10 ms·

One of my all time favorites. Can’t remember where I first read it (Quora?), but it’s currently my top Google hit for “balloon programmer project manager joke”.

One of my all time favorites. Can’t remember where I first read it (Quora?), but it’s currently my top Google hit for “balloon programmer project manager joke”. [0] ============ A man is flying in a hot air balloon and realizes he is lost. He reduces height and spots a man down below. He lowers the balloon further and shouts: "Excuse me, can you help me? I promised my friend. I would meet him half an hour ago, but I don't know where I am." The man below says, "Yes, you are in a hot air balloon, hovering approximately 30 feet above this field. You are between 40 and 42 degrees North latitude, and between 58 and 60 degrees West longitude." "You must be a programmer," says the balloonist. "I am," replies the man. "How did you know?" "Well," says the balloonist, "everything you have told me is technically correct, but I have no idea what to make of your information, and the fact is I am still lost." The man below says, "You must be a project manager" "I am," replies the balloonist, "but how did you know?" "Well," says the man, "you don't know where you are or where you are going. You have made a promise which you have no idea how to keep, and you expect me to solve your problem. The fact is you are in the exact same position you were in before we met, but now it is somehow my fault." [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/2rn8qx/i_have_this_joke_posted_in_my_officedamn_project/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/2rn8qx/i_h...

