be going in the same direction.  Client and top management commendations became almost routine.

Ms. T was more the “controlling” type of boss.  There are a thousand and one ways of skinning a cat but many times she would insist on her way of skinning the cat.  It was often irritating but the results spoke for themselves. She got promotions and therefore heavier responsibilities every year that I was in her team.

In the first major project that we worked on together, our team was ready for implementation way ahead of the other teams.  Once the project got into the production environment, we received word from top management that it was the “best managed and best implemented so far”.

It was the same for the next project, and the project after that and the project after that.   In fact it was true for all the projects we implemented.

Tacked to my cubicle is a saying attributed to a Mr. Aristotle that says, “Excellence is not an act, but a habit.”  This could well have come from Ms. T.

In summary, each boss was unique, each brought with him a different style of management, and each one did not affect my work performance at all.

My performance rating has always been above average or higher since I started work as a programmer eleven years ago.  And I owe it all to an old and saintly priest who screeched, “DON’T LOOK AT OTHERS, LOOK AT YOURSELF” during a recollection back in college.

Even before Peter Drucker and Alvin Toffler taught me about knowledge workers, this priest already burned into my mind the importance of taking responsibility for my life.  It is my choices and my actions that will determine my destiny.  In the final analysis, it will not be my bosses nor my parents who will be facing Him but me.

So while it’s true that bosses make a job easier or harder to do, it is my responsibility to get the job done no matter what.  For what are bosses after all but persons like you and me.  Some may have become bosses through education and training, some through a lifetime of excellent performance, and some by default – there was nobody else so the poor guy remaining becomes boss.

For as far as bosses go, I subscribe to the Peter Principle as expounded on by Bishop Barski in James A. Michener’s novel, “Poland”, “…organizations like the church or General Motors promote a man up and up till he reaches a spot which he is obviously incapable of filling, and there they let him rest.  So that big corporations are constantly being run by men like me who have attained the demonstrated level of their incompetency...”

Paul Vergel is a mainframe programmer whose recurring nightmare is that of waking up as a boss.  He is the father of three kids who roll all over him every night thereby waking him up and keeping those nightmares at bay.  Comments are welcome at itdinosaur@gmail.com.  By the way, thank you to those who took time to send in their comments.  I may not have the time to reply individually but I do appreciate your feedback.  Some of the ideas expressed in your letters may even become the basis of future articles.  Best of all, your emails give me hope that there are still a lot of people out there who care.  To those who seek my advice, I am sorry but I feel inadequate to the task.  I share my story and other dinosaurs will soon share their stories for your benefit.  We hope you learn from our stories just as we learned from the stories of those who went before us.  Ultimately, the path you take will have to be decided by you alone.