The boss you've already had.

Manager OTG is the perpetually traveling, perpetually unreachable, perpetually "in another meeting" middle manager. He's the boss above your boss, or the boss two cities away, or the boss someone else got. He's everywhere. We just write him down.

Featured

Field guide

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

A line-by-line reading of the most aggressive auto-reply in your inbox. Featuring the four-day silence, the recursive deferral, and the photo of a sunset he didn't take.

Glossary

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

Circle back. Take this offline. Ping me. Help me understand. 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. #q3-vision-alignment. #book-club-leadership. The one DM he sent to the wrong channel.

Recent

Field report

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

53 minutes. A 47-slide deck. A polling tool nobody asked for. A quote from Marcus Aurelius. One new initiative name.

Field report

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

The gap between what his Slack status says and what he is doing. The red dot. The 💯 emoji. The eleven-paragraph comment that arrived at 11:47 PM.

Taxonomy

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

The quick sync. The standup that's also a meeting. The alignment touch-base. And the org-change email that absolutely should have been a meeting.

A publication. For entertainment, not advice. Any resemblance between Manager OTG and your actual boss is coincidental — or, more likely, structural. More about the project.