yeuxardents 6y ago
I sent this to a project manager once, and they didnt understand nor appreciate it.
- cantsingh 6y ago
  They must be a project manager.
  - yeuxardents 6y ago
    I, perhaps appropriately, improperly calculated their threshold for humor.
    - mkarliner 6y ago
      No, he did't deliver the joke fast enough.
      - oumua_don17 6y ago
        And neither did he create a jira story for delivering the joke in the sprint!!!
        Cthulhu_ 6y ago
        Project managers wouldn't read the story anyway, they cough up the headline and maybe a few lines of text and expect the team to fill in the blanks during multiple refinement meetings.
  - faeyanpiraat 6y ago
    This is the comment that made me laugh, well done!
  - nvader 6y ago
    Adding another layer of indirection: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25866318 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25866318
- ssss11 6y ago
  I’m a project manager and find it hilarious! But i’ve also been technical.
  - drno123 6y ago
    So you are not "project manager", but "competent project manager", which is something completely different :)
    - uncledave 6y ago
      I’ve never met one of them in the wild. A rare thing indeed.
      - cornel_io 6y ago
        They're actually more common than engineers with understanding of project management or the concerns that they quite reasonably have. And they're way more valuable than a zug-zug eng. I say this as a pure engineer who has been a lead many times but never a PM.
- KrishMunot 6y ago
  I bet a product manager would be more kind
codetrotter 6y ago
A similar joke I heard recently: A helicopter was flying around above Seattle when an electrical malfunction disabled all of the aircraft's electronic navigation and communications equipment. Due to the clouds and haze, the pilot could not determine the helicopter's position and course to fly to the airport. The pilot saw a tall building, flew toward it, circled, drew a handwritten sign, and held it in the helicopter's window. The pilot's sign said "WHERE AM I?" in large letters. People in the tall building quickly responded to the aircraft, drew a large sign and held it in a building window. Their sign read: "YOU ARE IN A HELICOPTER." The pilot smiled, waved, looked at her map, determined the course to steer to SEATAC airport, and landed safely. After they were on the ground, one of the passengers asked the pilot how the "YOU ARE IN A HELICOPTER" sign helped determine their position. The pilot responded "I knew that had to be the Microsoft building because, the response they gave me was technically correct, but completely useless."
- robbrown451 6y ago
  The joke above is a play on the older joke you told.
  - ehou 6y ago
    O the irony of down votes on a meta joke
    - jefurii 6y ago
      That's funny!
- bryanrasmussen 6y ago
  A helicopter was flying around above Seattle...malfunction disabled... aircraft's electronic navigation and communications equipment... ....The pilot saw a tall building, flew toward it, circled, drew a handwritten sign, and held it in the helicopter's window. The pilot's sign said "WHERE AM I?" in large letters. People in the tall building quickly responded to the aircraft, drew a large sign and held it in a building window. The Sign was a stylized picture of the helicopter they were in, with a BIG red arrow pointing towards the pilot's window where a small cartoon pilot held up a sign saying 'WHERE AM I" in a hand-rendered Helvetica font. The pilot smiled...yadda yadda yadda.. After they were on the ground, one of the passengers asked... The Pilot responded "Tableau Software"
cstuder 6y ago
"And you got there by a bunch of hot air."
hutzlibu 6y ago
Thats a rehash of an old joke: I know it soviet style: A mathematician, a physicist and a biologist are flying in a air balloon and are lost. They encounter a man walking below: The biologist asks him: "do you know, where we are?" "..." the man looks up and says nothing The physicist ask him: "can you please tell us, where we are!" "..." after a while the man says: "in a balloon". The mathematician remarks, ah, he must be a philosopher. The others: "how do you know?" "Well, for once he needed a lot of time to answer. Then his answer is correct with our objective reality. And lastly, his answer is completely useless to us." (in eastern soviet republics, philosophy was not in high regards, because the peoples governments were supposed to be philosophical (a la Marx) government, with in theory, very high standards)
- plasticchris 6y ago
  I heard this one but it's a mathematician and a physicist in the balloon, and the physicist says the person must be a mathematician. As told by a math professor...
- lb1lf 6y ago
  A Soviet engineer needs some plumbing done in his apartment, and calls for a plumber. The plumber arrives, does his thing, and hands over the bill. The engineer is shocked. -'What, this is like a quarter of what I make in a month - for half an hour's work???' Plumber shrugs. -'Well, why don't you come join us? Easy work, well paid, no responsibility - just remember to keep mum about your degree, as we're not supposed to hire academics.' Our engineer contemplates this for a while, applies for a job as a plumber - and gets it. All is well, good money, no responsibilites - until management requires that they take evening school classes to gain new skills and thus better build socialism. So, grudgingly, our engineer enrolls in a math class and, upon arriving, finds that the teacher wants to establish what the plumbers already know. -'You over there - could you please come to the blackboard and show us the formula for the area of a circle?' he asks our engineer. Standing at the blackboard, he suddenly realizes he can't for the life of him remember the formula; while a bit rusty, he soon figures out how to reason it out - furiously writing out integrals on the blackboard, only to find the area of a circle is -(pi)*r^2. Minus? How did a negative enter into it, he thinks, going over his calculations once again. No, still gets the same result. Sweat building, he turns away from the blackboard for a moment, turning to the other plumbers watching. As in one voice, they all whisper -'Comrade, you must switch the limits to the integral!'
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
mrmonkeyman 6y ago
It is telling developers choose a methaphor in which they position themselves at height, lowering themselves to establish communication with any rabble they encounter. (Arrogant? Moi?)
bryanrasmussen 6y ago
It sounds like they're in the middle of the Atlantic? Have I got it wrong, I must have because the programmer is supposed to be standing in a field. Wait - are they dead and in heaven!?!
- ant6n 6y ago
  Maybe a bug in a joke, perhaps the coordinates need fixing.
  - bryanrasmussen 6y ago
    This would never have happened if the joke had been made by one of those 10X Comedians.
    - ralusek 6y ago
      I think without actually getting into the 10x debate regarding engineers, we can all agree that there are definitely 10x comedians.
      - sokoloff 6y ago
        Analogous to programming, the average joke-teller just isn’t that funny, making 10x more achievable. “Think of a comedian.” There probably isn’t a 10x that comedian for you. “Find the first person to tell you a joke live next week; considering them as a proxy for average, there is almost surely a 10x comedian out there.”
        ralusek 6y ago
        Kevin Hart, Sarah Silverman, Bert Kreischer - 1x Tom Segura, Ali Wong, Nikki Glaser, Bill Burr, Mark Normand, Andrew Santino - 5x Dave Chappelle, John Mulaney, Louis CK - 10x
        sokoloff 6y ago
benjaminsuch 6y ago
As much as I like the joke and of course understand the analogy, I don't see how, from this conversation, the programmer comes to the conclusion that he has to solve the managers problem. The manager just asked, the programmer gave a technical correct answer and the manager replied that it doesn't help him. But at no point was the programmer expected to solve the managers problem nor has he blamed him so that it's "his fault".
- prepend 6y ago
  PM gave a jerk response denigrating the programmers attempt to help.
- wruza 6y ago
  I think it plays around a common case of a manager saving their ass in front of superiors by shouldering the blame on an unsuspicious employee (“what were you doing all these months, what’s the state of the project, and how are you planning to deliver?”). With time the latter becomes experienced enough to not take the blame, and detects these attempts easily, because it is always happen to be “their” fault. (Sorry if that was obvious and you meant something else.)
bryanrasmussen 6y ago
A man is flying in a hot air balloon and realizes he is lost. He reduces height and spots a man down below. He lowers the balloon further and shouts: "Excuse me, can you help me? I promised my friend. I would meet him half an hour ago, but I don't know where I am. The man below produces a small object the shape of a teardrop colored a pleasing grayish blue that he proceeds to hold above his head in an inverted manner and then with a courtly, elegant bow indicates the ground the bottom of the teardrop is pointing at. The man in the balloon flies off again, exclaiming under his breath "damn designers"
tsoukase 6y ago
I also enjoy a similar one where instead of the programmer stands a statistician and instead of project manager a principal investigator. Source: https://stats.stackexchange.com/a/12745 https://stats.stackexchange.com/a/12745
pretzelhands 6y ago
Just for fun I checked where that position would be on world map. Turns out it's in the Atlantic, quite a bit off the east coast of the US.
hzhou321 6y ago
Meanwhile, no effort is made on either side to make progress. It is not a joke about software programmer or project manager, it is about self-centered irresponsible people.

