Have You Met People Like This?
You think the most awesome people in a company are the most technically skilled? Wrong. It’s the people who don’t need to write code or make plans—but get promoted and get raises every time.
What do they rely on? The three-piece set of a rushed operation: gilding turds, passing the buck, and emergency tasks.
The First Piece: Gilding Turds—Making Simple Things Complicated
What’s “gilding turds”? Taking a clearly simple requirement and packaging it to be incredibly complex and high-end.
What’s the essence of this? Make simple things complicated so no one understands, making yourself look awesome.
I once met an “architect” at a big company whose core ability was: insisting on building a mobile cross-platform container in-house, and it had to work across all platforms (one codebase for multiple platforms), have the best performance, and the lowest cost.
The result? The system often had problems—but every time there was a problem, he could say “the business is growing too fast, the architecture needs to evolve,” then build an even more complicated architecture.
The Second Piece: Passing the Buck—Credit Is Mine, Blame Is Yours
If “gilding turds” is ability, then “passing the buck” is survival instinct.
There are three levels of buck-passing:
Level 1: Junior buck-passing—it’s all someone else’s fault “This bug is because QA didn’t test it” “The delay is because product changed the requirements” “The data is wrong because operations gave the wrong parameters”
Level 2: Intermediate buck-passing—I warned you about this a long time ago “Actually, I thought this方案 had problems from the start” “I said we needed to prepare in advance earlier” “Too bad no one listened to my advice”
Level 3: Advanced buck-passing—I’ll take this blame, but I can’t help it—things are just this complicated, and you didn’t warn me either “I’ll take responsibility for this problem, but mainly the big environment is bad” “I did my best, but we don’t have enough resources” “The blame is on me, but I hope everyone can solve this together”
The most brilliant one I ever saw: a project went wrong, and the person in charge said in a meeting:
“I take primary responsibility for this project’s failure. But we also need to reflect—why did we work so hard and still not do well? This shows our organizational structure has problems, our processes need optimization, and our culture needs improvement.”
See? He took the blame—but in the end, he pointed the finger at “the organization,” “processes,” and “culture,” turning it into everyone’s problem, and he became the one “bravely taking responsibility.”
The Third Piece: Emergency Tasks—Turning Everything Into Firefighting
“Emergency tasks” are the king of the three-piece set.
Why? Because once something is defined as an “emergency task,” all rules can be broken:
- Can interrupt anyone at any time
- Can take all the credit for yourself
The most magical thing? Bosses eat this stuff up.
In a boss’s eyes, the people who quietly work and deliver on time aren’t as hardworking as the people who yell “emergency task” and work overtime every day.
Because the former are “doing what they should,” while the latter are “fighting for the company.”
Why Is This Three-Piece Set So Effective?
You might ask: why do these people who don’t do anything still thrive?
Because most company management looks at “performance,” not “results.” The boss themselves doesn’t have professional ability, doesn’t have enough knowledge and insight to judge—so in the end, they can only look at “performance.”
- Gilding turds: makes the boss think you’re professional and deep
- Passing the buck: makes the boss think you’re clear-headed and responsible
- Emergency tasks: makes the boss think you’re hardworking and passionate
And what about the people who actually do the work?
- Write good code—boss doesn’t see it
- Make perfect plans—boss thinks “isn’t that what you should do?”
- Deliver on time—boss thinks “you’re not busy enough”
This is the survival rule of a rushed operation: People who do work are worse than people who make PPTs, people who make PPTs are worse than people who yell slogans, people who yell slogans are worse than people who pass the buck.
But—Is This Really Right?
I’ve been in the internet industry for 15 years, and I’ve seen too many people like this. They thrived for a while with the three-piece set—but in the end, either the company collapsed or they got eliminated.
And the people who actually do the work—they might go slower, but they go steady.
If you’re in an environment like this too, I have two pieces of advice for you:
- Don’t learn from them—because you can’t, and if you do, you’ll lose your底线
- But recognize them—know their tricks, avoid getting the buck passed to you, avoid getting interrupted by their “emergency tasks”
Most importantly: Spend time on yourself, make yourself irreplaceable.
Because when you’re truly valuable—this three-piece set of a rushed operation won’t work on you.
About Me
I’ve worked at NetEase Games, Baidu, Tencent (8 years), and Meituan (nearly 7 years), leading large R&D projects and managing teams of over 100 engineers.
Now I build software as an independent developer.
Why? Because the world is full of uncertainty—staying at one company too long can make you addicted to certainty. Building on your own is like sailing into uncharted waters.
I believe good software should give people a sense of security and control. That’s the thread connecting everything I make:
PhotoRestore Pro — AI photo restoration that runs 100% offline on Windows. Your photos never leave your device. No cloud, no account, no compromise on privacy. Built for legal professionals, but anyone with old family photos will find it useful.
AstroSky — Think of it as “Snapseed for astronomy.” Turn raw FITS data into stunning celestial images. Fully offline, GPU-accelerated, with a Beauty/Science dual mode that serves both casual stargazers and researchers.
fastool.io — A collection of browser-based science tools. Right now it’s focused on astronomy: solar path tracking, moon phase analysis, sidereal time calculation, telescope FOV planning—all running in your browser with zero data upload.
Whether I’m gazing at the cosmos or refining a line of code, the goal is the same: build tools that put people in control of their own data.
Get in touch: HummingbirdLabs@outlook.com.