How to annoy your boss

Send him status updates. Constantly.

Ooh look at me! Ooh ooh! Did you see what I did? I did exactly the thing you pay me to do! Did you see it? Aren’t I the best?

A least once a day, send your boss this email. Several times per day would be even better.

Maybe your boss is too nice to tell you, but if you do this, he hates you. He hates you with a white hot fury. When he closes his eyes, all he can picture is you. Suffering.

Occasional status updates are OK, in very specific situations. If you’re working on a big project that takes weeks / months to complete — feel free to send over a biweekly update. This is especially OK if there are other people waiting on you to finish your part of the project so that they can continue working.

That’s it, though. You are expected to do the thing you get paid to do. That’s why you get paid. There’s no reason to tell your boss that. Do you also tell him how you made it to work on time, didn’t embezzle money from the company today, and held the door for an elderly woman? Of course not. These are all basic expectations.

Don’t annoy your boss to death. If everything is going smoothly, there’s nothing to talk about. When promotion time comes up, he’ll remember who gets the job done, and who loves to annoy him to death.

The moral of the story? Business advice is bullshit. I was reading an article recently¹ about how to set yourself up for a promotion. The main point was exactly this — providing your boss with constant status updates. Terrible advice. If you’re doing good work, the right people will notice.