yeuxardents 6y ago

I sent this to a project manager once, and they didnt understand nor appreciate it.

cantsingh 6y ago
They must be a project manager.
- yeuxardents 6y ago
  I, perhaps appropriately, improperly calculated their threshold for humor.
  - mkarliner 6y ago
    No, he did't deliver the joke fast enough.
    - oumua_don17 6y ago
      And neither did he create a jira story for delivering the joke in the sprint!!!
      - Cthulhu_ 6y ago
        Project managers wouldn't read the story anyway, they cough up the headline and maybe a few lines of text and expect the team to fill in the blanks during multiple refinement meetings.
- faeyanpiraat 6y ago
  This is the comment that made me laugh, well done!
- nvader 6y ago
  Adding another layer of indirection: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25866318 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25866318
ssss11 6y ago
I’m a project manager and find it hilarious! But i’ve also been technical.
- drno123 6y ago
  So you are not "project manager", but "competent project manager", which is something completely different :)
  - uncledave 6y ago
    I’ve never met one of them in the wild. A rare thing indeed.
    - cornel_io 6y ago
      They're actually more common than engineers with understanding of project management or the concerns that they quite reasonably have. And they're way more valuable than a zug-zug eng. I say this as a pure engineer who has been a lead many times but never a PM.
KrishMunot 6y ago
I bet a product manager would be more kind

codetrotter 6y ago

A similar joke I heard recently: A helicopter was flying around above Seattle when an electrical malfunction disabled all of the aircraft's electronic navigation and communications equipment. Due to the clouds and haze, the pilot could not determine the helicopter's position and course to fly to the airport. The pilot saw a tall building, flew toward it, circled, drew a handwritten sign, and held it in the helicopter's window. The pilot's sign said "WHERE AM I?" in large letters. People in the tall building quickly responded to the aircraft, drew a large sign and held it in a building window. Their sign read: "YOU ARE IN A HELICOPTER." The pilot smiled, waved, looked at her map, determined the course to steer to SEATAC airport, and landed safely. After they were on the ground, one of the passengers asked the pilot how the "YOU ARE IN A HELICOPTER" sign helped determine their position. The pilot responded "I knew that had to be the Microsoft building because, the response they gave me was technically correct, but completely useless."

robbrown451 6y ago
The joke above is a play on the older joke you told.
- ehou 6y ago
  O the irony of down votes on a meta joke
  - jefurii 6y ago
    That's funny!
bryanrasmussen 6y ago
A helicopter was flying around above Seattle...malfunction disabled... aircraft's electronic navigation and communications equipment... ....The pilot saw a tall building, flew toward it, circled, drew a handwritten sign, and held it in the helicopter's window. The pilot's sign said "WHERE AM I?" in large letters. People in the tall building quickly responded to the aircraft, drew a large sign and held it in a building window. The Sign was a stylized picture of the helicopter they were in, with a BIG red arrow pointing towards the pilot's window where a small cartoon pilot held up a sign saying 'WHERE AM I" in a hand-rendered Helvetica font. The pilot smiled...yadda yadda yadda.. After they were on the ground, one of the passengers asked... The Pilot responded "Tableau Software"

cstuder 6y ago

"And you got there by a bunch of hot air."

hutzlibu 6y ago

Thats a rehash of an old joke: I know it soviet style: A mathematician, a physicist and a biologist are flying in a air balloon and are lost. They encounter a man walking below: The biologist asks him: "do you know, where we are?" "..." the man looks up and says nothing The physicist ask him: "can you please tell us, where we are!" "..." after a while the man says: "in a balloon". The mathematician remarks, ah, he must be a philosopher. The others: "how do you know?" "Well, for once he needed a lot of time to answer. Then his answer is correct with our objective reality. And lastly, his answer is completely useless to us." (in eastern soviet republics, philosophy was not in high regards, because the peoples governments were supposed to be philosophical (a la Marx) government, with in theory, very high standards)

