This article, called
Tricks of the Trade is slightly old, but it's very amusing. A snippett from the intro:
For every occupation, there is a catalog of secrets only its employees are aware of—such as how waiters with heavy platters know to look straight ahead, and never down. Armed with a bag of reader mail, Matthew Baldwin unfurls a whole lot more true insider knowledge.
My favorite paragraph is this:
Curiously, I’ve noticed an almost identical aspect in the software development trade. Every year there seems to be a technical whatsit that management recognizes as the sexy-cool new thing but doesn’t really understand. This year, for instance, a programmer can always tack the phrase “and I’m thinking of incorporating some XML functionality” onto a project summary to explain why he’ll need an extra week, account for a missed deadline, or impress a superior. In this respect, the gap between software engineers and birthday clowns is almost negligible.
Basically because there's someone here who does the same thing, and he even does it with regards to XML as well. When trying to get a bit of context regarding an application he wants developed, I was asking "What does it do?" - a question which I think should be answerable in a simple sentence in order to make any progression. Of course I was returned nothing but a flurry of buzzwords.
The paramedic entry scares me because it reminds me of the time our doctor didn't want to diagnose my brother with measles because it meant more paperwork for him, so he told my Mum that it was just a cold. Proofreader sounds like a good idea which I'm going to try sometime. Software tester makes me laugh because I have similar comments in a lot of my code, although they're usually a lot more graphic and filled with expletives.