There are no end to deadlines in the IT sector. If you are working on a development project, you have deliverables and codes to complete within the timeline. If you are working on a support project, you have to provide support as and when it is required to meet the demand of the hour. It is always a race with time. You always feel you do not have enough of it to complete all your tasks. Same is with your supervisors as well, in fact it is so for most people in the IT industry except few lucky ones who only need to spend the stipulated 9 hours daily and leave without any pressure of deadlines.

Read more: Small mistakes get hyped, no mistakes (read work) get hyped too »

But there is an elite group of people who are a class apart and who can achieve he impossible, defying the law of conservation of energy. They get to accomplish tasks that require lots of effort by not giving any effort, well, almost. For them, work is just a wastage of effort and time. As some of them claim, they love to be ‘around’ work, not ‘doing’ the work.

Let’s get it straight now. They act as the coach of the team even though they are the captain of the team! He wants his team members to do the job for him as he lazes around. Occasionally, and let me put that very rarely, he acts to provides moral support to his team members! Not that he is bad at that though. If required he can pour his heart out at help his team members out of the trickiest most troublesome situation, that’s his best side. He might spend hours until he achieves what he wants to do, be it in his own work, or helping out his own team members or members of a different team. But, as you already might have guessed, that happens very rarely. It will be a very big day and almost everyone (yes, everyone including PLs and GLs!) is going to raise their eyebrows seeing him work, or being sincere (seemingly trying to be).

It seems a pretty useless and unwanted person he is in the team. Isn’t it? Apparently, he is. But that’s not the whole story. In fact, it’s only a part. There’s a lot more to him than meets the eye. He can read you inside out when you are talking with him. His brain collects signals of your likes, dislikes, hobbies, your close ones, their food preferences, holiday preferences, your shopping habits and what not. The cumulative data is used to process out some vital information that is required to make the best impression on you. Something that will make him appear to you so close that you can share anything with him (don’t take in the wrong sense!).

This is a gift. Really lucky are those who possess such innate quality of impressing people. It can range from your immediate boss, your group leader, your onsite client whom you met at a party. It helps to have this great impression which gives you an edge over the others even when you underperform (well, that doesn’t mean you deliberately underperform and roam around). It makes you appear really an efficient resource. It helps you bag a greater points in the eyes of your boss, hence a nice perk. It favors you on having onsite opportunities.

Well, it does pay off you see! But there are a number of cases when such larger than life images backfires. You can well imagine any scenario when an apparent Jason Bourne, is send on a mission when actually, he is, Adam Sandler!

Did you have any such experience or know someone with such gifted qualities? Feel free to comment and share below.