plasticchris 6y ago
I heard this one but it's a mathematician and a physicist in the balloon, and the physicist says the person must be a mathematician. As told by a math professor...
lb1lf 6y ago
A Soviet engineer needs some plumbing done in his apartment, and calls for a plumber. The plumber arrives, does his thing, and hands over the bill. The engineer is shocked. -'What, this is like a quarter of what I make in a month - for half an hour's work???' Plumber shrugs. -'Well, why don't you come join us? Easy work, well paid, no responsibility - just remember to keep mum about your degree, as we're not supposed to hire academics.' Our engineer contemplates this for a while, applies for a job as a plumber - and gets it. All is well, good money, no responsibilites - until management requires that they take evening school classes to gain new skills and thus better build socialism. So, grudgingly, our engineer enrolls in a math class and, upon arriving, finds that the teacher wants to establish what the plumbers already know. -'You over there - could you please come to the blackboard and show us the formula for the area of a circle?' he asks our engineer. Standing at the blackboard, he suddenly realizes he can't for the life of him remember the formula; while a bit rusty, he soon figures out how to reason it out - furiously writing out integrals on the blackboard, only to find the area of a circle is -(pi)*r^2. Minus? How did a negative enter into it, he thinks, going over his calculations once again. No, still gets the same result. Sweat building, he turns away from the blackboard for a moment, turning to the other plumbers watching. As in one voice, they all whisper -'Comrade, you must switch the limits to the integral!'

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

mrmonkeyman 6y ago

It is telling developers choose a methaphor in which they position themselves at height, lowering themselves to establish communication with any rabble they encounter. (Arrogant? Moi?)

bryanrasmussen 6y ago

It sounds like they're in the middle of the Atlantic? Have I got it wrong, I must have because the programmer is supposed to be standing in a field. Wait - are they dead and in heaven!?!

ant6n 6y ago
Maybe a bug in a joke, perhaps the coordinates need fixing.
- bryanrasmussen 6y ago
  This would never have happened if the joke had been made by one of those 10X Comedians.
  - ralusek 6y ago
    I think without actually getting into the 10x debate regarding engineers, we can all agree that there are definitely 10x comedians.
    - sokoloff 6y ago
      Analogous to programming, the average joke-teller just isn’t that funny, making 10x more achievable. “Think of a comedian.” There probably isn’t a 10x that comedian for you. “Find the first person to tell you a joke live next week; considering them as a proxy for average, there is almost surely a 10x comedian out there.”
      - ralusek 6y ago
        Kevin Hart, Sarah Silverman, Bert Kreischer - 1x Tom Segura, Ali Wong, Nikki Glaser, Bill Burr, Mark Normand, Andrew Santino - 5x Dave Chappelle, John Mulaney, Louis CK - 10x
        sokoloff 6y ago

benjaminsuch 6y ago

As much as I like the joke and of course understand the analogy, I don't see how, from this conversation, the programmer comes to the conclusion that he has to solve the managers problem. The manager just asked, the programmer gave a technical correct answer and the manager replied that it doesn't help him. But at no point was the programmer expected to solve the managers problem nor has he blamed him so that it's "his fault".

prepend 6y ago
PM gave a jerk response denigrating the programmers attempt to help.
wruza 6y ago
I think it plays around a common case of a manager saving their ass in front of superiors by shouldering the blame on an unsuspicious employee (“what were you doing all these months, what’s the state of the project, and how are you planning to deliver?”). With time the latter becomes experienced enough to not take the blame, and detects these attempts easily, because it is always happen to be “their” fault. (Sorry if that was obvious and you meant something else.)

bryanrasmussen 6y ago

A man is flying in a hot air balloon and realizes he is lost. He reduces height and spots a man down below. He lowers the balloon further and shouts: "Excuse me, can you help me? I promised my friend. I would meet him half an hour ago, but I don't know where I am. The man below produces a small object the shape of a teardrop colored a pleasing grayish blue that he proceeds to hold above his head in an inverted manner and then with a courtly, elegant bow indicates the ground the bottom of the teardrop is pointing at. The man in the balloon flies off again, exclaiming under his breath "damn designers"

tsoukase 6y ago

I also enjoy a similar one where instead of the programmer stands a statistician and instead of project manager a principal investigator. Source: https://stats.stackexchange.com/a/12745 https://stats.stackexchange.com/a/12745

pretzelhands 6y ago

Just for fun I checked where that position would be on world map. Turns out it's in the Atlantic, quite a bit off the east coast of the US.

hzhou321 6y ago

Meanwhile, no effort is made on either side to make progress. It is not a joke about software programmer or project manager, it is about self-centered irresponsible people.