> I dial in every morning for the mandatory death march status call with the CTO and I lie. > “The team is working hard. Today we hit milestone integration poi

> I dial in every morning for the mandatory death march status call with the CTO and I lie. > “The team is working hard. Today we hit milestone integration point #73.” > “The team made good progress yesterday, we finished another web service.” > Every day I showed up and told the big boss that we were hard at work on stuff that we had already completed over the previous month. I think it's a really important detail that he was lying about work that was already done. That looks like "underpromise and overdeliver" from a certain angle. I'd feel worse about lying about work that's not done yet. Certainly riskier, and maybe not the best feeling for the team when they get back: "Here are your tickets, I told the CTO they were already done, so hurry up."