A quick story (and a true one, I promise).

The Team is at lunch. Say, ten or twelve software engineers sitting at a high table in the Commons at Microsoft, eating sandwiches and chips and soup and so forth. Oh, and there’s a new guy, fresh out of college.

“The thing is,” says Phil to the FNG, “You really have to be prepared in meetings. They might ambush you and want a schedule, or ask when that really hard bug is going to be fixed, or get you to commit to working on some scrum metrics or something, and you have to be ready.”

And with that, he takes out his rather large Kershaw knife, flicks the blade open and bangs it down on the table.

And without hesitation, about six of us take our own knives out, flip them open, and bang them on the table, too. They’re pointy.

“You have to be ready.”

I’ve not seen someone’s eyes that large at lunch, before or since.