If The American Idol judges were Project Managers

Unless you've been living under a rock for the past 5 years, you know who these three people are. They are on TV three times a week, influencing millions of Americans on what phone number to dial. What if your Project Manager is like them?

The Randy Jackson Project Manager. This is your buddy Project Manager, your hangout pal. He takes interest in your life outside of work. He wants to know your playlist on Last.FM, the stories you Digg and whether you caught that TWiT episode when Steve Wozniak was on. When you pass his desk on the way to the rest room, he would greet you with a "What up, Dawg!" without fail. When your module passes unit test, he would slap you in the butt and exclaim "That was hot!"

The Paula Abdul Project Manager. Project Manager would be a misnomer because she is more of a cheerleader than somebody that leads or manages. She believes happy coders are productive coders. She does not direct or coach, nor does she know what stage the project is in. When you can't figure out how to tune that stored procedure to finish under 3 minutes, she would pull you in for a pep talk and tells you that she sees a little Tom Kyte in you. She gives such generic kudos to everybody all the time, you wonder if she ever noticed the weekend work you put in to install the patch to fix that annoying crash when more than 2 people log in at the same time.

The Simon Cowell Project Manager. This is the manager who always lets you know whether you're in the doghouse or the penthouse. He doesn't mince his words. When you get your performance evaluation, you will not be surprised because he's been giving you constant feedbacks since day one. When a lot of your bugs are spelling errors, he will gladly give you a kick in the pants. When you don't sound confident during status report meetings, he will tell you so. Sometimes you wonder why he picks on so many little things and sometimes his feedbacks de-motivates you. Sometimes you hate him and even fear him. But you know that if you don't take his criticisms personally he can make you a better code monkey.